Commentary

It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t yield. It runs red lights (especially deep red ones). It’s a hazard to your well-being. It’s a menace to truth, justice and the American way.

Note: I started writing this story a week ago. I had held off posting it so it could be edited for better comprehension and for length. I realized today, however, that since the FBI legal search at Mar-A-Lago, almost everything I wrote when I started this, only a week ago, is old news; news on the back burner; news no one is talking about. So I decided to post it anyway, lest we forget, that before Mar-A-Lago, the attack on “truth, justice and the American way” was in full swing.

Over the last several weeks the Republican Party, the Grand Old Party, the Party of Lincoln, has reached what many believe, is their nadir. It is legitimate to ask, when talking about the actions of the GOP and its leaders, can it go any lower? Can they do any more to undermine the American democracy and the rule of law?

If you haven’t been following the news as closely as I have, allow me to list some examples of what the GOP has been up to lately:

• The featured speaker at the recent Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) was, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. As Max Boot, a conservative columnist for The Washington Post wrote:

“All you need to know about the state of the Republican Party today is what happened at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas on Thursday. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has been destroying his country’s democracy, received a standing ovation less than two weeks after he gave a speech in Romania in which he endorsed the white supremacist ‘replacement theory’ and denounced a ‘mixed-race world.’

“One of Orban’s longtime advisers quit over what she described as a speech ‘worthy of Goebbels’ before backtracking a bit. But Orban hasn’t recanted his repugnant views, and right-wingers in Dallas thrilled to his denunciations of immigration, abortion, LGBTQ rights and ‘the Woke Globalist Goliath.’ He even excoriated Jewish financier George Soros, a Hungarian native, as someone who ‘hated Christianity.’ The racist and anti-Semitic signaling was not subtle.”

• Keeping up with “Goebbels/Nazi theme, it was revealed recently that when he was President, Donald Trump asked his advisors why his generals couldn’t be more like the WWII German generals, only to be reminded that those same generals attempted to assassinate their Führer, a fact that our Ivy League educated former president was apparently unaware of.

• Following up on what an Ivy League education can lead to, in a recent vote in the Senate confirming the U.S.’ agreement that Sweden and Finland should be admitted to Nato, the bill passed 96-1. The only “No” vote was cast by Stanford (BA)/Yale (JD), fist-pumping, insurrectionist-congratulating junior senator from Missouri, Republican, Josh Hawley.

• A little closer to home Florida’s double Ivy League Republican governor, Ron DeSantis (Yale (BA/Harvard (JD) recently signed a bill which would allow military veterans and their spouses without a college degree to serve as teachers in Florida public schools. In defense of the move, Florida Republicans noted that there were some caveats: “Prospective veteran-teachers must have completed at least 60 hours of college credit [note: general requirements call for 120 credits to graduate] while maintaining a 2.5 GPA. [For those who’ve forgotten, that’s like a C+] Candidates must also pass a Florida Department of Education subject exam to teach certain, [but not all] subjects. For his part, in a statement after the bill was passed, Ivy League Ron said, “You give me somebody who has four years of experience as a Devil Dog over somebody who has four years of experience at Shoehorn U and I will take the Marine every day of the week and twice on Sunday.”

• Recent Republican primaries in several states resulted in most Trump-endorsed candidates making it to the ballot in November to face Democratic opponents. In Arizona, the entire slate of state-wide offices, governor, attorney general and secretary of state, were won by Trump-backed election deniers. As Rachel Leingang, co-founder of the politics and government newsletter, the Arizona Agenda, wrote in an Op-ed following the election, “[Arizona] GOP primaries went full MAGA.” The gubernatorial candidate, election denier and former TV news anchor, Kari Lake, spent days fuming over unfounded voter-fraud allegations…stopping only when she was declared the winner. Mark Finchem, a fringe state lawmaker who has built a national reputation while trying to overturn the 2020 election, will be the GOP’s nominee for secretary of state, the office that oversees elections, while Abe Hamadeh, who said he wouldn’t have signed off on the 2020 election and shared claims that it could still be overturned, won the primary for attorney general. In other words, if they win in November, the chances of a free and fair election in Arizona, and more specifically, a Democratic candidate running for any office, winning, are slim and none!

• And how about Michigan, where Ryan Kelley, a Michigan gubernatorial candidate who was hit with federal misdemeanor charges related to the Capitol riot (Kelley has pleaded not guilty), rejected his campaign’s loss this week, despite finishing the primary in fourth place. Kelley condemned the results as a “predetermined outcome.” And, where Michigan’s Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office has requested the appointment of a special prosecutor to consider criminal charges against nine people it alleges were involved in a conspiracy to improperly obtain access to voting machines used in the 2020 election — including the presumptive GOP nominee for attorney general set to challenge Nessel in the November election! Nessel’s office asked the state’s Prosecuting Attorneys Coordinating Council for the appointment of a special prosecuting attorney in part to avoid a conflict of interest given that allegedly “one of the prime instigators of the conspiracy” is now Trump-backed Republican candidate Matthew DePerno.

• And how about this: In a major triumph for the Biden Administration, the Senate passed the “Inflation Reduction Act” which calls for (update, the bill passed the House and will be signed by Biden today):
  • +$300 billion in climate investments;
  • $35 cap on insulin for many Medicare users;
  • Allows Medicare to negotiate prices with drug companies
  • Imposes a 15% minimum tax on large corporations
    • But didn’t call for eliminating a tax loophole shielding private equity managers from the minimum tax because Arizona Democratic(?!?!?!) senator, Kyrsten Sinema would have blocked the entire bill otherwise. Sinema of course has been the recent recipient of over $1MM in political donations from…wait for it…the private equity industry.

These are all good things people (except, obviously, Sinema’s hostage holding). But guess what? Even with Sinema’s blackmailed vote, the bill passed the Senate only because Vice President Harris broke the 50-50 tie to send it to the House. That’s right, not one Republican senator, not even the so-called moderates, not Mitt Romney, not Lisa Murkowski, not Susan Collins, not one could see fit to vote for these good things.

Has the GOP reached bottom. And I ask that without even mentioning Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, the Pillow Guy or Ted Cruz, among plenty of others.

Despite all this, despite the bogus election fraud claims, despite that he encouraged and substantially led an insurrection against the United States of America, the country in which he was, at the time, the Commander in Chief, his cult stands by him, evidenced in the CPAC 2024 Presidential straw poll taken last week showing Donald Trump in the lead at 69%, followed by Ron DeSantis with 24% and Ted Cruz with 2%.

The other night I went to dinner with a long-time friend. My friend is a narrow-minded unworldly, Trump follower who gets all his news from Fox. When we get together the ground rule is that all political discussion is off-limits. At this dinner, we had a great evening with lots of laughs and lots of reminiscing. But as we were leaving this friend said that he had to get home to watch some of the shows he had been recording. I didn’t have to ask…the shows were Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham. The only words I said, to remain polite, were, “Great night, drive carefully and see you soon.”

The next day, on “Morning Joe,” Mika Brzezinski, in discussing the CPAC Straw Poll as well as the degradation of the Republican Party, talked about her own friends who seemed to have the same views as my friend. The best she could muster in addressing those friends is the same one I could have asked my friend:

“WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?”

Commentary

One Democratic candidate, John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, understands that

The other day I posted a story called, “Making Joe Manchin irrelevant”

Making Joe Manchin irrelevant

While the focus of that story was about money in politics and, importantly how to donate strategically, I finished with this admonition:

One last thing. After spending all this time talking about money, I need to tell you a little story that when it comes to paid communication, it’s not always about just money.

It was a story, based on my own experience in advertising overseeing the California Dancing Raisins campaign, and how the power of a great idea, innovatively executed, can have a substantial multiplier effect on ad spend.

I concluded with these questions:

Are you listening, political consultants and ad gurus developing campaigns for your candidates? Are you spending the contributions from your supporters with the best messages you can? Are you willing to learn about the power of great advertising from those shriveled grapes from California? Are you willing to understand that it’s not just about money, it’s also about great ideas? And that the future of our democracy depends on those great ideas?

Today I wanted to show you an example of a campaign that takes those admonitions, answers those questions, and runs with them.

John Fetterman is the Democratic candidate for the open Senate seat in Pennsylvania. Currently Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, Fetterman has a real chance to flip the seat blue. He’s running against, as I characterized in that earlier post, “(apparent) New Jersey resident and world-class charlatan and TV snake-oil salesman Dr. [Mehmet] Oz.

Fetterman and his advisors have just released an ad that does exactly what I suggested – a great idea, not just innovatively executed, but brilliantly executed. It’s called “The Wizard of Lies.” Take a look…and while you’re looking, please note who devised the ad, an outfit called “Meidas Touch,” who’s spokesman seems to be a good ol’ boy named “Texas Paul.” Maybe there’s hope for Texas after all.

Democratic strategists, consultants, communication specialists, ad gurus and, most importantly, candidates, take heed; do what John Fetterman did:

Don’t just spend our money, spend our money behind brilliant, winning messages! The future of our democracy depends on it.

Commentary

Woods’ “inadvertent” erasure of a key Watergate tape is like amateur hour compared to today’s Secret Service’s malfeasance

Most of you are old enough to remember Rose Mary Woods, President Richard Nixon’s personal secretary. But you wouldn’t have remembered Rose Mary Woods but for one incident.

Woods worked for Nixon from his early days in Congress through the end of his political career. Fiercely loyal to her boss, Woods claimed responsibility, in a 1974 grand jury testimony, for inadvertently erasing up to five minutes of the 18 1⁄2 minute gap on a June 20, 1972 audio tape. The gap in the tape was one of many alleged cover-up attempts by Nixon and his team during the Watergate investigation. Her demonstration of how this might have occurred, in which she stretched to simultaneously press controls several feet apart (what the press dubbed the “Rose Mary Stretch”), was met with skepticism from those who believed the erasures to be deliberate.

In light of the most recent White House erasures, the Secret Service’s deletion of text messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, shortly after the Department of Homeland Security inspector general requested them as part of an investigation into the agency’s response to the assault on the U.S. Capitol, Rose Mary Woods’ explanation of the erasure seems, well, kind of quaint; sweet almost. Compare that one “stretch” and, “whoops, they’re gone” with the rhetorical machinations of the Secret Service this week.

• “The texts were deleted because of a long-planned device-replacement program.”
• “The texts were already deleted in January before the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General (USSS reports to DHS) asked for them,” forgetting to point out that Congress had requested the data in January.
• “The insinuation that the Secret Service maliciously deleted text messages request is false,” despite the fact that every Federal agency has a requirement to backup government records, one way or another.

According to Pulitzer Prize winning Washington Post reporter, Carol Leonnig, who wrote the book, “Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service,” “…in this instance the Secret Service was nearly incompetent and/or sloppy as heck.”

Or, is this a Secret Service, an agency that had been, it is widely believed, “politicized” by Donald Trump, that deliberately deleted these messages? In other words, participated in a coverup!

The investigation continues, not only by the January 6 committee but also by The National Archives, the agency responsible for maintaining federal government records.

But the timeline, as compiled by MSNBC, is damning:

Some dates need repeating,

• Between December 17 and January 24, migration is “tested” and “guidance refined.”
• On January 16, Congress tells DHS to ensure records relating to the riot are preserved.
• On January 25, further record preservation instructions are issued.
• The migration process doesn’t begin until January 27.
• Yet records from January 5 and 6, 2021, not ordinary days, but arguably the most important days in the history of the Secret Service (with all due deference to November 22, 1963) were seemingly deleted, if the above timeline is correct, before the migration began!

As a statement from the January 6 committee reads in part,

“Four House committees had already sought these records from DHS before the records were apparently lost. Additionally, the procedure for preserving content prior to this purge appears to have been contrary to federal records retention requirements and may represent a possible violation of the Federal Records Act.”

“…may represent a possible violation of the Federal Records Act,” suggests that there is more to come. Who knew what about these deletions and when did they know it will, I’m sure, ultimately be known.

John Dean once famously said, “We have a cancer within…the presidency.” If there is something worse than cancer, this is it.

Commentary

And, while we’re at it, Kristin Sinema as well

In the last Around the Block, “Why-for art thou, Joe Manchin?” https://around-the-block.com/2022/07/16/why-for-art-thou-joe-manchin/, I suggested that the only way to deal with Senator Joe Manchin, “Democrat” of West Virginia, is to make him irrelevant. The way to make him irrelevant is to ensure his vote doesn’t count; that he just becomes one of a minority of senators who have seats, but no influence or power.

Now, of course, given the rules of the Senate, the self-proclaimed most deliberative body in the world, eliminating any senator’s influence or power is impossible; we’ve all witnessed how one Republican senator can, standing on the floor of that hallowed place, put the brakes on the democratic process. But, that lunacy will be the subject of another Around the Block.

Manchin irrelevancy depends on ensuring that real Democrats, that is Democrats other than Manchin and his partner in “democratic” crime (or is it “Democratic” crime?) Arizona’s Kirsten Sinema, can be out-voted by 50 other Democratic. In other words, the 2022 mid-term election has to result in the election of at least 50 Democratic senatorial candidates not named Manchin or Sinema.

So, how do we do that?

As is painfully obvious, money is the root of (almost) all evil in politics. (Digressing for a second, did you hear the one the other day about the right-wing Republican billionaire who contributed $10 million to a political committee Florida Governor Ron DeSantis controls. You know the guy, Robert Bigelow, the budget hotel founder often quoted for his eccentric beliefs about the galaxy and afterlife and who once said aliens are already on Earth “right under people’s noses.” Despite the fact that Bigelow is certifiable, his $10mm has been accepted by DeSantis because…wait for it…in Florida, there are no limits on how much a person or business can donate to a political committee. But as I said, I digress).

Back to retaining the Democratic Senate majority despite senators named Manchin and Sinema.

Money is a fact of political life. But money contributed and/or allocated haphazardly is not. Apparently that doesn’t seem to bother the grand Pubahs of the Democratic Party whose fundraising efforts are as coordinated as…I’m looking for a phrase that won’t get me into trouble with my politically correct readers…some kind of “fire drill”…but you get it. If I told you that in one 24-hour period I received over 250 email solicitations for Democratic candidates, some of whom I’ve never heard of, you’d agree that lack of coordination is too simple a characterization.

Remember back to 2020 when candidates like Jamie Harrison in North Carolina (now the DNC chairman) and Amy McGrath in North Carolina, both attractive, appealing Democrats, overwhelmed us with messages saying that “only a few more dollars will but me over the top.” I fell for it. Many of you fell for it. And both were beaten overwhelmingly, most sadly in Kentucky where McGrath’s opponent, Mitch McConnell, won by the biggest margin in his career.

If we are to prevail, if we are to make Manchin, and yes, Sinema, irrelevant, we have to continue to spend money. But that spend needs to coordinated and strategic.

Let’s take a look at the playing field.

Ballotpedia posted this analysis the other day:

I hate to say it, but with the exception of Ohio, which I will explain in a bit, no money should be spent on any of the states in RED. As much as it troubles me in a state like Iowa where a retired Navy three-star admiral, Mike Franken, is running against Chuck Grassley, the oldest and perhaps the second most obnoxious Senate Republican (#1 of course goes to Ted Cruz of Texas), my fear is that Franken, and others like him, will turn out to be another Harrison or McGrath. Why spend there, when there are other states where the return on investment will be greater?

So let’s narrow it down a bit.

Political analysts are suggesting that there are eight “toss-up” states; based on the chart above, five are clear toss-ups while three are “lean-to/likely.”

Democrats are incumbents in three of the toss-ups, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada and one lean/likely Democratic, New Hampshire. Those seats have to be retained. The candidates in these states cannot lose. If even one of these states flips, the road to control of the Senate will be uphill to say the least. Contribution priority #1: Mark Kelley, Raphael Warnock, Catherine Cortez Masto and Maggie Hassan.

The other two toss-ups are both interesting. In Pennsylvania, with the incumbent GOP Senator retiring, there’s a chance to flip the state in a race with current Democratic lieutenant governor, John Fetterman, running against (apparent) New Jersey resident and world-class charlatan and TV snake-oil salesman Dr. Oz. Sometimes known as a “celebrity doctor” ( I refrain from using that description since I won’t tarnish the reputation of either celebrities nor doctors), Oz is running about 4-5 points behind Fetterman in the most recent polls. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Fetterman required surgery to implant a pacemaker with a defibrillator in May which revealed that he had a serious heart condition. So, Pennsylvania is a case where you might want to divide your contributions…some to the campaign and some to getting the best cardiologist money can be. But seriously, Dr. Oz cannot win; we have enough cranky Republicans in the Senate as it is; we don’t need a quack as well.

Wisconsin is another story. Ron Johnson is one of the worst senators in history and one of the dumbest men in the world. Despite his apparent mid-western good looks, he is an idiot, an idiocy most recently displayed when he avoided reporters’ questions because “he was on his phone” until one reporter told him, “No you’re not. I can see your screen. You’re not on the phone.” Wisconsin is a toss-up; but given the competition, another potential flip. Of course it will help if we know who’ll be running for the Democrats, an issue to be settled after the Democratic primary on August 9. But after that, let the money flow.

Of the states leaning one way or the other, the first priority has to be Democratic-leaning New Hampshire, where incumbent Democrat, Maggie Hassan, if as expected, wins her primary, will be running for reelection against the Republican winner of their primary on September 13. As with Arizona, Georgia and Nevada this seat cannot flip Republican so make sure Maggie Hassan is high up on your donation list.

Republican-leaning North Carolina and Florida are flippable. When it comes to statewide offices, North Carolina has been getting bluer, with Democrats holding the statewide offices of governor, attorney general and secretary of state. With the retirement of Republican senator Richard Burr, Democrats have an opportunity to take another statewide office and flip North Carolina. But financial support to the Democratic candidate, Cheri Beasley, will be critical.

Florida, of course, is near to my heart (I’m working on making it “dear.”) Incumbent Republican senator Marco Rubio has been a flip-flopping, blowing-in-the wind, mostly absent, failure as a senator. But, with his Cuban roots and the importance of the Hispanic vote in the state, a formidable candidate. But not an unbeatable one, particularly given that his opponent is Representative Val Demings of the Orlando area. Demings made a name for herself as one of the Congressional impeachment managers at Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial. Before entering politics, Demings was in law enforcement rising through the ranks to become chief of the Orlando Police Department, its first female chief, capping a 27-year career with the department. Demings is running 8 points behind Rubio in a poll of likely voters but only five points behind among all voters. That says two things: money needs to be spent to not only support Demings, but also to get out the vote and overcome all voter suppression schemes Florida Republicans have instituted.

Before I sum all this up, let me get back to Ohio, a former “swing” state that has become more deeply red. That’s why on the Ballotpedia chart Ohio is red and is not included as a “toss-up” state. But, I don’t think those classifications take into account one key factor: the candidates. The Democratic candidate is Representative Tim Ryan of Youngstown. Ryan is a smart, personable and photogenic candidate who ran for president in 2020 and has represented his district since 2013. He is, at 49, something of a firebrand who actually initiated a bid to replace Nancy Pelosi as House Minority Leader in 2016. Perhaps misguided, given what Pelosi has accomplished, his actions pushed Pelosi into giving more leadership opportunities to junior members. Not a bad accomplishment for a 40-something looking at the Democrat’s gerontological Congressional leadership.

And his opponent? Political novice and Trump favorite, JD Vance, who Democratic consultant James Carville says is an “anti-choice, anti-democracy billionaire who doesn’t give a hoot about the challenges working families are facing and built his Silicon Valley fortune on the backs of hardworking Americans.” In fact, Carville believes “Ohio needs JD Vance like I need a hairbrush.“ In the event you don’t get Carville’s humor, perhaps this will help.

So, let’s sum up.

If the Democrats are able to take all eight battleground states plus Ohio, here’s what the Senate will look like:

Winning all nine would be a dream come true, although more likely a pipe dream. But what the above chart demonstrates, even accounting for the Manchin/Sinema obstinance, there’s still a three-seat margin of error (since Vice-President Harris can break a 50-50 tie).

So put your money where your mouth, where your heart, where your patriotism and where your love of democracy is. Be strategic. Don’t fall for the pleas for candidates who have no chance of winning. Support Kelley/Warnock/Cortez Masto/Fetterman/Demings/Hassan/Beasley/Ryan! Make Manchin (and Sinema) irrelevant!

As ABBA says, “Money, money, money, always sunny” And won’t it be “sunny” if Democrats control the Senate.

One last thing. After spending all this time talking about money, I need to tell you a little story about when it comes to paid communication, it’s not always about just money.

As many of you know, I was responsible, to a great degree, for the famous California Dancing Raisins advertising campaign. There are two lessons I learned from the development and the astonishing success of that campaign. The first is that to mount a successful communication campaign, you need an insightful, convincing strategy. The second is that a great piece of communication that reflects the essence of that strategy…an ad…can multiply the money spent behind that ad immeasurably.

How do I know?

Once a month in the years that the Dancing Raisins campaign ran on TV, Advertising Age, the industry bible at the time, ran a column highlighting the “most remembered advertising during the past month.” The top five ad campaigns at the time were from the usual subjects: Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds, Burger King…and one not so usual subject…the California Raisins. The usual subjects back then spent hundreds of millions of dollars each promoting their products. California Raisins? About $6-8 million. This means a campaign supported by less than $10 million had the same impact as campaigns spending $200 million and more. Talk about the power of a great idea, innovatively executed!

Are you listening, political consultants and ad gurus developing campaigns for your candidates? Are you spending the contributions from your supporters with the best messages you can? Are you willing to learn about the power of great advertising from those shriveled grapes from California? Are you willing to understand that it’s not just about money, it’s also about great ideas? And that the future of our democracy depends on those great ideas?

For the sake of this country, I hope so!

Commentary

Hillary thinks it’s as easy as…?

Sorry for two intrusions on one day but I couldn’t let this one go by without a comment.

I received an email earlier today: Abolish the Electoral College via End Citizens United. Below is the message in its entirety.

Needless to say, signing the petition gives the signer the “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to donate money to…wait, which one is this one…oh, yeah, Citizen’s United. But that’s not the real reason I’m writing.

If you actually read the message you’d see that to “prove to Congress that the American people want to get rid of the Electoral College” and for “Congress to pass a Constitutional Amendment” requires 10,000 signatures.

At 8:06am EDT, according to the email, they still needed 9,219 signatures. That means at that point, 781 people signed and they’d reached less than 8% of their goal!

Do you wonder why this campaign has not captured the attention and imagination of the the American people? If you think it’s because Hillary Clinton is the person they chose to spearhead this initiative, you’re only partially correct. The real reason is that it’s a FOOL’S ERRAND! What do I mean? Here’s what it will take to abolish the Electoral College:

According to former (Bill) Clinton secretary of labor Robert Reich it’s not going to happen because, Amending the constitution is very hard – requiring a two-thirds vote by the House and Senate plus approval by three-fourths of state Legislatures.

In fact the last time it was attempted was in 1966, led by Sen. Birch Bayh, an Indiana Democrat (yes, some of us are old enough to remember that there were Democratic senators from Indiana) who introduced an amendment calling for the direct election of the president by popular vote. At the time nearly half the Senate signed on as formal sponsors of Bayh’s bill and it passed the House by an overwhelming margin of 339 to 70, with votes in favor drawn nearly equally from Democrats and Republicans alike. As the proposal headed to the Senate, President Nixon announced his support as well. Apparently, in a place far away and long ago there was this thing called “bipartisanship.”

However, according to Kevin M. Kruse, a professor of history at Princeton,

But like many changes, the constitutional amendment was throttled in the Senate. Republican Strom Thurmond of South Carolina led a bipartisan coalition of southern conservatives against the measure. Convinced that the system’s inequalities were necessary to preserve their power, they vowed to defend it at all costs, with repeated procedural delays and filibusters. Ultimately, they kept the Senate from voting on the amendment and thus kept the Electoral College in place.

Reich believes that we can make the Electoral College irrelevant without a constitutional amendment. Here’s how:

Article 2 of the Constitution says states can award their electors any way they want. So, instead of allocating electors on a “winner-take-all” basis as all but two states do now, states can allocate them based on the proportion of popular votes each candidate receives. As Reich writes,

So all that’s needed is for states with a total of at least 270 electors to agree to award all their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote.

Of course, Reich’s “all that’s needed” is not an easy hurdle. Do you really think Texas and other Red states will go for it? If you do, there’s a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you. And if Blue states begin the process of proportional allocation without all the states going along, guess what…things get worse as only a portion, for example, of California’s or New York’s votes will go to the Democratic candidate. The only way this will work is if every state buys into it.

Sorry Mr. Reich, that’s as likely to happen as Hillary Clinton’s Constitutional amendment.

Speaking of Mrs. Clinton, I received a second email from her today. This one has her shilling for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee under the guise of doing something about SCOTUS’ shameful Roe v Wade decision. Opening bid, only $7. Her pitch, In Congress, we’re limited by slim majorities. By building our Democratic power in state legislatures, we can pave the way for more states to secure abortion rights and protect our right to bodily autonomy. I guess she’s been away from the “game” so long that she wasn’t aware that gerrymandering has made it virtually impossible to “build our Democratic power in state legislatures”…even in states where Democratic officials hold all or most of the statewide offices. The battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are prime examples. I actually wrote about this issue a year ago in a post I called, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” https://around-the-block.com/2021/05/10/im-mad-as-hell-and-im-not-going-to-take-this-anymore/

Let me close with what I’m sure will not go down well with my “friends of HRC” readers. Do we really need to have Hillary Clinton help fix things? Isn’t one reason we have endured the last six years of hell due, in part, to the her arrogance and the ineptitude of both the candidate, her husband and her staff? In an Around the Block election post-mortem I posted on 11/16/16, I wrote, among other things,

Despite her incredible credentials and unmatched qualifications, Clinton family hubris and Hillary’s many unforced errors were too much to overcome. Here’s a link to that post (in Around the Block’s former guise):

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/4952494196096199299/5397130746252426229

Can’t the Democratic Party find someone else to rally us. Channelling Ferris Bueller’s teacher, played by (the very right-wing) Ben Stein: “Anyone? Anyone?”

Commentary

One column by the WaPo’s Gene Robinson sums up all that’s wrong with the Republican Party…and the nation

I’ve been incredibly busy the last week or so on non-writing, family-oriented projects. So busy, exhausted actually, that I spent the entire day, and night, Monday, in bed. I don’t remember the last time I slept so long. Of course, I did get up in time to watch yesterday’s January 6 hearings. If you watched you would have to agree that Trump’s West Wing was a corrupt, evil, carnival, intent…and I use the word “intent” intentionally as that’s the only word between the “t-crossers” and “i-dotters” at the Department of Justice (I’m looking at you, Attorney General Merrick Garland)…and indicting Trump for planning and leading an insurrection that attempted to overturn the results of a legal election and bring down the American democracy.

Despite what we are all watching in plain sight, Republican leaders, elected and hoping to be elected, continue to support the “Big Lie” and, by extension, Donald Trump. As do a majority of Republican voters. Their blind allegiance to this grifter and his scams, his hustles, his flimflam, is incredulous.

Having said that, I thought I’d focus today on an example of one Republican wannabe elected official, Herschel Walker, who is running for the Senate from Georgia against incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock.

And since my writing is a little rusty, I’ll use a column from one of my go-to columnists, Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post, as the basis for my incredulity.

Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and the Post’s associate editor, headlined his column, “Walker win would mean US has lost its mind.” His lede,

It’s not yet clear who will be the weirdest and most unfit Republican Senate candidate in November. But my early pick is Herschel Walker in Georgia. If he wins — and he could — this nation has truly lost its mind.

Robinson’s support?

• Regarding African-American Fathers: [The] “father- less home is a major, major problem in the Black community. The father leaves in the Black family. He leaves the boys alone so they’ll be raised by their mom. If you have a child with a woman, even if you have to leave that woman . . . you don’t leave that child.” As Robinson points out, that stance became a punchline when it was revealed that Walker, who proudly describes his relationship with his 22-year-old son Christian, is also the father of three other children of whom he does not speak — and with whom he is not in regular contact.
• Regarding lies: Walker claimed he graduated from college when he didn’t, claimed he had “worked in law enforcement” when he didn’t, and claimed he owned “the largest minority-owned chicken business in the United States” when he didn’t.
• Regarding climate change: “We don’t control the air. Our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air. So when China gets our good air, their bad air has got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then, now, we’ve got we to clean that back up.”
• Regarding evolution: “At one time, science said man came from apes. Did it not? … If that is true, why are there still apes? Think about it.”
• Regarding COVID: “Do you know, right now, I have something that can bring you into a building that would clean you from COVID as you walk through this dry mist?”
• Regarding the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting: “Cain killed Abel and that’s a problem that we have. What we need to do is look into how we can stop those things. You know, you talked about doing a disinformation — what about getting a department that can look at young men that’s looking at women that’s looking at their social media. What about doing that? Looking into things like that and we can stop that that way.”

Huh?

As I mentioned, Walker is running against incumbent Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock who is defending the seat he won in a special election in 2020. Senator Warnock is also a Baptist pastor, the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, Martin Luther King Jr.’s former congregation. During his short tenure in the Senate, Warnock has co-sponsored an amendment to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and, in his first floor speech, argued for the passage of the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

As Eugene Robinson points out in his column,

Despite the choice between crazed and competent, polls show Walker and Warnock in a statistical tie.

“A STATISTICAL TIE!”

I call it incredulous. Some may call it incredible, others unbelievable. Call it what you want. But you cannot deny this: Herschel Walker is the walking, talking, incoherent embodiment of the Republican Party today.