America Is an Idea
America Is an Idea
In the closing argument for her presidency, Harris championed why democracy rules
Oct. 30: Harris makes the case for democracy … And for fighting … Musk predicts market crash under Trump … Supreme Court forces Kennedy to stay on ballots where he’ll hurt Trump …
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In a rare instance of TFN getting something wrong, your usually not-wrong TFN was astonished that a remark by Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) in his acceptance speech this summer didn’t become a defining controversy and debate in the campaign.
“People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home.”
This celebration of selfishness, this slur against everyone who’s fought for abstractions, was largely ignored — even though Vance had erased the history and reality of American soldiers, teachers, political leaders, union members, activists, and protesters who have defended abstractions on American soil and around the world.
It was the cleaned-up equivalent of calling war dead “losers” and “suckers” for dying on foreign soil for anything other than I’m all right, Jack. And the campaign of Vice Pres. Kamala Harris, as I’ve often groused, has not stressed why Americans did fight for abstractions, other than tyranny bad.
Harris has not educated people (and some folks need educating) about why messy, contentious democracy is better than neat, orderly tyranny. It’s not the joys of individual autonomy.
The reason democracy is the best system of governance is that it harnesses the forces of political conflict to power progress. That whole “more perfect union” thing only happens in a system where every constituency has levers of power to pull. Where every elected official is constrained by the political realities of representing different people. In two (2) short slogans that mean the same thing:
E pluribus unum.
Diversity, equity, inclusion.
Those ideas produce the best outcomes. And last night, that was the case that Harris made as the closing argument of her presidential campaign.
My own preferred tack is to exalt political conflict. Fighting — as your Fucking News likes to say — is the system. Harris doesn’t say that, but boy she came pretty close to making political conflict sound like the coolest thing in the world:
“[W]hat Donald Trump has never understood is that ‘e pluribus unum,’ ‘out of many, one’ isn’t just a phrase on a dollar bill. It is a living truth about the heart of our nation. Our democracy doesn’t require us to agree on everything. In fact, we like good arguments from time to time.
“It’s not the American way to not have disagreements. We don’t shy away from robust debate. Robust debate, in fact — we like a good debate, don’t we? We like a good debate. And the fact that someone disagrees with us does not make them ‘the enemy within.’ They are families, neighbors, classmates, coworkers, they are fellow Americans.”
America is actually not unique in this. Lots of countries are moving forward — some of them ahead of us — powered by the same dynamic: Democratic fighting, the accountability that accrues from answering to an (educated) populace.
Because it’s not, of course, that Americans just magically “like” arguing. The system the founders created forces us to fight because that’s what ensures best outcomes.
But Harris hinted at this, too, by citing her own choices to fight. And not fearing the word “fight.”
“I am not afraid of tough fights against bad actors1 and powerful interests…
“[A]s a prosecutor and a top law enforcement officer of our biggest state, I’ve won fights against big banks that ripped off homeowners, against for-profit colleges that scammed veterans and students, against predators who abused women and children, and cartels that trafficked in guns, drugs, and human beings.”
Yes, we saw some vexing, perplexing vestigial tropes last night. The last thing we need is more nationalistic iconography. And the fetish for compromise will always baffle me. But up against an opponent and a vision that hold that America is best without compromise, I understand the utility in exalting a commitment to it.
And Harris made the case that not just her fights, but our systemic fights yield real dividends. Not just freedom, but its expansion.
“America was born when we wrested freedom from a petty tyrant. Across the generations, Americans have preserved that freedom, expanded it, and in so doing, proved to the world that a government of, by, and for the people is strong and can endure.”
And Harris acknowledged that the fight for freedom has been much more than Americans with guns in strange lands. That much of it has been fought on this soil. At a time when Trump’s campaign rests largely on demonizing transgender people, Harris included the iconic LGBTQ+ battleground, Stonewall.
And she placed it unapologetically, unconditionally in the pantheon of freedom fighters that includes those who fought Nazism, racism, sexism, and capitalism.
“[T]hose who came before us — the patriots at Normandy and Selma, Seneca Falls and Stonewall, on farmland and factory floors — they did not struggle, sacrifice, and lay down their lives only to see us cede our fundamental freedom. They didn’t do that only to see us submit to the will of another petty tyrant.
“These United States of America, we are not a vessel for the schemes of wannabe dictators. The United States of America is the greatest idea humanity ever devised. A nation big enough to encompass all our dreams, strong enough to withstand any fracture or fissure between us, and fearless enough to imagine a future of possibilities.”
The aspiration of Harris’s closing remarks gives reason to hope that the small-bore proposals she has offered have been tactical elements. And that the presidency she imagines for herself and for us will draw power from messy democracy to achieve bigger things, dreamt-of things, and a more perfect union for more of us.
Because the Trump campaign seems hellbent on demonstrating the limitations of tyranny and autocracy.
Trump Campaign, Like Trump Everything, Terrible at Thing-Accomplishment
As your diligent TFN discussed yesterday, the Trump campaign dodged a (metaphorical) bullet with the excision of the word “c--t” from prepared remarks for Sunday’s rally.
It’s fair to speculate that millions of Puerto Rican voters might never have heard what that guy said about them if he had also called the United States vice president, a presidential nominee, the c-word. But it’s also fair to say that the blowback and women-voting motivation to come from it would have been far worse.
So what saved the Trump campaign from this? Wokeness, yo. Freedom-stifling groupthink. The comedian didn’t get to say the c-word because someone from the Trump campaign saw it and said, probably literally, “Dude.”
With that one exception, the Trump campaign is a case study in how the Trump ethos of autonomy and individualism yields poor results. Yesterday showed this to us in glorious CinemaScope™.
We’ll get to yesterday’s fuck-up by one of the few individual humans so autonomous and free from democratic restraints that he’s practically got his own foreign policy.
But first, the ultimate “I alone can fix it” guy, where “it” refers to a system designed for multiple operators. (Probably the only thing that saved us from nuclear war during the Trump presidency was the fact that he would’ve had to let someone else turn the second key.
Former President Donald Trump was so bad at thing-accomplishing that he couldn’t even keep the presidency with the advantages of both incumbency and rampant exploitation of presidential power.
That’s how bad he is at team thing-doing. Which explains why, with only months left in the campaign, he converted the Republican National Committee (RNC) from a well-oiled-by-Big-Oil operation into a yokel joke.
Multiple reports suggest that the GOP ground game in battleground states is running about as well as anything else run by Trump. It’s not just poor execution, it’s dumb-ass leadership: Trump wanted the RNC to prioritize not voter-mobilization but “election integrity.” Which it did. Hence, poor voter mobilization.
And, as TFN has fucking discussed before, the Trump campaign outsourced its get-out-the-vote operations to Everything CEO Elon Musk…who then outsourced it to paid outreach people who don’t give a shit whether Trump wins they just wanna get paid which means they’re happy to tell the CEO of X that they talked to X number of voters when they didn’t.
Turning Points USA is also “helping,” but as MSNBC reported earlier this week, neither Musk’s political action committee nor TPUSA has ever, y’know, won anything.
And speaking of Musk, Musk’s speaking yesterday, unvetted by woke groupthink, gave Harris powerful ammunition against Trump. Apparently on purpose because what even is impulse control?
Musk Says True Thing to Trump’s Dismay; Walkback Expected
Imagine if the world’s richest man — who despite all his money enjoys the presumption of brilliance — said the following:
“If Trump succeeds in forcing through mass deportations, combined with Elon [Musk] hacking away at the government, firing people and reducing the deficit — there will be an initial severe overreaction in the economy — this economy propped up with debt (generating asset bubbles) and artificially suppressed wages (as a result of illegal immigration). Markets will tumble. But when the storm passes and everyone realizes we are on sounder footing, there will be a rapid recovery to a healthier, sustainable economy. History could be made in the coming two years.”
Too much to ask? How about if Musk read that and responded: “Sounds about right.”
Well, apologies to folks who think the Christmas season starts too early every year, but that’s the gift Santa brought the Harris campaign yesterday: Musk’s agreement that Trump’s presidency will cause markets to tumble.
And the cause for the predicted recovery is almost as good: Wall Street bros will realize things are good. Fuck fundamentals, our economy depends on whether Wall Street bros realize things. And when they do, they’ll take us right back where we are.
In other words, the economic system that the world’s most powerful man and richest man will create is exactly like the one we have now. Plus a stock market crash!
So, why would Musk’s federal budget cuts kneecap the economy?
As your occasionally forgetful TFN would have swore we already wrote about, Musk’s vow to slash $2 trillion from annual government spending would eliminate pretty much everything funded by the annual allocation bills.
At Sunday’s rally, perhaps the most obscene thing we heard got very little attention.
Cantor-Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick, a leader of the fucked-up Trump transition team, asked Musk “How much do you think we can rip out of this wasted, $6.5 trillion Harris-Biden budget?” Yes, pressing for cuts that would directly impact the vast majority of clients of his financial-services company.
Musk responded, “I think we can do at least $2 trillion.”
That would include military cuts, potentially a good thing — albeit economically painful until everybody realizes we are on sounder footing — but also pretty much everything else. Most benefit spending is what’s called mandatory spending; you’d have to change existing law to cut it. So is our interest payments on America’s debt.
But discretionary spending — the shit that gets approved at the last minute every year — totals less than $2 trillion, the amount Musk wants to cut, and that’s the only spending he could cut without new legislation. And that discretionary spending includes the funding for the offices that administer all those benefits.
So, under Musk, the U.S. government would still have the money for those mandatory benefit payments, it just wouldn’t have anyone on staff to lick the stamps and mail them out. The precious veterans and kids we love so much and yet screw over anyway would get more-screwed over, if possible.
Also gone: The FBI and federal prosecutors. Federal college aid. Environmental protections. Also off the table, inspecting bridges and airplanes. Bon voyage!
Musk’s comments are, of course, the best way to remind people of all the things we like and cherish about government. Even federal. Even big.
Even More Beclowning from Team Trump
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., one of the leading Donald Trump surrogates, will appear on the ballots in two battleground states: Michigan and Wisconsin.
That’s expected to hurt Trump more than Vice Pres. Kamala Harris. Which we know because it was Kennedy and the Trump campaign pushing to get him off those ballots, where he might siphon away the votes of people who don’t like Harris but wanted an alternative to Trump.
Because the aforementioned Trump clowns are clowns, however, they waited too long to pull Kennedy’s name from the ballots. And yesterday the Supreme Court told these clowns, don’t make me laugh.
How come? Voting has already started in those states.
How unprincipled is all of this? Kennedy is fighting to get on the ballot in states where he thinks it’ll help Trump, who’s said he’ll put Kennedy in charge of vaccines so everyone forgets about Trump’s disastrous COVID response compared to the six million dead in the Great 2027 Mumps Epidemic.
And How About That Election Fraud Effort?
Former Pres. Donald Trump and the Republican Party have had four years to put together a coordinated, criminal conspiracy to fuck with voting systems nationwide.
That, however, would mean working together, compromising(!), and subordinating personal impulse to teamwork. So what do Republicans have instead?
Burning ballot boxes. And this guy:
Meet Larry Savage, Indiana Republican official, failed congressional candidate, and now defendant.
Savage apparently attempted to undermine confidence in Indiana vote-counting by spotlighting missing ballots in a test run. (No points if you’ve already guessed who took them!)
Savage was arrested yesterday. And it turns out he’s almost as dumb as the world’s richest man and former world’s most powerful man. Here’s Savage greeting the arresting officers:
“You talking about the ballot the lady told me I could take? I got the paper you’re talking about. I just rolled it up and put it in my pocket. I wasn’t trying to steal from nobody.”
The stolen ballots were found in the back of his Japanese car.
More Wind at Harris’s Back
With the exception of what’s forecast to be a slightly soft jobs report — hiring still happening, just not as much as expected — Vice Pres. Kamala Harris is going into the election less than a week away with multiple new strong economic reports at her back.
The Nasdaq hit a new high yesterday. But we’re seeing more than just positive Wall Street bro fee-fees.
The Conference Board, a business group, assesses consumer confidence every month. And this month saw a big jump.
The group’s Consumer Confidence Index leapt from 99.2 in September to 108.7, the biggest increase since the second full month of Joe Biden’s presidency.
The index is based on the Conference Board’s consumer polling of shit like, do you expect a recession? Planning major purchases to enrich the banks that fund us? How’s the job landscape look?
And although Friday’s job numbers aren’t expected to be great, last month’s were a lot better than expected. The U.S. economy added more than a quarter million jobs — 254,000 — in just the month of September.
As folks keep saying, the race still looks close, but at this point, you’d rather be Harris than Trump.
Oh, And One More Thing to Rob You Doom-Scrollers of Ammunition
Everyone went nuts about Donald Trump’s remark Sunday that he and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had cooked up a “little secret” he’d reveal after the election.
The assumption was it’s about post-election election-stealing. But look at what he actually said to/of Johnson:
“I think with our little secret, we're going to take the House, right? … Our little secret is having a big impact. He and I have a secret.”
He’s talking about winning the House. Not the presidency. And he said it’s already having a big impact.
Well, they’re so bad at thing-doing — including delaying release — that the secret’s already out.
Trump’s people told the New York Times that he was talking about virtual rallies Trump has been holding with Republican congressional candidates.
Spokesperson Steven Cheung told the Times: “President Trump has done countless tele-rallies reaching millions of Americans across the country in key regions that also help bolster Republicans in congressional races.”
I know, I know, it’s a feint. A double false-flag or whatever. Sure. Maybe. But that would make it the first-ever strategy thing Trump has ever executed in his life.
And a Final Cherry-Picked Thing to Be Hopeful About
Y’know how TFN has parroted all the mainstream doom-prognosticating about the likely demise of Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT)? Well, his opponent, Tim Sheehy, has been caught in lie after lie about his military service, his alleged wounding therein, and alleged lack thereof.
Maybe as a result of that, or maybe as a result of poor polling in a state with not many voters, but either way…a new poll out yesterday shows the race dead even between Tester and Sheehy.
TCB
BEZOS Your bonus-providing TFN did a bonus TFN last night that I was unusually proud of, absolutely shredding Jeff Bezos’s attempt to justify ending the Washington Post’s presidential endorsements.
If you missed it, I hope you’ll check it out!
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Go get ‘em, kids!
Hopefully also not afraid of tough fights against well-intentioned-but-wrong actors!
"two (2) short slogans that mean the same thing:
E pluribus unum.
Diversity, equity, inclusion."
A slogan worth remembering.
Perhaps it is unnoticed but the maga group behaves far more like a criminal gang trying to dismiss any other forms of expression or argument by vulgar dismissal and displays of willingness to hurt harm and otherwise injure any who oppose . Its leader , Donald , has his own criminal record that actually elevates his status as unquestioned saint to the god of power , and deliverer of nirvana now here on earth for all who profess allegiance to all that is asked , with out need of further thought . It is the supreme word to be in time codified as a bible like the plan now in primitive form as project 2025
.
And they are a serious portion of our population who reject most forms of consideration and profess power and support to all who resist the temptation of equanimity or kindness . It’s all or nothing ! Get ready for some very real dangers for being honest and fair .