Random Thoughts
I’m irritated by lazy journalism of which there are two types. The first is writing the first paragraph and then posting tweets from social media. The second is going out and finding people who say they are affected by whatever is written in the first paragraph. For example, “Thousands of voters are undecided in the upcoming presidential election. Joe Smith is one of them.” Then the rest of the article is about why good old Joe hasn’t made up his mind. Then there are the stories on inflation that don’t analyze the problem but go out and find four or five “victims” and tell their stories.
The Wall Street Journal had an article about Trump and Harris trying to attract the sliver of undecided voters to their side. This was a totally useless piece of misinformation. If there are any undecided voters, then their numbers are so few they can be safely ignored. A dear friend made the brilliant observation that what both sides need to do is to concentrate on their registered voters who do not vote. My friend noted that if you go to the 2020 election, Donald Trump lost because his voters did not vote in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada. In Georgia Trump lost by 80,000 votes out of 2.5 million cast. Yet one million republicans stayed home. Trump is responsible for there being two Georgia democrat senators. He bashed the republican governor and secretary of state saying that they helped the democrats steal the election. The result was that fewer republican votes were cast in the runoff elections for senate and both republican incumbents lost. Trump will lose if he and his campaign do not concentrate on getting their voters to quit whining, get off their lazy behinds and go vote.
Trump has gone to Georgia and bashed the governor, cementing the fact that Trump is a fool. Kemp is a Trump supporter saying that four more years of democrat rule would be a continuing disaster. Trump by his childish venting may well cost him the state.
What Trump and Vance need to do is to concentrate on the swing states. They need to stay on message and highlight the positions of Harris and Tim “Little Bernie” Walz. Of course this requires discipline, something that Trump lacks. Vance should never leave the states of Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He should stay on message. He should never call his opponents names. He needs to talk about inflation, jobs, government overreach, the second amendment, the Supreme Court, lawfare, banning of internal combustion engines, Green New Deal costs and subsequent layoffs, and the border. Personal attacks just turnoff most voters. Mainly Vance, Trump and their campaign should concentrate on getting their voters to the polls. Again it’s voters not voting that lose elections not the “undecided” voter.
Were there demonstrations at the republican convention? I did not watch a second of the convention but I read about it. I don’t recall reading about protests outside the convention hall. So if there were any, then they must have been “mostly peaceful.”
For some weird reason it looks like there will be protests at the democrat convention over Gaza. This is truly bizarre. Most if not all of the protestors will vote for Harris, if they vote at all. Harris and Tim “Little Bernie” Walz are no supporters of Israel and it is highly unlikely that they will continue Biden’s walking down the middle of the road policy with Israel. That the protest groups have morphed from Genocide Joe to Killer Kamala is a real head scratcher.
So Kamala stole Trump’s bad idea of exempting tips from taxation. Trump cried foul. Woopie. What did he expect? He made the announcement while pandering to a crowd in Nevada. As thanks, the workers’ unions in Nevada are now endorsing Harris.
Trump also has pandered to us old folk by advocating that Social Security payments should be tax exempt. He would be better served by proposing to exempt the pay of active duty military from taxes.
I have yet to hear Trump speak on the $2 trillion national debt. Of course the debt grew like Topsy during his term due to Covid. But that proved to be just a jumping off point for Biden and his trillion dollar infrastructure bill and the Chips bill. Trump is likely not saying anything about the debt because at heart he is too a big spender. Didn’t Trump propose building 10 new “freedom” cities on federal land? This would make Biden’s spending look like Reagan’s. He also wants to build flying cars – he must be a fan of the Jetsons.
Trump also wants the president to have a say in the Fed’s decision making particularly with regard to monetary policy. I guess he has forgotten the consequences of a progressive democrat president. Trump, himself, with zero knowledge of monetary policy would be a disaster as well. Having the Fed report to the president is a bad idea. It would be akin to having presidential input to Supreme Court decisions.
haroldblackphd.com 