Election Analysis 2024

  

                  

Since former President Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamela Harris in the 2024 Presidential election, I have read a number of analyses of the election results and all, whether Republican or Democrat, blame the Democrats for the defeat. Harris is blamed for not being a good candidate. President Joe Biden is blamed for not stepping down sooner. The Democratic party is blamed for being overly “woke” and out of touch with ordinary Americans.  Even the millions of people who voted for Trump are blamed for being racist, bigoted, and misogynistic.

However, I have not seen one analysis where Trump is given any credit for his remarkable victory. Even the conservative editorial writers and columnists at the Wall Street Journal cannot give an ounce of credit to Trump or his team. Indeed, throughout the long-drawn-out campaign, these commentators found it difficult to say even one good word about Trump. It is as if they feared alienating friends or colleagues in the industry. The editors of the WSJ consistently believed that Nikki Haley or anyone else were better candidates than Trump, and despite their losses in the primaries, would have been easy winners for the Republican party. 

In any contest, it is usually the superior player who wins.  Can it be that Trump was the superior player in 2024? Since Trump first entered the political arena in 2015, I have never seen such enthusiasm for a candidate. It grew as he demolished leading Republicans in the 2016 campaign, and then upset Hillary Clinton in the Presidential election. His controversial defeat in the 2020 election obviously did not diminish the enthusiasm of his millions of supporters and ultimately it carried him to victory this year. Without that enthusiastic base no Republican could have won. Was this enthusiasm based on nothing? Was it totally unreasonable?

I have talked with a number of Trump supporters over the years, and I can point to a few reasons for his popularity. In the first place, from the moment he entered politics, it was clear that Trump was not a politician. Perhaps this is the reason why so many in the governing class despise and hate him. He was rich but he was not one of them. No one has ever accused him of being a politician. To put it in a positive way, he appears to his base as genuine, and not as a phony. He is incredibly rich and flaunts it, but still seems like a regular guy. 

I believe that his supporters also admire his courage. He showed a lot of courage in taking on the Republican establishment in 2015. As President I recall his seemingly innumerable press conferences where he took on the entire attacking press corps without benefit of teleprompter or staged questions. Compare his bravado to Biden and Harris who hardly ever held a press conference. 

Who can forget that moment in Butler, Pennsylvania when an assassin’s bullet came within an inch of taking his life. He could have stayed on the ground covered by Secret Service agents, but something in this 78-year-old man made him rise and shake a defiant fist in the air. 

Maybe, courage has something to do with the fact that Trump might be the hardest political campaigner in history. I know he gave practically the same speech at every rally, but he was still out there night after night right till the last day of the campaign.

Trump should also be given some credit for his actual campaign. He obviously picked a team of very talented and capable people. Only after the election did we find out that the leader of the campaign was Susie Wiles. She led a campaign that won every battleground state, as well as the popular vote. The media totally overlooked her. They still don’t know how she did it.

 

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Endorsement

 

 

The Weekly Bystander endorses Donald Trump for President.

A year ago I was looking forward to this year’s Presidential election with great anticipation. President Biden was running virtually unopposed in the Democratic primaries and was a lock to get the nomination. Although former President Donald Trump faced stronger opposition in Republican primaries, he seemed unstoppable. The 2024 election was shaping up to be a rare event, a contest between two Presidents. It would be a contest between the current administration, and the previous one. It would be easy to compare the two administrations on the basis of what they actually achieved, and not on some promised reforms or future policies.

However, it was not to be. Biden’s inept performance in the early debate led to a Democratic insider party coup that forced him out of the race. As a result it seemed as if Kamela Harris, Biden’s anointed successor was a reform candidate running against Trump who now appeared as the incumbent from whom we had to turn the page.. She has consistently declined to run on her record, but just talks about her plans for the future. Even though practically everyone in the country has already made up their mind, it still seems to me that there is no way the Biden-Harris administration can stand comparison with that of the Trump administration. *

There is no need to go over the whole list of failures of the Biden-Harris administration except to note that the greatest failure is still hidden. How long have Democratic insiders like Vice-President Harris known of President Biden’s incapacity? How long have we been governed by a secret cabal? It is claimed that President Biden removed himself from the race only after being threatened by the 25th Amendment. That amendment, however, cannot be used as a threat. If the Vice-President suspected the President was mentally or physically unable to continue, she had the responsibility to call a cabinet meeting and call for a vote. Perhaps this explains why the cabinet has met only once in the past six months, and that only for a photo op.

Whether elected or defeated, Harris and the Biden Administration will have a lot to explain in the years to come.


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* See earlier post on the resumes of the two contenders.

Vance Walz Debate

 Since I fell and fractured the humerus in my left arm five weeks ago, it has been difficult to use the keyboard on my computer for anything more than a sentence or two. But I would like to make a brief comment on last night's debate.

Before the debate, I thought that Republican Senator Vance would have to show that he was Presidential. He did not have to win but just show that he could be up to the job. Trump is nearly 80 and even his most ardent supporters must be concerned about the succession issue. So, it was not a question of win or lose the debate but would Vance show that he belonged in the arena.

I believe he passed with flying colors. He was intelligent, articulate, knowlegible, poised and young. His youth was a breath of fresh air. 

In fairness, I have to say that Governor Walz did better than I thought he would, and showed much more knowledge and experience than his running mate. This debate was the most substantive I have ever seen in all my years of following politics.

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Two Resumes

  

                  

This week at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), the Democrats nominated Vice President Kamela Harris to be their standard bearer in the November election. She will face off against the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump. Now would be a good time to compare the two candidates. 

Theoretically, we are their potential employer, and let’s imagine that we are looking at their resumes and considering their qualifications for the job. Of course, like any good employer, we should not consider their age, gender, race, creed, or color. Let’s concentrate on their recent work experience.

First, we find that Donald Trump has actually served four years as President of the USA. He has four years of on-the-job experience. We see that his administration had some major successes in foreign affairs. He met with many foreign leaders, both friend and foe, and the World was at relative peace, especially after ISIS was defeated in Iraq.  Toward the end of his term, his administration brokered the Abraham Accords, an historic first step in normalizing relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors. There was no war in Ukraine.

Domestically, his most important achievement was tax reform that made the tax system not only fairer and simpler, but also more growth oriented. It is important to understand that the Trump reform was not really a cut in taxes but a cut in tax rates both personal and corporate. In 2016, before tax reform, the Federal government collected $3.27 trillion in taxes. By 2019, before the pandemic hit, total tax revenues rose to $3.46 trillion. Moreover, during the Trump administration employment and real wages reached all-time highs.

But more than anything else, he was always up front, a leader in both foreign and domestic affairs. We remember his many press conferences where, unscripted and without a teleprompter, he took on all questions from largely hostile media.  Even during the Covid crisis, he was on stage practically every day during that national emergency. Whatever you think of vaccines, there is no doubt that he acted with firmness and alacrity in their development. 

In summary, his resume shows four years or relative peace and prosperity despite a pandemic, and despite incredible and unprecedented opposition from his political opponents.

 

Now, let’s look at the resume of Vice-President Harris. There is a lengthy goal statement, but one wonders why she has not achieved any of these goals in the past three and a half years of the Biden/Harris administration. She plans to do many things on Day 1 of her administration, but since she is in office right now, why hasn’t she done them already? 

I would ask any reader to help me list three significant things that she has achieved as Vice-President. I can offer a couple of hints. She obviously participated in the coup that put an end to President Biden’s re-election campaign. After years of lying about how sharp and capable he was, she helped to throw him under the bus. If she is truly running the show now, she added insult to injury by putting Biden on the DNC stage at 11:30 on Monday night.  

She also appointed Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota as her running mate. His only qualification seems to be that he will not outshine her. Otherwise, her resume is blank for the past three and a half years. What has she been doing during that time? She was supposed to be Border Czar, but her handlers have deleted that item.

Finally, her resume shows no evidence of any real leadership. Did she play an important role in the inner circles of the Biden administration? Or is her call for a new era of hope and joy, a critique of that administration? Who knows? She is being hidden from view in the same manner as Biden four years ago, she gives no interviews or press conferences. Her speeches are all ghost written and delivered via teleprompter. It is true that she does a good job of reading from a teleprompter.

I watched her acceptance speech to see if she added more information on her role in the Biden administration. She briefly mentioned three things. First, she warned President Zelensky of Ukraine that the Russians were about to invade.  Three years later, the war goes on. Second, after three years of an open border policy she worked this year to create a border bill but that was somehow derailed by former President Trump. Finally, she is currently working with President Biden to end the Gaza war, but so far with no success. That was all she could say about her record as Vice President. She spent much more time talking about her mother.

 

Who would you hire?

 

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Hiroshima and Nagasaki Revisited

 

                                             

 On August 5, 1945 a U.S. Air Force bomber dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Four days later a second atomic bomb was dropped on the port city of Nagasaki. Five days later  on August 15 Japanese Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese government agreed to accede to Allied demands and surrender unconditionally. 

Earlier that year, on May 8, 1945, the European Allies had accepted the surrender of Germany after Hitler’s suicide. VE Day marked the end of the war in Europe and the Allies could now turn their full attention to the defeat of Japan. Joseph Stalin, the brutal Communist dictator in Russia, had refused to open an Asian front against Japan until the defeat of Germany. 

After VE Day Stalin agreed to launch an attack on the Japanese puppet state in Mongolia within three months. On July 26, 1945 the Allied leaders met at Potsdam and issued a demand to Japan to surrender unconditionally or face utter destruction. While the Russians built up their forces in the East, the United States launched a series of devastating firebomb attacks on Japanese cities from recently taken islands in the Pacific.

When these attacks failed to bring the Japanese to their knees, the Allies made preparations for a full-scale attack on the Japanese mainland. Massive casualties were projected on both sides.  Finally, by the beginning of August scientists had successfully tested the Atom bomb. President Truman then made the decision to use the bomb.

I was six years old at the time and have only the slightest recollection of that world-shattering event. I don’t think anyone at the time could have imagined the awful destruction caused by those two bombs. A few years later, after the Soviet Union had managed to steal the technology and build their own bomb, I remember participating in air raid drills in school. Teachers told us to crouch under our desks or just put our heads on the desks with our hands over them. I guess that this exercise was to protect against shattered windows but even we children realized its futility.

As  I got older I became somewhat aware of the debate that had gone on within the Truman administration about the decision to drop the bomb, as well as the debate that still goes on among scholars and other commentators about the necessity and morality of the action. I’m sure that this question is one in which there are strong arguments on both sides. For myself, I still wonder why it was necessary to drop the second bomb on Nagasaki only four days after Hiroshima. 

Coincidentally, at the time Nagasaki was the most Christian city in Japan. The day the Japanese government agreed to surrender was August 15, for Catholics the feast day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven. Although Catholics had celebrated the feast of the Assumption on August 15 for centuries, the doctrine had never been officially defined by the Church. 

Maybe it was the awful destruction of the Second World War, maybe it was the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and maybe it was the prospect of an atomic arms race, but only five years after the surrender of Japan on August 15, Pope Pius XII, in a rare exercise of Papal infallibility, declared that belief in the Assumption of Mary was a binding doctrine of the Catholic church.

So far, despite the Cold War and the continued development of nuclear weapons, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain unique.  Although warfare has continued, there has thankfully been no worldwide conflagration to match either WWI  or WWII. It might not seem so, but since August 15, 1945 we have witnessed an unprecedented era of peace between world powers.

 One of the reasons I voted for Donald Trump in 2016 was his stated concern about the danger of nuclear war. I cannot find the exact source but I recall that when he was asked about the greatest issue facing the country, he put the threat of nuclear war at the top of the list. Given the events of the past four years,  I believe that it should still be at the top of the list in the 2024 Presidential campaign,. It certainly far surpasses in importance any issues that "progressive Democrats" have raised since 2016.

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Debate Report Card

 

My wife and I watched the Presidential debate last Thursday night, and it was obvious that President Biden lost. I rate his performance as a “D” because he at least completed the grueling ordeal. My impression was confirmed by watching the spinmeisters discuss the debate afterwards. Even the most die-hard Democrats admitted as much. It didn’t take words. Their faces told the story.

 

 It was not that you could point to a blunder or two. President Biden looked and sounded weak and infirm. One Democratic commentator noted that there is only three years difference in their ages, but Trump looked and acted thirty years younger.

 

Joe Louis, one of boxings greatest champions, once said of an opponent that “he can run, but he can’t hide.” Well, President Biden may be running but he couldn’t hide during the debate. We finally saw the real Joe, or what was left of him at age 81. Finally, he stood alone without even Jill at his side, and we saw him without teleprompter or prepared remarks although he had spent a week preparing. It was sad, even sadder when you consider that he is the President of the United States.  

 

President Biden’s deportment during the debate would make you think that we have not really had a President for the past three and a half years. I would go even further and say that he appears like a figurehead or puppet, and that during his term I suspect that the country has been run by a secret cabinet of non-elected Democratic bureaucrats and advisors working behind the scenes. 

 

For three years Jill and the others in his inner circle must have observed that he was suffering from old age, and that he was no longer fit for the job. Along with a cooperative media, they have perpetrated a colossal fraud on us. They have hidden the real Joe from us but in the debate we could see and hear the truth with our own eyes and ears. 

 

It is hard to believe that the professional politicians who run the Democratic party could have come up with the idea of this early debate. Sure, CNN would give Biden the home court advantage, and the moderators were friendly referees. Nevertheless, debate innovations like shutting off the mikes to prevent interruptions just worked to Trump’s advantage. It toned him down and allowed Biden to disgrace himself.

 

Speaking of Trump, I gave him only a C+ for the debate. He came off as strong and vigorous, and was good on inflation and immigration, but he missed too many opportunities to score. He belabored many points and often repeated himself, and when the moderators tossed him softballs like childcare, he could have hit them out of the park but let them pass. In a night with few memorable lines, he just threw away his best line. When he said something like, “I shouldn’t be here, I should be enjoying a good retirement at some resort, that I was not going to run again until I saw what a bad job Biden was doing,” that statement belonged in his final two-minute summation. 

 

Speaking of grades, I would give an “A” to the two CNN moderators for the way they conducted themselves, and the debate. I thought their questions were fair and balanced, and especially liked the way they reminded the candidates that they had time remaining on the clock to expand on their remarks. I believe that the format should be a model for future debates.

 

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PS. By coincidence, I have been reading the letters of Junius, an eighteenth century critic of the British government on the eve of the American Revolution. In one passage he discussed the Duke of Bedford, an aging aristocrat and minister whose policies contributed to the American war and the eventual loss of the American colonies.

 

“ Let us consider you then, as arrived at the summit of worldly greatness; let us suppose that all your plans of avarice and ambition are accomplished, and your most sanguine wishes gratified… can age itself forget that you are now in the last act of life? Can gray hairs make folly venerable? And is there no period to be reserved for meditation and retirement? For shame, … let it not be recorded of you, that the latest moments of your life were dedicated to the same unworthy pursuits, the same busy agitations, in which your youth and manhood were exhausted. Consider that, although you cannot disgrace your former life, you are violating the character of age, and exposing the impotent imbecility, after you have lost the vigor, of the passions.”

Asset Inequality

  

As the Presidential race heats up I think it might be good to avoid personalities and discuss some of the issues that voters should consider. Here is part of a post I put up three years ago that still seems relevant today. ...................................

The income inequality bemoaned by progressives in this country is a myth. Statistical studies that demonstrate an increasing amount of income inequality apparently leave out over a trillion dollars of government income transfers to those in lower income brackets. These studies also do not take into consideration the substantial impact of an effective progressive income tax code on the highest earners.  

Three years ago in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Bruce D. Meyer, a professor of public policy at the University of Chicago, and James X. Sullivan, a professor of economics at Notre Dame, claimed that “there is much less material deprivation than there was decades ago.” They cited a number of studies including the American Housing Survey that demonstrated the significant strides made in this country. They wrote,

"The poorest 20% of Americans live as the middle class did a generation ago as measured by the square footage of their homes, the number of rooms per person, and the presence of air conditioning, dishwashers, and other amenities."

Unfortunately, studies that claim that America has reached an unprecedented level of income equality are questioned by politicians and advocates on both extremes of the political spectrum. Right wingers claim that the enormous sums spent by government social programs or income transfers have largely been wasteful and ineffective. Left wingers claim that they have not gone far enough and continue to call for massive spending to finance free college education, health care, minimum wage increases and a host of other benefits. 

Left wing progressives also claim that studies that demonstrate rising income equality are a politically biased attempt to roll back or eliminate the social service safety net. As a last resort, even if they grudgingly admit some measure of income equality, progressives will then raise the issue of “asset” inequality. Even if the incomes of the poor are improving, the gap in asset ownership is greater than ever before in history and getting wider and wider.

I know that there are incredibly wealthy people in the country today. Jeff Bezos of Amazon is reputed to be the wealthiest person in the world with a fortune of $157 Billion in 2018. But my own experience leads me to believe that the gap between the very rich in this country and the rest of us is no wider than it has ever been, and that more Americans share in the benefits of the American economy than ever before.

When I started my career in the financial services industry as a mutual fund salesman in 1972, it quickly became clear to me that most Americans did not own a share in the American economy. The mutual fund business was in its infancy, and only a small percentage of the population owned shares of common stock. Moreover, there were no IRA or 401k plans with tax favored treatment of retirement savings. Many leading companies had pension plans but there was little in the way of profit sharing plans or employee stock ownership plans. There were, however, two tax-favored retirement accounts but they were only available to small businesses (Keogh plans), and school teachers (403b plans). The 403b plan was the granddaddy of these plans and it is still used to fund the retirement of most college and university professors today. 

In the past 50 years the growth of all of these plans has been phenomenal. More Americans now own tax favored retirement plans than ever before and most of them are invested in a broad cross section of the American economy. In addition to the tax advantages, most people could participate in these plans through payroll deduction, the best way to save. Incredibly, the huge amounts that Americans put into these tax favored retirement plans do not count in official government statistics as savings.

When I started in 1972 the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) was about 1000. Today it is over 34000. The baby boomers who began saving in the 1970s have become the richest generation in history. On a recent visit to Alameda California, across from San Francisco Bay, I discovered that even modest homes there could not be had for less than $1 Million largely due to its proximity to trendy San Francisco. Although San Francisco is the bluest city in the bluest state in the country, most ordinary people cannot afford to live there.

Closer to home, my wife and I enjoy sitting at the marina near Fairfield beach and watching the boats, both large and small, go in and out. It is a constant parade. Fairfield is a middle class town but a good number of its people enjoy messing around in boats, and can afford to do so. 

But what about the lower classes? Although people living on welfare have very few assets, their guaranteed welfare income and benefits makes them virtual millionaires. For example, if someone receives a monthly welfare check, subsidized medical care under Medicaid, and housing and food assistance, they could easily have the equivalent of an income of $2500 per month or $30000 per year. At 3% interest it takes a million dollars of assets to provide an income of $30000 per year. Moreover, any assistance that poorer Americans get ultimately comes from the income and profits made by other Americans.

Despite protests from both the left and the right, it would appear that the social safety net is working in America. Other countries have emigration problems but America has an immigration problem. Despite all of its so-called flaws, people still want to come here. Isn't it incredible that thousands of refugees from Somalia have been able to settle in Minneapolis in the past few decades? It is even more incredible that one of them has been elected to Congress where all she does is complain about her adopted country.

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Trump Trial

 

I will hold off on any comments on the recent conviction of ex-President Donald Trump in a New York city court until the matter winds its way through the appeal process. In the meantime, I would just like to comment on the hatred of Trump that lay behind the proceedings. Half the people in this country dislike Trump, and many of those despise, even hate him. What is the cause of this hatred?

 

When I ask people why they dislike Trump, they rarely mention his performance as President from 2016-2020. True, they point to his behavior on January 6, 2021, but their animus preceded that event. Moreover, they rarely mention his policies, foreign or domestic. Some object to his insulting remarks about his opponents. They just wish he would tone down the rhetoric.

 

I did a search for Trump’s insults and found that the New York Times had compiled an exhaustive list of insults hurled by Trump at various people and institutions from 2015 to 2021.The list is in alphabetical order based on the name of the recipient of Trump’s invective. I only went through the A,B,Cs which I found contained a good sample especially since it included Trump’s opponents in the past two elections. Here is a selection from the Times list.

 

ABC. Fake News. (ABC was first on the list but most media were called fake news)

 

Stacey Abrams. Will destroy the State etc.

 

Jim Acosta. A fake reporter

 

Anderson Cooper. A waste.

 

Bashar al Assad. A gas killing animal who kills his people.

 

Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements…her mind is shot.

 

Steve Bannon. Sloppy Steve.

 

Paul Begala. Dopey

 

Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bozo

 

Joe Biden. Sleepy Joe etc. (the Biden file is almost a page of small print)

 

Hunter Biden. Crooked as can be.

 

Michael Bloomberg. Mini Mike

 

John Bolton. A warmongering fool.

 

Jeb Bush. Jeb low energy Bush

 

Pete Buttigieg. Alfred E. Newman.

 

James Clapper. Dirty Cop…proven liar.

 

Hillary Clinton. Crooked Hillary etc. (her file is as long as Biden’s)

 

Michael Cohen. Bad lawyer and fraudster.

 

Anne Coulter. Wacky nut job

 

Chris Cuomo. Fredo

 

It seems pretty mild to me except for the charge leveled against Bashar al Assad, the Syrian dictator, who has in fact used poison gas on his own people. Today, after the various hoaxes promoted by the media in the last eight years, “fake news” seems like a matter of fact and not an insult. I found no foul language on the list. Certainly, nothing close to the insulting language hurled against Trump by his opponents. He is often called a Nazi and compared to Hitler. Remember that Maxine Waters, a Congresswoman from California, called him a mother f---er. He did say that Stacey Abrams would destroy the State of Georgia, but recently, outside the NYC courthouse, actor Robert DeNiro claimed that Trump would destroy the Country and the World.

 

No, it is more than insults or rhetoric. For half the country, Donald Trump is the epitome of the big, bad businessman that has been part of American lore from the beginning, especially from the time of the nineteenth century Robber Barons to the present. From Colombo to Law and Order the killer has always been a successful white businessman or professional.

 

From the time he came down the escalator in Trump Tower to declare his candidacy, Trump was the successful white businessman par excellence. Moreover, he showed no guilt about his riches. He had inherited wealth but then increased it immensely. He flaunted his wealth. He lived in Trump Tower and Mar a Lago amid furnishings of gold. He loved to play golf and had a reputation as a womanizer. He married a beautiful young wife after dumping two previous wives. He had a good education but still seemed boorish and uncultured. Most of all, he was not the “not for profit” type. He always watched out for Number 1.

 

Think about it. The last three Democratic Presidents never had to be in business. They never had to run a profit or worry about taking a loss. Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary were lawyer politicians, Barack Obama was a community activist before his election to the Senate from Illinois, and Joe Biden has been in government forever. They were all public servants who made millions, but somehow escaped the opprobrium of being rich.

 

Many years ago I was a young teacher at a newly founded small college in Connecticut. Like me, most of the faculty were liberal arts teachers just out of grad school. For some reason, we all looked down our noses at businessmen even though most of us had little real contact with people in business. We thought they were ill-educated and uncultured, and it seemed especially unfair that they should make much more money than we did. We even looked down upon the school’s fledgling Business department as a kind of necessary evil. I suspect that such anti profit prejudice still prevails today in most colleges and universities despite the fact that most of them now turn out hordes of business majors.

 

As one letter writer in the Wall Street Journal pointed out this week,Trump was prosecuted not because of anything he said or did, but simply because he was Donald J. Trump.

 

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Trump Enthusiasm

 

A recent poll indicated that 97% of those who voted for Donald Trump in 2020 would again vote for him in 2024. If the poll is correct, of the over 74 million who voted for him four years ago, about 72 million would vote for him again. Despite the repeated claims of his political opponents whose opposition borders on hatred, Trump does not represent a tiny, fringe group of MAGA hat wearing, flag waving supporters.

Super Tuesday has come and gone, and Trump practically swept all the Republican primaries by overwhelming margins, after earlier record-breaking victories in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Michigan.  Nikki Haley, Trump’s last remaining Republican opponent, has now dropped out of the race. She was the last hope of the anti-Trumpers, and commentators still claim that Trump cannot win without Haley voters. In reality, a large percentage of Haley votes came from Democratic Trump haters who would never have voted for her in November.

Interestingly, these same commentators never bother to wonder how Haley or any of the other Republican contenders could have won without the votes of Trump enthusiasts. Did Haley or Chris Christie actually think that over 70 million Trump supporters would vote for them after their repeated Trump criticisms? Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida was smart enough not to openly criticize Trump or his supporters during his short-lived campaign, and quickly endorsed Trump after he withdrew from the race.

What explains Trump’s popularity?  During his successful campaign in 2016, I never in all my life saw such enthusiasm for a candidate. Now, eight years later, his popularity remains intact.  Two impeachments did not hurt him, and the recent multiple indictments have, according to a chart in this week’s Wall Street Journal, only increased his popularity. Is it just poor education or irrationality on the part of his supporters, or is there something else? Here are some reasons for the enthusiasm.

In the first place, he already has experience as President. This is very important. I remember that back in 2016 many commentators believed that Trump could not last a month as President. They felt it would be almost impossible for him to even form an administration and govern. Nevertheless, whether you like him or not, you would have to agree that he was up to the job. I will not list the many accomplishments of his term since he continually refers to them in his speeches. But more than anything else, he was always up front, a true leader in both foreign and domestic affairs. Even during the Covid crisis, he was on stage practically every day during this national emergency. Whatever you think of vaccines, there is no doubt that he acted with firmness and alacrity in their development.

Secondly, there are his words, his manner, and behavior. Detractors, who will never vote for him anyway, want him to tone it down. But his supporters want him to do just the opposite. So what if he fooled around with women in the past, not one of his many critics ever accused him of sexual misbehavior while in office. He certainly never had sex with a young intern in the White House. 

So what if he ridicules his opponents. His supporters love when he pricks the balloons of the high and mighty. Think about it and compare his jibes to those insults hurled at him by his haters. Did he ever call anyone a mother f----er? Don’t his critics have a sense of humor? His supporters, after being ridiculed and derided as deplorables, love his combative personality. Did nice words ever prevent Mitch Romney from being derided as a heartless nabob who wanted to deprive grandma of benefits?

Trump detractors never mention his actual performance as President. They just don’t like him, period. Basically, they dislike the fact that he is a white businessman who is not only wealthy but who also flaunts his wealth. But his supporters love the fact that he made his money in the private sector battling in the shark tank that is New York City real estate. They want a shark in the White House and not a feeble old man like his successor who somehow made millions for himself and his family as a career public servant.  

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Trump DeSantis Ticket

  

Trump and DeSantis

 

Last week I conducted my own informal poll of Republican Trump supporters on whether they would like to see Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as Donald Trump’s choice for his running mate in the Presidential campaign.  All believed it would be a great idea.  A few days later, right before the New Hampshire primary, Governor DeSantis withdrew from the race and announced that he would support President Trump.

Now that Donald Trump has defeated Nikki Haley by 11 points in New Hampshire, I think his way is clear to the Republican nomination despite Haley’s determination to carry on. No matter what she does, I think it would be good to examine the pros and cons of a Trump/DeSantis ticket.

Trump does not need DeSantis to shore up his base. In all my life I have never seen such enthusiasm for a candidate as Trump has garnered since his entrance into politics in 2015. Despite all the criticism, harassment, impeachments, investigations, and indictments, his supporters still love him. In 2020 an unprecedented 74 million people voted for Trump, and I doubt if any of them have changed their mind since then, especially considering what has happened at home and abroad during the past 3 years of the Biden/Harris administration.

What DeSantis can add to the ticket is an heir apparent. Critics claim that Trump will be a lame duck if elected in November, and because of that he will have even more difficulty governing than he did during his first administration. DeSantis provides a competent, experienced, and youthful successor to the aging Trump. He would be a natural to carry on the conservative agenda in 2028, as well as step in if Trump were to experience health issues before then. What a contrast it would be to the Biden/Harris ticket. Even Democrats shudder at the possibility that Biden, already obviously suffering from old age, would be succeeded by Kamela Harris.

It is true that Trump has had bad words for DeSantis since 2020. Trump had helped DeSantis win an unprecedented landslide in Florida, but then believed that DeSantis had failed to reciprocate. A couple of years ago, when DeSantis responded “no comment” when asked if he planned to run for President, Trump felt he was being disloyal. In hindsight, it would have been much better for DeSantis to have responded: “President Trump did a great job during his term in office, and if he chooses to run again, I will support him. I will only consider running if he chooses not to run.” Given his results in recent month he would have saved a lot of time and money. 

Nevertheless, politics is politics and if Joe Biden could choose Kamela Harris as his running mate after what she said about him in debates, there is no reason why Trump and DeSantis cannot mend their fences and forge a winning combination for November.

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Industrial Revolution

President Biden and former President Trump have both thrown their hats in the ring for the 2024 Presidential election. Before the campaigns gets into full swing, I would like to reprise some earlier posts on what I believe should be the major issues even though I know that the personalities of the two candidates will probably crowd out issues. Below is a post written four years ago on the Industrial Revolution, a phenomenon widely mis-understood especially by progressives.

 My high school granddaughter asked me to help her with a recent assignment about the Industrial Revolution. It brought to mind my college teaching experience of over fifty years ago when I taught a unit on the Industrial Revolution as part of a basic course in Western Civilization. I thought then and still believe today that the Industrial Revolution was one of the most significant developments in the history of the world.

Try to imagine a world today without the following:

Electricity

Clean water delivered by pipeline to your home

Modern sewers and waste removal systems

Automobiles

Home heating without firewood

Computers

Televisions

Air Conditioning in homes and cars

Trains, Planes, and Buses

Indoor Plumbing—before the IR there was no such thing.

Elevators

Washing Machines for clothes and dishes

Hospitals with their incredible technology

Cell Phones—most important of all!

It is hard to believe but our ancestors before the Industrial Revolution had none of these essential elements of modern life. Actually, many parts of the world today still live in the pre-industrial age without many of the items listed above. 

Industrial Revolution is the term given to the transformation of manufacturing from homes and shops to factories employing hundreds or even thousands. The transformation began in Great Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and eventually spread all over the world. However, before there could be an industrial revolution, there had to be three other revolutionary developments. 

First, there was a Demographic Revolution involving a substantial increase in population. This increase happened not so much because of a rise in the birth rate but because of a decline in the death or mortality rate due to a dramatic drop in infant mortality, a drop caused by advances in diet and sanitation. For example, in Italy in 1860, 232 of every 1000 infants died in the first two years of life but 60 years later only 127 of 1000 infants died during the same period. 

An Agricultural Revolution accompanied the Demographic Revolution. Human ingenuity devised new methods of farming, land management, and animal husbandry to feed the growing population. While doomsayers like the British clergyman Thomas Malthus were predicting mass starvation, they could not predict that the profit motive and human resourcefulness would provide for the needs of an ever increasing population. 

A Transportation Revolution also accompanied the Industrial Revolution. The nineteenth century was the great age of canal and railroad building. At the same time, steam power replaced wind power as a safer and more reliable source of energy. The revolution in means of transportation allowed mass migrations of people from rural areas to the urban centers of manufacturing and commerce. It also allowed goods and services to be delivered faster and at less cost. 

From the beginning the tremendous social, economic, and political changes caused by these revolutions had both good and bad consequences. Rural areas lost population and industrial cities became overcrowded. Writers and social commentators were quick to point out the terrible working conditions in the factories, and the deplorable living conditions in the slums surrounding the factories. 

Moreover, critics objected, as they do today, to the incredible disparities in wealth and income between the factory owners and financiers (capitalists) who profited and the workers who toiled. The misery of the urban poor could not be overlooked. Nevertheless, in countries that did not industrialize, like Ireland or southern Italy, the poor were even worse off and literally starved to death either from actual food shortages or malnutrition. Why else would millions from Ireland and Italy leave their beautiful countries to live in the overcrowded cities of the New World?

I suspect that the Industrial Revolution still has a bad name today. Capitalist is a term of opprobrium and even capitalists shun to describe themselves as such. Even union members whose pensions are invested throughout the American industrial sector do not realize that they are capitalists. Of course, Progressives are outspoken in decrying the terrible effects of corporate greed and inequality.

It’s true that few of us will have the income or assets of CEOs, politicians, Rock stars, TV personalities, or professional athletes. But more than anywhere else in the world, we do have the opportunity to acquire and keep property. We can even buy and sell shares in the companies we work for. You may call it Capitalism but I prefer to call it a free-enterprise system. Whatever you call it, it has worked to raise the standard of living in this country to the highest level that has ever been seen in the world. 

My granddaughter’s class was asked to evaluate the relative merits of Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism. All three systems were responses to the Industrial Revolution. You can judge for yourself which of the three systems did the best job of providing the necessities of life listed at the beginning of this essay. Before the Industrial Revolution, as one seventeenth century commentator noted, life was “nasty, brutish, and short.”

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Trump's Prospects

In a recent Wall Street Journal column, Daniel Henninger, editor and regular columnist, repeated the 2020 election analysis that has now become generally accepted. To paraphrase Jane Austen, if President Trump had only behaved in "a more gentleman like manner," he would not have turned off so many voters and lost the election. Or, in the words of a friend of mine, President Trump was a “turn-off, a narcissistic, demeaning bully, as well as an egotistical BS artist." To give my friend credit, he voted for Trump, because he believed the alternative was even worse. Other acquaintances went even further and regarded Trump with dislike bordering on overt hatred.

However, if President Trump’s personality turned off so many voters in 2020, how did he manage to get over 11 Million more votes than he did in 2016? In 2020 his 74 Million votes set a record for an incumbent President. Now that Donald Trump has officially entered the 2024 presidential race, it might be helpful to take a closer look at the figures of the last election.

First, here is a spreadsheet that compares the Trump vote totals in 2020 and 2016.  First are four key battleground states that gave Joe Biden the victory in 2020, then four "red" states, and then two different "blue" states. 

 

	2020	2016	Increase	Gain%
Arizona	1661686	1252401	409285	32.68%
Georgia	2461854	2069154	392700	18.98%
Pennsylvania	3377674	2970733	406941	13.70%
Wisconsin	1610184	1405284	204900	14.58%
Total	9111398	7697572	1413826	18.37%
Florida	5668731	4617881	1050850	22.76%
North Carolina	2758775	2362631	396144	16.77%
Ohio	3154834	2814005	340829	12.11%
Texas	5890347	4685047	1205300	25.73%
	17472687	14479564	2993123	20.67%
California	6006429	4483810	1522619	33.96%
CT	715291	673215	42076	6.25%
Total	74223369	62984828	11238541	17.84%

In the four battleground states that decided the election by the slimmest of margins, his vote total increased by over 18% with a whopping 33% increase in Arizona. How did he win easy victories in Florida and Ohio, states that were very close in 2016? Polls (who can believe them anymore?) showed those states in play in 2020 but President Trump won easily. In Ohio he gained over 340000 more votes, a 12% increase over 2016. In Florida his vote total was a Million more than it was in 2016, a gain of over 22%. Polls showed even Texas close in 2020 but Trump won going away. He increased his 2016 vote total there by 1.2 million votes, a 25% gain. 

Even in California, the bluest of states, President Trump gained over 1.5 Million votes, a 33% increase, despite the fact that his voters had to know that there was no chance of winning in California. More than anything else the California vote indicates an incredible level of enthusiasm for the candidate. In fact, the above figures show that despite four years of bitter opposition on the part of Democratic politicians, the main stream media, and even the the Federal government establishment, President Trump gained in popularity. Despite two failed impeachment attempts, official investigations, and incessant criticism, Trump gained in popularity.

I am not bringing these figures up to replay the last election, but to indicate that the figures are very important for the next one in 2024. Despite media claims, Trump supporters are not a small minority of right-wing nuts. Trump has entered the race and his supporters make up the bulk of the Republican party. He is the front runner and no Republican can win without his supporters. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is an attractive candidate with a good record but he can not beat Trump for the Republican nomination. 

I was sorry to hear that Trump had decided to run in 2024, but not because I don't like him. Actually, I admire his abrasive manner, but I also believe he did an excellent job as President. Nevertheless, I think the office is too much for a man approaching 80, and that it might harm him and his family. Look at poor Joe Biden. But if Trump and DeSantis patch up their personal differences, DeSantis would be a perfect heir apparent. Voters could rest secure that even if old age took its toll on Trump, there would be a  capable successor, something that is notably lacking in the present administration.  Moreover, a Trump/De Santis Administration could  ensure Republican supremacy for not four, but twelve years.

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