May 31, 2020
Friday May 29 marked the last day to register for the Primary Election in Wyoming. So, this is a good place to start a new thread.
Presidential Election.
We'll start with what you already know, who's running for the Oval office in the GOP and the Democratic Party:
The big two, as you already know, are incumbent President Donald Trump and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
Will Americans go for the Joe they know, or play the Trump card?
For an update on that, go back to our last thread, Part 7. When something really new occurs, we'll update this race.
We will not that while polls in May are not necessarily good indicators of who will win in the fall, things are not looking good for President Trump right now. The Coronavirus Pandemic has had the collateral impact of destroying the economy on at least a temporary basis and the President's strong suits were 1) a strong economy and 2) an extremely loyal base. He still retains that base, but the economic freefall can't be denied. Trump desperately needs the economy to recover by mid summer, and we're nearly in mid summer, in order to have any kind of hope of reelection. Recent statements by the President on various matters have seemed calculate to pitch to his base and NPR's Politics analysis held that this was a strategy to capture those in his base who didn't vote in 2016.
At the time we're posting this, news events have been dominated by riots across the nation sparked by the killing of a black man by a while police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Whether this translates into anything in the fall is of course unknown, but Trump's initial reactions seemed to be of this character and likely have at least temporarily tainted him in the view of many white middle class voters while eroding support among those minority voters he has, to the extent he has any. Suffice it to say, things are looking good for Biden, whose campaign's big task is to keep Biden from saying anything weird or embarrassing. That's proving to be difficult.
Congress
Turning to the local, here's the official race registration for the United States Senate and the House, which has changed just a bit since we last posted, as updated on the County's website. Indeed, a couple of the additions are really interesting so the race, in terms of its overall quality, appears to have probably improved a bit.:
Federal Contests
| Contest | Term | |
| United States Senator | 6 years | |
| Republican | R. Mark Armstrong | |
| Republican | Devon Cade | |
| Republican | John Holtz | |
| Republican | Michael Kemler | |
| Republican | Cynthia M. Lummis | |
| Republican | Bryan E Miller | |
| Republican | Donna Rice | |
| Republican | Star Roselli | |
| Republican | Robert G. Short | |
| Republican | Josh Wheeler | |
| Contest | Term | |
| United States Representative | 2 years | |
| Republican | Liz Cheney | |
| Republican | Blake Stanley | |
| Democratic | Carl Beach | |
| Democratic | Lynnette Grey Bull | |
| Democratic | Carol Hafner | |
There's a few new names there of people who have entered the race at the very, very end. When we last looked, the GOP field was:
In actuality, the field is beyond five at this point. The actual announced candidates, so far, are:
Cynthia Lummis
Mark Armstrong
Joshua Wheeler
Robert Short
Bryan E MillerPatrick Dotson
John Holtz
Michael Kemler
Star Roselli
Donna Rice
We now see its
| Republican | R. Mark Armstrong | |
| Republican | Devon Cade | |
| Republican | John Holtz | |
| Republican | Michael Kemler | |
| Republican | Cynthia M. Lummis | |
| Republican | Bryan E Miller | |
| Republican | Donna Rice | |
| Republican | Star Roselli | |
| Republican | Robert G. Short | |
| Republican | Josh Wheeler | |
Devon Cade, therefore, has entered. I don't know anything about Cade other than this entry and that he's from Pennsylvania.
The only Devon Cade who is a politician from Pennsylvania I can find was previously a Democratic candidate for the Philadelphia City Council. This unfortunately is another example of a weakness in Wyoming's system in which candidates from out of state register here under the delusion, probably partially fueled by the election of Elizabeth Cheney some years ago. People inspired by that apparently fail to appreciate that Cheney did have a connection to Wyoming, had relocated here, and that she only won as there was a three way split in the primary.
Unfortunately registrations like this, and that of Star Roselli, who is from Arizona, give some fuel to the thought on the part of some local Republicans that they're being inundated with false Republicans. In reality the bigger problem is that the state's Democratic Party has become moribund to the extent that anyone registering in any party who is serious about politics will tend to do it as a Republican. A more vibrant Democratic Party would cure that problem.
On the Democratic side this race last featured:
Merav Ben-David
Chuck Jagoda
Yana Ludwig
James Kirk DeBrineKenneth R. Casner
Rex Wilde
It now features:
| Democratic | Merav Ben David | |
| Democratic | Kenneth R. Casner | |
| Democratic | James Kirk Debrine | |
| Democratic | Yana Ludwig | |
| Democratic | Nathan Wendt | |
| Democratic | Rex Wilde | |
On that race, it appears that Jagoda, therefore, bowed out, but Wendt through his hat in the ring. I don't know much about him other than that he's an entrepreneur in Jackson and the direction of the think tank the Jackson Hole Center for Global Affairs.
Wendt may have a fairly good chance at securing the nomination, although he'll lose in the general election. Still, his entry is interesting and it has to be taken seriously. So far, in the field of Democratic candidates, only Merav Ben David are best situated for a run at the seat. Everyone else fits too much into the recent failed Democratic mold. Wendt, although we know nothing about him so far, is a young businessman who might at least make for interesting debates.
Turning to the House of Representatives, the GOP field remains the same but the Democratic field has a new candidate, Lynette Grey Bull.
Grey Bull is a dual registered Native American, being both Sioux and Arapaho and she is the director of the Wind River Native Advocacy Center. She was chair of the Arizona Commission of Indian Affairs. she is also is the founder of Not Our Native Daughters and was invited in that capacity to appear in the last Rose Parade. Also in that capacity, she's responsible for billboard going up in Wyoming bringing attention to that cause.
Given all of that Grey Bull is a really interesting candidate in the context of the current year. If she were to gain the nomination it would bring some really stark contrasts to the election, featuring a Wisconsin born incumbent whose primary "real world" experience was a lawyer in Virginia against a Native of a different sort (it's unclear to me what state Grey Bull was originally from, but she's currently listing a Fort Washakie address), and whose real world experience is really gritty. It'd be an interesting race.
Which doesn't mean she'll get it, of course. The race right now for the Democratic nomination is between Carl Beach and Grey Bull, giving her at least a decent chance. Beach is an educator who was unopposed in reality, given that Hafner is an unelectable candidate from South Dakota. This may mean that the Democratic House primary race may be one of the most interesting ones of the season, even though the victor of that race is extremely unlikely to unseat incumbent Cheney.
Indeed, the irony is that the Democrat contests are actually that now, real contests, but the results don't matter much. Lummis is almost guaranteed to take the Senate seat in the fall and Cheney is almost guaranteed to be reelected to her seat in November as well.
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June 2, 2020
While we're hardly even thinking of primaries occuring anymore, given that the "presumptive nominees" are now long decided, Joe Biden won the Democratic primary in Montana yesterday.
The day before President Trump visited the Episcopal St. John's Cathedral in Washington D.C. where his visit required the use of tear gas to clear a route for him, where he posed with a Bible. Yesterday he went to the Catholic St. John Paul II Shrine at the Catholic University, which did not require the use of crowd control. Both events invoked the rebuke of the respective Bishops of those faiths.
In Iowa Republican Steve King, who had a history of racist remarks, lost in the Iowa primary to Randy Feenstra.
It's odd to think of Iowa having a primary when all you hear about is it caucus, but it does. King had done poorly in the last primary as well, barely retaining his position. This time he didn't.
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June 4, 2020
To say that the times have become extraordinary would be an understatement right now.
Much of what is currently going on, only a fraction of which has been touched upon in this blog, really are more deserving of their own threads, but extraordinary times present a unique challenge for an onging "trailing" thread like this one. How much of what is currently going on do we include in the tread?
Well, at this point things are becoming so intertwined with the election its really impossible not to. That shows up in the post from June 2 which notes the visit by President Trump to two religious sites in Washington D. C., events which generated immediate controversy and criticism, both of a general nature, and at least in the case of one of them, internally within the faith that was the subject of the visit. As noted, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington D.C. immediately criticized the President in the context of the use of force to clear a path so that the President could visit the location. Generating more internal controversy was the visit of the President to the St. John Paul II shrine, which resulted in a statement by the Catholic Bishop of Washington D.C., who is himself black. That statement caused internal debate among Catholics concerning whether the Bishop acted properly in a fairly unspecific criticism about a pre scheduled visit to the location, with some of that debate being quite heated.
On the national stage, the general position of the Presidency, which has not been typical for the Oval Office in a time such as this, has shocked many people and is leading to Republican criticism of President Trump. President Trump has so far not changed his expressed attitudes and really ramped up the criticism when he suggested he'd deploy the U.S. military against protesters if state governors didn't get things in control through the use of the National Guard.
The suggestion of the use of the active duty military is a shocking one. There are instances in which the Executive Branch in the United States has used the military in this role, but they are fairly rare and in some instances examples of why this is really not a good idea. It's been pointed out to me (I wasn't aware of it) that the Marines provided assistance to the Los Angeles Police Department in the 1990s, and that didn't go well. Dwight Eisenhower deployed the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas in support of the Little Rock Nine attending high school there when the state's governor was set to deploy the Arkansas National Guard to do the opposite, which provides a successful positive example of the use of the Regular Army in this role. Standing in contrast to that, the Franklin Roosevelt Administration's use of the Regular Army to disperse the bonus marchers in Washington D. C. is universally regarded as a disaster.
A person can go through and find other examples, dating back to at least the Whiskey Rebellion. But very few of them are really happy or non controversial in some ways. About all that can be said of the 18th and 19th Century examples is that they were short and likely necessary. Suppressing riots in New York during the Civil War and intervening in the Johnson County War provide others.
Large scale deployment of the Regular Army in riot control duty hasn't been done that I can recall since the Civil War, and while there may be other examples after that I'm unaware of, the only 19th Century post Civil War example I can think of is the Federal Government declaring "a state of insurrection" existing in Johnson County in order to deploy troops in response to that event. In that latter case, the U.S. Army largely ignored and reinterpreted its instructions on the spot, something that was easy to get away with in the 1890s but which would be somewhat more difficult, and highly likely to occur, now.
The suggestion by the President that he'll use Federal troops if the States don't use their National Guard has been widely criticized and has extremely little support. There are rare exceptions, but they're rare. Republicans have come out against it. And now former Trump official and retired Marine Corps general Mattis has come out bluntly. In so doing he's stated in a letter published in The Atlantic, the following:
There have been, contrary to what the press may suggest, prior Presidents who have used this strategy at least a bit. Richard Nixon, for example, campaigned on "law and order" following the riots of the late 1960s. But nobody has gone this far in this tactic and should he prevail in the election, which is increasingly extremely doubtful, the nation will be more divided than at any point since the 1960s, if not the 1860s. If Biden wins, which now appears increasingly likely, he'll inherit that division to such an extent its almost impossible to imagine his presidency, which is unlikely to be more than one term, being anything more than a caretaker term. Indeed, Trump's most ardent supporters should be hoping that to be the case, as the left is certainly more energized now than at any point since the 1960s and if Biden turns out to be an active President, assuming he wins, or if he turns the reigns of power principally over to his cabinet and whomever his Vice President pick is, it may turn out to be the most left leaning administration since the 1930s, or perhaps ever.
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June 5, 2020
Yesterday conservative Washington Post columnist George F. Will came out with an editorial that not only called for election defeat of President Trump, but also for his "Congressional enablers".
Will is a very prominent conservative voice and can probably legitimately be regarded as being the premier conservative columnist in the country, a status he rose to even prior to William F. Buckley's death. Together with Buckley he might be regarded as one of the two defining intellectuals of modern conservatism, although other voices have been prominent in recent years who have taken a different track from the sort of Buckleyite conservatism of the post World War Two era. Will left the GOP, which he'd been a member of for decades, in 2016 when Trump was nominated.
In some ways the Will departure has always focused the sharp divide between Republican populist and Republican conservatives. While the two do blend, they are different. Early on in the Trump Administration there were a fair number of pundits who expected the conservatives to balk at the Administration, but they instead fell into line fairly quickly, especially when it became obvious that the Trump Administration would support conservative policies in economics. law and in the social arena. Essentially a sort of quiet deal was reached where the conservatives supported the Administration as long as the Administration supported conservative goals.
This has managed to hold together in spite of a lot of strain and to the disdain of those like Will. In recent weeks, however, the strain has beginning to really show and by this point there's real reason to believe that Trump will be a one term President and he might end up taking Republican control of the Senate down with him. Only a couple of months ago there was, interestingly enough, some serious speculation that the GOP might regain the House. Now that's definitely not going to be the case and there's concern that things are going to go very badly.
For some of Will's view the deal reached with the Administration has been so corrupting that they're now arguing against their party or former party. Will knows that a victory like he's now urging, which would not only end the Trump Administration but also bring in a united government that would be the most liberal one the country has seen since the Great Depression, would permanently bring into the government ideas and concepts that he's opposed his entire life. That's how opposed to what is going on he is.
What seems to underlay this line of thinking is a belief that conservatives have been pushed out or aside in the GOP anyhow, and therefore there's not really a place left for them in the party. By urging its defeat, they're essentially arguing that the game is lost for the sort of intellectual conservatism they represent and by bringing down the populist centered GOP they can rebuild a new conservative party.
How this will develop will be interesting to see. Will isn't so influential in Republican circles that voters are going to follow his lead because he's urged them to take this step, but it might indicate that others are thinking the same thing. More probably, it likely means that the Republican center is abandoning support for the Administration's continuation in November and independents are very likely to have irretrievably left. The recent events in Minneapolis and the President's handling of it may have begun to cement his fate, or are at least definitely impacting his campaign at the present time.
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June 7, 2020
This past Tuesday Joe Biden officially acquired the number of delegates needed to be the Democratic nominee when he secured the delegates for Washington D.C.
This went by pretty much without notice everywhere, not just here, given all of the dramatic news of the past week.
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June 19, 2020
Amy Klobuchar withdrew her name from consideration as a Vice Presidential nominee under Joe Biden specifically to make way for an African American female nominee.
Biden earlier announced that his nominee would be a woman, but with the current civil unrest going on and the focus on the plight of African Americans, pressure has been building for that nominee to be African American. Klobuchar's action essentially nearly dictates that the choice fit that description.
It's highly likely that Biden's choice will in fact be an African American in any event so at best Klobuchar's decision simply recognizes the inevitable and secures for Klobuchar a little bit of low cost virtue signalling. Biden appears to be waiting until the convention, in whatever form it will take, to actually make his decision.
On the same day, African American Mary Elizabeth Taylor, a senior State Department employee at age 30, resigned her position from within the State Department in protest of her view of President Trump's response to the ongoing civil unrest.
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June 24, 2020
John Bolton's expose of the Trump White House was released last week in spite of a Trump effort to block its release as violating security provisions. It may have, according to the court, but it was released anyway. The book was the talk of the weekend news shows due to its characterization of Trump as unfit for office.
Democrats had an interesting reaction to the book, being critical of Bolton for resisting testifying during the Impeachment investigation but endorsing the book's contents.
Whether the book was a factor or not, the Trump campaign is now suffering greatly at the polls. If these numbers continue to hold, the campaign's outcome looks bleak. In an effort to address that last week, a live rally was held in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but it was under attended in spite of claims to the contrary.
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June 30, 2020
The local GOP has been in the news the past two days for events that occurred at its recent convention.
The smaller event, but one making press, was a fist fight between two delegates. Fight fights in politics are nothing new, but the story is embarrassing.
More significantly, the branch of the party centered in smaller population counties, but which is accordingly more numerous in terms of delegates than those centered in larger population counties, successfully amended some rules for the party designed to punish those who strayed from the state GOP platform. This has been a matter of real controversy as the party in the smaller counties is sometimes much more populist, for lack of a better way to put it, than the party elsewhere, and its also out of step with the views of the average Wyomingite voter on some things, which the larger county delegations are aware of as they seem to reflect that. The rules moved some things outside of the general delegate vote arena and, among other things, will impose financial punishment, in the form of lack of financial support, on elected officials who don't have an 80% platform conformance in their voting record.
When this passed, some delegates from larger counties walked out and it seems extremely likely that two separate lawsuits will be filed over this matter.
This comes at the same time that it is becoming increasingly clear that President Trump's bid for reelection is highly likely to fail and the GOP is in trouble in Congress. While there are still months to go, if President Trump is able to overcome his polling deficit at this stage it would be an historic event given the degree to which he's trailing. That deficit is 14 percentage points, which is a large deficit in American two party terms. Only 7% of voters remain undecided. So in order to prevail at this point Trump not only has to capture the undecided vote but also change the minds of a substantial number of voters who have declared for Biden.
Trump's problems date back to his first victory and he's always had a very large percentage of voters who disliked him. Voter turnout, always a problem for Democrats, explain their defeat in part and the mobilization of hardcore populist Trump supporters, which he can likely still count on, may explain the rest in part.
Also explaining it, however, were Republican voters who voted for Trump but don't really care for him. This included those who vote for single issue reasons or largely for those reasons. Opponents of abortion and gun control, for example, really have very few options.
That will all still be the case but Republicans who voted for Trump simply because they're Republicans are not falling in line. The Coronavirus Pandemic, John Bolton's revelations, the George Floyd Protests, and many other things that have come, and sometimes gone, have caused their support to waiver and even depart.
That departure is now seriously threatening their thin control of the Senate and it now is an open question if the Republican Party will retain it.
Indeed, it's already the case that careful observers can see a dedicated conservative effort building to rebuild the party. The George F. Will story we ran the other day was an open declaration of revolt in that direction. John Bolton, in his interviews, is hinting at that as well and even expressed the think hope that a Republican challenger might still emerge. Patrick Deneen, a conservative writer, seems to have fast forwarded past the current election and is already pondering that. It seems some are having the same impulses that Buckley did and concluding that the time has arrived to rebuild a new conservative minority party within the GOP, which is how the original conservative movement of the post war era got started.
If that begins to build, circling back around, it has some interesting elements in comparison to where the Wyoming GOP seems to be headed. That sort of Burkean/Bucklyite party would be deeply philosophically conservative, but not populist. Indeed, it'd nearly be anti populist and somewhat elitist in a way. It would be unlikely to reflect the views of the populist wing of the party.
This wouldn't immediately mean, of course, a resurgence of the Democrats in the state, and the Democratic Party has been a minority party in the state, although occasionally one with a fair amount of support, as the election of various Democratic governors provides one example of. The Democrats have been enormously hurt in Wyoming by events that occured from the 1970s on, culminating with the start of the Clinton election. But it's worth noting that real Republican dominance in the state started during the Reagan era and which was part of a national trend. Things aren't developed enough to determine if a trend is ongoing now, but it's certainly the case that the Democratic Party nationwide, including its really radical elements, seem to be insurgent right now. If the GOP does poorly at the polls nationally this year, it'll have no immediate impact on the state's Republican politicians, but it would be unlikely that the GOP would prove immune to whatever party reckoning would occur following the loss of the White House. That would, moreover, be particularly true if the Senate was also lost.
Certainly the reverse, even in a short time frame, has been true. Trump has had a major influence on the state party, having boosted an insurgent group that was there already. That element failed to take control of the party during Governor Mead's term in office, but it has gained ground since the last election. The strain of that struggle, however, is now really showing.
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July 25, 2020
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July 27, 2020
While I posted the debates above a couple of days ago, I've only listened to the Republican one so far.
It's worth listening to, in part because this is likely the only chance you'll have to hear some of these candidates, at least one of whom is an out of state candidate who has no chance whatsoever.
The candidates were fairly uniformly tacking to the right, but there were some surprises in the first round. Cynthia Lummis opened with a promise to be a strong supporter of President Trump, whose election bids looking increasingly grim, making that platform somewhat curious for 2020.
On that election, there's some speculation that Mark Zuckerberg may come out for Trump out of fears of having Facebook regulated and there's also speculation on Trump's chances being boosted by a Coronavirus vaccine coming out in October, if one was to come out in October.
There will be no Wyoming Congressional candidate debate. Elizabeth Cheney accepted an invitation to debate, but her challenger did not.
Kanye West was publicly apologizing yesterday to his wife after last week's breakdown.
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July 31, 2020
Yesterday, citing the coronavirus pandemic, President Trump suggested postponing the election.
To my surprise, Congress has the ability to do a limited postponement, but it's not going to happen, and even suggesting it was unwise.
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August 1, 2020
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August 7, 2020
Both of the candidates for the Oval Office managed to say things yesterday that left their supporters cringing.
Trump stated that a Biden was "against God" and that a Biden Presidency would "hurt the Bible". Biden made a statement that the Hispanic community is very diverse, "unlike" the African American community.
While both were head scratchers to most people, to a certain office both comments probably actually make a slight bit of sense. Trump's statements, while featuring his typical odd speaking style, does hit a bit with conservative Catholics who have long wondered about the elastic consciences of Democratic Catholic politicians, such as Biden, who regularly take positions that are completely contrary to the faith's position on certain things, and are even gravely so. Biden's comments, for his part, are grossly overbroad but do hit on the truth that the term "Hispanic" includes a large number of individuals who are not of Mexican heritage and who share very little in common with that demographic, which makes up the largest group of Hispanics nationwide.
On other election news, or news that's remotely connected to the election, the Mayor of the City of New York, who is in the far left, urged New Yorkers never to buy cars. New Yorkers worried about riding in mass transit have apparently been pondering that, but Bolo Bill wants to make sure that New Yorkers know that cars are, in his view, passe.
The State of New York's Attorney General, Letitia James, just guaranteed the future of the National Rifle Association in the same manner that the Korean War guaranteed the future of the Marine Corps. Proving the NRA right that Democrats will do anything to undermine the organization, James filed an action which appears, at least from this distance, to lack standing and which will result in a probable dismissal after filling the organizations coffers.
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August 12, 2020
Joe Biden was expected to make his announcement on his VP pick last week, but instead made it yesterday, announcing that he was choosing former candidate Kamala Harris as his running mate.
In choosing Harris he fulfills the recent prediction of pundits, although there was widespread speculation that Susan Rice may take the spot recently as well. Also, in choosing Harris he made arguably the safest, and most problematic, choice.
Biden had limited his choices early on by declaring that the field was limited to women, exhibiting a trait in American politics to essentially jump the shark on this issue. It's been clear for well over a decade that there remains no cultural bar to a woman running and obtaining the Oval Office and indeed Hillary Clinton received more votes for the office in 2016 than Donald Trump did. So the concept that choosing a woman eliminates some long standing taboo is false. Indeed, the election of Barack Obama essentially proved that all the old "can'ts" had disappeared and such considerations are really, at this point, based on a sort of cultural assumption that the country remains in the 1970s when it clearly does not, combined with the view that women will vote for women because they're women, which is patronizing.
Beyond that it had become clear that Biden's choices were really limited, due to recent events to black women. While there are many very qualified African American women for the position, in the end he really didn't pick one (personally I would have picked Donna Brazile, had I been in his shoes).
Harris is perceived as fitting both necessary characteristics, being a woman and being a "woman of color" only due to the strange American concept that simply being black puts a person in a certain ethnicity. Her mother is Indian of the Tamil ethnic group. Her father is Jamaican. While there are a fair number of Jamaican Americans in the United States its been noted by those who study ethnicity that their cultural and economic experiences are distinctly different from African Americans whose heritage stretches back to 18th and 19th Century slavery. Indeed Harris is an example of this in an unusual fashion in that both of her parents were highly educated immigrants to the United States who occupied academic and scientific research positions. That does reflect an aspect of the recent immigrant history, but it doesn't reflect at all the experiences of the vast major of African Americans.
Beyond that, Harris has a history of being a criminal prosecutor and while she maintained that she held concern for African Americans in that role, her history doesn't show her to have been shy about the incarceration of blacks while in that occupation. During the debates, at least on the issue of the 2nd Amendment, she demonstrated contempt for the Constitution which actually lead to a rebuke from Biden.
Harris was not popular with black voters, who are savvy to being patronized, during the election and she polled poorly with them. The African American community, having saved Biden's campaign when it was tanking, expected Biden to choose a significant African American politician as his running mate. It can be argued that in choosing Harris he really didn't. Biden was in trouble recently for publicly stating that African Americans were a monolithic group with no variances among them and in choosing Harris, a candidate who does have African roots, but whose ancestry and experience doesn't match that of the vast majority of African Americans, he seems to have ratified that this is fact the Democratic view. Choosing a figure associated with law enforcement in 2020 may prove unpopular with black voters, and further choosing one whose experiences are so atypical for African Americans may as well. Harris won't be popular at all with potential Republican crossover voters or with conservative independents.
On last week's Meet The Press one of the pundits argued that Biden's choice for VP would "only matter for five days". That may be the history, but in this race that is unlikely. Biden has done well by being quiet and there's more than a little rumbling that if he was more public it would shake up his support. Republicans are trying to capitalize on that by claiming that his mind is slipping in old age, a real and genuine concern for both candidates who are both elderly men. That latter fact makes the Vice Presidential candidates for both men really important as there's a real reason to believe that the VP will end up the President. Pence has been a weak figure in the Trump administration all along and has not been a figure who has been likely to gain him any support where he lacked it (a real argument could be made that Trump should, at this point, choose a new VP candidate in an attempt to boost his support). Harris isn't likely to gain the support of worried voters, and will likely cause some to either lose interest or go elsewhere.
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June 2, 2020
While we're hardly even thinking of primaries occuring anymore, given that the "presumptive nominees" are now long decided, Joe Biden won the Democratic primary in Montana yesterday.
The day before President Trump visited the Episcopal St. John's Cathedral in Washington D.C. where his visit required the use of tear gas to clear a route for him, where he posed with a Bible. Yesterday he went to the Catholic St. John Paul II Shrine at the Catholic University, which did not require the use of crowd control. Both events invoked the rebuke of the respective Bishops of those faiths.
In Iowa Republican Steve King, who had a history of racist remarks, lost in the Iowa primary to Randy Feenstra.
It's odd to think of Iowa having a primary when all you hear about is it caucus, but it does. King had done poorly in the last primary as well, barely retaining his position. This time he didn't.
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June 4, 2020
To say that the times have become extraordinary would be an understatement right now.
Much of what is currently going on, only a fraction of which has been touched upon in this blog, really are more deserving of their own threads, but extraordinary times present a unique challenge for an onging "trailing" thread like this one. How much of what is currently going on do we include in the tread?
Well, at this point things are becoming so intertwined with the election its really impossible not to. That shows up in the post from June 2 which notes the visit by President Trump to two religious sites in Washington D. C., events which generated immediate controversy and criticism, both of a general nature, and at least in the case of one of them, internally within the faith that was the subject of the visit. As noted, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington D.C. immediately criticized the President in the context of the use of force to clear a path so that the President could visit the location. Generating more internal controversy was the visit of the President to the St. John Paul II shrine, which resulted in a statement by the Catholic Bishop of Washington D.C., who is himself black. That statement caused internal debate among Catholics concerning whether the Bishop acted properly in a fairly unspecific criticism about a pre scheduled visit to the location, with some of that debate being quite heated.
On the national stage, the general position of the Presidency, which has not been typical for the Oval Office in a time such as this, has shocked many people and is leading to Republican criticism of President Trump. President Trump has so far not changed his expressed attitudes and really ramped up the criticism when he suggested he'd deploy the U.S. military against protesters if state governors didn't get things in control through the use of the National Guard.
The suggestion of the use of the active duty military is a shocking one. There are instances in which the Executive Branch in the United States has used the military in this role, but they are fairly rare and in some instances examples of why this is really not a good idea. It's been pointed out to me (I wasn't aware of it) that the Marines provided assistance to the Los Angeles Police Department in the 1990s, and that didn't go well. Dwight Eisenhower deployed the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas in support of the Little Rock Nine attending high school there when the state's governor was set to deploy the Arkansas National Guard to do the opposite, which provides a successful positive example of the use of the Regular Army in this role. Standing in contrast to that, the Franklin Roosevelt Administration's use of the Regular Army to disperse the bonus marchers in Washington D. C. is universally regarded as a disaster.
A person can go through and find other examples, dating back to at least the Whiskey Rebellion. But very few of them are really happy or non controversial in some ways. About all that can be said of the 18th and 19th Century examples is that they were short and likely necessary. Suppressing riots in New York during the Civil War and intervening in the Johnson County War provide others.
Large scale deployment of the Regular Army in riot control duty hasn't been done that I can recall since the Civil War, and while there may be other examples after that I'm unaware of, the only 19th Century post Civil War example I can think of is the Federal Government declaring "a state of insurrection" existing in Johnson County in order to deploy troops in response to that event. In that latter case, the U.S. Army largely ignored and reinterpreted its instructions on the spot, something that was easy to get away with in the 1890s but which would be somewhat more difficult, and highly likely to occur, now.
The suggestion by the President that he'll use Federal troops if the States don't use their National Guard has been widely criticized and has extremely little support. There are rare exceptions, but they're rare. Republicans have come out against it. And now former Trump official and retired Marine Corps general Mattis has come out bluntly. In so doing he's stated in a letter published in The Atlantic, the following:
When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.
We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.
James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that “America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.” We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.
Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that “The Nazi slogan for destroying us…was ‘Divide and Conquer.’ Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.’” We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.
Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.
We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Park. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. At the same time, we must remember Lincoln’s “better angels,” and listen to them, as we work to unite.
Only by adopting a new path—which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.
James MattisIt's frankly impossible to imagine a figure who looms as large as Mattis in recent history not having an impact through his statement on the upcoming election. Irrespective of the cause of the recent riots, the President's reaction to them and the widespread feeling that he is not being "presidential" is undoubtedly eroding support even as his opponent is nearly absent from the campaign. His strategy in the upcoming election, assuming there is one, seems to be to go all in for his base and to be divisive in doing so. If that's the case, it's highly risky as his base is not likely to be large enough to carry the day.
There have been, contrary to what the press may suggest, prior Presidents who have used this strategy at least a bit. Richard Nixon, for example, campaigned on "law and order" following the riots of the late 1960s. But nobody has gone this far in this tactic and should he prevail in the election, which is increasingly extremely doubtful, the nation will be more divided than at any point since the 1960s, if not the 1860s. If Biden wins, which now appears increasingly likely, he'll inherit that division to such an extent its almost impossible to imagine his presidency, which is unlikely to be more than one term, being anything more than a caretaker term. Indeed, Trump's most ardent supporters should be hoping that to be the case, as the left is certainly more energized now than at any point since the 1960s and if Biden turns out to be an active President, assuming he wins, or if he turns the reigns of power principally over to his cabinet and whomever his Vice President pick is, it may turn out to be the most left leaning administration since the 1930s, or perhaps ever.
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June 5, 2020
Yesterday conservative Washington Post columnist George F. Will came out with an editorial that not only called for election defeat of President Trump, but also for his "Congressional enablers".
Will is a very prominent conservative voice and can probably legitimately be regarded as being the premier conservative columnist in the country, a status he rose to even prior to William F. Buckley's death. Together with Buckley he might be regarded as one of the two defining intellectuals of modern conservatism, although other voices have been prominent in recent years who have taken a different track from the sort of Buckleyite conservatism of the post World War Two era. Will left the GOP, which he'd been a member of for decades, in 2016 when Trump was nominated.
In some ways the Will departure has always focused the sharp divide between Republican populist and Republican conservatives. While the two do blend, they are different. Early on in the Trump Administration there were a fair number of pundits who expected the conservatives to balk at the Administration, but they instead fell into line fairly quickly, especially when it became obvious that the Trump Administration would support conservative policies in economics. law and in the social arena. Essentially a sort of quiet deal was reached where the conservatives supported the Administration as long as the Administration supported conservative goals.
This has managed to hold together in spite of a lot of strain and to the disdain of those like Will. In recent weeks, however, the strain has beginning to really show and by this point there's real reason to believe that Trump will be a one term President and he might end up taking Republican control of the Senate down with him. Only a couple of months ago there was, interestingly enough, some serious speculation that the GOP might regain the House. Now that's definitely not going to be the case and there's concern that things are going to go very badly.
For some of Will's view the deal reached with the Administration has been so corrupting that they're now arguing against their party or former party. Will knows that a victory like he's now urging, which would not only end the Trump Administration but also bring in a united government that would be the most liberal one the country has seen since the Great Depression, would permanently bring into the government ideas and concepts that he's opposed his entire life. That's how opposed to what is going on he is.
What seems to underlay this line of thinking is a belief that conservatives have been pushed out or aside in the GOP anyhow, and therefore there's not really a place left for them in the party. By urging its defeat, they're essentially arguing that the game is lost for the sort of intellectual conservatism they represent and by bringing down the populist centered GOP they can rebuild a new conservative party.
How this will develop will be interesting to see. Will isn't so influential in Republican circles that voters are going to follow his lead because he's urged them to take this step, but it might indicate that others are thinking the same thing. More probably, it likely means that the Republican center is abandoning support for the Administration's continuation in November and independents are very likely to have irretrievably left. The recent events in Minneapolis and the President's handling of it may have begun to cement his fate, or are at least definitely impacting his campaign at the present time.
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June 7, 2020
This past Tuesday Joe Biden officially acquired the number of delegates needed to be the Democratic nominee when he secured the delegates for Washington D.C.
This went by pretty much without notice everywhere, not just here, given all of the dramatic news of the past week.
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June 19, 2020
Amy Klobuchar withdrew her name from consideration as a Vice Presidential nominee under Joe Biden specifically to make way for an African American female nominee.
Biden earlier announced that his nominee would be a woman, but with the current civil unrest going on and the focus on the plight of African Americans, pressure has been building for that nominee to be African American. Klobuchar's action essentially nearly dictates that the choice fit that description.
It's highly likely that Biden's choice will in fact be an African American in any event so at best Klobuchar's decision simply recognizes the inevitable and secures for Klobuchar a little bit of low cost virtue signalling. Biden appears to be waiting until the convention, in whatever form it will take, to actually make his decision.
On the same day, African American Mary Elizabeth Taylor, a senior State Department employee at age 30, resigned her position from within the State Department in protest of her view of President Trump's response to the ongoing civil unrest.
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June 24, 2020
John R. Bolton.
John Bolton's expose of the Trump White House was released last week in spite of a Trump effort to block its release as violating security provisions. It may have, according to the court, but it was released anyway. The book was the talk of the weekend news shows due to its characterization of Trump as unfit for office.
Democrats had an interesting reaction to the book, being critical of Bolton for resisting testifying during the Impeachment investigation but endorsing the book's contents.
Whether the book was a factor or not, the Trump campaign is now suffering greatly at the polls. If these numbers continue to hold, the campaign's outcome looks bleak. In an effort to address that last week, a live rally was held in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but it was under attended in spite of claims to the contrary.
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June 30, 2020
The local GOP has been in the news the past two days for events that occurred at its recent convention.
The smaller event, but one making press, was a fist fight between two delegates. Fight fights in politics are nothing new, but the story is embarrassing.
More significantly, the branch of the party centered in smaller population counties, but which is accordingly more numerous in terms of delegates than those centered in larger population counties, successfully amended some rules for the party designed to punish those who strayed from the state GOP platform. This has been a matter of real controversy as the party in the smaller counties is sometimes much more populist, for lack of a better way to put it, than the party elsewhere, and its also out of step with the views of the average Wyomingite voter on some things, which the larger county delegations are aware of as they seem to reflect that. The rules moved some things outside of the general delegate vote arena and, among other things, will impose financial punishment, in the form of lack of financial support, on elected officials who don't have an 80% platform conformance in their voting record.
When this passed, some delegates from larger counties walked out and it seems extremely likely that two separate lawsuits will be filed over this matter.
This comes at the same time that it is becoming increasingly clear that President Trump's bid for reelection is highly likely to fail and the GOP is in trouble in Congress. While there are still months to go, if President Trump is able to overcome his polling deficit at this stage it would be an historic event given the degree to which he's trailing. That deficit is 14 percentage points, which is a large deficit in American two party terms. Only 7% of voters remain undecided. So in order to prevail at this point Trump not only has to capture the undecided vote but also change the minds of a substantial number of voters who have declared for Biden.
Trump's problems date back to his first victory and he's always had a very large percentage of voters who disliked him. Voter turnout, always a problem for Democrats, explain their defeat in part and the mobilization of hardcore populist Trump supporters, which he can likely still count on, may explain the rest in part.
Also explaining it, however, were Republican voters who voted for Trump but don't really care for him. This included those who vote for single issue reasons or largely for those reasons. Opponents of abortion and gun control, for example, really have very few options.
That will all still be the case but Republicans who voted for Trump simply because they're Republicans are not falling in line. The Coronavirus Pandemic, John Bolton's revelations, the George Floyd Protests, and many other things that have come, and sometimes gone, have caused their support to waiver and even depart.
That departure is now seriously threatening their thin control of the Senate and it now is an open question if the Republican Party will retain it.
Indeed, it's already the case that careful observers can see a dedicated conservative effort building to rebuild the party. The George F. Will story we ran the other day was an open declaration of revolt in that direction. John Bolton, in his interviews, is hinting at that as well and even expressed the think hope that a Republican challenger might still emerge. Patrick Deneen, a conservative writer, seems to have fast forwarded past the current election and is already pondering that. It seems some are having the same impulses that Buckley did and concluding that the time has arrived to rebuild a new conservative minority party within the GOP, which is how the original conservative movement of the post war era got started.
If that begins to build, circling back around, it has some interesting elements in comparison to where the Wyoming GOP seems to be headed. That sort of Burkean/Bucklyite party would be deeply philosophically conservative, but not populist. Indeed, it'd nearly be anti populist and somewhat elitist in a way. It would be unlikely to reflect the views of the populist wing of the party.
This wouldn't immediately mean, of course, a resurgence of the Democrats in the state, and the Democratic Party has been a minority party in the state, although occasionally one with a fair amount of support, as the election of various Democratic governors provides one example of. The Democrats have been enormously hurt in Wyoming by events that occured from the 1970s on, culminating with the start of the Clinton election. But it's worth noting that real Republican dominance in the state started during the Reagan era and which was part of a national trend. Things aren't developed enough to determine if a trend is ongoing now, but it's certainly the case that the Democratic Party nationwide, including its really radical elements, seem to be insurgent right now. If the GOP does poorly at the polls nationally this year, it'll have no immediate impact on the state's Republican politicians, but it would be unlikely that the GOP would prove immune to whatever party reckoning would occur following the loss of the White House. That would, moreover, be particularly true if the Senate was also lost.
Certainly the reverse, even in a short time frame, has been true. Trump has had a major influence on the state party, having boosted an insurgent group that was there already. That element failed to take control of the party during Governor Mead's term in office, but it has gained ground since the last election. The strain of that struggle, however, is now really showing.
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July 1, 2020
John Hickenlooper, geologist, brewer and politician (the Sam Adams of 21st Century Colorado?) took Colorado's Democratic contest for nomination to the Senate yesterday with a commanding majority. He'll face Senator Cory Gardner in the fall who is widely believed to be in political trouble. This seat is predicted to go from the Republicans to the Democrats.
Also in Colorado, five term Republican Congressman and Trump backed candidate Scott Tipton went down in defeat to challenger Lauren Boebert. Boebert is, if anything, to the right of Tipton. She opposed Colorado's Coronavirus lock down and carries a handgun.
Also in Colorado, five term Republican Congressman and Trump backed candidate Scott Tipton went down in defeat to challenger Lauren Boebert. Boebert is, if anything, to the right of Tipton. She opposed Colorado's Coronavirus lock down and carries a handgun.
Incumbent Kendra Horn survived a Democratic challenge in her Oklahoma House district. She'll go on in the Fall to face Republican Steve Russell whom she unseated by 1.5 percentage points two years ago. The race will once again be very tight.
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July 5, 2020
Entertainment personality and entrepreneur Kanye West seems to be running as an independent for President. His announcement is somewhat unclear as it came via Twitter.
Independant campaigns, assuming that is what he is running, always face very long odds and there's never been a successful one. Indeed, in the American system third party races face nearly as long odds. Perhaps that's why West's announcement met with instant derision from all sides. And West does seem to be a gadfly.
Gadfly though he may be, he probably shouldn't simply be dismissed as he's been remarkably successful at everything he's done. And he stated as long ago as 2015 that he intended to run for President in 2020, backing away from that after the election of Donald Trump.
West is a political conservative, to the extent his political views are known, and a fan of Candace Owens, the controversial black conservative figure. He's been a supporter of Donald Trump and the Los Angeles Times actually speculated following this announcement that his declaration was a ploy to draw black votes away from Biden, a thesis that doesn't credit West seriously enough.
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July 5, 2020
Kanye West at the White House.
Entertainment personality and entrepreneur Kanye West seems to be running as an independent for President. His announcement is somewhat unclear as it came via Twitter.
Independant campaigns, assuming that is what he is running, always face very long odds and there's never been a successful one. Indeed, in the American system third party races face nearly as long odds. Perhaps that's why West's announcement met with instant derision from all sides. And West does seem to be a gadfly.
Gadfly though he may be, he probably shouldn't simply be dismissed as he's been remarkably successful at everything he's done. And he stated as long ago as 2015 that he intended to run for President in 2020, backing away from that after the election of Donald Trump.
West is a political conservative, to the extent his political views are known, and a fan of Candace Owens, the controversial black conservative figure. He's been a supporter of Donald Trump and the Los Angeles Times actually speculated following this announcement that his declaration was a ploy to draw black votes away from Biden, a thesis that doesn't credit West seriously enough.
Candace Owens with President Trump.
Whatever his motivations may be, and the safe one to assume would be that he wants to be President, West's announcement comes at a time during which there are beginning to be black voices that are seriously questioning whether progressivism has served their community well since the mid 1960s. Larry Elder, a conservative black Chicago radio personality, has just issued a documentary on the topic of black conservatives which at least some pundits are taking seriously. And blacks have been seriously questioning the extent to which their concerns are hijacked by white progressives who care little about their actual views. Reference to statistics on the impact of social programs on the black community, long a topic among academics, is starting to be openly discussed in the black community. All of this suggests that the community may be reaching its final transition stage into the larger American community in spite of recent events and resulting protests.
And while West would face very long odds, he has a record of success against the odds. This isn't stated to suggest he'll win, it would be nearly impossible, but rather to suggest that he shouldn't simply be easily dismissed. Indeed, his announcement comes at the point where other conservatives have started openly casting about for an alternative to Donald Trump, and 2020 has been full of suprises.
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July 6, 1920
Bryan Miller won a straw poll over Cynthia Lummis and the state's GOP published the results, according to the Tribune.
Miller is an Air Force veteran and the former Sheridan County Republican Chairman. The result is a surprise and that's leading to questions on whether it's really representative of anything within the GOP (many delegates had left by the time the straw poll was taken) and whether it means anything outside of the convention itself. The question matters as the winner of the GOP race is the almost certain future Senator, given that the Democrats are so moribund in the state.
Having said that, if the GOP nominated a weak candidate, and the Democrats a strong one, that might spell trouble for the party.
That there is trouble within the party right now is one of the things that people citing this poll are pointing to. The party leadership is considerably to the right of the average Republican voter in many places. The Tribune cited party troubles as showing a need for change in the party leadership itself None of that is going to happen immediately, but the poll likely does show that there are indeed real problems. Lummis is almost guaranteed to win in August and Miller isn't as well known as the other contenders for the spot. That the party leadership doesn't, apparently, completely approve of the likely candidate shows that the party has some serious divisions.
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July 15, 2020
Jeff Sessions lost a primary bid to Tommy Tuberville in Alabama.
I don't have any idea who Tuberville is, but he's apparently a retired coach. This primary result, at any rate, is one of a series or recent ones which suggest that the party is moving away from Trump as the November election approaches.
What the results of that will be are unclear. Democrats have gone from wondering if they could retake the Senate to quietly expecting it at this point. There is, of course, a long time left before the fall election and much could change prior to that.
On Trump's chances, they now appear very poor. Some have taken his recent pardon or Roger Stone as a sign that he knows that and expects to lose the election, hence an unpopular act that he has to take now, rather than later. Weakening that argument is the fact that he could have always waited until December were that his logic.
NPR's Politics had a somewhat interesting, somewhat dense, discussion of absentee voting on the July 14 episode.
The dense part was reporting on a survey which talked about around 65,000 absentee ballots being cast out this year so far for shocking things like arriving after the election was over.
Seriously, if a ballot shows up after the election is over, that's not really shocking. If the proposal is to not have ballots that arrive too late still count, how far do we keep that open? Is there still a chance that Kennedy might not be President?
It's really like complaining that people showed up after the election day to vote in person. Too late.
The interesting part was the administration's effort to discount voting by mail, with the show noting that it's really no different than absentee voting.
Indeed, I haven't been able to understand the supposed distinction myself. For a long time here you've been able to request a ballot on any pretext that you won't be available to vote in person and vote by mail. I think that works the same way in most places. You sued to have to sign some attestation that there was a reason you weren't going to be around, but I don't know if you still have to do that. Indeed, lots of people here just vote early at the old courthouse.
Anyhow, as the administration has been dissing voting by mail, it seems that Republican loyalist have been declining to use it in some numbers this year, while the Democrats are doing the opposite. As the data shows that absentee voting doesn't favor either party, running down voting by mail isn't helping the administration.
What this appears to be about is an administration fear that as Democrats outnumber Republicans and are very active this year, organized vote by mail efforts may favor the Democratic party by default, although there's no evidence that is actually the case.
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July 16, 2020
Kanye West has dropped out of the Presidential race.
On the same day it occurred that he'll officially appear on Oklahoma's ballot, having filed for that yesterday.
It would seem that there's some confusion as to his running status.
President Trump fired his campaign manager and replaced him with a new one. With Trump's campaign now in very serious trouble this would seem to reflect a potential change in strategy.
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July 21, 2020
Kanye West launched his campaign in South Carolina while somehow also missing the deadline to submit 10,000 signatures in order to appear on South Carolina's ballots.
He followed that up with a bizarre tweet storm last night, most of which were subsequently taken down.
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July 23, 2020
The first Wyoming primary season Senatorial debate was held on the 21st.
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July 6, 1920
Bryan Miller won a straw poll over Cynthia Lummis and the state's GOP published the results, according to the Tribune.
Miller is an Air Force veteran and the former Sheridan County Republican Chairman. The result is a surprise and that's leading to questions on whether it's really representative of anything within the GOP (many delegates had left by the time the straw poll was taken) and whether it means anything outside of the convention itself. The question matters as the winner of the GOP race is the almost certain future Senator, given that the Democrats are so moribund in the state.
Having said that, if the GOP nominated a weak candidate, and the Democrats a strong one, that might spell trouble for the party.
That there is trouble within the party right now is one of the things that people citing this poll are pointing to. The party leadership is considerably to the right of the average Republican voter in many places. The Tribune cited party troubles as showing a need for change in the party leadership itself None of that is going to happen immediately, but the poll likely does show that there are indeed real problems. Lummis is almost guaranteed to win in August and Miller isn't as well known as the other contenders for the spot. That the party leadership doesn't, apparently, completely approve of the likely candidate shows that the party has some serious divisions.
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July 15, 2020
Jeff Sessions lost a primary bid to Tommy Tuberville in Alabama.
I don't have any idea who Tuberville is, but he's apparently a retired coach. This primary result, at any rate, is one of a series or recent ones which suggest that the party is moving away from Trump as the November election approaches.
What the results of that will be are unclear. Democrats have gone from wondering if they could retake the Senate to quietly expecting it at this point. There is, of course, a long time left before the fall election and much could change prior to that.
On Trump's chances, they now appear very poor. Some have taken his recent pardon or Roger Stone as a sign that he knows that and expects to lose the election, hence an unpopular act that he has to take now, rather than later. Weakening that argument is the fact that he could have always waited until December were that his logic.
NPR's Politics had a somewhat interesting, somewhat dense, discussion of absentee voting on the July 14 episode.
The dense part was reporting on a survey which talked about around 65,000 absentee ballots being cast out this year so far for shocking things like arriving after the election was over.
Seriously, if a ballot shows up after the election is over, that's not really shocking. If the proposal is to not have ballots that arrive too late still count, how far do we keep that open? Is there still a chance that Kennedy might not be President?
It's really like complaining that people showed up after the election day to vote in person. Too late.
The interesting part was the administration's effort to discount voting by mail, with the show noting that it's really no different than absentee voting.
Indeed, I haven't been able to understand the supposed distinction myself. For a long time here you've been able to request a ballot on any pretext that you won't be available to vote in person and vote by mail. I think that works the same way in most places. You sued to have to sign some attestation that there was a reason you weren't going to be around, but I don't know if you still have to do that. Indeed, lots of people here just vote early at the old courthouse.
Anyhow, as the administration has been dissing voting by mail, it seems that Republican loyalist have been declining to use it in some numbers this year, while the Democrats are doing the opposite. As the data shows that absentee voting doesn't favor either party, running down voting by mail isn't helping the administration.
What this appears to be about is an administration fear that as Democrats outnumber Republicans and are very active this year, organized vote by mail efforts may favor the Democratic party by default, although there's no evidence that is actually the case.
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July 16, 2020
Kanye West has dropped out of the Presidential race.
On the same day it occurred that he'll officially appear on Oklahoma's ballot, having filed for that yesterday.
It would seem that there's some confusion as to his running status.
President Trump fired his campaign manager and replaced him with a new one. With Trump's campaign now in very serious trouble this would seem to reflect a potential change in strategy.
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July 21, 2020
Kanye West launched his campaign in South Carolina while somehow also missing the deadline to submit 10,000 signatures in order to appear on South Carolina's ballots.
He followed that up with a bizarre tweet storm last night, most of which were subsequently taken down.
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July 23, 2020
The first Wyoming primary season Senatorial debate was held on the 21st.
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July 25, 2020
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July 27, 2020
While I posted the debates above a couple of days ago, I've only listened to the Republican one so far.
It's worth listening to, in part because this is likely the only chance you'll have to hear some of these candidates, at least one of whom is an out of state candidate who has no chance whatsoever.
The candidates were fairly uniformly tacking to the right, but there were some surprises in the first round. Cynthia Lummis opened with a promise to be a strong supporter of President Trump, whose election bids looking increasingly grim, making that platform somewhat curious for 2020.
On that election, there's some speculation that Mark Zuckerberg may come out for Trump out of fears of having Facebook regulated and there's also speculation on Trump's chances being boosted by a Coronavirus vaccine coming out in October, if one was to come out in October.
There will be no Wyoming Congressional candidate debate. Elizabeth Cheney accepted an invitation to debate, but her challenger did not.
Kanye West was publicly apologizing yesterday to his wife after last week's breakdown.
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July 31, 2020
Yesterday, citing the coronavirus pandemic, President Trump suggested postponing the election.
To my surprise, Congress has the ability to do a limited postponement, but it's not going to happen, and even suggesting it was unwise.
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August 1, 2020
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August 7, 2020
Both of the candidates for the Oval Office managed to say things yesterday that left their supporters cringing.
Trump stated that a Biden was "against God" and that a Biden Presidency would "hurt the Bible". Biden made a statement that the Hispanic community is very diverse, "unlike" the African American community.
While both were head scratchers to most people, to a certain office both comments probably actually make a slight bit of sense. Trump's statements, while featuring his typical odd speaking style, does hit a bit with conservative Catholics who have long wondered about the elastic consciences of Democratic Catholic politicians, such as Biden, who regularly take positions that are completely contrary to the faith's position on certain things, and are even gravely so. Biden's comments, for his part, are grossly overbroad but do hit on the truth that the term "Hispanic" includes a large number of individuals who are not of Mexican heritage and who share very little in common with that demographic, which makes up the largest group of Hispanics nationwide.
On other election news, or news that's remotely connected to the election, the Mayor of the City of New York, who is in the far left, urged New Yorkers never to buy cars. New Yorkers worried about riding in mass transit have apparently been pondering that, but Bolo Bill wants to make sure that New Yorkers know that cars are, in his view, passe.
The State of New York's Attorney General, Letitia James, just guaranteed the future of the National Rifle Association in the same manner that the Korean War guaranteed the future of the Marine Corps. Proving the NRA right that Democrats will do anything to undermine the organization, James filed an action which appears, at least from this distance, to lack standing and which will result in a probable dismissal after filling the organizations coffers.
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August 12, 2020
Joe Biden was expected to make his announcement on his VP pick last week, but instead made it yesterday, announcing that he was choosing former candidate Kamala Harris as his running mate.
In choosing Harris he fulfills the recent prediction of pundits, although there was widespread speculation that Susan Rice may take the spot recently as well. Also, in choosing Harris he made arguably the safest, and most problematic, choice.
Biden had limited his choices early on by declaring that the field was limited to women, exhibiting a trait in American politics to essentially jump the shark on this issue. It's been clear for well over a decade that there remains no cultural bar to a woman running and obtaining the Oval Office and indeed Hillary Clinton received more votes for the office in 2016 than Donald Trump did. So the concept that choosing a woman eliminates some long standing taboo is false. Indeed, the election of Barack Obama essentially proved that all the old "can'ts" had disappeared and such considerations are really, at this point, based on a sort of cultural assumption that the country remains in the 1970s when it clearly does not, combined with the view that women will vote for women because they're women, which is patronizing.
Beyond that it had become clear that Biden's choices were really limited, due to recent events to black women. While there are many very qualified African American women for the position, in the end he really didn't pick one (personally I would have picked Donna Brazile, had I been in his shoes).
Harris is perceived as fitting both necessary characteristics, being a woman and being a "woman of color" only due to the strange American concept that simply being black puts a person in a certain ethnicity. Her mother is Indian of the Tamil ethnic group. Her father is Jamaican. While there are a fair number of Jamaican Americans in the United States its been noted by those who study ethnicity that their cultural and economic experiences are distinctly different from African Americans whose heritage stretches back to 18th and 19th Century slavery. Indeed Harris is an example of this in an unusual fashion in that both of her parents were highly educated immigrants to the United States who occupied academic and scientific research positions. That does reflect an aspect of the recent immigrant history, but it doesn't reflect at all the experiences of the vast major of African Americans.
Beyond that, Harris has a history of being a criminal prosecutor and while she maintained that she held concern for African Americans in that role, her history doesn't show her to have been shy about the incarceration of blacks while in that occupation. During the debates, at least on the issue of the 2nd Amendment, she demonstrated contempt for the Constitution which actually lead to a rebuke from Biden.
Harris was not popular with black voters, who are savvy to being patronized, during the election and she polled poorly with them. The African American community, having saved Biden's campaign when it was tanking, expected Biden to choose a significant African American politician as his running mate. It can be argued that in choosing Harris he really didn't. Biden was in trouble recently for publicly stating that African Americans were a monolithic group with no variances among them and in choosing Harris, a candidate who does have African roots, but whose ancestry and experience doesn't match that of the vast majority of African Americans, he seems to have ratified that this is fact the Democratic view. Choosing a figure associated with law enforcement in 2020 may prove unpopular with black voters, and further choosing one whose experiences are so atypical for African Americans may as well. Harris won't be popular at all with potential Republican crossover voters or with conservative independents.
On last week's Meet The Press one of the pundits argued that Biden's choice for VP would "only matter for five days". That may be the history, but in this race that is unlikely. Biden has done well by being quiet and there's more than a little rumbling that if he was more public it would shake up his support. Republicans are trying to capitalize on that by claiming that his mind is slipping in old age, a real and genuine concern for both candidates who are both elderly men. That latter fact makes the Vice Presidential candidates for both men really important as there's a real reason to believe that the VP will end up the President. Pence has been a weak figure in the Trump administration all along and has not been a figure who has been likely to gain him any support where he lacked it (a real argument could be made that Trump should, at this point, choose a new VP candidate in an attempt to boost his support). Harris isn't likely to gain the support of worried voters, and will likely cause some to either lose interest or go elsewhere.
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August 18, 2020
The Democratic National Convention started yesterday. The convention is the first major party national convention conducted remotely in the country's history, although the Republican one will soon join it in that status. Speakers included Michele Obama and Bernie Sanders.
Today is primary election day in Wyoming.
Today will be the last for part 8 of this series, as by tomorrow, hopefully, final candidates will be in position in Wyoming.
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