Tag: politics

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION ANALOGIES – THIRD PARTIES AND FORMER PRESIDENTS

By Ken Grossberger, PhD

There is much discussion about how the 2024 US Presidential elections will play out, and media types have pushed several comparisons to prior elections, seemingly in an attempt to predict the future from the elections of the past.  Analogies are usually not perfect, but there are a few that might be instructive. Three-way presidential races, where there are viable third party candidates or independents, and races between current and former presidents, upset the balance between the two major parties and lessen the predictability of the outcomes. The “third” candidate becomes a mediating variable that is hard to analyze.  A brief review of the history of such elections sheds light on such unpredictable contests.

  • The election of 1860 was a 4-way contest between Abraham Lincoln and 3 Democrats at a time that the country was seriously polarized due to sectional differences arising from the slavery issue and the states’ rights argument. Sen. Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois (against whom Lincoln ran in 1858 for the Illinois Senate seat) represented the northern Democrats, John C. Breckenridge (incumbent Vice President of the United States) drew support from the southern states, and John Bell of the newly formed Constitutional Union party gained electoral votes from the border state region. Lincoln won almost all the electoral votes in the north, the three Democrats split the rest, and Lincoln won the presidency.
  • In 1892 former President Grover Cleveland, Democrat, came back to challenge incumbent Republican President Benjamin Harrison (who beat Cleveland in 1888).  In this return contest Cleveland won back the presidency, the only person in US history to have 2 unconnected terms in the White House. The third party candidate in the race, James B. Weaver, representing the Populist Party, won almost 9% of the vote and carried a few western states, which may have hurt Harrison.
  • The 1912 election was the race of the 3 presidents, one past, one current and one future. Former President Theodore Roosevelt ran against his old protégé William Howard Taft and won 27% of the vote. President Taft, the incumbent Republican, ran third with only 23% of the vote and only 8 electoral votes. Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs won about 6% of the vote. Roosevelt and Taft split the Republican vote, and New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson, the Democrat, won the election with only 41% of the popular vote but an electoral landslide.
  • The presidential election of 1948 was famous for the biggest media faux pas in American history when the Chicago Tribune prematurely published a headline that stated: “Dewey Defeats Truman”. Incumbent President Harry S. Truman beat New York Governor and former prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey by a fairly comfortable margin in the electoral college. Truman was not that popular and the third party candidate, Dixiecrat South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond denied Truman a sizable portion of the southern Democrat vote. After attempts to get him to drop out of the race the Democratic Convention nominated Truman, who went on to win by waging a strong campaign.
  • There was a similar outcome in the 1968 presidential race but this time the Democrat split gave the election to the Republican former Vice President Richard M. Nixon. Democrat Gov. George Wallace of Alabama ran on the American Independent ticket and won 5 southern states, denying Democrat and incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey the electoral votes of those states and a significant portion of the popular vote.
  • In 1992 independent Ross Perot, a Texas billionaire, won 19% of the vote, most of it from incumbent Vice President Republican George H.W. Bush, giving the election to Democrat Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. Perot scored one of the highest third party totals in US history. Ironically Bush had a national approval rate of 81% following the 1991 Gulf War, only to see his popularity dwindle to only 37 percent of the vote in the election.

The election of 2024 may be a mix of these scenarios. There is a viable third party candidate I Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, who is drawing about 10% in many polls, but not enough to be in contention for any electoral votes in the swing states. He appears to be taking more votes from Biden than Trump as we see a shift of a few points in the 5-way polling (including 2 other third party candidates), as opposed to the head-to-head data showing Trump with about a 2 point lead over Biden.

The post June 27 debate polls show a slippage in Biden’s support, most notably in the swing states, where Trump now leads outside the margin of error in 8 of 14 critical states.  Worse for Biden is that New Hampshire, Minnesota and Virginia, which have voted Democrat in recent elections, are now within the margin of error. There will be more to come with the polls following the assassination attempt on Trump.

Predicting the future from the past is always a lesson in objectivity and thought, and this election is no different.

PAPER TIGER REDUX

by Ken Grossberger, PhD

President Biden’s foreign policy mantra is to avoid escalating current conflicts. To use his favorite word: don’t. Don’t do anything that will upset America’s enemies, don’t properly defend American troops abroad, don’t do everything possible to protect American interests, and certainly don’t upset the not-so-mainstream media, upon whom his re-election, in large measure, depends. But history sadly shows us that such weakness causes the very escalation such policies seek to avoid. Trying not to risk expanding conflicts generally leads to expanding those conflicts. One word admonitions scare no one and accomplish nothing, except to make the United States look ridiculous. The US is confronted with multiple wars and serious threats, yet the White House seems oblivious to the lessons of history.

English Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain famously engaged in a policy of appeasement towards Adolf Hitler prior to WWII in an attempt to avoid a major conflict. Hitler had taken the Rhineland, Austria, and part of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Chamberlain met with Hitler to appease him in order to avoid war and both signed the Munich Agreement in 1938. Hitler agreed to no more territorial acquisitions and Chamberlain stated, “I believe it is peace in our time.” But in 1939 Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia and then invaded Poland, starting WWII.

By the 1850’s the US Congress had made several agreements between northern states and southern states about the extension of slavery as the country grew westward including the Missouri Compromise (1820) and the Compromise of 1850. The war with Mexico, ending in 1845, reignited the slavery issue as Texas would be entering the union as a slave state. Northern abolitionists opposed the extension of slavery and southern slaveholders insisted on it. The Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scott case in 1857 made the situation much worse by ruling that Congress did not have the authority to prevent the extension of slavery into the new territories. President James Buchanan, a northern Democrat with southern sympathies took office in 1857 but failed to resolve the slavery issue, taking a passive stance and leaving the issue to the radicals on both sides of the issue. He did not run for re-election in 1860, eleven southern states seceded and the Civil War started in April of 1861.  More Americans lost their lives in this conflict than in all other wars combined.  Buchanan didn’t think those states had the right to secede, but he did nothing to stop them, nor to resolve the conflict.  He left office in April 1861 with the country in shambles.

There are other historical examples. The price of weak leadership is extraordinary, but the Biden White House is trying to make sure that whatever we do, we do nothing to expand any of the currently expanding conflicts. We don’t want to further upset anyone. We issue warnings and have demonstrations of force but do little. Evidently the policy is we can get mad at them, but we don’t want them to get mad at us.

The Biden administration is preoccupied with how our enemies feel, so the president makes sure the US doesn’t overreact, even when American interests and American friends are under assault. Terrorist organizations have attacked American bases in the middle east over 100 times, Russia has killed thousands of Ukrainians in a war of conquest, the Chinese Communist Party is working overtime to wreck the US economy and on October 7 Hamas put on a freak show that would have embarrassed the Gestapo. There are college students demonstrating in support of this ridiculous terrorist organization. How crazy do you have to get before these students see how bad this is? Biden does not want to upset these college demonstrators and the Palestinian supporters either, so he simultaneously supports a middle east ceasefire to call attention to the plight of the Palestinians but then states again he is “rock solid” behind Israel.  Then no one gets mad at him or the US.  But as it turn out everyone is mad at America.

Weakness solves nothing, and as Sen. Kennedy (R-LA) stated “more sheep is not going to solve the wolf problem.” Biden cannot ignore the consequences of appeasement and inaction. This toxic dissonance results in bold moves by American enemies abroad, and nationwide demonstrations at home. Biden has the same title as Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, but he is not in the same league.

THE CORRUPTION OF THE MEDIA IN A POLARIZED POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT

By Ken Grossberger, PhD

The media, both liberal and conservative, would have us believe every paranoid notion they foment, like Biden will sell us out to Iran and Trump will be a dictator. Believing this nonsense is  the intellectual equivalent of going to a bar at 2AM and taking notes. Journalism, as we used to know it, was about providing information on the critical topics of the day. Now it’s an opinionated free-for-all with a can-you-top-this attitude in sensationalism where commentators cannot pile it on enough in a desperate attempt to bash the other side on a daily basis. They are down to name calling on a level that would embarrass the occupants of a junior high school locker room.

So CNN beats up Trump and Fox beats up Biden. Every day. All day. Each candidate is described in the most horrific, belligerent terms, and each is labeled a criminal and an existential threat to democracy, depending on the media outlet (oh yeah, and our guy is the savior). They would have us believe (whichever side they are on) that we certainly could not survive the election of the guy they don’t like. Yet we just survived a combined seven years of both.

Too many politicians, like many media types, cast ethics to the winds, and have no more respect for civility and honor than a storm has for the grains of sand on a beach. The negative lessons for the young may have lasting effects, as many continue to be lost in the dark hole of the internet/cellphone void. Yet, oddly, the percentage of voter turnout has been on the rise in recent elections. Below is a chart of the presidential elections since 2000:

US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION TURNOUT
2000-2022
YEARTURNOUT
202266.6%
201660.1%
201258.6%
200861.6%
200460.1%
200054.2%
ave.60.2%

This represents an increase from the 1990s and 2000s when the average turnout was in the mid-fifty percent range. Perhaps voters are driven by party loyalty, anger, or fear but certainly not by respect for the political system. Below are the average approval ratings for the last 3 presidents in their third year in the White House:

Biden               40%

Trump              42%

Obama             44%

All three were disliked by more than half the country. All were in office during the attack-media period. Not that the media was all that kind in previous years, but it has gotten much worse.

It is routine to tune into one of the major media outlets and witness outright bashing of politicians and candidates, even making jokes about them in these “panel” discussions of so-called experts. They make up alternative realties to suit their tribal narratives, and facts don’t seem to be a concern.  To add fuel to the neurotic fire social media is a sea of uninformed opinion, vindictive hyperbole and hysterical vitriol and it seems more like a therapy session on steroids than a marketplace of intelligent ideas.

So where does the voting public go from here? Perhaps the one critical issue that is not mentioned is the need for political education, so people know more about how government works and what the candidates really stand for. Maybe then voters can intellectually separate legitimate policy ideas from the hysteria.

POLLS, POLLS, POLLS – What Do They Really Tell Us?

by Ken Grossberger, PhD

It’s the silly season (again) and all the punsters and pollsters are making predictions as to who is leading and who will win. How do they know? The answers they use are in the almighty polls, but what do those polls really tell us?

The consensus is that voters begin to seriously focus on the election after Labor Day, so the early polls may provide an indication, but we need to look deeper to understand what the polls may mean. Polls are not necessarily predictive but are designed to provide qualitative data on popular sentiment. Gauging a number of polls over time yields trends, which are retrospective, not prospective. In other words, political polls look at the present and the past, not the future. Yet many play the prediction game because we think that what is probable today might tell us what’s going to happen tomorrow. Not necessarily.

Political polls are public opinion surveys, and thus we have to be concerned with the data collection methods as well as the data parameters. For example, in order to collect data many polls use a technique known as Random Digit Dialing (RDD) to ensure all voters in a population have an equal chance of being called. The survey staff must be properly trained and supervised, and samples should be large enough to be statistically meaningful or they may suffer from small sample size validity issues (which may lead to results that are true, when they are false, called Type II error in statistics).

For instance, a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll (04/15/24) showed that 833 registered voters preferred Biden to Trump by 41% to 37%. The margin of error (MOE, the statistic that indicates how far off a survey may be) was 4% with 22% of those polled having no preference/might not vote/favoring a third party candidate. So what does this really tell us? The media would report that Biden has 4 point lead, but is that accurate? Does this poll have any realistic predictive value?

My observations are as follows: any sample of less than 1,000 respondents is too small to have much statistical power, and the results are within the margin of error as well.  Also, 22% undecided is too large a group to give us confidence in the determination as to which candidate may be leading. This is just the tip of the statistical iceberg. Many polls suffer from considerable statistical issues:

  • Registered voters vs. likely voters: polls that measure registered voters only are weak as they measure people who may not vote; likely voter responses are more meaningful
  • Timing: polls from last month may be out of date in an age of fast paced news cycles
  • Sample size: it’s doubtful that a sample of less than 1,000 voters could be representative of the voting population of the United States
  • Undecided responses: the Reuters/Ipsos poll mentioned above had 22% choosing something other than Biden and Trump, with only a 4% difference between the two with seven months to go to the election – this makes it very difficult to draw any meaningful  inferences
  • Margin of error: rates over 4% are usually too large to provide confidence in the result, and leads within the MOE means no one has a lead
  • Outlier polls: a result that is far from the average of the other polls – the media on either side loves to quote polls that show their guy in the lead, even if it is way outside the average

So to revisit the Reuters/Ipsos poll, a result that seems to favor Biden: it’s a small sample of registered voters only, a result within the MOE, with a large amount of undecided. If you’re looking for a prediction, don’t bet any real money using this poll.

Another issue is using the average of polls, a method which is supposed to give us a solid basis as to who is leading whom. Perhaps the most popular is the RealClear Politics (04/15/24) average of polls (widely quoted by the media) which is an unweighted average, meaning it’s a simple average of polls with different sample sizes. Here is a recent report:

POLLSTERDATESAMPLEMOETRUMP (R)BIDEN (D)SPREAD
RCP Average3/21 – 4/7——45.545.3Trump+0.2
Morning Consult4/5 – 4/76236 RV1.04443Trump+1
Reuters/Ipsos4/3 – 4/7833 RV4.03741Biden+4
I&I/TIPP4/3 – 4/51265 RV2.84043Biden+3
Emerson4/2 – 4/31438 RV2.54645Trump+1
Rasmussen Reports3/31 – 4/21099 LV3.04941Trump+8
Data for Progress (D)**3/27 – 3/291200 LV3.04647Biden+1
NPR/PBS/Marist3/25 – 3/281199 RV3.74850Biden+2
Forbes/HarrisX3/25 – 3/251010 RV3.15050Tie
FOX News3/22 – 3/251094 RV3.05045Trump+5
Quinnipiac3/21 – 3/251407 RV2.64548Biden+3

But when the samples are weighted by the number of voters (a sample of 1,438 is given more “weight” than a sample of 833), Trump’s lead doubles. Also, note how many of the polls are “RV” or registered voters, and that some of the polls are older, meaning from prior news cycles. The age of a poll is an issue as in just one month Biden may have any number of mumbled gaffes, Trump may insult another dozen people, and another war or two may break out. All of these sway public opinion and affect the polls.

Anyone who draws firm conclusions from these polls is engaging in a neurotic level of wishful thinking. But there is hope, many surveys over a period of time (longitudinal, in statistical language) generate more confidence than one-off polls (cross-sectional). There are no simple answers, we have to do the work. For example, most recent polls show Trump with a lead outside the MOE in the swing states over a period of time, and we therefore can have some confidence in that result. In recent history polls tend to tighten as we get closer to election day, and much can happen. We will see what events move the arc of the current trajectory.

References:

RealClear Politics. 04/15/24. RCP Poll Average. RealClearPolitics – Live Opinion, News, Analysis, Video and Polls. RealClearPolitics – Live Opinion, News, Analysis, Video and Polls

Palmer, Ewan. 04/15/24. Donald Trump’s Polling Numbers Are Dropping. Newsweek. Donald Trump’s Polling Numbers Are Dropping (newsweek.com)

KENNEDY’S VEEP: THE STRUGGLE FOR CREDIBILITY

By Ken Grossberger, PhD

RFK Jr. has picked Nicole Shanahan for the vice-presidential slot on his ticket. The ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin is a lawyer and an activist, and at 39 finds herself in the center of the American political arena. Kennedy, in his introduction yesterday warned her about the candidate risks in current political times: character assassination, name calling, negative reporting, exposure, investigations, lawsuits, etc.  She has no experience as a political office holder, which may be one of her strengths. She is from humble origins but has been in a position to contribute to various causes such as climate change, female reproductivity and criminal justice. She has also contributed to the campaigns of Democrats and progressives, and her checkbook may be one of the most attractive features to the Kennedy campaign.

But the main issue for Kennedy is his credibility. Does he really intend to win, or just make a statement? Is this a set up for 2028? There is a long history of third-party candidates for President of the United States. The fledging Republican Party (in the process of replacing the Whig Party) was running candidates in 1856 (John C. Fremont) and 1860 (Abraham Lincoln). In the 1890s issue-oriented groups formed the Greenback Party, the Populist Party and the People’s Party. The early 1900s saw the rise of the Progressive Party (also known as the Bull Moose Party with Teddy Roosevelt as their candidate in the chaotic election of 1912). Southern Democrats ran as Dixiecrats with Strom Thurmond as their presidential candidate in 1948. Gov. George Wallace of Alabama ran on the American Independent line in 1968 and John Anderson ran as a liberal Republican on the National Unity Party on 1980. Ross Perot was an independent candidate in 1992 and 1996. The Reform Party ran Pat Buchanan in 2000 and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson ran as the Libertarian Party candidate in 2012 and 2016. The Green Party has run Ralph Nader several times in recent history and now Jill Stein in 2012, 2016 and this year. All of this with little success, but Lincoln won and Perot got 19% in 1992. Most of the rest were also-rans with low percentages of the votes.

So, the probability of a Kennedy win is exceptionally low, even in a cycle where both major party candidates are seriously flawed and highly vulnerable.  But anything that includes Trump will defy any odds thus history may not be as much of a factor as it usually would.

PHARMA CARTEL MEXICANO

by Ken Grossberger, PhD

The Mexican drug cartels, as a collective, are some of the largest suppliers of pharmaceutical grade drugs to the US.  Reports state that record amounts of fentanyl were illegally exported to the US in 2023.  Last year, these reports tell us, about 240,000 pounds of drugs were seized by the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) including over a billion fentanyl doses. All this came through our southern border and was consumed in the United States.

This is a huge market. All of the US government attempts to interdict the flow across the border, all of law enforcement attempts to apprehend the offenders, all of the diplomatic attempts to get help from the Mexican government, have all been of little or no avail under the current administration. President Biden has shown little taste for doing anything meaningful at the border and has even taken Texas to court to stop their attempts to stop the flow.  Clearly, the tsunami of illegals (sorry, the “deprived newcomer future Americans”) and the avalanche of drugs crossing the border are apparently what he wants.  Nothing effective has been done by the White House as the problem worsens, and Biden is left in desperation to blame Trump and the Republicans.

So we look at another option.  A French drain (not to be confused with the French Connection), is a technique whereby a structure constantly gets flooded, so instead of trying to stop it, the water is let in through a drain, and then it is let out by the same drain. In other words, control the flow.  Why not do the same thing at the border?  Let the drugs in but regulate it, and then tax it. If we’re not going to stop it, we might as well make some money from it.  Maybe Biden can use some of his proposed almost 100,000 IRS agents to collect taxes from the cartels.  If he doesn’t want to secure the border, at least he can get some revenue out of it (“the rich should pay their fair share”). So let’s make a cartel out of the cartels. As Pharma Cártel Mexicano (stock symbol PCM) grows, Biden can get a brokerage to put together an IPO and Americans can then invest, hopefully making enough money to pay for the drug rehab for relatives addicted to the fentanyl that illegally came across the border in the first place.

SOCIALISM, SNICKERS AND SNARKINESS:  THE HATE OF THE UNION SPEECH

by Ken Grossberger, PhD

Article II of the constitution requires the president to deliver “from time to time” “information” on the state of the union. In recent memory we heard the soaring rhetoric of Ronald Reagan, the eloquence of Barack Obama and the incisive words of Bill Clinton. Joe Biden’s speech on Thursday was none of that. Give-Em-Hell-Joey came out blazing in what amounted to more of a campaign rally pep talk than a state of the union address.

Was the raised voice approach evidence of some newfound energy, or a failure of anger management? He came across as a roboticized angry old man. His rant was more blame game than solution oriented as he referred to his “predecessor” 13 times. It was a polarizing, divisive speech that did nothing for independents. He was loud, contentious, confrontational, mawkishly pandering and unpretentiously partisan. It was a baseless attempt to appeal to the base in a transparent exercise to reset his campaign at the cost of reason and civility. After digesting this speech the American people needed a dose of philosophical Narcan. At times it seemed like an exercise class, how many times could the Democrats stand up? You could almost hear the Pointer Sisters in the background. The Jack-In-The-Box Democrats jumped up so often the House clerks almost had to send out for oxygen. It’s the kind of theatrical fawning that renders the political process as appearing spurious and self-serving.

In Biden’s imaginary America the only real problem is “my predecessor,” and his arguments are based on carefully parsed data and reality avoidance. It’s an election year, so he romances the left with a list of expensive giveaways (how all this is to be actually paid for no one knows, maybe “tax the rich” again) but with each promise one could see America’s future fading into the sunset under a growing mass of unpayable debt. Another check-the-box exercise in political manipulation, and he kept coughing as if even he didn’t believe his own jive. In a bizarre moment, he interjects a point about the great snack rip-off (so much for lofty rhetoric and the promise of the great American experiment), which went nowhere. He then perfunctorily proposes a two-state solution for the middle east. Which Israel is he supporting? He pandered to the left, heckled the hecklers on the right, and blew his response to a call to “say her name” with his Lincoln Riley faux pas. Then came they pedantic core values wrap up. Which core was he referring to? Then chants of “four more years” (meaning we want power). He closed with “I’ll always be the president for all Americans.”  Really?

So the president uses the state of the union speech to re-launch his reelection bid, as he mumbles, fumbles and stumbles his way into the future. Unfortunately, the antidote to current President Biden is former President Trump, who has his own blizzard of problems. He attacks his friends as much as he attacks his enemies (basically he just attacks) in a desperate attempt to get back what he craves most, power.

It’s a race to the bottom in what we hope is the last of this tawdry exercise in how politics in America is not supposed to be.

DEMOCRACY DIES IN THE GREAT PARTY DIVIDE

by Ken Grossberger, PhD

Dean Philips has been told he should not run for the presidency because he takes votes from Biden. Same for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. No doubt the same for Cornel West and the Green Party candidate. The same will be “explained” to the No Labels candidate (if and when). Independents and moderates who state they will not vote for either Biden nor Trump are being told, alternatively, depending on whether they are getting advice from a Democrat or a Republican, that not voting for Biden is a vote for Trump, or not voting for Trump is a vote for Biden. The rationale for this voting strategy is that the other guy is so bad that he is an existential threat to democracy. But the real existential threat to democracy is the elimination of choice in a free society.

Free speech is infringed upon when people on either side of the great party divide think that what someone on the other side says is all lies, is dangerous and should be suppressed. Also, the Not-So-Mainstream Media edits and smothers content, as does social media, because what they don’t like is “dangerous.” None of this passes constitutional muster. Many Democrats suffer from a bad case of replacement racism and some Republicans wish to reconstruct the first amendment to mandate religion as part of government. Not good for democracy but policy has become the new religion and ideology has become theology. Let the sinners be damned and thrown to the scrap heap of democracy. But whatever happens, don’t let them vote.

This is party driven. Republicans and Democrats have fostered a dangerous age of polarization, and the fallout has covered the nation in an anti-democratic toxicity that is poisoning the ability of the electoral system to provide fair outcomes and reasonable office holders. The key variable is power, not useful policy, and certainly not good government.

AGEISM, THE 14th AMENDMENT AND THE BIDEN PROXY CAMPAIGN

by Ken Grossberger, PhD

At the end of the US Civil War there was a problem: approximately five and a half million African Americans were technically still slaves, still the property of their masters. So Congress passed, the president signed, and the state legislatures approved, the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments the constitution. The 13th amendment abolished slavery, the 14th amendment provided the now former slaves with citizenship (among other things) and the 15th amendment gave them the right to vote (except for women). The 14th amendment contained other significant provisions, such as the protection of citizens’ “privileges and immunities”, incorporated due process into the states, and gave “equal protection” to all Americans. This last clause has become the basis of many laws since, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, which have become the bedrock of defending citizens against discrimination based on so-called protected characteristics, including age. Here is where the political rubber meets the electoral road. The prejudice against President Biden comes to mind.

We reach a point in our lives where we realize we have to walk and chew gum sequentially. This apparently has not yet dawned on the president. Thus the public consternation at his decision to run for reelection. But are the objections to his age or ability? The public perception is that it’s the former, but oh yeah, it might be the latter also. His age as a disqualifier is openly discussed, ad nauseum, as if the constitution doesn’t exist. Ironically, he picked his vice president based on gender and color, another egregious violation of standing law. Any employer would be on the wrong end of a lawsuit based on such flagrant violations of the constitution and subsequent statutes. But in this era of extreme polarization, with the attendant prejudiced partisan press, these discriminatory choices and comments have become mainstream.

The long history of the civil rights movement, and numerous court cases and laws, also include the Fair Pay Act, the Bakke case, the Fair Admissions cases, and many more. Yet we see blatant age discrimination (Biden is too old to be president), gender discrimination (the selection of running mates based on sex) and racial discrimination (the selection of Harris for VP based on color).

So Biden is both a victim and a perpetrator, but as his own worst enemy, he not only continues to feed the negative narrative, his White House staff and campaign staff seem to want to replicate the hidden candidate trick of 2020. Another proxy campaign, where his surrogates, apologists and excuse makers will ignore the bad, tell the country all is well and try desperately to have everyone focus on the evil Donald Trump. Meanwhile Biden will again be on vacation, taking trips or simply back to Delaware again and again.

This will not be something akin to the 19th century back porch campaigns, not in the high speed, instant information space. The President-In-Hiding maneuver may well backfire in this cycle, age discrimination or not, yielding a reductionism of the politically neurotic – it’s always about Trump.

And we are one terrorist act away from a brand-new ballgame.

The Discomfort of Undue Process

Ken Grossberger, PhD

What if George Santos is found not guilty?  What if Donald Trump is?  What if Hunter Biden is? What if Joe Biden gets indicted? The rush to judgment may satisfy emotionally, but due process gets trampled along the way.

Congress may have acted prematurely in the George Santos case. The press, and the people, may have prejudged Trump and anyone named Biden (depending on one’s predilections), in advance of any jury verdict.  This is fine for a discussion at the bar at midnight, terrible for any appreciation of due process. The lesson here is that preemption may be prematurity.  Expelling Santos from Congress and removing Trump from the ballot may be politically palatable to some but is also legally foundationless. The political strategies of ballot denial and power maintenance are also ethically dubious at best. The US Constitution requires due process to protect each individual’s rights, and even though in some venues due process does not apply in fact, it should apply in principle.

The most egregious example is in Maine, where Secretary of State Shenna Bellows unilaterally removed former President Trump from the primary ballot.  Her argument was that Trump was guilty of inciting an insurrection on January 6, thus she was compelled under section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the constitution to rule that Trump could not run for political office.  Access to the ballot, therefore, is left to the constitutional interpretations of hundreds of unelected state administrative officials, a precedent under which democracy, as we know it, would disintegrate.

In Colorado the state supreme court also removed Trump from the ballot under the same logic.  Here we have at least some semblance of jurisprudence, with a court of law involved. However, we also have the legal conundrum as to the intent of section 3 as Congress intended it in 1868.  After the Civil War, Congress was left with the problem of over 5 million people who were still slaves in the south.  Thus the legislature passed the 13th amendment to free them, the 14th amendment to provide them citizenship and the 15th amendment to give former slaves the vote.  The insurrection in question was half the country seceding and fighting a major war of separation from the federal government.  Almost a million Americans lost their lives as hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides fought a desperate war in this rebellion.  The superannuated but highly embarrassing January 6 frat party was incredibly wrong and damaging to the American psyche, but hardly an insurrection.  

So, those who graduated from the Google School of Law, and some misguided courts, would have us believe that cherry-picking one’s way through the constitution to find a word or phrase that seemed to justify one’s preconceived conclusion is justified, due process notwithstanding.  Removing Trump from the ballot, ipso fact, is supported by the 14th amendment.

Thus we would be left whims of the perpetually upset never-Trump neurotics, or their counter-parts on the Right, to determine whom they would allow to run for office.  Elections would become free-for-alls with competing jurisdictions summarily removing from the ballot candidates of the opposing parties only to suffer retaliation in turn, and then perhaps no one is left on any ballot.  Court cases would pile up and the entire electoral system would be permanently constipated.

“Democracy is on the ballot,” as we hear so often, and maybe this year it actually is.