Presidential Debates, Just Around The Corner

In case you haven’t had your fill of politics already, with an important election only a few weeks away and political stories of one kind or another dominating every newscast, here’s some encouraging news — the first Democratic presidential candidate debates for the 2020 election are just around the corner.

Politico is reporting that the first debates will probably occur in the spring of 2019, months before the first primaries and caucuses, and a full year and a half before the 2020 election.  And even though that seems ridiculously early to non-political types like me, it’s apparently causing all of the would-be candidates to ramp up their activities now.  It’s expected that there will be a lot of people who will be vying for the chance to square off against President Trump in 2020 — more people, in fact, that can reasonably fit on one debate stage.  And if sheet numbers mean there will be two debate stages and two sets of debaters, all of the candidates want to be sure that they appear on the stage that includes all of the perceived “real contenders,” and are not relegated to the “everybody else” stage.  So everybody who is contemplating throwing their hat in the ring is out there raising money, hiring staff, visiting Iowa and New Hampshire, and trying to make news and start showing up in the polls.

Who are the “real contenders” for the Democrats?  According to the Politico article, only one person — a Congressman named John Delaney, who I’ve never even heard of — has formally declared his candidacy at this point.  Among the people who reportedly are considering a bid are Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren, as well as Cory Booker and Kamala Harris.  Some people think Hillary Clinton might run, or Michael Bloomberg, and no doubt there are mayors, governors, other senators and representatives, and corporate figures who may launch campaigns.  If only a few of these folks actually run, you’ve already got a pretty crowded stage.

It’s hard to believe that we’re at the point of gearing up for another presidential election already, but politics being what it is, I am sure that there are a lot of Democrats out there thinking very seriously about running for President.  Why not?  After all, if Donald Trump can win the Republican nomination and actually get elected, just about anything is possible.  So why not take a shot — and do whatever you can to make sure that you get onto the coveted “contenders” stage?

Not Just An Also-Ran

Senator John McCain died yesterday, at age 81, after a long battle with brain cancer.  He was an American hero for his fierce resistance to his North Vietnamese captors after he became a prisoner during the Vietnam War, and after he was released from captivity he forged a long and equally independent record in Congress.  He was a proponent of campaign finance reform, a steadfast supporter of veterans, and a strong advocate for the military.  McCain was one of those members of Congress who was willing to buck party leadership and reach across the aisle if he felt it was the right thing to do — a reputation that was confirmed when he voted against a repeal of Obamacare — and if I didn’t always agree with his positions, I always felt that he was largely motivated by a sincere belief in what would be best for the country.

It’s an impressive legacy — but for many people, McCain will be remembered primarily as the man who was beaten by Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election.

McCain’s death got me to thinking about the people who have run for President on a major party ticket in a general election and lost, and how many of them are still living.  Two of the oldest members of that group, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, actually won the presidency before losing their bids for re-election.  The other living members of the club of people who were unsuccessful in their run for the presidency include Mike Dukakis, Bob Dole, Al Gore, John Kerry, Mitt Romney, and Hillary Clinton.  All of them have had successful careers in politics and have made different contributions to the country — and all of them will be remembered, at least in part, for the time they lost.

America is a tough place for a politician.  The higher they rise, the higher the stakes, and when a person raises the money and makes the speeches and personal appearances and survives the primary system and becomes the nominee of a major political party, the stakes are the highest of all.  We routinely honor the winners — at least, most of them, if only for a short period of time — and second-guess and chastise the losers, dissecting their campaigns and pointing out every flaw and flub.

John McCain shows how unfair that perception is.  Sure, he never became POTUS, but that fact doesn’t detract from who he was or what he accomplished.  He was a lot more than an also-ran.

Not Exactly Principled

Donna Brazile, the long-time Democratic operative who took over as the chair of the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 presidential campaign, has published a tell-all book.  It’s the kind of political book that is described as “explosive,” because Brazile dishes the dirt on the likes of Hillary Clinton, the Clinton campaign, President Obama, and other topics that titillate the inside-the-Beltway crowd.  You can read the Washington Post article about the book and some of its revelations here.

For example, Brazile now says that she was so concerned about Hillary Clinton’s health after Clinton’s fainting spell at the 9/11 ceremony that she actually considered exercising her ability as party chair to try to throw Clinton aside as the Democratic nominee and replace her with the ticket of Joe Biden and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker.  Brazile says the Clinton campaign had no energy, disrespected her and the DNC, and didn’t allow the DNC to participate in get-out-the-vote efforts; she also recounts an incident in which she told Clinton campaign operatives that they were treating her like a “slave.”  She says that the fix was in on the primary battle between Clinton and Bernie Sanders due to a joint fundraising agreement between Clinton and the DNC that effectively gave the Clinton campaign control over finance, strategy, and staff decisions, providing it with an advantage over other candidates.

I read about Brazile’s disclosures in the Washington Post article linked above, and I wonder:  why do these political operatives always seem to wait until after everything is settled before speaking up?  Who knows whether, for example, providing information during the primaries so that the news media could report on the joint fundraising agreement might have made a difference in the result?  And when Brazile took over the DNC, why not immediately publicly expose the culture of corruption and financial mismanagement that she describes in her book?  But the D.C. operatives never seem to do that, do they?  Instead, they smile and give speeches and toe the party line during the campaigns, regurgitating the canned talking points on the Sunday morning public affairs shows and hoping for a good result so that they can be appointed to some plum position by the new President — but then when the results are bad, they write a tell-all book and make a hefty personal profit spilling the beans.

It’s not exactly principled behavior, is it?  Of course, this is the same Donna Brazile who, when she was a paid contributor to CNN, gave the Clinton campaign a heads-up on potential topics and questions that might be asked at a CNN town hall, so maybe she really didn’t care all that much about the Clinton campaign getting an unfair advantage.  And in any case, since when should we expect principled action from the gaggle of toadies and sycophants that seem to make up the vast majority of the political class in both the Democratic and Republican parties in this country?

The Comey Canning

As Forrest Gump might have said, any day with the Trump Administration is like a box of chocolates:  you never know what you’re going to get.  Yesterday, we got the decision from President Trump to fire the Director of the FBI, James Comey.  And, to accentuate the bizarre, bolt from the blue aspect of the decision, Comey apparently learned of the decision when the news flashed across the TV screen behind him while he was giving a speech, and he initially chuckled and thought it was a joke.

The White House says that Trump acted on the recommendation of senior officials in the Justice Department, who concluded that Comey botched the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s questionable email practices and, in the process, caused “substantial damage” to the credibility and reputation of the FBI that has “affected the entire Department of Justice.”

The Deputy Attorney General, Rod J. Rosenstein, prepared a memorandum citing reasons for Comey’s discharge that stated:  “I cannot defend the director’s handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton’s emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken. Almost everyone agrees that the director made serious mistakes; it is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives.”  Among other mistakes, Rosenstein cited Comey’s curious July 5 press conference, where Comey announced that charges would not be pursued against Clinton but then castigated her creation of the servers and her handling of confidential materials.  Rosenstein stated that Comey acted “without the authorization of duly appointed Justice Department leaders” and added: “Compounding the error, the director ignored another longstanding principle: we do not hold press conferences to release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation . . . we never release it gratuitously . . . It is a textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do.”

There is truth the Rosenstein’s statement about a bipartisan consensus that Comey’s handling of the email investigation involved a lot of mistakes; Comey’s actions and his decision to make an abrupt, pre-election announcement of a renewed investigation into Clinton’s email servers were criticized by former attorney generals in both Republican and Democratic administrations.  And only this week, the FBI had to correct misstatements Comey made in recent testimony to Congress about the email investigation.

But there is something very unsettling about the Trump Administration’s abrupt decision to discharge Comey for actions he took months ago, because the decision comes in the midst of an ongoing investigation into Russian influence into the last presidential election and the actions of the Trump campaign in relation to the potential Russian involvement.  Trump’s letter to Comey giving him the boot oddly acknowledged the ongoing investigation, stating:  “While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau.’’  And Rosenstein has only been at his Department of Justice post for two weeks, which suggests that his first job assignment in his new position was to consider whether Comey should be fired.

Not surprisingly, Democrats are up in arms about the decision, which they compare to Richard Nixon’s infamous “Saturday night massacre” of Justice Department officials, and members of Congress are calling for an investigation.  I think an investigation makes sense, but until then I’m going to reserve judgment and see what develops.  There’s no doubt that Comey had his issues, and it may well be that — unfortunate timing aside — the White House and the Department of Justice had legitimate concerns that he simply was incapable of handling the kind of highly sensitive investigations the FBI must undertake in a non-partisan way.  On the other hand, the timing is unfortunate, and naturally gives rise to suspicions about what really happened here.  A through investigation will help to establish the facts and clear the air.

The Inevitable Post-Election Tell-Alls

It’s been six months since the last presidential election, which means it’s time for those tell-all books about the campaign to start coming out.  The first one that I’ve read about is called Shattered:  Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign.

As if often the case, the publishers of the books try to gin up interest by releasing supposedly tantalizing details about incidents that occurred during the campaign.  In the case of Shattered, the incidents involve a phone call in which Hillary and Bill Clinton both unloaded on the campaign staff, and the prep sessions for one of the debates with Bernie Sanders in which Hillary Clinton got mad and made one of her preparers stand up and answer questions while she critiqued him.  The underlying message of both incidents was:  Hillary Clinton was angry that she wasn’t doing better and just couldn’t recognize that the problem was due to her personal failures, rather than failures by her staff.

I enjoyed the Theodore White Making of the President books way back when, and Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing:  On the Campaign Trail ’72 remains one of my all-time favorite books, but I’ve long since stopped reading the “insider” accounts that now come out after every election.  I haven’t read one in decades because the lack of loyalty inherent in the form of the book makes me sick to my stomach.  Professional staffers provide juicy tidbits as part of an overall information campaign to cover their own butts, make themselves look good, and position themselves to get hired and do it all over again in the next campaign cycle.  The losing candidate always gets torn down, while the wise, far-sighted staff that the candidate was supposedly stubbornly ignoring get elevated.

So, Hillary Clinton was frustrated that she wasn’t doing better, and from time to time lashed out at her staff when voting results or polling weren’t favorable?  Gee . . . is anybody really surprised that a person who is seeking the presidency — and who saw her election as an historic opportunity to shatter a very visible “glass ceiling” for American women — from time to time had that reaction?  When you’re on the griddle for months, 24/7, as presidential candidates are, of course there are going to be times when fatigue and frustration leave you not at your finest, and when the results aren’t going as you hoped, the effects of that fatigue and frustration will inevitably be compounded.

So Hillary Clinton lost her temper, and she and Bill Clinton administered an occasional tongue-lashing.  So what?  She lost.  Can’t we just let it be, without having rat-like staffers heaping scorn on the losing candidate with anecdotes carefully pitched to make themselves look good?  If I were a potential presidential candidate, I would never hire somebody whom I suspected was the source of leaks in one of these tell-alls.  Loyalty is an important quality when you are working for a politician, and people who leak stories to promote themselves are finks who simply can’t be trusted.

Finally Over

Today the Electoral College voted, and the results made Donald Trump, officially, the President-elect of the United States of America.  There were a few defections, on both sides, but for the most part the electors did what they typically do — they voted for the candidate who won the popular vote in their state.  Concerns, or hopes, that there might be a significant number of “faithless electors” turned out to be largely unfounded.

2016 has been a crappy year for a lot of reasons, but the 2016 presidential election is one of the biggest ones.  The election dominated the news all year, from the seemingly endless and embarrassing Republican primary debates to the improbable Bernie Sanders movement to the unfathomable, and for the most part totally unpredicted, victory of Donald Trump.  Every night, we got hit over the heads with Trump’s latest outrageous tweet, or Clinton’s big-money speeches to Goldman Sachs, or Trump’s appalling comments about women, or Hillary’s ill-considered private email server.  It was a year of all election, all the time.

There are those who are happy with the results of the election, and there are those who are bitterly disappointed, and angry, and disgusted.  And then there are people like me:  I’m just glad that this wretched election is finally, officially over.

When All Will Be Revealed

Tomorrow we’ll see the finale of HBO’s Westworld.  We’re being assured that all will be revealed, and after the episode the show will actually make sense.

Yeah, right!  I’ll believe it when I see it.  That’s like expecting triumphant Trump staffers  and bitter Clinton campaign operatives to reach friendly consensus on why Donald Trump won the election, or imagining that fair-minded Michigan fans will freely concede that the referees correctly spotted the ball on the 15-yard line after J.T. Barrett’s fourth-down keeper in the second overtime of this year’s classic version of The Game.

Westworld is right up there with The Leftovers as the most confusing show since Twin Peaks.  It’s so intentionally mystifying that I don’t even try to understand it, or piece together the disparate threads of the plot.  I just wince at the horribly bloody violence that is likely to occur at any tender moment, groan at the show’s troubling core assumption that any human who goes to a fantasy world will promptly turn into a blood-soaked, sex-crazed lunatic, and recognize that any character in the next instant could be revealed as a robot, a cold-blooded killer, a psychopath, or all three.  (I also cringe for the actors who have to routinely sit buck naked on chairs on a sterile set while other characters question them and tap iPads, but that’s another story.)

I’ve stopped trying to figure it all out.  Kish and I watch the show, and I just let it kind of wash over me, rather than struggling to make sense of why Dolores’ outfit changes from instant to instant or why Bernard’s interactions with his fake dead son are so significant.  I realized that the show had reached the point of ridiculousness this past week, when I was walking back from lunch with two friends, one of whom watches Westworld and one of whom doesn’t.  The watcher and I started talking about the show, and after a few minutes of discussion of “Billy” and the possibility that the show’s plot is running along different timelines and the importance of the photo of Billy’s bethrothed and whether the twitching beings at the church Dolores visited were troubled robots looking for some kind of salvation, the non-watcher asked, with a baffled laugh:  “What is this show?”  And I realized that it was all pretty silly.

So I’ll watch the finale, but I’m not expecting that I’ll get everything in this episode, because that sure hasn’t been the case in the past episodes.  I just make one request:  before we move on to “the new narrative,” can you at least let us know what the old narrative was all about?

American Tune

I always listen to music walking to and from work.  This evening, as I was listening to my acoustic playlist, it struck me that American Tune by Paul Simon — a beautiful song that is one of my favorites — pretty accurately captures how many people are feeling these days.  I’m not just talking about disappointed Hillary Clinton voters, either.  There seems to be a strong sense of disquiet, an unsettled feeling, mingled with curiosity, trepidation, raw hope, and uncertainty about what might happen next, lurking throughout the general populace.  Some of those feelings stem from the election results and the thought of Donald Trump as President, to be sure, but some of them also seem to flow from concerns about the direction of the country as a whole.  Where is our road leading?

American Tune, which was released in 1973, aptly crystallizes this odd mixture of emotions and sensations.  Simon wrote:

I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
Or driven to its knees
Oh, but it’s all right, it’s all right
For lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road
We’re traveling on
I wonder what went wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what’s gone wrong

Two verses later, the song concludes, in a mixture of pride, doubt, fatigue, and resignation:

Oh, we come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age’s most uncertain hour
And sing an American tune
Oh, it’s all right, it’s all right
It’s all right, it’s all right
You can’t be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow’s going to be another working day
And I’m trying to get some rest
That’s all I’m trying to get some rest

It says something about the universality of music when a song written at the end of the Nixon Administration can so perfectly express how so many Americans are feeling, 45 years later.

Protests In The Aftermath

We’ve seen several nights of mostly peaceful protests, in a number of American cities, in the aftermath of Tuesday’s shocking election of Donald Trump.

In Oregon, two Portlanders have submitted a ballot proposal to have Oregon secede from the Union — although they say it’s only “partially” a response to Trump’s election, because they feel much of the United States no longer subscribes to “Oregon values” of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and equality.  Groups in California also are talking about secession.

And, because Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, people are asking questions — which get raised after every close presidential election — about whether we should abolish the Electoral College and just elect our President through a simple national referendum.

I’ve got no problem with any of these developments.  In America, people have the right to protest thanks to the First Amendment, and we’ve also got the right to take a fresh look at our constitutional institutions and decide whether to change or reject them through the constitutional amendment process.  I’m not in favor of the states along the west coast, where we have lots of friends and family, actually seceding from the United States, of course, but I also have no problem with people seriously discussing the disconnect between the perspective on the coast, where voters gave huge majorities to Hillary Clinton, and the results found in the interior, where Donald Trump racked up huge vote totals.

I think all of these developments are signs of a healthy, functioning democracy, and they also convey an extremely important message:  elections have consequences, and voting is the way to produce the consequences you favor.  In 2016, tens of millions of Americans didn’t vote at all.  Hillary Clinton got about 6 million fewer votes than Barack Obama did in 2012, and early indications are that certain groups — like “Millennials” — didn’t turn out to vote in the same way they did in 2008 and 2012.  We’ll never know what the election results would have been if all of those eligible voters had exercised the most basic democratic right of all, but it sure isn’t a bad thing if the people who didn’t vote now feel remorse and resolve that it will never happen again.

Wouldn’t you like to know whether all of the people out protesting Trump’s election actually voted on Election Day?

The Fruits Of Polling Failure

One last point about the election, and then it’s time to move on:  it’s pretty clear that the entire polling edifice about which modern campaigns, and much of modern political journalism, have been built came crashing down Tuesday night.

The Hill has an interesting article on the degree of polling failure, with a headline stating that pollsters had sustained a “huge embarrassment” as a result of their general failure to predict, or even detect the possibility of, a Donald Trump win.  By way of example, no poll indicated that Trump would win Wisconsin, and instead showed Hillary Clinton with a 6.5 percent lead in that state.  As a result, none of the know-it-all pundits who were pontificating on Election Day even identified Wisconsin as a “battleground state” — when in reality Wisconsin may be the crucial state that handed the presidency to Donald Trump.

I’ve written before about the many judgment calls that go into polling, and how a few tweaks in turnout modeling and the demographic makeup of “likely voters” can change the results.  With this election, we’ve seen the suspicion that polling is not quite as “scientific” as we’ve been led to believe become a painful reality.  Pollsters were just wrong in predicting who would turn out, and in what numbers, and as a result their numbers were skewed — which is why the ultimate results were such a shock.

Polls have become a crutch for campaigns and journalists, and also have been used to crush the aspirations of challengers out seeking to raise money.  Maybe now the “national media” covering the elections will actually get out on the campaign trail, go to events, and report on what the candidates are actually saying and how their audiences are reacting, rather than reporting on polling data and insider leaks about the shape of the horse race.  Maybe now campaigns will pay more attention to what people on the ground are saying and doing, and whether they are responding with enthusiasm to a candidate’s message.  And maybe people deciding which candidate to vote for or financially support will pay attention to the candidates themselves, rather than trying to pick a likely winner based on polling data.

I would never say that this awful election had a positive impact on anything, but if it results in our political processes being much less poll-driven, that would be a step in the right direction.

Why I’m Voting NOTA

I’ve voted for a candidate in every presidential election since 1976.  In that 40 years I’ve voted for candidates from both parties and even an independent, John Anderson, in 1980.  This year I’ll break that streak.  I’ll go to the polls this morning and will gladly make my views known on down-ballot races and state and local issues — but when I’m asked about voting for President, I’m choosing None Of The Above.

Voting for Donald Trump was never a possibility.  I’ve got old-fashioned views when it comes to the President:  I think character counts.  Trump’s character is about as ill-suited to the presidency as I can possibly imagine — and it’s not just his appalling comments about women or the ugly mean-spiritedness you see lurking below the surface, either.  People elected to serve as President should approach that enormous job with a measure of humility; Trump offers nothing but overwhelming arrogance and bombast.  Presidents are asked to make decisions with far-reaching consequences and should do so based on careful study and reasoned reflection; Trump is the king of the knee-jerk reactions.  These aren’t small failings.  In an increasingly dangerous world, these are character flaws that go to the essential core of the job.  I envision the bumptious Trump in a meeting with world leaders, and I cringe at the message it would send about America.

I tried to get behind Hillary Clinton, which is where other members of my family and many of my friends have landed.  I really did.  But I couldn’t get there, either.  I find the Clintons’ seemingly endless rapacious appetites totally off-putting, and the whiff of corruption in the high-dollar speeches, the Clinton Foundation donations, and other activities also seem ill-suited to the presidency, where the individual’s integrity should be beyond reproach.  I was amazed at the recklessness of Hillary Clinton’s email practices, but even more disturbed by the reaction to it by the candidate and her followers — first by steadfast denials, then by attacking the accusers, and finally by grudging, forced, clearly insincere apologies.  Presidents are going to make mistakes, and when they do they need to accept responsibility for them and demonstrate accountability.  I don’t see that quality in Hillary Clinton, and I think it is a very important one.

I looked at the third party candidates, but they are minor figures who lack the experience or the training for the most important job in the world.  It didn’t take long to exclude them from the mix.

So, no candidate is getting my vote this year.  No one is going to notice that there is one fewer vote being cast, among in the millions that will be counted this year — but it’s the only way I’ve got to send a message that the choice this year is utterly unacceptable, and that it should never happen again.

Making Up Your Mind: Voting For the “Lesser Of Two Evils”

Another common point of discussion about politics these days, as people struggle with making their decision in the worst presidential election choice in decades, is the concept of “negative voting.”

This election has nudged us into bizarre territory.  Except for the true believers in the Clinton and Trump camps, just about everyone recognizes that both candidates are significantly flawed — and is angry that the average voter has been put into this awful predicament. As a result, the discussion about deciding how to vote gets into deeply negative thinking.  You hear people talking about how people need to look at things like worst case scenarios — I’ve actually sat with a person who said he’s made his decision based on “Which of the two candidates is more likely to blunder America into World War III?” — or should engage in relativistic weighing of candidate flaws to determine the “lesser of two evils.”

Indeed, this year, more than any presidential election year in the past that I can remember, serious people have argued about whether or not there is a moral obligation to vote for the perceived lesser of two evils.  See, for example, here and here.   Others argue that the ethics should work the opposite way:  because voting for “the lesser of two evils” is still voting for an “evil.”

This is alien territory for most of us, because in most elections people get comfortable with, or even enthusiastic about, the candidate of their choice and actually believe that the candidate would be a good President.  Their vote is an affirmative endorsement.  I’m confident that in, say, 2008, the overwhelming majority of people who voted for Barack Obama did not think they were choosing the lesser of two evils, and instead thought he would be a game-changing President.

Of course, in any election there is going to be a comparison of the candidates, and a decision on which would be the better choice — and part of that process may be to look at areas where you disagree with the candidate’s position.  But in normal election years the process doesn’t involve a comparison of the faults of the two candidates and arguments about which of the candidates is less irredeemably flawed.

Is it any wonder that the American electorate this year is so deeply disaffected?

Voters’ Remorse

With the onset of early voting in Ohio and many other states, and the increasing number of people who decide to exercise that option, you have to wonder if last-minute revelations and disclosures — like, this year, FBI Director James Comey’s disclosure about the resurrection of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email practices — will have much of an impact on national elections.

After all, if people have already voted, they’re done, right?

Not so fast!  It turns out that, in seven states, you can change your early vote.  Connecticut, Michigan,  Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin all let early voters change their minds and correct their ballots.

In Wisconsin, early voters can change their ballots up to three times before the votes are officially deemed to have been cast– but if they’re going to do it, they have to act by November 4.  It’s a cumbersome process that involves election officials individually retrieving the person’s completed ballot and then having the voter document that they have changed their mind and are submitting a second, superseding ballot.  This year, according to a report from a Wisconsin TV station, some voters in fact have changed their mind and invoked the so-called “three strikes” re-vote process.

People argue about whether early voting is a good idea, with some opponents noting that it results in voters having different levels of information because of the possibility of late-breaking developments.  I’m in favor of early voting, because I think anything that allows more people to vote, easily and consistent with their work and child care and other obligations, is a good thing.  But the notion that, under some states’ laws, early voters can change their mind is an intriguing concept.  And in this election, where the choice is bemoaned by so many people, the “fickleness factor” may be magnified.  Indeed, apparently the Google search for “change early voting” was trending over this past weekend, after Comey’s announcement.

I’m not sure how I feel about people who have voted early changing their minds and getting a “do over” on their ballots . . . much less doing so three times.  Obviously, that’s not something you can do if you vote on Election Day, and I’m not sure the rules should be different.  But I do know this:  if you haven’t reached a clear, settled, and final decision in your own mind on how to vote — one way, or the other, or not at all in the presidential election — you probably shouldn’t be voting.

One Wretched Week To Go

The calendar tells us that today is November 1.  Normally, those of us living in the Midwest would feel a certain grim foreboding at the turn of the calendar’s page, because November is the gray slayer of the last remnants of summer and the bringer of cold, bitter weather.

This year, however, the arrival of November is blessedly welcome — because it means this wretched presidential election is almost over, and we have only one week of it left to endure.

With one week to go, we should pause to consider, again, just how awful this election has been — but of course no one wants to think about that, because it’s just too depressing.  We’ve ended up with a crass, blustering, know-nothing political dilettante running against an uninspired insider who seems baffled that the campaign isn’t a coronation.  We’ve seen recordings of unforgivably crude behavior and a failure to provide basic information, like personal tax returns, on one hand, and allegations of corruption, insider politicking, and a lack of true personal accountability on the other.  It’s been a campaign rocked by planned leaks, video of a candidate apparently fainting and being dragged into a van, charges of sexual maulings and misconduct, and investigations of pay-for-play and tawdry business practices.  Oh yeah — and we saw a debate where the ultimate nominee Donald Trump talked about the size of his hands.

I know that presidential campaigns have always been down and dirty, but this campaign, and the political climate generally, seems especially destructive.  Important national institutions that were once viewed as separate and apart from politics have been brought deeply into the toxic mix.  The Supreme Court has become a forum to resolve political disputes and has been left short-handed for months because Congress won’t consider a nominee.  Former military officers are making commercials for one candidate or another, giving the sense that the campaigns are trading on the apolitical traditions of the military to try to lend much-needed credibility to their attacks on their opponents.  Now the FBI is being harshly criticized as a politicized entity because of its announcements about its investigation of the mystifying email practices of Hillary Clinton and her staff while she served as Secretary of State.  And, as the campaign nears its conclusion, we are reminded, again, that a vulgar embarrassment like Anthony Weiner once served in Congress and was viewed by some as an up-and-coming star.

So November, I am glad you are here.  We’ve got just one more week to go — let’s hope we survive it.  And, when the election is finally ended and one of these candidates ends up as our next President, let’s hope the country can survive it, too.

Provocative Junk Mail “Re” Lines

We have a “junk mail” filter at work.  Most of the time, the filter just moves what is obvious spam into a “junk mail” folder without me looking at the email or doing anything to it.

Sometimes, though — for reasons not known to me — particular junk mail will make it through the filter and be brought to my attention under the heading “Incoming Message Quarantined by Web Reputation Monitor.”  I’m not sure whether the filter concludes that such emails are more likely to be legitimate, or because they come from more plausible email addresses, or some other reason.  In any case, I recently got one of those messages, checked to make sure that the email wasn’t sent by somebody I know, and then stopped dead when I saw the “re” line:  “Trump reveals groundbreaking secrets to triple your income.”

Of course, I didn’t try to open that spammy email . . . but I have to admit I was sorely tempted.  Aren’t you curious about what income-tripling tips “Trump” might offer?  Tips like:  Be sure to inherit millions from your parents?  Become a reality TV show star?  Contribute to the political campaigns of every candidate for every office, regardless of their party affiliation, so you have ready access to the levers of power?  Make liberal use of the American bankruptcy laws?  Invest in “Man Tan” franchises?

Having seen the Trump income-tripling “re” line, I found myself thinking of other spam email “re” lines that would just be too tantalizing to pass up.  Here are a few that I came up with:

“Hillary Clinton’s Guide to Data Security and Personal Ethics”

“Rappers and Buddhism:  A Perfect Combination”

“Choosing A Soul Mate The Anthony Weiner Way”

“Personal Humility in the NFL”

I’m sure there are others.