A Season of Change

Fall is Here And It Is Not Only the Weather That Is Changing. Just Ask Trump

Ah, Fall

This is, by far, my favorite season. It is one reason we moved to live in the mountains. My only complaint is that it is too short a season. The slight crispness of the air, the spectacular foliage, followed by a time to admire the architecture and beauty of bare trees. It is a reminder that time marches on and more change is coming.

This year, that promise of change, both good and bad, in in the air of human endeavors. Let’s look at a few of them.

VP Harris’ Growing Popularity and Public Confidence

A lot of observers speculated, not unreasonably, that the surge of popularity VP Harris gained upon nomination would fade. Same for the Democratic Convention surge. And the same for the debate surge. You may have noticed that none of that happened. Her likely to vote for her scores, likeability scores, best represents my interest scores – they all continue a steady rise. We’ve not seen anything quite like this in our lifetimes. It appears on track to exceed the same trends for Obama in 2008.

Whether it will hold the rest of the race is unknowable today, but barring anything unknown, it appears the trend will hold. There will surely be setbacks along the way and let us not forget that Hillary beat Trump in the popular vote, and we got Trump, courtesy of the Electoral College. But the national appetite to leave behind the ugliness that Trump and Company spread seems palpable. What an opportunity for us all.

Speaking Of The Electoral College

That we need to rid ourselves of this anachronism is plain as day. Should we get good results in the upcoming election, let’s hope the effort to simply bypass it by declaring a state’s electoral votes will go to the popular vote winner nationally. They are close to having commitments of 270 electoral votes now to make this happen. Let’s hope November gives it the last few states needed to make it happen.

Heather Cox Richardson had a truly excellent blog post recently that laid out why the Electoral College happened in the first place and covers how it has been a subject of distortion and abuse more than once in our history. Do yourself a favor and take 10 minutes to get smart and understand the context of this important subject: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-20-2024

Vote Counting is Like Automatic Driving

Some Trump type minor officials in Georgia have declared that all ballots must be hand counted to be tallied. This is, of course, nonsense – it would take many weeks to accomplish and is sure to be plagued by human error. The Georgia Secretary of State – a courageous Republican official with a long history of doing the right thing – has said that decision likely exceeds the authority of these folks to do such a thing.

Hopefully, it will be dropped. A hand count for sample testing or to settle a dispute on a specific ballots makes sense. Doing them all this way does not make sense.

Two things come into play here.

One is that this is clearly an effort to slow the vote certification and to cast doubt among the people in the validity of the electoral process. But there is a bit of a human factor at work also. People do not trust technology, often with good cause. This little gambit plays on those fears. It is a bit like self-driving cars. As limited as those cars are (we hear about accidents), the fact is that even in this early stage, those cars are WAY safer on the road than human drivers.

Same with electronic tabulations vs hand counting. The electronics win hands down for speed and accuracy. One always needs the ability to cross check by hand counting but know that the electronic systems are good at doing the job.

Economics As Weakness?

While Harris is passing Trump on a wide range of public confidence issues, the economy still is a factor. Trump’s lead in this area is down, though still high enough to be a concern. The fact is that the US economy is remarkable in every way, often setting decades old records. This is about the healthiest US economy overall I have ever seen.

But the fact that inflation roared in as we pulled out of a deep recession is also undeniable, and that gives us the prices we see daily. That is an inevitable fact in an economic recovery. The Biden team and the Fed managed it better than any other country. Prices are coming down, but people are uncomfortable, understandably.

That will not go away, but the Harris team must do a better job of helping people understand how much of this comes from cleaning up the Trump economic mess, something brought on by a guy who declared bankruptcy six times, mangled our economy and deficit, and had zero plans in place to deal with any of it. Time for better messaging, on a saturation basis.

Foreign Policy Changes?

Two major wars are at more than one fulcrum point, a third is in the wings.

Ukraine continues to fight bravely and smartly. Russia continues to demonstrate its ability to absorb casualties and to wage war with epic cruelty. Perhaps as many as 100 million have died on both sides. Ukraine is finally getting permission to use US longer range weapons inside Russia at military targets. This has some risk but is valid and has potential to help shape the war.

In the Middle East, Israel now has a two front war on its hands. One can admire the sabotage of all those Hezbollah communications devices. The preparation and secrecy required to pull that off gives a remarkable case study that will be taught for years. Spreading this attack to solar power units will yield many more civilian casualties for not much military gain. As always, the Middle East is a mess, waiting to consume more people and inflict more damage.

Not getting much attention of late, the Chinese are being ever more aggressive around Taiwan, to include actions in the territorial water of Japan and others. The risk of war at some point sooner than many might think is not minimal.

All three of these scenarios may be subject to important actions following the US presidential election. If Trump wins, Russia has a blank check in Ukraine (and in Europe). The Palestinians will be completely ignored by the US regime. And China may feel bold enough to make an early move on Taiwan, knowing Trump would not stand and fight to defend Taiwan – or any other country.

If Harris wins, the aggressors in all three conflicts may feel tempted to challenge a new US president. That would be a mistake on their part, but the risk is real. Hold your breath, America – foreign policy will loom large in 2025.

Ending on a High Note

Much has been written lately about substantial decreases in drug overdose deaths in the US over the last year or so. Some have described this as a complete mystery – it is not. There are no doubt many factors at work here, and it is right to define what is going on as best we can. But we know two major factors lead to this good news.

One, the US Government has brought pressure to bear on the supply of Fentanyl, the primary drug in the body count. They have worked hard on China and Mexico, and others, on cutting out production and distribution. We are catching much more of it entering the country. Two, the Biden administration put money and process into getting great quantities of NARCAN and similar treatments throughout the country, along with education on how to use . By all estimates this has already saved many thousands of lives.

Let’s give a little credit where it is due and say thanks.

See You Next Week

42 days until election day.

Stay informed, talk to others, make some calls, write some cards. Knock on some doors, put out a sign or hand a bumper sticker. Share a little of your hard earned money with the candidates this country needs as leaders. Vote early and in person if you can.

Bill Clontz

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