Bratton… some truthdig… Greensite… will be back next week… Steinbruner… is out this week… Hayes… perennial grasses and healthy soil… Patton…They … Matlock… …inexorable decision by the donkey in the room…a hat is tossed…a new day… Eagan… Subconscious Comics and Deep Cover… Webmistress serves you …June Lockhart in 1970… Quotes on… “Election”
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Dateline: July 24, 2024
Friends, this week I’m passing on this story which was originally published in the Grist weekly newsletter.
After weeks of intense media speculation and sustained pressure from Democratic lawmakers, major donors and senior advisors, President Joe Biden has announced that he is bowing out of the presidential race. He is the first sitting president to step aside so close to Election Day. “I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and focus entirely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term,” Biden said in a letter on Sunday.
He endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, to take his place. “Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year,” he said in another statement. Not long after, Harris announced via the Biden campaign that she intends to run for president. “I am honored to have the president’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination,” she said.
During his term, Biden managed to shepherd a surprising number of major policies into law with a razor-thin Democratic majority in the Senate. His crowning achievement is signing the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA — the biggest climate spending law in U.S. history, with the potential to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions up to 42 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. In announcing his withdrawal, Biden called it “the most significant climate legislation in the history of the world.”
Former president Donald Trump has vowed to undo many of the policies Biden accomplished if he becomes president.
Despite his legislative successes, the 81-year-old Democrat couldn’t weather widespread blowback following a debate performance in June in which he appeared frail and struck many in his party as ill-equipped to lead the country for another four years. He will leave office with a portion of his proposed climate agenda unpassed and the United States still projected to miss his administration’s goal of reducing emissions at least 50 percent by 2030.
Former president Donald Trump has vowed to undo many of the policies Biden accomplished if he becomes president, including parts of the IRA. And scores of his key advisors and former members of his presidential administration contributed to a blueprint that advocates for scrapping the vast majority of the nation’s climate and environmental protections. Whichever Democrat runs against Trump has a weighty mandate: protect America’s already-tenuous climate and environmental legacy from Republican attacks.
With Biden’s endorsement, Harris, a former U.S. senator from California, is the favored Democratic nominee, but that doesn’t mean she will automatically get the nomination. There are fewer than 30 days until the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19. The thousands of Democratic delegates who already cast their votes for Biden will either decide on a nominee before the convention, or hold an open convention to find their new candidate — something that hasn’t been done since 1968.
As vice president, Harris argued for the allocation of $20 billion for the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, aimed at aiding disadvantaged communities facing climate impacts, and frequently promoted the IRA at events, touting the bill’s investments in clean energy jobs, including installation of energy-efficient lighting and replacing gas furnaces with electric heat pumps. She was also the highest-ranking U.S. official to attend the international climate talks at COP28 in Dubai last year, where she announced a U.S. commitment to double energy efficiency and triple renewable energy capacity by 2030. At that same conference, Harris announced a $3 billion commitment to the Green Climate Fund to help developing nations adapt to climate challenges, although Politico reported that the sum was “subject to the availability of funds,” according to the Treasury Department.
“Vice President Harris has been integral to the Biden administration’s most important climate accomplishments and has a long track record as an impactful climate champion,” Evergreen Action, the climate-oriented political group, said in a statement.
Harris caught some flak for using a potentially overstated “$1 trillion over 10 years” figure to describe the Biden administration’s climate investments. She got that sum from adding up all of the administration’s major investments over the past four years, some of which are only vaguely connected to climate change.
“Vice President Harris has been integral to the Biden administration’s most important climate accomplishments and has a long track record as an impactful climate champion.”
As a presidential candidate in 2019, Harris proposed a $10 trillion climate plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045 on the campaign trail, including 100-percent carbon-neutral electricity by 2030. Under the plan, 50 percent of new vehicles sold would be zero-emission by 2030; and 100 percent of cars by 2035. But that proposal, like similarly ambitious climate change proposals released by other Democrats during that election cycle, was nothing more than a campaign wishlist. A better indicator of what her plans for climate change as president would look like — better, even, than her record as vice president, as much of her agenda was set by the Biden administration — could be buried in her record as San Francisco’s district attorney from 2004 to 2011 and as California attorney general from 2011 to 2017.
As district attorney, Harris created an environmental justice unit to address environmental crimes affecting San Francisco’s poorest residents and prosecuted several companies, including U-Haul, for violation of hazardous waste laws. Harris later touted her environmental justice unit as the first such unit in the country. An investigation found the unit only filed a handful of lawsuits, though, and none of them were against the city’s major industrial polluters.
As attorney general, Harris secured an $86 million settlement from Volkswagen for rigging its vehicles with emissions-cheating software and investigated ExxonMobil over its climate change disclosures. She also filed a civil lawsuit against Phillips 66 and ConocoPhillips for environmental violations at gas stations, which eventually resulted in a $11.5 million settlement. And she conducted a criminal investigation of an oil company over a 2015 spill in Santa Barbara. The company was found guilty and convicted on nine criminal charges.
“We must do more,” Harris said late last year at the climate summit in Dubai. “Our action collectively, or worse, our inaction will impact billions of people for decades to come.”
Clayton Aldern contributed writing and reporting to this article.
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GOYO. Netflix series. (6.5 IMDB) 
Hard to believe and follow this tearful drama from Buenos Aires. It’s about a museum guide who has Asperger’s. We get to look at his sex life, how he loses control, and his new love of the beautiful woman guide that changes everything.
A MAN IN FULL. Netflix series (6.5 IMDB) Jeff Daniels at his very best acting (not so much) costars with Diane Lane in this drama centering on his real estate empire and all the complex issues we find in real estate everywhere. Lucy Liu plays a big part in it too as we watch his partial control over himself and his holdings mostly disappear inside banks, attorneys, and drawn out office scenes.
ROALD DAHL’S ESIO TROT. Prime movie. (6.9 IMDB) 
The top name cast has Dustin Hoffman and his chasing of Judi Dench while Richard Cordery leads us on this boring, predictable, comedy. It’s another back balcony upstairs/ downstairs over used plot. Hoffman is very disappointing when you start thinking back to his classic and serious films, he’s 87 years old now.
THE ASUNTA CASE. Netflix series. (6.9 IMDB) Another Spanish movie based on a true story about a local couple whose adopted Chinese daughter is found murdered. Even the police are suspected of the crime. Mistakes are made, the story stays tight, worth watching.
GANGS OF GALICIA. Netflix series (6.3 IMDB) A Spanish murder adventure about a woman whose father gets murdered, so she goes inside some drug cartels to find out and get revenge on whodunit!! Great seaside- water footage. With boats and police everywhere.
SUNNY. Apple series (7.3 IMDB) 
A Japanese comedy starring Rashida Jones who loses her husband and has a robot replace him. There’s way too much mugging, drinking, and undirected reactions to make this worth watching…avoid it
DESPERATE LIES. Netflix series. (7.0 IMDB) Juliana Paes takes the lead in this Brazilian re-take after re-take about childbirth. It appears that she got drunk, went to bed with two guys and got pregnant from both of them….and had twins! Complex, barely believable, only a bit humorous, but you will stay focused.
FANCY DANCE. Apple movie. (6.6 IMDB) Executive directed by Forrest Whitaker and starring Michael Rowe. It’s all about Native Americans and their family structure and personal issues. It’s both sensitive and amateurish and lacks a forceful direction.
YOUR HONOR. Netflix series (7.6 IMDB). Bryan Cranston along with Hope Davis and especially Rosie Perez lead this New Orleans saga. The son of a crime boss is killed and it’s the judge’s son who gets the blame. Well worth watching.
HOUSE OF THE DRAGON. HBO series. I re-watched much of this series prequel to Game of Thrones just to check on how relevant and applicable it may still be. It definitely has lost the magic and charm, probably due to our increasing and improving the world. Game of Thrones was back in 2011 and had an amazing 72 episodes. House of The Dragon begins 17 decades before Game Of Thrones.
A BODY THAT WORKS. Netflix series. (7.7 IMDB) It starts slow as we watch a scared and un-pregnant 37 year old woman decide to get a surrogate woman to carry her baby. There’s much realistic action and re-actions between the two “pregnant” couples.
NIGHTMARES AND DAY DREAMS. Netflix series.(6.6 IMDB) A collection of 7 episodes starting in Jakarta with a baby falling from a balcony, some concepts of torture, and then… switches to a bread factory !! All seven chapters are like that and they hang together neatly, but full of blood and guts.
ROCCO SCHIAVONE: ICE COLD MURDERS. Series. (7.8 IMDB) 
An absolutely engrossing, tightly knit movie about an Italian (Aosta is the city in Italy) detective whose wife is either murdered or maybe was suicidal. He’s quirky, smokes pot, and heads up a great cast in an excellent series. Go for it.
PRESUMED INNOCENT. Apple series. (7.5 IMDB). Jake Gyllenhaal does his usual excellent job this time as a Chicago attorney. It’s almost all courtroom scenes plus murder of a pregnant woman, and why was she killed? Legalese takes first place plus some very tense moments….go for it.
THE BOYS IN THE BOAT. Prime movie. (7.0 IMDB) All about competition rowing at the college level. The University of Washington ended up sending their rowing team to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Hollywood star/ actor George Clooney directed this sentimental and touching near documentary…and it shows. Exciting, scenes from the existing class system and how these poor children pulled together.
INHERITANCE. Netflix movie. (5.1IMDB) This is a comedy and you need to remember that intention. A TV host dies and for some plot reason the family is invited to his mansion to experience the reading his will. He hosted a game show and they throw in some gay humor, some inside tv programing errors and it’s only worth 2 thumbs.
Gillian will be back next week!
| Gillian Greensite is a long time local activist, a member of Save Our Big Trees and the Santa Cruz chapter of IDA, International Dark Sky Association http://darksky.org Plus she’s an avid ocean swimmer, hiker and lover of all things wild. |
Becky will be back soon!
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Becky Steinbruner is a 30+ year resident of Aptos. She has fought for water, fire, emergency preparedness, and for road repair. She ran for Second District County Supervisor in 2016 on a shoestring and got nearly 20% of the votes. She ran again in 2020 on a slightly bigger shoestring and got 1/3 of the votes.
Email Becky at KI6TKB@yahoo.com |
Perennial Grasses and Healthy Soil
Isn’t it amazing how marketing pitches can formulate the foundations for societal dialogues? Somehow, forest management gets ridiculed with the phrase ‘raking the forest,’ aiding the politics of defunding the US Forest Service at a time when we really do need widespread restoration of prescribed fire…not raking, but effectively the same thing. And ‘forgiving student debt’ gets bandied about, helping to steer conversations/media away from the more difficult subjects of: better funding/better outcomes of public education; training young adults about contractual obligations and financial planning, and; regulating financial institutions to make student loans more affordable. I’m sure each area of human dialogue has its ‘short hand’ statements that one sector uses to manipulate others. The one I’m faced with currently is the jingo ‘healthy perennial grasses make for healthy soil.’ Let’s take a closer look at that phrase.
Bunchgrass Paradigm
Long ago, a preeminent ecologist traveled to California and ‘discovered’ something that formulated the basis of myriad dialogues continuing through today. Frederic Clements described ‘natural succession’ where nature transforms itself from one habitat to the next in a logical and predictable order. You may recall the diagram that still sticks with me where a pond becomes a marsh becomes a bog becomes a meadow becomes shrubland, culminating in the ‘climax’ community…a forest. In examining California’s grasslands, Dr. Clements found a patch of ‘pristine’ grassland, one of the few that had escaped the plow, along a railroad right of way. That ‘pristine’ grassland was dominated by a perennial bunchgrass, purple needlegrass: this, he said, was how all California’s grasslands should look. Many people still believe this. What about the hundreds of species of wildflowers, such as those cited by John Muir as creating carpets across the Central Valley, and those which provided food for indigenous peoples for generations? Those holding dear to the ‘bunchgrass paradigm’ will say those species grew only in between the bunchgrasses where weeds now proliferate.
Perennialization Bandwagon
As the bunchgrass paradigm has been perpetuating, another popular movement has been building, a desire to transform agriculture from annual plants into perennial plants with little to no tilling, which purportedly ‘destroys’ soil health. Despite being disproven as effective over and over again, farmers are still attempting to grow lettuce, carrots, broccoli, etc, on ground without tilling. Meanwhile, rangeland managers are repeating a similarly disproven hypothesis that all California grasslands would be better off if ‘restored’ to perennial grasses. Buoyed by science papers that suggest the importance of cattle grazing to help establish/maintain perennial grasses, livestock managers have found good use of this message to gain credibility and increase their land base.
The “Perennial Grasses Have Bigger Roots” Myth
Add the two previously described popular myths together and you encounter another emergent, oft-repeated myth: perennial grasses restore soil health because they have larger masses of roots (in comparison with annual grasses). Central to this popular misconception are comparison photos from the Midwest showing profiles of annual wheat versus perennial wheat including both above and below-ground portions of the plants. The idea being promulgated is that larger root systems add more organic matter to the soil, break up soil compaction, and allow for better water infiltration. Most recently, proponents of this myth point out that the increased below ground organic matter of the larger rooted perennials means that more carbon is being sequestered, helping to address climate change.
California’s Grasslands: Not Naturally Perennial
California is mostly a Mediterranean state with a long history of ecological disturbance: grazing, fire, drought, inundation, etc. That ecological situation does not naturally produce widespread perennial grass dominated prairies. Even where there are perennial grasses present in a given area of prairie, they are rarely naturally ubiquitous: species seem specific to soils, steepness of slopes, wetness, nutrients, and so on. There are many more annual species than perennial, and many more wildflowers than grasses. Some of the most emblematic grasslands in California are naturally annual plant dominated, such as the wildflower-display rich Carizzo Plains, the rolling hills over the Altamont Pass, and the flower-filled savannahs of the southern, low-elevation Sierra Nevada. On the other hand, large swaths of the former wetlands of the Great Valley were probably once dominated in wide swaths by perennial rushes, sedges, and tall native, rhizomatous (not bunch) grasses.
Myths of the Perennial Life Form
Let’s examine the “Perennial Grasses Have Bigger Roots” myth for a moment. The most widespread native perennial grass in California is pine bluegrass, a diminutive grass that often has leaves a mere inch or two high and a flower stalk reaching a foot or so into the air. This species likes it hot, dry, and shady, growing in interior oak savannahs. With the first rains, it turns green, later sends up flower heads, and then dries by late spring. There is no reality in which this species has longer roots, or a bigger root system, than the often 4′ tall European oatgrass. Around here, that European oatgrass is more comparable to the perennial California brome grass. This brome, in some soils, alongside European oats similarly continues growing, flowering, and seeding well into summer. In wet areas, a common native perennial grass is meadow barley. Meadow barley is relatively small and short-lived, and goes dormant very early in the season, when it is replaced by the proliferate annual Italian ryegrass, which is larger by far. Most people surveying for perennial bunchgrasses have overlooked meadow barley altogether as it disappears so early in the season.
Yes, there are smaller annual grasses and larger perennial grasses, but my point is that the generality that ‘perennial grasses have bigger roots’ is untrue and not that useful as a generality.
Regenerative Ranching: Regenerating What?
Although the definition of ‘regenerative ranching’ is elusive, it seems most proponents are gravitating towards suggesting that they are ‘restoring healthy soil.’ The idea here is that soil has been in some way degraded and must be returned to its primeval state. Often, the soil degradation concern is ‘compaction.’ To restore soil health, proponents rely heavily on the myths described above overlaid with management hypotheses that using livestock can mimic evolutionary disturbance regimes last encountered with the Pleistocene megafauna, 10,000 years ago. Regenerative ranchers really believe that such approaches work and are full of anecdotes about what they’ve witnessed, though changes in soil health are notoriously slow and always soils-specific.
Compared to What?
I’m pleased that there is a conversation about how to best manage California’s prairies, but concerned about bandwagons, slogans, and misinformation. Humans are really, really good at pairwise comparisons, but their attraction to such must be tempered. Perennial vs. annual grasses: nonsensical! Livestock grazed vs. ungrazed: not helpful! We can try really hard or spend a lot of money trying to ‘restore’ soil health, but what are we restoring it to? There is the possibility for a great collaboration in this conversation. The USDA NRCS has a long-running research project that fits nicely: their ‘ecological site description’ project would do well to help define which sites are best compared with one another, based on soil types. When having these conversations, we would do well to have great respect for the state of the science, referencing a rich literature and how it does, or doesn’t pertain. And, in our pairwise comparison analysis, let’s always try to compare what we are doing, regenerative or otherwise, with someone else’s approach: what is working better, and why? We must always make these conversations very site-specific…variability across sites is the rule.
Meanwhile, beware of definition-less terms without a systematic third party certification program: ‘natural,’ ‘grassfed,’ or ‘regenerative’ labels hope to entice you to pay more, have higher respect, adhere to brand loyalty, or just plain ‘believe’ you are doing the right thing by supporting such verbiage. With this and other jingo-based bandwagons, let’s get a tad more critical so that we support what is worth supporting with greater clarity on WHY.
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Grey Hayes is a fervent speaker for all things wild, and his occupations have included land stewardship with UC Natural Reserves, large-scale monitoring and strategic planning with The Nature Conservancy, professional education with the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, and teaching undergraduates at UC Santa Cruz. Visit his website at: www.greyhayes.net
Email Grey at coastalprairie@aol.com |
Pictured above is Raymond Oliver Dreher, Jr. (born February 14, 1967), known as Rod Dreher. Dreher is an American expatriate writer and editor living in Hungary. He was a columnist with The American Conservative for twelve years, ending in March 2023, and he remains an editor-at-large there. He is also author of several books, including How Dante Can Save Your Life, The Benedict Option, and Live Not by Lies.
The above information is coming to you by way of Wikipedia. Dreher’s blog, should you wish to consult it, can be found by clicking this link. I have mentioned Dreher before (and actually more than once). I first became aware of him by way of a New Yorker profile.
Below is a rather long extract from Dreher’s blog posting published on July 15, 2024. In that blog posting, Dreher reacts to the attack on former president Trump that occurred during a July 14, 2024, rally in Butler, Pennsylvania:
Whatever the motivation of the failed assassin, this was a monumental failure on behalf of the Secret Service. How the hell does a gunman climb onto that roof and crawl into place, with multiple people in the crowd screaming, “He’s got a gun!” and trying to warn police, and squeeze off shots at Donald Trump?! There were snipers already in place for just such a possibility. Why were there no Secret Service agents on that roof to begin with? It’s an obvious platform for an assassin, were one to be present. The conspiracy theorists are already going wild on this point, and understandably so. I say “understandably” not to endorse a conspiracy theory, but to say this Secret Service failure gives natural rise to such speculation.
My thoughts as I was falling asleep on the first night, on the fact political and culture war fact pattern emerging:
- They wouldn’t leave Evangelical Christian Jack Philips alone to bake his cakes and run his business.
- They won’t let parents know if their children are transing themselves in school.
- They won’t let parents remove pornographic books from school libraries.
- They teach little children and teenage minors to hate everything normal — their families, their own bodies, even their very identity.
- They told us that the President of the United States was a Russian Manchurian (Siberian?) candidate, and crippled his administration with these lies.
- They told us Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation, though they knew it was not.
- They lied to us about Covid and its origins.
- They told us that we couldn’t have even a semblance of a normal life because of Covid … unless we were going out onto the streets to protest racism, or burn the cities down to honor George Floyd.
- “Mostly peaceful” riots.
- They have turned professional journalism into propaganda.
- For example, they ignored obvious signs of Joe Biden’s mental and physical decline into decrepitude, until he choked on live TV — and are now shocked, shocked that the White House deceived them.
- They tried to ruin as a bigot a high school kid who wore a MAGA hat on the Mall, and was set upon by a provocative left-wing activist.
- They have conspired to destroy institutions essential to running society by keeping out the accomplished and the meritorious, for the sake of letting in those who are incapable of doing the work, but who possess the favored demographic profile.
- They have divided America and made us fear and loathe each other on racial lines.
- They have demonized white people — especially white males.
- They have destroyed statues and attempted to rewrite American history to reflect ideological convictions.
- They have led near-pogroms against Jews on elite American campuses.
- They secretly pressured, from senior government levels, a policymaking medical organization to abandon scientific considerations in order to eliminate lower limits on sexually and psychologically mutilating children.
- They passed laws in some states allowing the government to seize minor children from their uncooperative parents, for the sake of sexually and psychologically mutilating them.
- They are destroying women’s sports, and making women everywhere more vulnerable to mentally unwell men who think they are women.
- They gaslit us into war in Iraq, and now they’ve gaslit us into an ongoing, unwinnable war against Russia, risking World War III for no plausible national interest.
- They are wrecking the military with DEI, such that fewer normal men want to serve.
- They have frightened millions of Americans into silence over fear of cancellation.
- They have left the back door into the US wide open for migrants, including Hezbollah fighters, likely Chinese agents, and others.
- They shipped America’s manufacturing base overseas, and blame Americans for being unhappy with their economic prospects.
- They deregulated Wall Street, and when it blew up in 2008, managed to avoid punishing anyone for it.
- They failed in Iraq and Afghanistan, but no senior military commander lost his job for it, even though the 2014 Afghanistan Papers report revealed that the Pentagon didn’t know what it was doing, and didn’t care.
- All those American soldiers, physically and psychologically maimed by the invasion of Iraq on false pretenses, and by the stupidity of trying to build a liberal democracy in Afghanistan — swept under the rug.
- In a country where you have to show ID to buy beer, this week they tried to defeat a law that would require people to show ID proving their are citizens in order to vote.
- They declared that Americans who dissent from all this are on the “far right” and might be “domestic terrorists” — while mollycoddling Antifa and violent leftists.
- They put Trump through a show trial in Manhattan on flimsy charges, to make him easier to remove as a rival to Joe Biden.
- AND NOW … they have tried to assassinate Trump.
Who is “they”? The Ruling Class. The people in power — including some Republicans; it wasn’t Democrats who led the invasions, nor only the Clinton Democrats who bent over for Wall Street). I’m talking about the people who benefit from the system as it is.
It’s a nice gesture for Dreher to suggest that maybe some “Republicans” are implicated in all the insults he lists – all those outrages that “They” have perpetuated upon the American people. It is true, for instance, that the shooter who apparently just grazed Trump’s ear, was a registered Republican, but it is pretty clear who Dreher thinks the bad guys are – who “They” are – as you read through Dreher’s list.
In August of last year, when I referenced Dreher, the title of my blog posting read: “Songs of Resentment.” If you want to track it down, you’ll find a link to an actual song, too! Given this recent “They” listing, it looks like Dreher thinks that there are a lot of new verses that might be added to the tune!
I keep saying this, but it seems to me that what I am saying continues to be relevant. In the United States of America, WE (“we, the people”) are “The Ruling Class.” At least we can be, and we should be, and we have the right to be! There is no “They” who are ultimately responsible for oppressing and distressing us. In our “self-government system,” our remedy for the outrages that we can see everywhere is to organize politically, and then to use whatever political successes we have to advance the agenda we think is best. I have had some people tell me that this “model” sounds good, but that it just doesn’t work in our current economic situation. Not in “real life.” Well, if it truly doesn’t work, then we need to do something about that, don’t we? Unless, that is, we are willing to stipulate that we are the powerless pawns of those with the big bucks, which is pretty much the theme of that “Song of Resentment” I linked above.
I’m not buying into a declaration of powerlessness, and I hope no one else is, either, because what we “think” determines what we “do,” and what we “do” determines what happens.
While we are trying to work out a good strategy, allow me to give my opinion: Making up lists of all the horrible things that “They” have done to us (finding more verses for those “Songs of Resentment” that we so often love to sing to ourselves) is exactly the opposite of a successful strategy.
Frankly, that kind of thinking is what sends people to the rooftops with automatic weapons!
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Gary Patton is a former Santa Cruz County Supervisor (20 years) and an attorney for individuals and community groups on land use and environmental issues. The opinions expressed are Mr. Patton’s. You can read and subscribe to his daily blog at www.gapatton.net
Email Gary at gapatton@mac.com |
NEVER MIND, WORKING CLASS NAPALM, ATTACK DOGS ON THE LOOSE
Last Sunday marked a dramatic change for American politics in one of the most unusual presidential races in our history with Joe Biden stepping aside from his Democratic presidential campaign. After weeks of back-stage whispers and hand-wringing by party stalwarts, the growing cacophony in support of this conclusive act caused the president to acquiesce after discussions with associates and family, ending his bold promise to charge on against Trump and the MAGA horde. His embarrassing ‘debate’ with Trump was not the first indication that trouble lay ahead, but it was the final straw for a majority, and his follow-up interviews with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and CBS’s Lester Holt did nothing to restore any confidence in his ability to carry on with the race as concern about his age and mental acuity only increased alarm.
Despite eroding poll numbers, Biden was undaunted, even in the face of the now-steady stream of calls for him to step aside to allow a stronger candidate to save democracy from the MAGA-controlled GOP which threatens to overhaul the government and negate the Constitution and our body of laws. His withdrawal basically reshapes the campaign for both parties, and may invigorate the Democrats who have faced waning support from apathetic voters, especially the big-money donors. Over the past months a disinterested electorate has rolled their eyes at a possible repeat of the Trump-Biden race of 2020, so a fresh new face could put some spice into the race, spurring the undecideds, as well as those who had decided to sit this one out to start paying attention. Democratic donors and operatives have been discussing possible replacements for some time now; and while several names have come to the fore with the dawning of a new day, VP Harris seems to have leapt to the top with her declaration of candidacy, donors coming out of the woodwork to fund her campaign. The only other person who has said Biden’s delegates are her target is Marianne Williamson, author, spiritual adviser to Oprah, and perennial political candidate who has never received more than 5% of the vote in any state primary she has entered. Senator Joe Manchin had hinted that he was considering re-registering as a Democrat in order to throw his hat in the ring, but Monday morning brought him to his senses and he discounted the notion.
CNN’s Trump-Biden ‘debate’ was damaging to Biden not only for his faltering showing, but it allowed the former president to retreat, holding back without revealing the real Donald Trump…fewer lies and name-calling than in his usual performance. Some members of Congress thought that Biden had been slow to reach out to his party’s leaders, and to those lawmakers in difficult races, with some charging his staff with shielding him from those calling for his withdrawal. A recent meeting of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, allowed members to vent about The Boss and his staff, referring to the situation as “the elephant in the room,” some calling it “the donkey in the room.” Last week, as Biden fell victim to his third bout with COVID-19, Democratic strategist Van Jones remarked, “Wednesday was a terrible day for Democrats,” as he contrasted the Trump assassination attempt the previous Saturday, adding, “If you pull back and look at this thing, strength versus weakness, a bullet couldn’t stop Trump. A virus just stopped Biden. The Democrats are coming apart. The Republicans are coming together.” After his diagnosis, Biden headed for Delaware for self-isolation, and presumably the critical meetings that resulted in his letter on X for a graceful withdrawal from the race, which Obama adviser, David Axelrod, had termed “inexorable.”
Biden announced his support for VP Kamala Harris, giving her a clear edge to replace him, also saying that selecting her as his 2020 running mate was the best decision he has made. One advantage she has is that she was a member of that winning ticket, and has several months of campaigning under her belt already. She has been a prominent figure in the administration’s push for abortion access, and is likely the candidate who would be able to access the president’s campaign war chest of donations for a solid start to a candidacy. Conventional wisdom says an open DNC convention is unlikely at this late date, but should that happen it could well be a disaster of infighting and chaos which will defeat the party in the end. Ryan Grim, on a Substack post says, “If Kamala Harris wants the nomination, and wants it to be worth anything, she has to at least show that she fought for it and won it cleanly. It just so happens Democrats are scheduled to meet to nominate a presidential candidate in Chicago next month. That process could help to resolve the legitimacy crisis by at least offering an attempt at something like a participatory democratic process.” Quickly tossing her hat into the ring, Harris issued a statement saying, “I am honored to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination.”
Republicans, anticipating this turn of events, have their attacks against Harris in a row, labeling her the “border czar” for her work on addressing the root causes of migration from Central America, and of course, she will be connected to the issues they have raised that are plaguing the Biden administration. Trump’s attack dogs were in the fray after Biden’s endorsement, blasting that, “Kamala Harris is just as much a joke as Biden is. Harris will be even WORSE for the people of our Nation than Joe Biden.” As satirist Andy Borowitz reports, the Trump campaign is “Calling it ‘the most crooked conspiracy in American history,’ as Trump and other Republicans accused Democrats of plotting to nominate a winning presidential candidate. ‘I’ve seen the Democrats do some pretty evil things, but I never thought they’d choose a nominee with a chance of winning,’ Trump said. ‘This should never be allowed to happen in our country.’ ‘What we are witnessing is no more and no less than a shameless scheme to mount a successful election campaign,’ House Speaker Mike Johnson charged. ‘As God is my witness, this will not stand.’ Senator J.D. Vance attacked the Democrats’ ‘blatant use of strategy’ and warned of more sinister machinations to come. ‘In a matter of days, be prepared for them to announce that they’ve chosen a qualified and appealing VP candidate,’ Vance said. ‘We Republicans would never do that.”” We can expect culture-war excesses over a Harris nomination from the MAGAs. A Californian? Too liberal! A former prosecutor? Too conservative! Too female! Too Black! The last two charges will not be said aloud…but count on dogwhistles thunderous enough to disintegrate the case holding the Constitution.
When the RNC closed its convention, party officials were beaming at the future they believed was spread out before them, expectations high! A party united, a candidate leading in the polls, opponents disorganized and a Democratic incumbent dropping like a rock in the polls. Donald Trump with victory in his eyes, had started solidifying plans for the post-election transition period, his 2024 election being a given in his cockiness. Then came the slap in the face, as Biden abandoned his candidacy, provoking fear in the MAGA ranks, as their anti-Biden offensive fell apart, while Democrats transitioned from despair to prudent optimism that they were finally on-track. One important factor is the contrast of youth versus old should VP Harris be the chosen one to face Trump…it’s no longer a race between two old, unpopular candidates…The Donald is now the oldest presidential nominee in US history! A South Carolina state representative said in a CNN interview, “The man is 80-years-old and so the question is, can he serve another four years? I’m not sure he can.” Tit-for-tat retribution! Anti-Trump Republican George Conway chimed in with, “Seriously, how do you convince people you’re going to make America great again with some old guy who slurs his words and rambles incoherently after his jail ti- …um, I mean bedtime??” And perhaps the most delicious comment came from E. Jean Carroll who said, “Suddenly, he is looking really old.” Former Trump advisor and MAGA extremist, Stephen Miller, enraged in his Fox News interview, accused Democrats of undemocratic actions, calling Kamala Harris a weak choice, and “napalm for the working class.” Miller whined that the GOP had spent tens of millions of dollars running against Biden, only to have the Dems pull the rug out from under them with a “never mind.”
Trump primary challenger, Nikki Haley, predicted in January, “The first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to be the party that wins the election.” In her campaign, she had called Trump “unhinged” and “not qualified,” drawing an impressive number of followers, but her appearance at the RNC convention giving the former president her “strong endorsement” revealed her true colors. A small PAC of disaffected Haley supporters, committed to preventing Trump’s return to the Oval Office, has endorsed Kamala Harris for president, changing their organization’s name too ‘Haley Voters for Harris.’ The group’s director, Craig Snyder, calls Harris a “tough former prosecutor and the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump in November.”
Ezra Klein writes in The New York Times: “It was a convention that picked Abraham Lincoln over William Seward. It was a convention that chose F.D.R. over Al Smith. I’ve been reading Ed Achorn’s book ‘The Lincoln Miracle: Inside the Republican Convention That Changed History.’ My favorite line in it comes from Senator Charles Sumner, who sends a welcome note to the delegates, ‘whose duty it will be to organize victory.’ Whose duty it will be to organize victory – I love that. That’s what a convention is supposed to do. It’s what a political party is supposed to do: organize victory. Because victory doesn’t just happen. It has to be organized.” Tom Nichols wrote in The Atlantic Daily: “Every voter who cares about democracy but has claimed to be paralyzed by the two old men in the race will now have no excuses for indecision. The Democrats have made clear that they intend to field a stable, experienced candidate. The Republicans, a cult of personality in the grip of fevered delusions, will field Trump. Tonight, Americans have the clarity they demanded.”
Independent presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., had to get his licks in, saying, “the contest for the White House is now a two-man-race’” and that only he can defeat Donald Trump. At his press conference he praised Biden for his service to the country while blaming Democratic leaders for concealing the president’s “mental decline.” “If the Democrats do what I suspect they’re going to do, which is to anoint Kamala Harris, a vice president who is monumentally unpopular within her own party…they’re doing it because it’s the easiest way to hold onto the money,” he added. He also said he would consider accepting the Democratic nomination if it were offered to him. Count on your telephone ringer to be deathly silent, junior!
As reported on HuffPost by Lee Moran, former Trump White House aide, Sebastian Gorka made racist comments about VP Harris before Biden pulled the plug on his candidacy, as talk arose regarding her possible succession to the slot. Gorka called the first female, Black and Asian American VP, a “DEI hire” and “colored,” reflecting a racist right-wing spin on efforts to boost diversity, equity and inclusion…which they have made into racist diatribe with the “DEI” term. Actor and comedian, D.L. Hughley, on CNN called Gorka’s comment a product of “mediocre white men,” as he defended Harris in her past achievements, her professionalism and ability to run the country, which makes her suitably qualified in the event of Biden’s inability to complete his term now or in the future. Hughley believes, “America has been more damaged by GCI than DEI…greedy, corrupt, incompetent white men who have caused more damage to the USA than diversity, equity, and inclusion. So what men do, what mediocre white men do, is blame things. They have no excuse for their failures. Trump did to get a second term because he so mishandled COVID that he was fired by the American people.”
Hughley says, “I find the whole tone of this insulting…for a couple of reasons. I watched a man get convicted of 34 felonies. I watched a man get adjudicated for sexual battery. I watched a man who got convicted of fraud and never have I heard from the media in general about his qualifications to be president.” Trump, as might be expected, took to his Truth Social platform to launch more conspiracy theories and propel insults at the president. “It’s not over! Tomorrow Joe Biden’s going to wake up and forget that he dropped out of the race!” Said the man who is still facing questions regarding his own mental fitness! He went on, accusing Biden of faking his COVID illness, and saying, “He is a threat to democracy. Who is running our Country right now? It’s not Crooked Joe, he has no idea where he is. If he can’t run for office, he can’t run our Country!!!” Yada-yada-yada…
Stephen Colbert, on a recent show said, “Donald Trump’s brain is broke, and we got more proof of that when he tried to shame Joe Biden into taking a cognitive test.” A video clip was shown of Trump bragging…again!…about passing a cognitive test of his own, muffing the name of the doctor who administered the test by calling him “Ronny Johnson” instead of his correct name, Ronny Jackson. Launching into his Trump-voice impression of the former president, Colbert said, “Doc Ronny Johnson, he gave me the test, then I went home to my beautiful wife, Malaria, and my two hideous sons, Urkel and Carl’s Jr.” The Late Show host then reminded us of the comments from a Republican lawmaker, who said a meeting with the former president was “rambling…like talking to your drunk uncle at the family reunion,” and a business leader who complained that a meet-up with Trump was “meandering…he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
The Late Night host, Seth Meyers gave President Biden credit for allowing Melania Trump to attend the RNC convention undisturbed after passing new protections for undocumented immigrants, which shields about 500,000 immigrants from deportation. Meyers said, “It’s the first time a US president has done something nice for Melania.” So, the mystery of the missing Melania ended when she made an appearance in the final hours of the RNC gathering, only 45 minutes late. Her apathy showed as she appeared onstage with The Donald after his record-breaking snoozer of a speech, when she quickly turned aside as he tried to kiss her. Maybe there is something to satirist Andy Borowitz’s post that she was lured to the convention by a promise that her husband was ready to sign the divorce papers?
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Dale Matlock, a Santa Cruz County resident since 1968, is the former owner of The Print Gallery, a screenprinting establishment. He is an adherent of The George Vermosky school of journalism, and a follower of too many news shows, newspapers, and political publications, and a some-time resident of Moloka’i, Hawaii, U.S.A., serving on the Board of Directors of Kepuhi Beach Resort. Email: cornerspot14@yahoo.com. |
EAGAN’S SUBCONSCIOUS COMICS. View classic inner-view ideas and thoughts with Subconscious Comics a few flips down.
EAGAN’S DEEP COVER. See Eagan’s “Deep Cover” down a few pages. As always, at TimEagan.com you will find his most recent Deep Cover, the latest installment from the archives of Subconscious Comics, and the ever entertaining Eaganblog.
Election
“The people who cast the votes don’t decide an election, the people who count the votes do.”
~Joseph Stalin
“People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.”
~Otto von Bismarck
“~A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.”
James Freeman Clarke
“It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact. In fact, in every presidential election since 1950 – except Goldwater in ’64 – the Republican would have won, if only the men had voted.”
~Ann Coulter
“The United States brags about its political system, but the President says one thing during the election, something else when he takes office, something else at midterm and something else when he leaves.”
~Deng Xiaoping
“Win or lose, we go shopping after the election.”
~Imelda Marcos
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Staying in the 70s, here’s an interesting clip. When looking into it, I found that June Lockhart is still around, and in fact turned 99 in June of this year. She is one of the last surviving actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood. As recently as 2021, she voiced Alpha Control in one episode of the rebooted Lost in Space on Netflix. |
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