Eric The Blue

Another Saturday night

Here's a conversational snippet that just occurred at our house.

Me: I can't believe I'm sitting here watching "The Devil Wears Prada" on Bravo while the effin' World Series is on.

Her: It's not like it's the last game.

At least the commercials are better: Victoria's Secret, not lite beer.

I see that my new FB friend, a college classmate, has a category of posts she calls Friday Fails.  I believe the idea is that social media tend to make you feel bad about yourself, because all your "friends" are "checking in" at restaurants you never heard of, or posting pics of their trips to Ivy League colleges with their eleventh grader, while you clean up cat barf that has been tracked up the steps by a barefoot kid with a full bladder.  To combat this possibly false narrative, Linda on Fridays posts on FB pics of her dying house plants and scratched-out, half-blank New York Times crossword puzzles.

In this spirit, I'll relate something that recently happened to me at the grocery store.  The couple in front of me in the checkout line wore cheap, ill-fitting clothing and looked as if they'd never been to the dentist.  Their cart held two loaves of white sandwich bread, a large jar of off-brand peanut butter, eighteen eggs, two gallons of whole milk, a bag of pistachios, a canister of oatmeal, and around twenty packages of ramen noodles.  One of these is not like the others, right?  So when the cashier announced the total, and the lady winced, guess which item she asked to have removed from her order?  When I got home, I related the story to Amanda, whose immediate reaction was:  You told the cashier to put the pistachios on your bill, right?

It's bad enough that I'm slow.  Even worse, my wife isn't. 

The CW re Clinton and the Republicans

Everyone seems to agree that Trump is toast--let's hope they're right!--and one result is that the CW concerning how the Republicans nominated the only candidate who could lose to Hillary Clinton is supposedly confirmed.  There are pretty obviously two aspects of this claim.  The first is that Trump's sixteen Republican opponents towered over him in stature and that Republican primary voters, in their perversity, reached into the barrel and plucked out the only loser.  The second is that Clinton is herself a terrible candidate who will be a disaster as president.

To my way of thinking, the first claim is rebutted just by calling the roll of the pygmies Trump beat.  Let's see.  George Pataki, he was formidable.  Jim Gilmore too.  Rick Santorum, who's about as attractive as the previous pope, and in many of the same ways.  On the evidence, Ben Carson is ridiculous everywhere except the operating room (I'll accept on faith that he's good in there).  Chris Christie's petty, bullying criminality came into clear focus just as early voting began--imagine if he'd been the one!  Carly Fiorina's principal qualification seems to have been that she drove Hewlett Packard into the ditch.  I'm sure I've forgotten a few but let's move on to the so-called top tier.  Ted Cruz was the runner-up.  Team Clinton was pretty clearly pulling for him, a standard-issue wingnut who is despised by everyone who gets to know him.  In comparison, going up against Trump is like fighting a southpaw.  I have to say that I think Trump had Bush and Rubio pegged.  The former was too "low-energy" to unearth the Access Hollywood video, despite the fact that a relative of his was Trump's fawning interlocutor, and on the campaign trail about a third of his speech acts were impolitic and embarrassing.  Then there's the perpetually thirsty "Little Marco," who's subject to vapor lock on the debate stage, which reminds me that Rick Perry is another of the justly forgotten.

I think John Kasich might have defeated Clinton, but he would have had to fill in some blanks--like what he's in favor of besides saying hello to your neighbors.

Regarding Clinton. I think medicine's Hippocratic Oath--"first, do no harm"--is broadly applicable and that, applied to presidential politics, it recommends candidates who seem most unlikely to do stupid stuff.  By this standard, the gap between Clinton and Trump is a yawning chasm.  Yes, she has weaknesses.  She fails the I'd-like-to-have-a-beer-with-her test, which is a stupid test, and, anyway, from what I hear she can hold her liquor.  (Trump is a teetotaler; can't imagine him drunk--thank the Lord for sending his tender mercies.)  We're told she's two-faced, as exhibited by her Wall Street speeches.  Shocking!  The Clinton Foundation is actually beyond reproach, an exemplary humanitarian enterprise.  She shouldn't have had the private e-mail server, and the absence of an "a" and a "b" should have persuaded her that maybe "c" wasn't a label for a paragraph.  In general, though, and especially compared to her opponent, she's smart, knowledgeable, informed, disciplined, cautious, and determined--all good traits in a president.  Republicans sometimes forget themselves and acknowledge that she possesses these traits.  When challenged in the town-hall debate to say something nice about his opponent, Trump, who a thousand times had derided her lack of "stamina," praised Clinton's grit and persistence.  A recurring pattern in the debates was Trump gradually wilting as she proceeded, strong and steady, beginning to end.  Here's a couple tweets from Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, at the conclusion of the third debate:

Hillary is pedestrian and over-programmed, but never made a notable mistake across 3 debates

— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) October 20, 2016

It's completely heartbreaking to see Hillary Clinton so outclass a Republican nominee across 3 debates

— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) October 20, 2016

Finally, the conclusion to a column endorsing Clinton by Dorothy Rabinowitz, of the very conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board:

The end of the election is now in sight. Some among the anti-Hillary brigades have decided, in deference to their exquisite sensibilities, to stay at home on Election Day, rather than vote for Mrs. Clinton. But most Americans will soon make their choice. It will be either Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton—experienced, forward-looking, indomitably determined and eminently sane. Her election alone is what stands between the American nation and the reign of the most unstable, proudly uninformed, psychologically unfit president ever to enter the White House.

So Dorothy and I concur.  It's not just that Trump is terrible.  Hillary's pretty good.

Rigged

Whenever Trump starts rattling on about how the election is "rigged" in some undefined way, my thoughts turn to the wide gap between what's usually called the "generic congressional ballot" and the actual composition of the House of Representatives. Currently the Real Clear Politics site shows Democrats holding about a six point edge in the 2016 generic congressional ballot.  In other words, when asked whether they intend to vote for a Democrat or a Republican for US House, about 46 percent of poll respondents answer "Democrat," compared to 40 percent who say "Republican."

So you might think that Democrats are poised to gain control of the House.  For that to happen, however, things would have to get somewhat worse for the Republicans.  The accompanying chart, from the Princeton Election Consortium, indicates that an aggregate six-point margin for Democratic House candidates across the country means "likelier GOP control" of the House.  To have a decent shot at winning a majority, the Democratic advantage in the nationwide vote has to rise to around eight percent. 

How could that be?  Gerrymandered district boundaries.  I gave an account of how it works in "Republican Cartography," here.  Elizabeth Kolbert, reviewing the definitive explication, which is David Daley's Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy, has more here.  I will append a visual aid, from The Washington Post, below.  Close observers of the Princeton chart above will note that in 2012 we had a very close race in the generic congressional vote--Democrats won, but by only 1.2 percent of the vote.  So what was the outcome, in terms of actual representation in the House?  Republicans, 234; Democrats, 201.  I remember John Boehner, the Republican Speaker, crowing that, while Obama might have been re-elected, "the American people" had chosen Republicans to lead the House of Representatives.  Seems problematic, considering that more "American people" voted for a Democrat.

Talk about "rigged." 

Local boy wins an award

With Bob Dylan having won the Nobel for literature, the Internet is filling up with lists of his greatest songs, or snippets of the compiler's favorite lyrics.  I'm a Dylan fan, and I admit to being unfamiliar with many of the items on these lists.  Maybe it's the size of the sea, maybe it's a sign that some people angle for status by snubbing the stuff "everyone knows" in order to highlight their own esoteric tastes. At the risk of putting myself in this second category, one of my favorite songs, "Abandoned Love," was written in 1975 and never put on a record till it landed on the three-disc retrospective "Biograph" ten years later.  You can listen to Dylan performing it in 1975 here.  If you compare the lyrics he sang that night to those in the "Biograph" version of 1985, you'll see that Dylan made changes--improving ones, in my opinion.  

What do I like so much about the song?  When in popular music the subject is love, everything's all unicorns and kittens, unless the kitten is impaled on the unicorn's horn.  Dylan, however, is for grownups.  At the end, there is ambiguity, a tug of opposing  emotions, ambivalence, a mix of relief and regret:

So one more time at midnight, near the wall
Take off your heavy make-up and your shawl
Won't you descend from the throne, from where you sit?
Let me feel your love one more time before I abandon it.

But, you know, I think the best songs are the ones everyone knows.  No one will ever write song lyrics that sound so much like a scripture:

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
And may your song always be sung
May you stay forever young.

 

Trump: the beat goes on

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was out last night with Amanda and some of her cousins and their significant others on a brew pub crawl in northeast Minneapolis.  We walked from joint to joint, which probably had the happy effect of keeping me from over-serving myself.  It also put us out in the street with other revelers, where we could hear bits of drunken hilarity being shouted out in the night.  "Grab her by the pussy!" someone shouted near Central and Broadway, before the sun had even set.

Ah, that Trump!  Even if the modern Republican party survives 2016, the campaign is likely advancing other smaller but still worthy ends, such as sparing us for a few years from having to hear about how Hollywood and the Democrats are "coarsening the culture."

Like some other Democrats, such as Amanda, I'm a little puzzled by the bipartisan outcry.  It doesn't seem like what Trump said eleven years ago was any worse than a lot of things he's said in the past several months, while campaigning for the presidency.  For example, he said that a federal judge, born in Indiana, was on account of his Mexican heritage unqualified to hear the case against Trump "University." Paul Ryan, the Republican highest up our political food chain, said this opinion qualified as "the textbook definition of racism," but that apparently was not enough to cause him to withdraw his support of Trump.  Maybe that's a bad example, because Ryan still hasn't withdrawn his support of Trump, though he did "disinvite" him to a Republican "unity rally" in Wisconsin yesterday.

Wasn't it kind of weird the way in which Team Trump decided to address the crisis?--I mean, by having him record a video in which he apologized, sort of.  The likely explanation is that the people who know him best understand he can't be trusted even to read a prepared statement in real time.  They needed a chance to have several takes, and edits, in order to elide, to the degree possible, the candidate's scowls, sneers, and manifest insincerity of manner.  Maybe not, however.  If the goal was to seem sincere and decent, the words themselves, which of course were prepared beforehand, should have been different.  (To appear decent and sincere, there is no substitute for actually being decent and sincere.)  The marriage of incompetence and repugnance is probably the best explanation for everything emanating from the Trump campaign. 

Speaking of words: I haven't seen anyone mention Trump's somewhat odd locutions while talking dirty.  (Probably I am just spending too much time in bars to know that it's been the subject of acute analysis on cable tv.)  His first "apology" described the chit-chat as "locker-room banter," which is something I know about.  I've heard a lot of swaggery talk about things sexual but the phrase "grabbed her by the pussy" was not in the linguistic repertoire of any of my teammates.  I don't think it's even possible . . . unless . . . but I'm not going there.  And what of "moved on her like a bitch"? I at first thought that in this novel expression the phrase "like a bitch" served to convey the concept of intensity, so that the meaning is something like "I hit on her very aggressively." It's also possible, however, that "bitch" applies to the object of the advance: he hit on her in the manner that you hit on a bitch (because she is one), as opposed to the manner in which you hit on a non-bitch. 

I'm ignoring my own advice about how to account for Trump.  In the movie Fargo, the way in which the William Macy character doesn't even know how to swear--"What the Christ?" he says, when things go wrong--shows what a loser he is.  Ditto for Trump.

 

PSA

Early voting is underway in Minnesota.  I don't qualify as an undecided voter, and I work in the building where I could cast my ballot tomorrow, so this morning I downloaded the sample ballot for our part of the People's Republic of South Minneapolis, just in case there might be some obscure race that I could research on the Internet before I go to fill in my ovals.  While it appears that the current water and soil commissioners are not facing the voters this year, the ballot was loaded with judicial races, almost all of them uncontested.  I scanned the columns in search of a race where I'd have to  make a choice, and that's when I saw the name Michelle MacDonald, who is challenging incumbent Natalie Hudson for a seat on the Minnesota Supreme Court.

Friends, don't vote for Michelle MacDonald.  It seems to me that we should all be able to agree on that--excepting perhaps for my Facebook friends who think that Hillary Clinton, when scratching the left side of her nose with her right hand last Monday evening, was signalling Lester Holt which question to ask next.  (It's her fault that Trump was for most of the evening completely incoherent!)  Here's a high-level summary of MacDonald's recent career.

She's a family law attorney who over the years has had some trouble with judges who grow weary of her antics.  Then in the spring of 2013 she was pulled over in Dakota County on suspicion of drunk driving.  She was belligerent toward the officer and refused to take the field sobriety test.  Though eventually acquitted of the drunk driving charge, she was found guilty of obstructing the legal process, resisting arrest, and refusing to take the breath test.  While this case was pending, she payed the $200 filing fee and became a candidate for associate justice of the Supreme Court.  At the Republican party's state convention in the spring of 2014, she gave a fiery speech, uttering the set phrases that would endear anyone to Republican party activists, and was awarded with the party's endorsement.  A couple weeks after that, the Star Tribune newspaper published a story concerning MacDonald's recent brushes with the criminal law.  From the response of party officials, it became obvious that the newspaper was the only entity vetting their candidates:  they were shocked--shocked!--to learn of the charges against her.  The party began maneuvering to withdraw its endorsement of MacDonald, who then in August before the election was tagged in Wright County for violating restrictions imposed on her driver's license pending the resolution of the Dakota County charge.  The Minnesota Republican Party was sufficiently embarrassed to adopt a rule denying access to its booth at the State Fair to any candidate currently facing criminal charges.  She showed up anyway, and was escorted away, but not before the crazy scene of the Republican party's endorsed candidate for Supreme Court justice being forcibly removed from the party's State Fair booth had been caught on tape.  (You can hear MacDonald repeatedly making the point, as she's being maneuvered toward the exit, that the state party should support its endorsed candidates, not prevent them from being heard.)  In the election that November, MacDonald received an astonishing 46.5% of the vote in her race against incumbent David Lillehaug, a recognized legal giant in the state.

Now MacDonald is back, trying again, though this time without the Republican party's endorsement.  In a poll of State Bar Association members conducted before the August 9 primary, incumbent Hudson had the support of 94% of respondents, compared to 3% for MacDonald.  The other 3% went to a fellow named Craig Foss, a lawyer who said he was running because he was currently unemployed. In the primary, MacDonald finished ahead of Foss but behind Hudson.  The top two finishers move on to the general election, which accounts for the name Michelle MacDonald appearing on the statewide ballot.  She's Exhibit A of why we should not have judicial elections, but, since we do, don't vote for her.  Hudson for Supreme Court.