For the first time in my life I’ve been watching at least the evening broadcasts of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago. For any of you who might be interested, the Convention is available to stream via the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS): click here and scroll down. This channel has the considerable advantage of NOT intruding with talking heads offering distracting “analysis.”
After trying to listen to Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention (I confess that I only make it through an hour of his ninety-some minute, lie-filled ramble) I find the speeches at the DNC humane and upbeat with emphasis on the Christian message of acceptance, community, and American ideals of freedom with which I grew up.
A couple of days ago I was offered a free article from Medium entitled “The Real Secret to Donald Trump’s Success.” Written by “T. J. Brearton” and published almost a year ago. Its final paragraphs shine some light on the contrast between the tenor of the two conventions.
Brearton develops the idea that Trump is doing the easy sell of justifying the unleashing of the basest aspects of human nature.
Trump message to his followers is:
America is your birthright. Do whatever you want; fulfill yourself. You, especially if you’re white, male, straight, and Republican, are the beating heart of the world. Get that extra large truck, take that extra-long vacation, make all the money you can, and gobble up everything in your path.
Forget the rest.
Trump sells you permission to indulge your vices, your baser instincts.
He sells you the right to be selfish, to lack any real moral fiber or scruples. He sells you the idea that intellectualism [as represented by the “elites”, the college professors, the “deep state”] is bad, institutions are untrustworthy, everything and everyone is corrupt and you can put your faith in only him, your martyr, who’s currently under major federal and state indictments for you.
He pays lips service to nationalism: let’s stay out of war, like the one in Ukraine, while praising the autocrat who started it. He bemoans the grift of D.C. while fleecing his constituency for millions.
Shameless, he’s never in danger of being a hypocrite because he can declare “So what?” To every charge. Either it’s persecution, it’s overreaction, or it’s simply fake.
Wouldn’t we all love this in our own lives? I’m rubber and you’re glue; whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.
Imagine if this attitude got us everything we ever wanted.
This is the easiest thing, in the history of things, to sell to people. F__k everyone else, it’s you, baby. F__k the gays and the blacks and the trans and the immigrants. F__k those people from shithole countries. Women should know their place, the government should let you do whatever you want, and you shouldn’t have to lift a finger to help anyone else. Ever. Just as America shouldn’t be helping anyone else, not unless we get something for it. It’s all a zero-sum game. Winners and losers.
I’m selling you a win.
Trump takes cultural issues, domestic and foreign policy issues, and economic issues, and gives you the easiest answer. Don’t like climate change? Don’t think about it, don’t worry about it; f__k the Paris Accord. Don’t like change in general? Let’s get back to the way things were. Don’t like the economy? Don’t like subprime mortgage fraud? Don’t like inflation or stagflation? Just get rich. Or blame D.C. for keeping you down. It’s the government and taxes, it’s not you.
Easy, easy, easy.
Don’t like something? Get rid of it. Don’t understand something? Blow it up, and sweep away the pieces. It’s never your fault, there’s nothing for you to do except hate the people doing this to you. The libtards and the immigrants and wokeism and other countries — it’s China. It’s always China’s fault; it’s got nothing to do with our rapacious consumer appetites. We’d build everything in America if we could!
Yeah, right.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying the Democrats or any other party are doing the work of the hard sell — you don’t get elected telling people to shut up and endure hard times. It’s always “have cake and eat too” — just different versions. The last moment we ever had that even came close to preaching selflessness was probably JFK saying, “Ask not what your country can do for you.” And look what happened to him.
But Trump has taken modern hedonism to a whole new level. This kind of thing, this easy sell — it’s timeless. We tell stories about it; probably the biggest and most well-known story of all is in the Bible. The tempting Devil. While I don’t believe those stories are literally true, Trumpism rivals these Biblical tales for its sheer scope and scale.
What Trump does is the easiest thing in the world; he’s not selling anything hard at all. He’s not asking anyone to try to be a better person, to consider their neighbor, to consider the future.
He’s selling you the right to be a complete a__hole, just like he is.
The speeches that I find inspiring at the Democratic National Convention offer hope of coming together, of tackling the big long-term problems, of having a future, rather than descending into a hell of hate and repression.
His obstruction–and his stock portfolio–suggest he does not
Spokane County Commissioner Al French is up against a formidable, community-centered, science-supporting opponent, Lt Col (Ret.) Molly Marshall, in the upcoming November General Election. For an immensely powerful elected official like Al French, a consummate politician, to accuse his opponent of “political attacks” over the deadly serious issue of PFAS contamination of our drinking water is richly ironic. It is time for a change.
The PFAS Issue
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—also referred to a “forever chemicals”—are a risk factor for the development of a number of cancers. Two PFAS chemicals, PFOS and PFOA, are major constituents of fire-fighting foams used in training exercises at airports nationwide for decades, including Fairchild Air Force Base (FAFB) and Spokane International Airport (SIA) west of Spokane.
In 2017 PFAS chemicals were detected in high concentrations in the municipal water supply of the City of Airway Heights. PFAS from Fairchild Air Force Base had leached into the groundwater and into the municipal wells. FAFB owned up to its role in the contamination. Airway Heights officials scrambled to connect their municipal water system, via wells maintained by the City of Spokane, to the purer water of the Spokane Valley–Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer underlying Spokane and points east and northeast.
But that was not the end of it. Seepage of contaminants in ground water does not respect municipal boundaries. Testing of private wells providing water for drinking, for livestock and for gardens for households outside of Airway Heights also began turning up high levels of PFAS contamination. Based on the hydrogeology of Spokane County’s west plains, Fairchild Air Force Base took some responsibility for the PFAS contamination for wells west of Hayford Road, a north-south dividing line east of FAFB, but drew the line there.
Spokane International Airport’s Silence
Spokane International Airport had found high levels of PFAS in test wells on its property in 2017. This was an entirely logical finding considering that SIA had, like FAFB, used PFAS-containing Aqueous Fire-Fighting Films (AFFFs) for decades—but SIA remained silent. Down-channel from SIA (east of Hayford Road) people drawing water from private wells for domestic use were left to wonder about their well water or to pony up hundreds of dollars to have it tested.
“Spokane International Airport”, like similar entities, has neither an ass to kick nor a soul to damn. The actions and declarations of “Spokane International Airport” are really the actions and declarations of the people most intimately involved in running the Airport. Spokane County Commissioner Al French is a prominent member and sometimes chairman of the Board of SIA, a vocal supporter of SIA’s CEO, Larry Krauter, and a tireless promoter of property development out on Spokane’s west plains.
Many have suggested that Commissioner French stood in the way of disclosing PFAS-contaminated test wells at SIA and sought regulatory relief from PFAS regulations for pecuniary reasons. French and real estate development interests connected to SIA and to S3R3, a private-public entity in which Mr. French also figures prominently, were thought to be guarding their interests, while hoping the issue would just go away.
There may be a deeper conviction at work here. Adept politicians like Mr. French would never come right out and declare disdain for scientific evidence of harm to human health or the environment. Even if that were their firm belief, it would be impolitic to own it.
But what do Mr. French and many of his like Republican politicians really think about the science? Here it is useful to inspect a little used resource that is publicly available at the tips of your fingers, the candidate financial statements at the Public Disclosure Commission’s website, pdc.wa.gov. (See the link “Financial Affairs Report” on the candidate’s page you can locate by exploring “For Voters and the Public”. )
Would a man with such lopsided stock ownership be inclined to take seriously a science-based assessment of a threat to human health of low concentrations of PFAS chemicals in drinking water? One must suspect that Mr. French’s actions around PFAS contamination speak of the same denial of the significance of PFAS as he holds for the threat of climate change.
We cannot afford to keep such people in office. Vote for Molly Marshall for District 5 Spokane County Commissioner this November.
Why most states subscribe to “winner-takes-all” (the Electors)
I remember the difficulty my father had in the early 1960s when he tried to explain to me how we elect the president using the U.S. Electoral College system. It made little sense to me—and the more I look at it the less sense it makes. If you need a little brush-up on how the Electoral College system works today (or doesn’t), check out the P.S. below. Why, for example, do 48 states and the District of Columbia pledge all their Electors to the presidential ticket that wins the most votes, a system referred to as “winner-takes-all?” That is definitely not what the framers had in mind, nor was it specified in Article II of the Constitution. Before we examine how we got here, let’s explore the recent frustrating. anti-democratic results of this antiquated system.
For the first half century of my life leading up to the Bush/Gore contest in 2000, the possibility of elevating a candidate who had lost the popular vote to the presidency via the Electoral College system seemed like a minor concern. Instead, the main issue was that, because of the winner-takes-all system of allocating Electors adopted by 48 of the states and the District of Columbia, presidential candidates pay scant attention to campaigning in any state other than “purple” states—the states in which they might arguably win and thereby take all the Electors for themselves. The result of this Electoral College-induced distortion is, for those who have a basic understanding of the red/blue status of their particular state, it can seem pretty meaningless to even bother to cast a ballot. This year, more than any other year, we need to shake off that feeling.
First, with Donald Trump and J.D. Vance making noises and taking actions to suggest preparation to challenge the integrity of the 2024 November election, the larger the overall vote margin for the winning candidate the less viable these challenges will appear. Second, if we manage to elect Harris and Walz there will be a much higher chance of their being able to move forward if they have a sympathetic majority in House and Senate. Finally, given the way the Republicans in Congress have voted as a block for at least the last twenty-five years, what Republican elected to serve in either chamber would have the temerity to vote against the Republican Party leadership if a nationwide abortion or contraceptive ban were proposed and made it to a vote?—regardless of moderation expressed on the campaign trail.
In our Washington Congressional District 5 working to thwart that grim possibility means supporting and voting for Carmela Conroy rather than Mr. Baumgartner. And while you’re voting don’t forget to vote for down ballot Democrats like Molly Marshall for District 5 Spokane County Commissioner—and against the Republican greed initiatives (more on those in later posts).
Now into the historical weeds
In the U.S. there have been only five presidents elected to office by our antiquated Electoral College system who were elected in spite of having lost the popular vote: John Quincy Adams (1824), Rutherford B. Hayes (1876), Benjamin Harrison (1888), George W. Bush (2000) and Donald J. Trump (2016). Of those five, Trump has the dubious distinction of having lost the popular vote by the largest margin by far, 2,868,686 votes—five times the absolute vote margin by which the next closest contender, George W. Bush, lost the popular vote in 2000. For good measure, in 2020 Trump lost the popular vote to Biden by a margin of 7,059,526 votes (in 2020 the Electoral College and the popular vote yielded the same result, a Biden/Harris win).
The only Republican president elected with a majority of the popular vote in any election in the last thirty years was George W. Bush in 2004 (and he rode in on the wave of a war based on a lie—”Weapons of Mass Destruction”). Small wonder that Republicans are so enamored of the Electoral College system, a system so antiquated that the U.S. is the only remaining democracy that uses it to elect its executive president [a few still elect a largely figurehead president using an electoral college].
Like so much else in the history of our country the framers of our Constitution developed the indirect election of the president and vice president via Electors as a muddy compromise necessary to get both slave and free states to ratify the Constitution.
Crazier still, the exhausted framers based their Electors method of electing the president on a series of misconceptions [bold is mine]:
For starters, there were no political parties in 1787. The drafters of the Constitution assumed that electors would vote according to their individual discretion, not the dictates of a state or national party. Today, most electors are bound to vote for their party’s candidate.
And even more important, the Constitution says nothing about how the states should allot their electoral votes. The assumption was that each elector’s vote would be counted. But over time, all but two states (Maine and Nebraska) passed laws to give all of their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the state’s popular vote count. Any semblance of elector independence has been fully wiped out.
The Founders also assumed that most elections would ultimately be decided by neither the people nor the electors, but by the [nonpartisan] House of Representatives. According to the Constitution, if no single candidate wins a majority of the electoral votes, the decision goes to the House, where each state gets one vote.
So how did we go from the framer’s vision of electing wise Electors as another layer of representative democracy? Most writing on the history concerns the mess that the original Constitutional Elector system produced in the first few elections—a president of one stripe and a vice president in strong political opposition—a situation that might have sounded to some like a temptation to plot against the president. The 12th Amendment (second after the Bill of Rights) passed in 1804. It patched up the details of how the Electors cast votes for president and vice president.
For the first forty years after ratification most states experimented with different methods of choosing Electors. Some used the state legislature to choose Electors, others chose them with statewide or district elections, hybrid systems of selection, or other experiments. But here’s the crux laid out in an excellent article (click the underlined words to go there):
The shift to statewide winner-take-all was not done for idealistic reasons. Rather, it was the product of partisan pragmatism, as state leaders wanted to maximize support for their preferred candidate. Once some states made this calculation, others had to follow, to avoid hurting their side. James Madison’s 1823 letter to George Hay, described in my earlier post , explains that few of the constitutional framers anticipated electors being chosen based on winner-take-all rules.
From the linked post above:
Attempts to defend the Electoral College based on the fact that it was introduced by brilliant political thinkers such as Madison fail to appreciate the unique political context in which it was created and the fundamental differences between that time and ours.
Historian Heather Cox Richardson, in a recent “Politics Chat”, verbally stated that it was Thomas Jefferson that got the ball rolling on “winner-take-all” Electoral College voting when he realized the Electoral advantage of the method as applied to his Elector rich home state of Virginia. HCR credits Jefferson with starting the tread.
The Electoral College is a vestige of the original compromise with the slave states necessary to ratify the Constitution. The Founders argued at length over its details. It never functioned in the manner intended by those who pushed it forward. It ought to be scrapped by Constitutional Amendment and relegated to the dustbin of history where it belongs—a daunting task but a worthwhile one.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. Quick Brush-Up on how the Electoral College system works these days (click here for the source of most of this):
Each state is allotted a number of Electors, specified in Article II of the U.S. Constitution, a number equal to the number of U.S. Senators (two for each state) plus the number of that state’s U.S. Representatives. For example, Washington State has ten U.S. Congressional Districts (CD) each of which elects a U.S. Representative, therefore Washington State “gets” 2+10=12 Electors. Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution left it up to each state to decide on a method of choosing their Electors [the bold is mine]:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
There are 435 total voting members of the U.S. House of Representativesand 100 U.S. Senators for a total of 535. (The total number of Representatives was fixed at 435 by The Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, instead of expanding with growth in population. The Act fundamentally changed the balance of power in electing the president through the Electoral College by limiting the increase in number of Electors [which, of course, depends on a state’s number of Representatives] allocated to the more populous states.) We arrived at the number “538” for the total number of Electors via the 23rd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, passed in 1961. This Amendment awarded the voters of the District of Columbia 3 Electors, thus giving D.C. voters a say in the election of the president—even as they remain without voting representation in the House and Senate.
So, voila!, 435+100+3=538. Then 538/2=269, and therefore the magic number is 270 Electoral votes to “win” by a majority in the Electoral College. The Constitution (written before political parties were envisioned) specified that if no candidate got to a majority in the Electoral College then the House, voting as a state delegation with one vote per state, would decide.
In 48 states and D.C., with the exception of Nebraska and Maine, the candidate slate that wins the popular vote in the November general election is effectively electing a slate of Electors chosen by the major party of the winning presidential slate in that state. State laws vary slightly regarding the few “faithless” Electors (who cast their ballot for a different candidate than the one specified by their party). Nebraska and Maine each choose two Electors based on the statewide vote, and one Elector is chose by the voters of each Congressional District. For detail about the actual steps in the process of Electors voting click here.
Jim Jordan stirs the crowd at Coeur d’Alene’s Candlelight Christian
Last Friday night, August 9th, Ohio State University wrestling coach turned MAGA U.S. Congressman from Ohio Jim Jordan spoke at a $50 a person fundraiser for U.S. Rep. Russ Fulcher (R-ID, CD1, western Idaho). Jordan and Fulcher spoke at the Candlelight Christian Fellowship, a Fundamentalist (“Evangelical”) non-denominational, low-lying, modern church on the west side of Hwy. 95 in Coeur d’Alene. Both Jordan and Fulcher displayed their full-on weird MAGA credentials at the gathering—all of which were highlighted by the venue at which they spoke.
The Candlelight Fellowship has made political news before [see the P.S.here]. In September of 2020 Charlie Kirk, youthful founder of Turning Point USA and darling of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), was a featured speaker at Candlelight. Kirk’s appearance was shortly after famously anti-science, anti-mask Candlelight Pastor Paul Van Noy narrowly survived a bout of Covid-19 that put him in the ICU for 18 days. It takes only a little internet digging to reveal multiple connections among Pastor Van Noy; Pastor Matt Shea of Spokane’s On Fire Ministries, the militia movement, and “The Biblical Basis of War” fame; Pastor Ken Peters, founder of The Church at Planned Parenthood (TCAPP), formerly of the Covenant Church in near north Spokane; and Shahram Hadian, traveling far right preacher and former candidate for governor of Washington State.
The bland title of the article describing the Candlelight fundraiser that appeared on the front page of the paper version of the Sunday Sandpoint Daily Bee, Jordan, Fulcher warn of growing divide in America, belies the article’s out-of-step content and the aura of the venue.
First, it was odd that both Fulcher and Jordan were still focused on attacking Biden three weeks after he stepped down and endorsed Kamala Harris for president. Nowhere in the article is Harris even mentioned. Evidently, Fulcher and Jordan live in some sort of time-warp.
The opening of the article, as seems typical for this bunch, was dark and vaguely threatening:
[Jordan and Fulcher] said the divide in America is great and called on people to line up with the right side.
But in doing so, they would face adversity.
“If you’re getting involved today, you’re taking risks,” said Jordan, a Republican representative from Ohio.
Fulcher, a Republican senator [he is not a U.S. senator, he is a U.S. rep.] from Idaho, said America has enjoyed great successes and endured many trials, including wars.
“I will submit to you right now; we’re going through another Civil War of sorts,” he said.
Gee. All the violent rhetoric of the last eight years has come from the right, not the left. Is this paranoid projection?
The author noted that “Security was tight, with guards at front and side doors and inside the auditorium,” and that Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris was in attendance. I guess they’re not taking any chances with all those imaginary antifa terrorists roving around in north Idaho.
Then it got muddier and stranger still [the bold is mine]:
Fulcher, in a five-minute talk, said there’s a growing battle between two opposing worldviews: Christian and secular.
“We’re seeing that conflict,” he said.
He said about half of those in Congress believe in the general tenets of the country, which he said was founded on Christian principles. [A number of the Founders were prominent Deists, (see P.S.)]
“The other half look at it totally different,” Fulcher said, explaining they want a more socialist society, with government in control, distributing wealth and offering programs for those in need.
In my Christian upbringing (they do consider Methodists to be Christian, don’t they?) taking care of the poor, downtrodden, and marginalized was taught as the paramount Christian virtue. Insofar as government is an expression of the will of the community it ought be very Christian to offer “programs for those in need.” To what sort of warped “Christian” message had Fulcher’s audience subscribed that they could hear his blather and not object? [Does the background and associations (see above) of this non-denominational cult offer a clue?]
He [Jim Jordan] said the administration of President Joe Biden has been stifling rights of assembly, free speech and free press.
“The most important liberty we have, more important than anything else, is our right to talk,” he said.
“That’s truly what this election in the end is about: protecting those liberties, those fundamental rights we have,” Jordan said.
This must be some weird psychological projection, since it is these folks who celebrate their Supreme Court’s reactionary majority’s trashing of the right to privacy and the right to make decisions about one’s own body, and seem poised to remove the right to love whom you choose—all based on theirclaimed theocratic right to tell everyone else how to live.
Perhaps their claim of “Biden” “stifling” the free press refers to Fox “News” paying out $787.5 million to settle a civil lawsuit for knowingly spreading lies about Dominion Voting Systems. (See Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network.) Are they arguing that Fox should be free to lie without fear of challenge? I guess that would suit them just fine.
[Jordan] quoted Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
“The dividing line in America is no longer between right and left — it’s between normal or crazy,” she said in her rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union address.
More psychological projection? What on earth is “normal” about what the Republican Party has become?
Jordan said that in the four years since Biden took office, the U.S.-Mexico border went from secure to no border at all; safe streets turned into places of record crime; $2 gas became $4; and stable prices turned into record inflation.
Mr. Jordan and his listeners seem unable to absorb actual crime statistics—or see prices at the pump (and realize that two dollar gas was a product of low demand during Covid)—or notice that inflation is under control.
The blather at this fundraiser was the very essence of weird.
Note: Deists favor rational thought and reject the notion that the Bible is the revealed word of God, which is often the first tenet of faith for Fundamentalist (“Evangelical”) Christians. Here is Candlelight’s expressed statement of faith on that point:
We believein the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments. We believe it is the inspired, inerrant, authoritative, Word of God (2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:20–21). The Bible is sufficient in and of itself to provide us with all that pertains to life and Godliness (2 Peter 1:2–3).
Science and rational thought apparently have nothing to offer these folk. If you can’t explain the findings of physics, geology, and archeology using the sufficiency of the Bible’s Old Testament and Noah’s flood, then, by G-d, the science must be wrong. No wonder these people cannot get their heads around the physics of global heating.
For: interim statewide and regional results for U.S. Senator, U.S. Representatives, and all the Washington State level offices, including the state legislative districts should be available through this link at the Washington Secretary of State’s website.
For: those races entirely within Spokane County (which includes state legislative districts 3 (central Spokane), 4 (valley north to Mt. Spokane), and 6 (mostly west of Spokane), check out the Spokane County Elections website here.
Post:
Trump, Vance, and the Trumpian Republican Party have been aptly saddled with the adjective “weird,” something that Vance’s “childless cat ladies” and a host of other past weird statements make particularly salient. When the electoral choice is between positive and forward looking vs. weird and twisted most of us know which side we’ll vote on. One only has to look back at the 2008 election and the manifest weirdness of Sarah “I can see Russia from my house!” Palin vs. the positive excitement about the Obama candidacy to appreciate how a label like “weird” can work. In this fall’s November election policy differences between the Trumpian Republican Party (think Project 2025) and local and national Democrats are stark and vitally important to our personal freedoms and the health of our democracy—but, and especially in a close election, the vibe really matters.
Somehow I got on JD Vance’s email list. His campaign sends out three or four emails a day and the weirdness of the Subject lines speak for themselves:
“I will wipe the floor with Tim Walz.” (From someone who wants to be VP??)
“President Trump & I love you, Jerry” (If that doesn’t give one the creeps, nothing will.)
“President Trump is paying for your trip” (Really? No, it’s a lottery.)
“Immediate action required: I need your input!” (Hint: It links to a push poll. Duh.)
Then there’s Lara Trump’s email: “Feeling lonely?” (You can nominate your town for Trump rally. Whoopee!)
And that’s just a sampling of the weird and creepy from Old Donald and company.
So where does this all lead and what does it have to do with rotting lettuce?
I have pasted below Jay’s commentary entitled “The Vibes Election.” I also wish to cite the older work of Brian Klass (linked in Kuo’s article and here) that forms the basis for Kuo’s post. Klass’s commentary is from January of 2023—but it rings brilliantly true.
You’ve probably felt the frustration before while talking to conservatives or independents, or even many fellow Democrats. No matter what the facts actually were—a strong economy, low unemployment, low inflation, crime and border crossings down—people just didn’t dig Joe Biden. He was just “too old.”
It didn’t matter that Trump is just three years younger. Or that he is cognitively impaired, a criminal felon, an adjudicated rapist, and wants to end democracy. You could recite all of that and back it up with hard evidence, but it wouldn’t change people’s minds.
So why is that? And what can we do about it?
Here’s what to remember: Elections, for better or worse, are won on feels, not facts. As Professor of Global Politics Brian Klaas notes, the human “political brain” works by creating “schemas,” meaning shorthands for how to process all that information we’re bombarded with.
For Biden, that shorthand sadly became “he’s too old.” For Trump, it’s “teflon,” which carries a far more positive connotation. “Teflon Don” even survived an assassination attempt.
And this is important: Once that shorthand gets baked in, the mind actively reinforces it, no matter what facts get put out. The “political brain” filters, sorts and often rejects those facts in order to buttress whatever pre-existing scheme it has adopted.
That’s how Trump can successfully claim to his followers that all of his crimes are actually the result of Joe Biden witch-hunts. This claim is totally counterfactual, but it’s what the MAGA brain filters, processes and accepts.
There’s good news, though. Democrats recently have found a way to crack the code and create new shorthands that resonate with middle America. The “Republicans are weird” attack is working. So is the “Auntie Kamala” vibe. Today, I’ll explain the “political brain” theory a bit more and provide some recent examples of how schemas were used to devastate candidates. I’ll also show how Democrats are using them today to define and uplift Harris.
The political brain is a brain defined by schemas. Political movements that understand that fact will usually beat those that don’t.
Republicans have battered Democrats on messaging in recent years because they intuitively understand schemas in a way that Democrats often don’t.
Schemas, according to Prof. Klaas, are “intellectual shortcuts for processing the information we encounter in our lives.” Those shortcuts are incredibly useful but also incredibly malleable. Klaas gives the example of an office:
[R]ather than remembering exactly what every office we have ever set foot in looks like, we develop a conceptual representation of what an office looks like. Then, when we remember an office, we fill in the gaps. So, even if we go into an office without a stapler on the desk, we often remember that a stapler was there later on, because that fits with our schema for an office.
And then here’s the kicker: Our brains quickly latch on to the ideas that match the shorthand versions we have handy. But when we encounter countervailing facts, our brains actually work overtime to alter reality so that the facts better match with our preexisting notions.
That’s why when you rattle off facts to someone who is on the opposite side politically, they likely won’t absorb them. Instead, their brains will work hard to create an explanation that accounts for the conflicting facts. The result is that the existing schema gets reinforced, not diminished.
Establishing the vibe quickly
When Ron DeSantis announced he intended to seek the GOP nomination for president, a lot of Wall Street bros and National Review types cheered. Here was a conservative cause warrior, fresh off a huge electoral win in his home state of Florida, which he declared was where “woke goes to die.”
The problem was, outside of these circles, it was obvious to anyone who’d actually met DeSantis that he was awkward, off-putting and even cruel. That smile looked painful and forced. His movements were stiff and unnatural. His war on Disney felt manufactured for political gain—plus, who goes to battle against Mickey Mouse and his own state’s largest employer? His attacks on gay and trans kids were harsh and bullying. Then there were the book bans, the demonization of migrants, and a new six week abortion ban he signed and announced under cover of night.
Because of all this, everything around DeSantis started getting filtered through the “DeSantis is a weirdo” schema. His white boots moment became a meme and a punchline. His debate performances were as “Ron the Robot.” And his candidacy began to tank fast.
The same thing is now happening with JD Vance, largely because the Democrats learned something from the former GOP strategists at the Lincoln Project about how to create a politically fatal vibe around a guy like Vance. His weirdness around women isn’t just a personal failing. It extends to actual policies that would control women’s lives and bodies. Strict abortion bans without exceptions for rape or incest. A belief that childless cat ladies are running everything. His proposal that parents with kids have more votes than those without.
These policy proposals transform the whole weirdo thing into something truly abusive and creepy. If your daughter were dating a guy like this, you’d plan an intervention and get your spouse and grandma involved if possible.
Klaas points to another recent and instructive political casualty in his own country: Liz Truss, the former British prime minister who famously could not outlast a head of lettuce. Writes Klaas,
The lettuce gag may have seemed like a silly sideshow, but when I saw it, I knew Liz Truss was toast. She had become defined by a punchline. Every piece of new information in the news was filtered through a schema that was shared across the British political divide: Liz Truss is an incompetent screw-up who crashed the economy and is likely to expire before a comically bespectacled bit of produce.
The bad news for JD Vance is that he is also fast becoming a punchline, whether it’s “Vladimir Futon,” dolphin porn, or the whole childless cat ladies thing. He is being laughed at, especially by women, which is the one thing men like Vance or Trump hate more than anything in the world.
Nice try, but no
The GOP has attempted to create schemas around Harris, but they keep falling flat. As I discussed in my recent piece in The Big Picture, the first volley of attacks portrayed her as the “DEI” candidate, which is MAGA shorthand for the N-word. Even Republican leaders recoiled at this and warned their members not to go down this path.
Perhaps they also knew there would be reactions like this in her defense that would galvanize even more African American voters behind her:
The GOP has also tried to pin the “border czar” label on her, but it has fumbled this badly. For starters, there’s no such position, and Harris’s work was at the diplomatic level with Central American countries, not at the border. “Diplomacy czar” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. And when Republicans decided to actually impeach an official over the number of migrant crossings, they targeted not Vice President Harris but Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. I guess Harris wasn’t the “border czar” after all.
Attempts by Trump to paint Harris as a “Marxist” and a “communist” have also failed to stick, in large part because the GOP has called everything and everyone that for years, and it just doesn’t resonate with the average voter. A shorthand only ever works if there is some deeper truth behind it. Biden really is old, for example. Trump really does seem like Teflon Don. But Harris as a communist? Only if every other Democrat they don’t like is, too.
The failure by the GOP and Trump to create an effective schema to pull down Harris has left a wide opening for supporters of Harris to define her with positive messaging instead. Her quirky sayings about falling out of a coconut tree have become popular coconut emojis. Her laugh is now a weapon of joy against Trump’s humorless and dark campaign. And her leadership in this moment, with progressive, democratic forces arrayed behind her, even became a new version of a well-known Avengers movie clip:
Beyond the memes and videos, and far more fundamentally, Harris offers an economic vision that is far closer to the mainstream, focused on affordable health care, job opportunities and education. She’s a fighter for freedom and associated with cool celebrities like Charli XCX and Beyoncé. And she represents the future, not the past, both in her vigor and her ideas.
As a result, voters are increasingly enthusiastic to cast their ballots for Harris. Indeed, in the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll, she performs a full nine points better than Trump on enthusiasm among all voters. Those figures include an astonishing 26 point gain among Democrats for their own candidate since February, when Republicans used to have an 18 point lead on enthusiasm.
As Harris’s favorables have risen, we should understand that in the eyes of many voters now, she’s become the cool auntie with the funny laugh you just want to be around—and maybe even gain some wisdom and hope from. If the GOP can’t redefine her soon, then everything she does from here till Election Day could be filtered through the context of that “cool auntie” schema.
That means Republican attacks would only serve to reinforce that image among her supporters and undecided voters. And wouldn’t that be fun to see for a change?
Still haven’t voted and turned in your ballot? Git ‘er done. Don’t let procrastination and perplexity keep you from using the most powerful tool you have to shape your local and state government—your vote. As of last Thursday in Spokane County only 15% of eligible voters had turned in their ballots, five percentage points less than in 2020 at the same point (the last primary election held in a presidential election year). The first vote counts aren’t done until Tuesday evening, so we have no idea what segment of the voting public has taken the time to vote so far. Rumor has it that right wing churches are coaching voters and gathering voted ballots to turn in. Don’t let that sort of technically legal “ballot harvesting” determine your choices on the November ballot. Vote!
I have met, talked with and observed many of the Democratic and some of the Republican candidates on the Primary ballot—and I agree with the recommendations and rationale presented in the Progressive Voters Guide. Many other blurbs and guides, candidate websites, county Voters’ Guides, newspaper articles, and recordings of debates are available at your fingertips—if you have hours to comb through the material. (For example, listen here, to hear the candidates to replace McMorris Rodgers.) Both the Public Disclosure Commission (for state and local candidates and PACs) and the Federal Election Commission (for federal races and PACs) have a wealth of valuable information—but it takes some time, and a lot of clicking, to figure out how to navigate to the data you want to see.
The race to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers has drawn eleven listed contestants, six “Prefers Republican Party” and five “Prefers Democratic Party.” For this race read the entry in the Progressive Voters Guide. The “Prefers Republican Party” candidates run from bad to worse. Democrats Carmela Conroy and Dr. Bernadine Bank are both endorsed by the Spokane County Democratic Party and both retain substantial campaign coffers to take into the General Election. (For links to the financial wherewithal of the eleven candidates check out this guide. Money isn’t everything, but it is nearly impossible to win without financial backing.)
There is a little comfort, I suppose, in noting that many of the contests on your ballot have only two contenders, which means, in our slightly bizarre “Top two” primary system, that both will appear on the November General Election ballot. Even so, do your homework and cast your votes in these contests, too. Your vote counts. Candidates and campaigns use primary vote results as an indicator—so do campaign donors, PACs, and political parties. The Primary, even when ballot turn-in is unimpressive, is a better poll than nearly all of the campaigns can afford to run.
Last Friday I wrote a very long post (partly for my own edification) on why we have the primary voting system we use in Washington State. You deserve a badge for diligence if you read to the end of that post and learned something you thought was interesting. In part I wrote it to expand answers to some of the questions that Jim Camden posed and answered in the article I’ve pasted below. I maintain a paid digital subscription to the Spokesman. I recommend it. I read it nearly every morning and view it as essential to keeping up with the local goings on. But I do not take the Spokesman as a single source. Mr. Camden’s article is shorter than mine, and well worth the time to read. Articles like this are one of the reasons I subscribe.
Vote! We should have some early results by Wednesday.
For some 4.8 million Washington voters, the most confusing ballot of the past four years probably arrived in the mail last week.
If not, it will likely arrive this week.
It’s the state primary ballot, which actually comes once a year about this time, but tends to generate the most questions in years divisible by four.
The first question is almost always, “Didn’t I just cast a primary ballot?”
The answer is “Yes, but.” The qualifier is that the primary ballot cast in March was a presidential primary ballot for the candidates seeking the nomination for either the Democratic or Republican presidential nomination. This primary is to narrow down the choices for other partisan races that will be on the November ballot.
So why does the state have two primaries?
That’s a bit more complicated, and involves a fairly long history that we’ll condense here. The presidential primary is relatively new – approved in the 1990s, but the rules have changed several times since – and was instituted with the hope that Washington voters could play a bigger role in choosing the presidential nominee. (It hasn’t worked all that well, but that’s a different issue.)
To be counted by the parties, the presidential primary has certain rules that require a voter to state that he or she is, at least when marking the ballot, a member of the party of the candidate being chosen. If a voter says he or she is a Democrat and marks the ballot for a Republican candidate, or vice versa, the ballot isn’t counted. If a voter fails to say he or she is a member of one of those parties, and votes for any candidate, the ballot isn’t counted.
The state primary is older, dating to the 1930s, and it was an effort to give voters more control – and the political parties less control – of selecting the candidates in the general election. For many years, the Democrat with the most votes and the Republican with the most votes in any given race advanced to the general election, as did certain minor party candidates or independents who got a certain percentage of the primary vote. But a voter wasn’t limited in his or her choices, and could pick a Republican for senator, a Democrat for governor, an independent for lieutenant governor and even a Communist for state school superintendent. (Just kidding. The School Superintendent office is nonpartisan.)
But it, too, has changed in recent decades because of legal challenges by the parties. A state primary voter can still vote for any candidate for any office – one per race, of course – but instead of the Democrat and Republican with the highest vote counts advancing, the two candidates with the most votes advance. That’s why it’s often called the “top two primary.”
Does that mean the general election could be between two Democrats or two Republicans?
Yes.
Do the parties like that better?
Generally not. It is, however, a good lesson in being careful what you ask for, particularly if you’re asking the courts.
Why does the ballot say the candidates ‘prefer’ a particular party?
In Washington, voters don’t register by party and candidates don’t run with the approval of the party they claim. They may or may not be active members of the party they list as a preference.
Why haven’t I heard of some of these parties, like the ‘Nonsense Busters Party’ or the ‘Standup America Party’ or the ‘No Labels Party’?
Sometimes candidates just make up a name, often to signify something about their political philosophy. Others may just have too much time on their hands. There’s also probably no difference between the “GOP Party” and the “Republican Party” or the “Trump Republican Party.”
If I marked the presidential primary ballot as a Democrat or a Republican to vote in March, do I have to vote only for that party’s candidates in the state primary?
No. You can vote for any candidate you want in the state primary. You are also not required to vote for the same candidate in the general election that you vote for in the state primary. Just get the primary ballot postmarked or in a drop box by Aug. 6.
