In Politics: The Democratic National Convention begins in 10 days. President Joe Biden’s withdrawal as the Democratic Presidential Nominee and his replacement with Kamala Harris has sent most Democrats into a state of Euphoria. So far polls have justified their more optimistic mood and their dreams of success have extended into hopes of winning the House and maintaining their Majority in the Senate. We hope the polls are right and Democratic momentum continues through their Convention and on to Election Day in November. One thing we are sure of, Republicans and their 34 time convicted felon of a Presidential Candidate will do anything to win. It will be a grind but with hard work there is reason to have faith that Kamala Harris and Democratic candidates run the table and our Democratic System maintains itself.
In Politics: In South Dakota: I still wait for signs of a campaign, any campaign, by South Dakota Democratic candidates and The South Dakota Democratic Party (SDDP) without much success.
On the Voter Registration front in South Dakota, so far in August the Democratic Party has added 129 voters to its voter roll while the GOP added 778. The SDDP has stopped its decline and improved its game but it is still falling further behind and losing the race badly.
Don’t get me wrong. I want Harris to win, and I’ll be voting for her, but the replacement of Biden by any other Democratic candidate is the biggest mistake in modern Western civilization since Chamberlain’s appeasement towards Hitler. But the only saving grace from this is that regardless of who is the 47th president, that president will be a dictator due to the demands of climate change and not just by their own wishes. But then the question becomes as to whether climate change, especially with a Trump presidency in the future, will offer an avenue of convenience for a Trump 47, or become an overwhelming burden like what Covid did to the final ten months of the last Trump term.
Also, I always thought it was dumb to have Biden debate Trump to begin with. We should have just forged ahead with Biden from day one, massive GOTV, targetted messaging, and we would have won Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania by a total of between 28,000 to 32,000 votes and then called it a day. But instead, the Democratic elite promoted this debate in my opinion so they could commit a soft coup because they were nervous about Biden’s polling. Although, they have never explained why the Democrats aren’t doing any better than Republicans in generic congressional polling either, before and after the Biden/Trump debate, even with all of the dysfunctionalism that Republicans have displayed in the last two years in the US House…. Because what this really all tells me is that the problem isn’t Biden, or it wasn’t Biden, rather it’s Democratic messaging, and that’s because we have allowed our Party to become a consortium of single-issue constituencies where none of the leaders from any of these constituencies are willing and capable to present and tell the broader message of the Democratic Party anymore. Because, our Party now has too many chefs in the kitchen with their own special sauce, who can’t prepare and cook a full meal.
Prior to the replacement of Biden, there were two historic presidential models, which were in play to significantly foretell what would happen in 2024. They were the Cleveland model (1892) and the Reagan model (1984), or what I would call the Reagan-lite model, because I never expected Biden to carry 49 states this year. But the Reagan-lite model dominated the Cleveland model due to Biden’s incumbency and the fact that unlike Cleveland, Trump has never won a majority or plurality of the vote, which Cleveland did in three consecutive races. Now, with Biden gone, however, the Reagan-lite model is off the table and we are now only left with the Cleveland model as dominant model, which means Trump wins in November. Plus, the now dominance of the Cleveland model also brings into play the Nixon model (1968), which further assures a Trump victory in the fall as well.
As far as any excitement for Harris in the polls, well, that is already beginning to wane and she might get a further bump from this week’s convention, but by mid September it will be Trump’s race to lose.
That said, I think Trump has made one big mistake since Biden left the race, and that has been his agreement to debate Harris so early with the current date set for September 10th, I believe. Such an early date will give Harris time to recover from an initial debate, which I think favors Trump. But that a course then assumes Trump has learned from his June debate with Biden, which is that he needs to offer more facts and less BS in the next debate…. I guess we will have to see.
Trust me, I want Harris to win as much as any other good Democrat does, but I don’t see it. History is against us now that LBJ (or Reagan?), I mean Biden, has left the race.
( and Woodstock adds: “You forgot to mention how Cleveland lost to Harrison then beat him, and then how Trump lost to a ticket with a candidate named Harris, and then…….
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It’s hard to stay positive with this race. While I do support Harris, I hate the process. The public should have picked the nominee, I agree this wrangling will hurt them, but I think she can win this.
It’s now Trump’s to lose.
As far as the wrangling, well, how about how the DNC did a number on Bernie in ’16, then somehow fifth-place Iowa caucus contender Biden was handed the nomination in ’20, while his opponents, who were winning in ’20, ended up as Cabinet members or the VP, and now we have this soft coup? It’s time the DNC had another McGovern-Fraser electoral reform committee formed. The Democratic Party is no longer democratic.
I also forgot to mention how as soon as Biden performed badly in the June debate, Democratic elites were mentioning all kinds of replacement names, but Harris’s name was never in the mix. In fact, there were press reports then that Harris was very upset about this, but then we ended up with Harris. So, if replacing Biden is about winning, then how does Harris honestly fit into that narrative or gameplay? #WeAreFxcked
In fact, as soon as Biden performed badly in that June debate, Democratic elites and the establishment press were calling for his replacement. I hadn’t seen such a quick turnaround since the time 9/11 happened, and then just like that, Congress already had a voluminous Patriot Act written and ready to be enacted…. It was a coup and a stupid one at that….