How do you decide whom to vote for?

I spent 25 years in politics chasing the answer to that question. And the answer is this:

You’ve already decided whom to vote for.

You’d like to pretend you haven’t. You’d like to say I’ve examined all the candidates, all the issues, the domestic needs, our foreign policy aims, the direction of science & technology, and consulted with my doctor, my lawyer, my preacher and my psychic. My mind is clear, my heart is pure and my diligence is due.

It says “Get Clean For Gene?”

The truth is, for politicos, we already know how you’re voting. We just check for your name on a number of different lists, check your voting record, and decide if you’re worth our time.

The “you” I’m speaking to is a member of a class of people that fit the “you” profile, and we can predict with pretty good accuracy whom you’re going to vote for – better than your psychic can, anyway – because we have large and growing amounts of data on everybody, and we can use data science to correlate what we know about groups of “you” with voting patterns.

This is not to say “demographics is destiny,” but rather to illustrate that the old models of elections no longer obtain: there is no vast pool of undecided patriotic Americans who can be persuaded to vote for your candidate by an objective comparison of positions, policies and personal probity.

Luke, Vote Palpatine      …It is your Destiny

Rather, since the 70s, identity politics and mass media began to widen the gulf between the two parties. This was turbo-charged when Bill Clinton’s election drove home the fact that Reaganism was a brief blip. The sheer numbers were in the Democrats’ favor (we’ve won every popular vote after 1988 but one) so Newt Gingrich et al began a scorched earth policy to convince everyone that Democrats were evil.

But they weren’t trying to coerce people to switch parties or candidates. They were trying instead to anger and frighten their voters, so that they would come out in greater numbers against the less than white, less than honest, less than moral evil Dems.

That approach has a flip side, a key flip side I didn’t understand until after 2016.  Getting out the vote (GOTV), i.e. trying to gin your voters up to touch that screen, darken that oval or punch that chad, is important, but at the same time you are also trying to ruin your opponent’s GOTV by depressing their voters to just do nothing.

This phenomenon is called Negative Partisanship. Your vote is no longer a positive step towards seeing your policy initiatives thrive (really, was it ever?) but rather a veto of the other side because of who they are and what they represent. Elections now turn on who stays home because their candidate is unpalatable, yet they’d never ever vote for the dark side.

Nooo, I’m Ridin’ with Mothma!

Negative partisanship is how we lost 2016. And why we won 2020 and why 2024 will be a Blue Tsunami.

Pay little attention to the few GOP folks who say they will vote for Biden. In 2024, the job is no longer to convince people he’s better than Trump: there’s no one convincible left. The job is to convince anti-Biden people to just stay home.

Demographics is just a road map. GOTV is destiny.

Poor Ted Cruz. Just as he is about to get a sympathy break from the revelations at this week’s “Stormy Trial,” out comes this reporting from The Houston Chronicle that he has a tax liability resulting from his podcast deal with iHeartMedia.

While Ted Cruz claims that all proceeds from advertising done during “Verdict with Ted Cruz,” his 3-times weekly podcasts over iHeartMedia airwaves go to Truth and Courage PAC, a SuperPAC devoted to his re-election, “… tax experts say Cruz may still need to report [this] income on his tax forms, even if he isn’t pocketing any cash.”

The tax laws, they say, require that this income (something around $630,000 in 2023) is taxed to the person who does the actual work. Since Ted Cruz serves as the podcast’s host, he is the one doing the actual work.

Outrage Alert: Ted Cruz did not report to the IRS any of this income that he generated.

From The Chronicle:

“It’s still going to be his income, because he’s the one who ‘earned it,'” said Brian Galle, a tax law professor at Georgetown University. “This isn’t like a charity that auctions off one hour of free accountant time or something … This was a payment for a series of appearances by Ted Cruz and not by anybody else.”

Oops.

As a ridiculous but sublime analogy, Galle compared the podcasts of Senator Cruz to a nun’s hospital work: “The arrangement is similar to a nun who works in a hospital and sends their pay back to the church because they have taken a vow of poverty. The nun is entitled to a salary for her services, even if she doesn’t collect it.”

I have to admit that hospital analogy cuts a little deep.

Nevertheless, if this is all true, and I’ll bet it is, this should undo all the sympathy heaped on Cruz over TFG’s deal with The National Enquirer to trash out Cruz’s father on its front page in 2016.

It says it right here in the Republican Handbook For 21st Century Campaigning:

“Rule 117. Sleaze cancels sleaze.”

Grace— disposition to or an act or instance of kindness, courtesy, or clemency

I went to Merriam for that definition of grace. I noticed that there were a grand total of eight categories with sub-definitions below them. So, if something else were coming to your mind you are likely also right. The definition above just happens to fit what I’m thinking in the moment.

Further defining terms we find that clemency can be defined as “an act or instance of mercy, compassion, or forgiveness see also amnesty, commute, pardon, reprieve.” In these trying times, forgiveness can be difficult. I wrote a piece earlier about forgiveness and I invite everyone to take a look. It is essentially a state of being and a realization more than anything else.

I say all this because a friend reacted angrily and in a bizarre manner to a piece I wrote last week. The initial reaction is usually one of defense. The response claimed I had said and done things that I had never said or done. So, the first reaction is to go through the rolodex of memories to try to determine where that was coming from. You then move onto anger. When someone clearly says you have said things you’ve never said or done things you’ve never done it can be bewildering and infuriating at the same time.

I’ve quickly moved on. Some of my other friends have not. The difficulty is that these things are all public now. Everyone on my friends list can see and as you’d expect they run the gamut. So, some friends want to defend me. Some probably feel the frustration by proxy.

I am asking for one simple thing: grace. That grace can go any number of different directions. It can obviously go to me as I am not going to turn down anyone or anything’s grace. However, it should also go to my friend. He is a decent person that might be triggered by some powerful feelings, confusion, and a boat load of misinformation.

One of the things he accused me of is being compliant. I find that term to be pretty charged in the way he intended it, but it is an ironic term. We are all compliant to something or someone. Someone that professes to be Christian (as he and I both do) are compliant to the word of God or at least our own interpretation of the word of God. He meant to political authority figures or prominent experts in a field.

I plead guilty to that one. One of the best things we have done as a species is specialize. When it comes to a world wide pandemic I’m going to trust an immunologist who has studied viruses for more than 50 years over my own best judgments and instincts. I got a D in college Biology. I felt like I understood the material better than that, but not much better.

Regardless of party or ideology, we have an absolute epidemic of people deciding they know as much as experts because they saw a YouTube video their cousin sent them. We have parents or even private citizens deciding we are teaching things in school we have never taught based on absolutely zero evidence. Instead of asking us they “do their own research.”

Someone famous once decried people that know things that just aren’t so. False knowledge is worse than ignorance. It rots the brain and causes people to believe things that have no basis in reality. I can’t hate people like this. I want to offer them love and support and will do as much as I can. That might be my own failing, but that is what it is.

Texas CD-13’s Ronny Jackson has a problem with his past, (present, and future tenses). Time is a human construct, but it would seem to be somewhat of an elusive concept to the Texas congressman.

I shall explain.

On his congressional website, Jackson refers to himself as a “retired Rear Admiral.” As in

“As a retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral with nearly three decades of military service I understand the commitment and sacrifices made by servicemen and servicewomen to serve our country.”

or

“In December 2019, after 25 years of distinguished service to his country, Dr. Jackson retired from the United States Navy as a Rear Admiral.”

Ronny Jackson is not a retired Rear Admiral.

Not anymore.

Before his congressional job, Dr. Jackson was TFG’s favorite doctor who once claimed that, except for his dietary choices, TFG “might live to be live to be 200 years old.”

200 years. That’s a lot of time for a human lifespan.

But not everyone was held in high esteem by Jackson. As explained in a DOD inspector general report released in March 2021, Jackson was abusive to doctors and nurses on his staff at the White House, and “established a workplace where fear and intimidation were kind of hallmarks with him…”.

As a result of the report, Ronny Jackson was demoted to Captain in July 2022, which was retroactively applied back to his 2019 retirement.

And while his past demotion is yet to be noted in the present on his congressional website, his retirement pension certainly does reflect his present rank.

Time problems tend to follow Ronny around.

In a March 13, 2024 local news article, Jackson’s efforts for his district were touted: “Due to Jackson’s efforts, over $200 million specifically designated for the district was included in” the Fiscal Year 2024 Government funding package.

Great, huh? What a wonderful provider for his district.

But only 9 days into the future, the same Ronny Jackson voted against the same funding package. His vote is listed there among the 134 Nay votes in the March 22, 2024 vote.

Albert Einstein once wrote:

“The distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

I can only conclude that Einstein’s proposition might be playing itself out in Ronny Jackson’s own mind.

What will probably become known as the Stormy Daniels trial began yesterday. There was much effort to delay it. There was wailing and gnashing of teeth as the good book says. Barring any unforeseen developments, the justice system has finally arrived at a place that it should have upwards of 40 years ago.

There is one nagging question that MAGA is asking and it deserves to be answered. Aren’t these prosecutions politically motivated? We’ve been ducking and side-stepping that question long enough. The simple answer is yes. They are politically motivated. However, I’m not sure if the details behind that answer really line up with what MAGA thinks it means.

The fact is that all of this is a prison of Donald’s thinking. Even if we take the facts from this particular case, we’d have to reach that conclusion. Would he have lost the election if the voting public found out he had a fling with a porn star? My guess is that it wouldn’t have had much of an effect at all. After the Access Hollywood tape came out, there was no doubt about who he was.

The defense is essentially the same one we give to the police officer when we get pulled over for speeding. Look at all the other people speeding. While that might seem persuasive, we cannot deflect from the obvious point that we were in fact speeding. Similarly, Richard Nixon could point to dirty tricks that others had pulled throughout history as some sort of relative defense, but he was caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

I surmise that at least half of these prosecutions wouldn’t be happening at all if he weren’t running for president again. Of course, that observation cuts both ways. A normal president would have accepted defeat, went back home, and made a killing on the lecture circuit. He would have sold books or been a guest professor at some prestigious university. He likes golf. He could have played every day on just about any course he wanted.

History has seen this happen before and history has seen similar deals go awry. Most of western Europe made a deal with Napoleon in order to get him out of power without bloodshed. That didn’t work, Appeasement didn’t work with Nazi Germany. I suspect that overtures were made behind the scenes to broker a similar deal with Trump. Just return the documents and move on with your merry life and no one would be the wiser.

The Donald cannot accept defeat even if it is the prudent thing to do. That’s all this has been about and all that it ever will be about. He lost in 2020 and couldn’t accept it. He continues to lose and can’t accept it. He lost for decades in business and refuses to accept it or learn from it. It is essentially hubris mixed liberally with idiocy. A wiser man would have walked away a long time ago.

Donald is not most people. I suspect most of us wouldn’t have sex with a porn star when our wife was pregnant. I suspect most of us wouldn’t consider stealing confidential or secret files from our place of work. We certainly wouldn’t hide them from the authorities after the fact. Donald is clearly not most people. So, would you or I be prosecuted in a similar situation? I suspect just about anyone else wouldn’t be in this position in the first place and that is kind of the whole point.

OK, here’s a hypothetical. Say that there is a highly placed legislator who decides to do a podcast to create an online presence. Then, a major media company gives the legislator a leg up to increase the podcast’s visibility over their nationwide media network as well as to triple the legislator’s weekly episode output.

Then, the media company funnels advertisement revenue from the thrice-weekly shows to an independent political action committee whose sole purpose is to see that the legislator is re-elected.

Then let’s say the same legislator, who sits as the ranking member of a powerful committee with oversight of commerce, science, and transportation, sponsors a bill to prevent auto makers from excluding AM radios from the cars that they make. But, hold on, the same media company that sends all of that money to the legislator’s independent PAC owns 250 AM radio stations nationwide.

Isn’t that, at best, a conflict of interest? Wouldn’t just that be enough to warrant a hard pass at the ballot box the next time the legislator is up for re-election?

Now imagine that it’s this guy.