Happy Days Are Here Again, Dare We Hope . . .

What a pleasure to wake up Saturday morning to see that the New York Times/Siena College Poll -- generally considered the best in the nation -- has Kamala leading by four percent among likely voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin! Another poll has her ever so slightly ahead in Nevada. Won’t it be particularly delicious if Harris not only carries those vital states but Trump’s racist miscues now cost him Georgia as well. If these trends continue, it’s game over!

Although the Vice President candidates rarely  move the needle, I believe this year they may have greater impact. First I believe the selection of Tim Walz does a significant bit to calm and perhaps reassure the noisy young liberal fringe which too often seems to take some peculiar comfort in just disturbing things rather than helping a center-left Democrat get elected. More than a few of our anarcho-fringe Demos (fortunately a tiny yet vocal number in our ranks) will now decide quietly to send in their ballots rather than boycotting or trying noisily to disrupt this election. And how can we thank Daft Donald for the gift of J.D. Vance! I have to believe that more than just a few non-MAGA Republicans who reluctantly announced their intention to vote the Trump ticket just to insure a more conservative government may now leave the top line on the ballot unchecked. It could all add up.

But only eking out a small victory, while essential to the survival of the Republic as we know and enjoy it, isn’t enough to put the lunatic MAGAcy back in the bottle from which it oozed. Particularly if we don’t regain control of both houses of Congress, we may just be treading water. I fear it will take a truly decisive beating to prevent little Trumplettes like plastic Vance or even the detestable baby Trumps Donald and Eric from dominating the right flank of American politics for the next decade.

Our biggest obstacle at this point may just be the mainstream press, the folks that DT moans about so constantly as being unfair to him! The media still betray an amazing willingness to forgive him his trespasses. Rather than detailing rambling, disoriented, confused and incoherent Trump’s recent embarrassing public appearances, they prefer to devote sound-bite headlines to whether Tim Walz did or did not keep the rank of Sergeant Major when he retired from the National Guard. Fact checks: J.D. Vance, with his fifteen minutes experience as an elected office holder, in his vaunted six months service in Iraq with the Marine Corps was, in his own autobiographical words “lucky to escape any real fighting.” In the meantime, having served twenty-four (yes, 24) years in the National Guard, with two foreign deployments -- yes, not to combat zones but once to backstop troops being sent to Afghanistan -- Tim Walz then forty-one years old and married decided to run for Congress where in the following six terms serving from a traditionally Republican-held Congressional District he accomplished far more for the armed forces and military families than any of the Republicans now so happy to heap scorn upon him; Walz, having already filed to run for Congress, in fact retired from the Guard months before it received a mobilization order for Iraq and almost a year before the unit actually deployed. Funny, I haven’t seen these details in the reporting in the Times or the Post or WSJ. And let’s not forget the service record of Donald Bonespurs not mentioned in any of the current coverage; funny how quickly Trump recovered from these bony overgrowths after relying upon them to avoid military service -- a positive medical miracle since how many people do you know who’s arthritis got better rather than worse as he grew older. (Maybe it was cured by the same disinfectants Donald drank in the war against Covid?)

Nor does the media seem to treat the border control issue with balance. The Trump campaign falsely attacks Kamala as the “border czar” but shouldn’t we also see equal space to her support for the bipartisan Republican-drafted legislative solution that Donald Trump sabotaged, saying he needed illegal immigration to be his campaign issue. A reasonable solution is on the table, Harris already supported it, and only a Republican Congress can keep it from being quickly enacted.

Donald and his very strange coterie persist in painting Kamala and Tim as far to the left, but only in a strange way it could be deemed accurate: if you measure the distance of the Democratic Party not from the political center to the left but from the point on the far far right fringe to which “dictator for a day” Donald has dragged the surviving rump of the Republican party. It’s all relative of course, but today’s extremism is far more palpable on the right than the left. Doesn’t it seem, though, that mainstream media persists in reporting when Trump persists in the ridiculous characterization of Harris and Walz as “socialists” or “communists” -- supposedly serious media but without any fact checking in this instance.

The media mostly dismissed Trump’s 2016 candidacy as a joke, gave him tons of free attention while trivializing or outright defaming Hillary Clinton, and basically propelled an orange buffoon into the presidency. This year Trump has provided material for some truly major guffaws. Like bragging about his rally attendance versus hers when he’s camped out in Mar-a-Lago not having nearly as many rallies as he held in 2016 or 2020. How about attending a conference of top level Black women newscasters and insulting both women and Blacks, demonstrating both his racism and misogyny  and saying he was the best president for black people, comparing himself favorably to Abraham Lincoln (who “nearly lost the civil war” and had lower poll numbers -- maybe because there were no polls in the nineteenth century). Just this week issuing rally attenders with a sea of signs behind him saying “You’re Fired” in large letters and tiny tiny virtually invisible print that says “Lyin’ Kamala”. Not a great image for TV, Donald, since it looked like you were the one being fired. Or the several truly incomprehensible press conferences and dazzlingly incoherent speeches like his acceptance at the Republican National Convention.

Now, when that 2016 joke-candidate treatment might actually do some good since Trump and his MAGots truly are weird, the national media treats Trump as a serious politician (with no coherent platform, of course), briefly mentioning his miscues yet headlining his baseless blather that Kamala’s candidacy is somehow “unconstitutional” (sorry Donald, there’s nothing in the Constitution about primary elections at all). Somehow all the news about Trump’s increasingly evident deterioration seems to end up “below the fold” if mentioned at all.  

Indeed our work is cut out for us. Complacency could yet kill the momentum. It is frankly a huge blessing that completely by chance the election season this year turns out to be as short as it is, starting with Biden’s July 21 announcement. Think about it: France and England both had national elections this year with even shorter campaign cycles and the parties easily got their messages across to their voters; and in our own olden times the candidates were selected at mid- to late-summer conventions and the race began on Labor Day, unlike this century where our presidential race begins a year or more before the election. Endless election seasons clearly damage the electoral process.

Can today’s euphoria carry us through Election Day? Yes (cautiously, I say) if every one of us does whatever we can to sustain the momentum. If you can afford it, contribute liberally to the Harris-Walz campaign since sadly money is very much the mother’s milk of successful politics. And please don’t forget a few shekels for critically endangered liberal Senators like Ohio’s Sharrod Brown [sherrodbrown.com/] and Jon Tester [jontester.com/] in Montana, and maybe to help swing a couple of House districts as well [swingleft.org/p/house].

Even if you live in a deep blue state but are comfortable chatting up like-minded folks in swing states you could volunteer for a Harris-Walz phone bank to get out the vote. Perhaps give your support to organizations fighting voter suppression, the Republican Party’s newest tool to pervert elections; there are dozens of worthy organizations like the Brennan Center for Justice, the ACLU, Common Cause, the Southern Poverty Law Center -- search and you will find. Just planting a lawn sign in your front yard for the neighborhood to see not only feels good but even in a committed Democratic state helps sustain a contagious community feeling of possibility that was evaporating not one month ago. But just do something.

Before I leave you to contemplate, here’s a small gift for our readers, an Ester Egg if you click on the button — it’s safe, I assure you.

And now I suspect I’ve run on more than enough for this month. Please comment freely. As always I’ll be delighted to receive any feedback, including criticisms -- that’s what frank conversation should be all about -- and any suggestions for future discussions. The main point, however, is to encourage civil conversation between you and your friends on what I see as today’s important social and political issues. And please do invite one or two people to join our slightly expanding circle.

Arne Werchick, after fifty years as a litigation attorney, pro tem judge, law writer and lecturer, former Presiding Arbitrator of the State Bar of California, and past president of the California Trial Lawyers Association, moved to Hawaii and lives with his wife Ruth and their rescue dog Topaz. He can be contacted at liberalmind@werchick.com.