Tracking Trump's implosion

Just as Trump was smart to let Biden talk at the debate and doom himself, Harris has been letting Trump and his team do the same.

A simulation of the Trump campaign's chances
of getting necessary voter demographic groups

And it's working brilliantly. 

Every day, the Trump/Vance ticket alienates another group of swing voters they'll need to win the election.

To court Black voters, Trump sat down yesterday to answer questions at a conference of the National Association of Black Journalists. Trump's ensuing racist and lie-filled tirade was absolutely jaw-dropping. Between insulting the journalist moderators (which Trump has a rich history of doing to African-American journalists), to blowing his racist dog-whistle for his MAGA base questioning whether or not Harris is even Black, to ending his hour-long commitment after only 34 minutes, you could almost hear the campaign's hope for the Black vote crashing to the ground.

Trump's entire visit at the NABJ conference

The fact-check of his visit to the NABJ conference

Harris called it "the same old show," and said, "The American people deserve better than Donald Trump's divisiveness and disrespect."

CNN's token Republican strategist (and Trump/GOP apologist), Scott Jennings was a little less genteel in his assessment: "(Trump) did crap the bed today. My advice would be get up and change the sheets."

But Trump being Trump, he's doubled down on his pathetic Truth Social platform with rants such as "Crazy Kamala is saying she's Indian, not Black," as well as mocking a photo of Harris, with her Indian-heritage family, dressed in traditional Indian clothing.

While Trump is busy insulting American Blacks (well, and people of Asian descent), comments from his VP-pick Vance are doing the same with the women's voting bloc.

Whether saying the country is run by "childless cat ladies" like VP Harris (who, um, has two stepchildren) or calling career-focused women "sad, lonely, and pathetic," the Trump/Vance ticket's courting of women voters without children (um, 21% of women ages 18-34 say they never even want children) doesn't seem to be going well.

When you throw in Vance's previous no-exceptions abortion stance and things like his comments criticizing beloved US Olympian Simone Biles (um, who's also Black, btw) for stepping away from the last Olympics for mental health reasons, it's not clear that the Trump/Vance ticket thinks they need the votes of any women at all.

About the only group Trump makes sure he doesn't alienate is his staunch base of primarily white voters in his dwindling MAGA movement.

And that won't be nearly enough votes to win in November.

One has to wonder, which other voting demographic can the Trump/Vance ticket offend in the next 95 days?

Quick take: Trump says, "I'm rubber, you're glue!"

Donald Trump lashed back at Vice-President Harris's terming the myriad odd comments from the Trump/Vance ticket--such as Trump's rally rambling "If there's a shark about 10 yards away, 'do I get electrocuted, or do I go with the shark?' I would take electrocution all day long," and Vance's sexist and moronic belief that the country's being run by "childless cats ladies"--as "weird."

I'M not weird! SHE'S weird!

In an interview with Fox News's Laura Ingraham, Trump set the record straight.

In a move appreciated and applauded by five-year-olds everywhere, Trump responded to Harris having called his campaign's comments "weird."

His insightful retort?

"Do you know who is plain weird? She's plain weird. She's a weird person."

That, my friends, is a man who is flailing in the water. Now that he can't decry Biden's age and related issues, he can't swim, and he doesn't know what to do. 

That who he thought would be his life preserver, his (seriously) weird choice for VP, JD Vance, is, instead, wrapped around the legs of the flailing candidate, pulling him further down into the abyss.

To extend (belabor?) the metaphor, the sharks are circling, Donald, and it doesn't look like electrocution is an option...

I'm sick of the deplorable GOP

 A couple elections ago, the Democratic candidate for President termed some of Trump's supporters a "basket of deplorables."

Now, in 2024, it has encompassed the entire party.

And I'm sick of them.

Back during Covid, when science said to wear masks (which, research shows, works to inhibit virus dispersal--despite what your MAGA uncle says), GOP supporters in my community chose not to. They didn't care about possibly infecting the elderly or the immunocompromised. They didn't care about stopping Covid completely by reducing the possibility of variants created as it spread.

They just didn't want to wear a mask. So, they didn't.

As the GOP President spread lies and misinformation about an election that was "stollen" (as Trump spelled it), his gullible believers--despite copious mountains of debunking evidence and testimony from his own administration and daughter, Ivanka--continued to push the lie. Many shameless GOP officials suggested the election was not legitimate. Only a handful of principled GOP members called out Trump and his baseless accusations.

Trump and the GOP now celebrate
those that attacked police and tried
 to thwart the Constitution

And when Trump's supporters, on January 6, 2021, attacked and injured Capitol police, ransacked the US Capitol, and chanted to hang the GOP Vice-President because of Trump's GOP-backed lies, the GOP President watched it unfold on television for 187 minutes, before he finally told these violent domestic terrorists that he agreed with them and that he loved them.

Many GOP members blamed Trump directly for, what some principled GOP leaders termed, the insurrection. Senator Mitch McConnell had a particularly powerful such opinion here.

But within months, when it became apparent that Trump still had his rabid, gullible base, the GOP tried to rewrite history, whitewash the day's violence and intent, and now GOP members call these perpetrators of horrendous violence (designed to thwart the Constitution) "patriots" and "political prisoners." 

The GOP chose the criminal
over the people

And when juries of citizens--selected, in part, by Trump's own lawyers, for goodness sakes--heard evidence, and in the face of possible retaliation from Trump's basket of deplorables (as many had previously threatened judges, court officials, their families, and witnesses), rendered guilty verdicts on 34 (THIRTY-FOUR!) felony counts, and also civil liabilities in the hundreds of millions of dollars, GOP leaders took the side of the duly-found criminal, and called these proceedings a sham.

Amazingly, the GOP then made this deplorable man their candidate for President. All of the sudden, the few, remaining, principled GOP backers, it seems, have turned their backs on morality, and decency, and what is right, just to kowtow to Donald Trump--to get his tax breaks, or to confirm they can vilify and call other people names, or whatever they--and his supporters--get from this deplorable act of hypocrisy and cowardice.

And now, GOP members use racist tactics to attack Trump's opponent, the Vice-President of the United States--by Trump purposely mispronouncing her name, or others shouting "She's a DEI hire!" or claiming Democrats back Harris because of "her ethnic background."

They call migrants "trash," "rapists," "convicts." 

They demonize gays and Muslims, and call cities run by Democrats "horrible."

And I'm just sick of them.

Let me say that a little louder:

I'M SICK OF THEM!

It's time to vote them out for the good of our country--

the whole deplorable basketful of them.

.

Quick Take: Buttigieg skewers Fox News

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg appeared today on Fox News with Shannon Bream. 

To Bream's credit, she let Buttigieg talk.

But, in retrospect, she--and the Trump campaign--probably wishes she hadn't.

Buttigieg proceeded to factually and systematically dismantle the right's negative talking points about Vice-President (and likely Presidential nominee) Kamala Harris.

It's a lot of fun to watch, actually (well, unless you're a Trump fan...).

Democratic support for Kamala Harris is ‘coming from the ground up’: Pete Buttigieg | Watch (msn.com)

Quick Take: How white was the RNC?

Just an interesting nugget:

The Republican National Committe's GOP convention included numerous African-American speakers, and RNC officials talked about their "big tent" to include people of color.

According to Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a whopping 3% of the delegates were Black.

Which, to be honest, was an enormous increase from Trump's first RNC convention in 2016, which had 1%.

Keep pitching that "big tent," GOP!

Trump mispronouncing Kamala: straight-up racism

Trump claims he's a “stable genius,” so why doesn’t he pronounce correctly the first name of the country’s Vice-President (and Presidential race opponent) Kamala Harris?

The choice is clear--
Kamala or the racist?

To be sure, Trump has butchered a lot of words (calling, for instance, California’s National Park “Yo, Semite”), but saying Harris’s name wrong isn’t just another example of his being uneducated or the bumblings of a doddering old man.

Experts point out that such purposeful mispronunciation is often a power move meant to bully another, assert dominance, put someone down.

However, when it involves the name of a person of color, it’s much more than that.

It’s straight-up racism.

Harris’s first name (pronounced--as Trump well knows--“Comma-la”) is Sanskrit, meaning “lotus flower.” About a million people worldwide share “Kamala,” most of them in India—the country of origin for Harris’s mother.

And when Trump purposely pronounces it otherwise, it hearkens back to days of US slavery, when names were changed or “Americanized” to strip enslaved people of their culture, their heritage, and their dignity. It also serves to disparage, in general, the culture from which it comes. And Trump’s done it before—mocking Nikki Haley’s given first name, “Nimarata,” and assigning her his demeaning version, “Nimbra.”

So, when you hear the despicable Donald Trump mispronounce the name of Vice-President Kamala Harris, know that it’s not just another “clever” nickname like his tiresome “Sleepy Joe,” or his now-self-describing “Crooked Hillary.”

Nope.

It’s racism.

And that’s who the despicable GOP thinks should be President.

Vote KAMALA Harris.

Harris's VP sweepstakes

So, who will be Harris's pick for VP? There's plenty of speculation, but one thing is certain: Harris's choice won't be anywhere as abysmal as Trump's JD Vance.

Arizona's US Senator Mark Kelly

Although some of the early favorites, such as Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and California's Gavin Newsom, have taken their names out of the running, there's still a surprisingly strong line-up from which Harris can choose.

The two that seem to be drawing the most attention are North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper--a close friend of Harris's who has won convincingly in what many consider a red state--and Arizona's US Senator Mark Kelly, a former astronaut who was only elected in 2020.

I think she'd do well to pick Kelly. 

First off, he's from a swing state. It's always nice for a campaign to have a "favorite son" in a swing state.  

And, as Arizona Senator, Kelly has worked on in-state border issues; he's even been critical of Biden's handling of immigration.  Kelly could give the Harris ticket a bit of instant credibility regarding Harris's perceived weakest issue.

His views on guns align with a tenet of the Harris campaign, which promotes "the freedom to be safe from gun violence." Kelly and his wife, former AZ Rep. Gabby Giffords--who was shot and disabled at a political event--formed their own political action committee to address gun violence. But Kelly still can additionally appeal to Second Amendment advocates: "Gabby and I are pro-gun ownership. We are anti-gun violence."

Hey! He's an astronaut!

Kelly's service as a US Navy Captain will likely bring automatic standing with US Vets, as well.

And, hey, he's an astronaut (which is undeniably cool, right?).

And he's WAY better than JD Vance.

Here's a USA Today article with pros and cons of Harris's potential VP picks