The Country's Really at Stake Tomorrow

I hope so much that I'm preaching to the choir here. But just in case--

For the love of God, vote.

And vote with your brain. Vote the way you actually see things with your very eyes.

If you're in the 3rd Congressional District, or know somebody who does: Tell them to vote for Rebecca Cooke, over incumbent Derrick Van Orden, the latest impostor who wants to keep his job as a Republican bobblehead. It's the only Congressional race in the state that's anything near competitive, due to Republican gerrymandering that spans more than a decade. This used to be Ron Kind's seat, but he stepped down. Rebecca represents a real choice, a new beginning, for the 3rd. Please vote for her.

For the U.S. Senate, please avoid electing a Ron Johnson clone by turning back Eric Hovde and staying with someone who's done a tremendous amount for this state, especially in the realm of health care: Tammy Baldwin. Hovde has thrown millions of dollars that, as a billionaire, he doesn't need, in addition to PAC money poured into the race by Mitch McConnell. McConnell sees the photocopy of Johnson's eccentric stupidity, his caving to moneyed interests, his enthusiastic inclusion of lies and innuendoes, his horrible pandering, and his terrible policy positions. Baldwin has fought back against Hovde's blithering, amateurish approach of sheer volume of smears. Don't let him succeed. 

Wisconsin needs Tammy Baldwin. Please vote for her.

And, of course: this is the moment to turn back a lying, disgusting, two-bit phony who's trying to return to the White House. That this election is going to be decided by a whisper thin margin tells you a lot about how White Christian Nationalism has nearly overwhelmed the rhetoric of this campaign, the exaggerations, the threats, the monstrous lies that ex- has included.

I have written much about ex-'s incompetence, his stupidity, his cruelty, and his meanness. It is the height of naivete for anyone to suppose that his words have been nothing but stunted, awful political rhetoric. He will make mincemeat out of the Constitution and abuse the military to deal with domestic issues. In short, he will turn America into a police state. He will also completely abandon Ukraine, pleasing Vladimir Putin because (remember?) he wants to build a hotel in Moscow.

Expect, too, wars with either Mexico or Iran. He wants to invade Mexico to stop immigration from that territory, as if he would with all the coastlines we have. He wants to show his mega-religious political allies that God will be pleased if he devastates Israel's number one enemy. With no accountability now to hold him back--the Supreme Court has set the table for him very nicely--and with his second term providing him with no political consequences, count on him to:

• Try to stifle all media opponents by legal or quasi-legal means;
• Try to expand book banning to include anything written about gays or trans-people;
• Take away any effort to contribute to battling climate change;
• Get us out of NATO and leave Europe at the mercy of Russia;
• If he gets both houses of Congress on his side, take away Social Security and Medicare;
• Ditto for control of Congress--before the above mentioned, he will end abortion in the U.S.;
• Cripple the economy with a misguided, repeatedly stupid attempt to foist China with tariffs; and 
• Put immigrants into concentration camps, where they will suffer and die by the thousands.

I'm sure that list, a highlight reel, is far too short. It can all be avoided by elected Kamala Harris President.

She doesn't have the elixir of magical policy alternatives; indeed, she would be far better off trying to mimic what Joe Biden has tried to do. But her campaign has undersold (at least in ads) the good that Biden has done for the economy and for relaxing the devastating anxiety caused by Covid. She has basically tried to sell herself by continuing to say that she isn't ex-, and trying to bring in Republicans who see things clearly. We will see, after tomorrow, whether that will work.

That she managed to recover much of the support lost by Biden after that disastrous debate in June is all to the good. But her momentum slowed down when ex- played it cagey by avoiding a second debate. He knew he would once again be made to look like the fool he is. So instead he relied on ridiculous, shouting, fear-mongering ads on TV, to which Harris could not respond with any kind of effective timing. He threw every kind of nonsense at us, including fears about support of trans-people, as if she had caved their every whim. (Note that Hovde copied those ads to the letter in Wisconsin.) If he wins, that change in strategy will be remembered as the turning point.

If. MSNBC's Steve Kornacki believes that Pennsylvania will be the deciding vote. I still believe that too many battleground states are too much up for grabs; it will be an absolute photo finish. Either way, we will still be left with a nation comprised at least halfway of people who, apparently with blind religious connection, have been fooled into thinking that the Almighty has willed this result. The movement it has engendered will not go away, either way it goes. But that will be a discussion for another day.

In the meantime: In the name of God, vote. Vote like the country's at stake. Because it really is this time.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

No, Jeff. I Don't Believe You. You Gypped Me.

Jeff Bezos has gypped the subscribers to the Washington Post--I am one of them, electronically--by walking away from his major public responsibility: Taking a position on this incredibly contested presidential race.

Not only did his cancellation of presidential election endorsement come at the last second and was timed maybe as poorly as it could have ever been, his explanation, made days later, riffs at ex post facto darts being pulled out of his back.

Bezos is trying to take the high road after torpedoing his own editorial staff at the Washington Post and removing a recommendation for Kamala Harris, the only move that makes any sense this fall.  He says it's the "right thing to do" because the newspaper should not appear biased.

That is colossal nonsense. Newspapers, as a rule, try as hard as they can not to be unnecessarily biased by the way they report facts. They seek balance, sometimes disappointingly because the underlying cause of big stories are often well-known before they reach the print stage. But the point is that they usually bend over backwards to avoid accusations, true or not, of misrepresentation.

So newspapers are, by their nature, normally as unbiased as entities could possibly be. Bezos' entreaty in the name of objectivity is pretentious and defensive. That has nothing to do with whether or not they should take positions on vital issues of the day. That's what the op-ed page is supposed to be about. But Bezos has nixed what I believe to be the Post's sacred obligation: to serve as the public's positional system on choosing the most important person in the nation and the world. Dozens of papers still do this and don't think twice about it. Bezos has not only thought twice, but thought wrong.

The timing of the decision, so close to the election itself, reveals this. If Bezos was that devoted to his high-minded principles, why didn't he come out and take this position, say, last spring? It has been more than obvious that siding with one or the other has reached an all-time high. If he was to do the public a lasting service by toning down the temperature of debates and disagreements, that would have been the time to do so.

It's kind of like a baseball hitter with a swing flaw. He should fix it in the spring, when the season's still young and the race is still blurry and largely undecided. He shouldn't wait to work on it when it's two out in the ninth, the bases are loaded, and he stands at the plate.

It all smacks of something else, too. Bezos is a multibillionaire. He has been roundly attacked, probably unjustly, by ex- during his woebegotten presidential term for his involvement in post office issues.The attack is a hazing, though, for not supporting ex- politically. It really means nothing else.

But that's enough. Bezos wants ex- off his back, just because it's too much of a hassle otherwise. Does that matter to the rest of us?

That's a good question. For the Post to avoid a presidential endorsement at this late hour cannot be anything but abdication of political and citizenship responsibilities. It is the direct ignoring of the simple fact that that paper represents a significant degree of the electorate, one that depends upon it for representing their views.

Yes, the Post tries to be balanced in its approach, and anyone who follows it can't help but agree. It has conservative columnists with whom I disagree strongly--but it has them. It has run plenty of stories about those who support ex-, even though I dislike them deeply. For it to be designated as responsible, it has to do so.

But the chief columnists, those who are read most consecutively and most often, remain those who lean left. The paper's readership has demanded it. It has relied upon it for opinion leadership. Their combined attitudes can't help but steer the paper's conclusion that ex- cannot possibly return as president.

Which is why a quarter of a million subscribers have cancelled at this point. If Bezos is so worried about losing money--I'm guessing he's really not--he shouldn't have waited until the ultimately decisive point to worry about this.

So, no: I don't believe his effort to smooth this over with high-minded principles. It feels empty and pointless.

The Los Angeles Times has also very recently declined to take a position in the race, too, infuriating much of its staff as well. Run by another billionaire, it all looks to be a cabal by rich people to save their toys so they aren't unnecessarily scratched.

Will it matter to the average voter? No way to tell. But for two major newspapers to abrogate their responsibilities now, at the last minute, tells me that it's capitulation to a tinpot phony who might in fact fool enough people in battleground states to walk away with this thing. When the heat came on, two newspaper moguls up and walked away. When it came to have some guts, they had none.

We have three days to know whether that mattered.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

"That Librarian" and Our New Reality

Amanda Jones worked like other school librarians worked: largely undetected. But she stood up for the right to read in Livingston, Louisiana, and there she called down opprobrium upon herself.

You know who they are now: the people who, for all the wrong reasons, think certain books should be removed from libraries, many of which they've merely heard of and haven't read. They make up all kinds of fear-mongering scenarios that never happen and never will. They connect what they do to a higher calling, believing that they are in concert with God and that justifies personal attacks and outright lies.

They call those who resist them, as they should be resisted, all kinds of damning names such as "groomer," pretending and assuming that librarians, somehow, are leading children into horrible lives.

And they have weaponized social media to do so. It can open opportunities to having and keeping friends, yes, but also wield devastating slander and libel on someone with no other motivation other than to set things straight. It can demonstrate the devastation of standing in the way of ignorance and hatred. "There really is no arguing with these people," she wrote. "They will believe what they want to believe, even when shown the truth, and when shown the truth they will often lash out with hate."

She kept a journal of her awful experiences of, in essence, trying to stand up for the rest of ourselves, and turned it into a book, That Librarian, out just recently. The saga is not pleasant. The criticism of groups such as the self-appointed Citizens for A New Louisiana lurched into genuine libel, and Jones, with funding help from a Go Fund Me site, tried to take them on in court. But the local judge, perhaps affected by members of the above mentioned group who turned up at the session, didn't allow herself to separate the quasi-religious issue from that of the personal damage it had caused Jones. She denied the request to sue. Jones fiercely defended her rights and appealed. Her account documents what happened in-between.

It was a personal hell, not of her own making. It's a story not that unfamiliar: When people begin to understand what the Bill of Rights is really all supposed to be about--letting minorities do what they think is right and living and let living as long as no one gets hurt--gets in conflict with righteousness many claim but can't live by, then you can get people fired up for foggy but somehow palpable reasons.

What book banning seems to be all about, when all else is swept away, is people who rail against the public displays of homosexuality and transgenderism and cherry-pick the Bible to justify their attitudes that if God would never permit it, why should they? Thus, why should they pay their hard earned tax money to someplace that tolerates it? And if it tolerates it, doesn't that mean it promotes it? It has more to do with discomfort in viewing and experiencing it than notions of righteousness, anyhow. But the religious angle stands as a firewall, a leakproof organizing strategy.

It doesn't seem like the book banners, the alt-right, and the white Christian nationalists are interested in being educated. Education is about knowledge, facts, truth, and what they're pushing isn't about these things. What they stand behind is really a belief system, which happens to be profoundly undemocratic and exclusionary. In truth, it's a believe system based in nostalgia, a longing to turn back the clock to a time when Christianity was more universal, when whites ruled society, when women were subservient to men, and when gay people stayed closeted. It cdhrainly doesn't appeal to be, but for those feeling enominically or socially "eft behind," or perhaps, simply out of step, it may be. a kind of a lifeline. It bestowers meaning, belonging, identity. It creates an us-versus-them world, at the heard of which is fear of difference and fear of change. Hate is its by-product. It's powerful stuff and what makes it so miserable to be targeted by them, and so frustrating to go up against. Do they believe the lies about that book or this book being inappropriate? I'm not sure, but I'm sure that they need to believe what they believe to maintain good standing with others in their communities.

There really is no arguing with these people. They will believe what they want to believe, even when shown the truth, and when shown the truth they will often lash out with hate.

It's time we admit that the United States has had an ominous history that hasn't aways been fireworks and "Yankee Doodle." Our country has some awesome ideals but has history of not living cup tot hem--of mistreating women, children, people of color, and the LGBTQIA+ community. Admitting the dark side of our country's history doesn't mean we hate our country.  It is the opposite.

I want to live in a country that earns its title of being the best until it is no longer a delusion or lofty idea but a fact. Instead, I live in a country whose current politicians are too busy dragging us through the mud with manufactured outrage over teaching real history and including books in our libraries that speak the truth and feature all members of society. I would love to stand in from of people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz and ask them what in God's name they think the are going besides causing us to backslide as a country.

The world can be pretty confusing these days. What I see is a society growing more open-minded to people who are different from them, and a backlash from a segment of people who are uncomfortable with this. These folks see it as a zero-sum game. Any movement toward openness and acceptance somehow takes something away from them. This is where and the victim talk comes from, and the steading raising of volume and distortion in their claims as the truth fails them and they reach for fear mongering.  American was founded not as a Christian nation, as they like to believe, but as a pluralistic democracy guaranteeing freedom of worship and the promise of equality. We still have a long way to go in the equality department, but the progress we have made should be celebrated, not feared. What Christian nationalists want nothing to do with this celebration. They want to turn back the clock to a time and a place that never was. It's sad and too bad. All it would take is a bit of courage, positivity, and generosity. True Christian values. But fear, hate and intolerance are easier and maybe more emotional satisfying in the short term. Indeed, they're playing the short game, and it won't end well.

Every day I wake up wondering who or where the next hate campaign will be launched. All across the country ate speech is running rampant, funding is being threatened, and our libraries are under attack. People are no longer hiding their racism. I don't know if I'm relived, because at least they are showing their true colors so that we can identify them, or if I'm just sad and wish they'd go back to hiding it.

She filed suit against Citizens for A New Louisiana and its spokespeople, Ryan Thames and Michael Lunsford, but got it thrown back in her face when the parish judge went along with the whole business not as a legal tort, but as a morality play of which she was apparently the guilty person. It set off a social media war. She was accused of things she couldn't have done.

The good part about this is that Jones set up a Go Fund Me account, and got herself enough money for appellate pursuits because there are plenty of people out there who love their libraries and don't want them to become right wing echo chambers. In the meantime, she became something of a media darling and was asked to speak in various places about the horrors of this obsession. And, as you can see, she took time off from what had suddenly become her incredibly stressful job to write her book.

So she's doing fine, sadder but wiser, of course. But I wonder about other librarians who, like her, want nothing more than to do their jobs helping people with the wonders and joys of reading. What happens to them when they are attacked? Who rushes to their aid?

I have done some reading connected to my advocacy position with the Friends of the Shorewood Public Library. Some librarians do "weeding" of some books that might bring public scrutiny. Such a practice can be deemed "normal," since some books really do need to be gleaned from the stacks due to lack of borrowing or simple wear and tear. But some librarians use this practice to do sneaky removals of potentially controversial works. People, young and adult, who might need to read them go wanting. Thus the undermining process works all by itself, without anyone raising their voices.

This is the ex- aspect of our lives now, that people have grasped onto something they can brag about without realizing how others are being hurt and how the culture is reduced. Not that they care. Self-righteousness begets compassion and, worse, critical thinking.

This upcoming election will not end this. Part of it is obviously, and ridiculously, to curry favor with ex-, or to be connected to him in some palpable way. But his defeat would not make this disappear, and his victory will accelerate it. If you like your local library, get ready. They're coming for it. It's just a matter of time.

If your local bookstore has a copy of Jones' book, just sit with it for a minute and read the final two dozen pages. It contains her advice about how communities can gird themselves against these unwarranted, pathetic attacks. In a word: Organize. In another: Inform. In a third: Warn.

This is part of our new reality, that others are trying as hard as they can to avoid facing reality and demand that we do, too. They have no right to do so, but they will seize power if they can get it--just like their hero is trying to do again.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

This Is Why Pete Rose Isn't in the Hall of Fame

Pete Rose has just passed away at 83. That will no doubt bring forward yet again one of the diciest of ethical issues in sports: Should he be selected to Baseball's Hall of Fame?

On paper, it's a no-brainer, and ridiculous to suggest otherwise. He's still, and because of big money contracts and the inclination to retire early now, probably will always be, the all-time leader in base hits with 4256. Beyond that, his on-field actions, his aggressiveness (sometimes pretentious, as when he would sprint to first base upon walking) and nickname of Charlie Hustle made him an icon to many.

But Rose smudged the game itself. Addicted to gambling--and upon his own admission, though much later--he bet on baseball games while managing one of its major league teams. Implicitly, he's been blamed for the sudden death of Bart Giamatti, then commissioner of baseball and a raging idealist of the game's contributions to our world ("Baseball breaks your heart," he once wrote, in a hauntingly prescient phrase), who died very soon after making the ruling that banned Rose from baseball from that day forward.

He has also been linked to fooling around with underage girls--not a good image for someone trying to be in someone else's Hall of Fame. His baseball accomplishments are terrific. How he conducted himself beyond his sports career is not. 

The betting alone is shaky, but if he had bet on horses or football games, he might even be forgiven. But he didn't. He bet on the game he said he loved so much, despite how bad he made it look.

For many of the Baseball Writers of America, the institution in charge of nominating and selecting the members of the Hall of Fame (with the exception of a players' committee which might override a rejection here and there), what Rose did is unforgivable. I happen to know something about some of the members of that group, or at least those who used to be.

During the 1980s, I earned myself a master's degree in journalism from Marquette University. To do that, one must write a thesis. I figured to combine two things I loved, journalism and baseball (I was in the middle of my experience of writing a local sports column), after reading a book that suggested that baseball writers--which I once dreamed of becoming, but life got in the way--didn't especially like what they did but you know, like other things, it's a living.

So I thought, pre-internet: They must stay in Milwaukee while the teams they cover play at (then) County Stadium. They would most likely work out of their rooms and they might eat breakfast or lunch at those hotels. I also did some digging as to who wrote for what newspaper (still in that heyday, soon to sunset). I also learned the hotels at which the visiting teams stayed and wondered, Could they be the same? Would make sense to try to get 'insider' stories.

I put that guessing together and called front desks. Sure enough: not only were the writers there, they were dispatched to me straightaway and suddenly I would be talking to them (our world now being much different, I highly doubt that you'd be able to do this now). I invited them to lunch. Most said yes; this to someone they'd never met.

I brought my tape recorder. We'd have the most fascinating talks. Going around the league, contributing to their newspapers in an important way--what fan didn't turn to the sports page every morning?--but operating mostly facelessly, they were eager to talk to anyone interested in what they did and how they did it, to get a glance under the hood, so to speak.

I was having the fun of my life. There's nothing like the enthusiasm that original research gives you. And I learned quite the opposite of what I had postulated: Baseball writers loved what they did, but like most of the rest of us, would take a moment to whine about its challenges and its daily grind of deadlines and need to say about games in a fresh way, even though what would take place on the field would have ringing similarities to the last game and the one before that.

But they also considered (and still do, I'm sure) themselves guardians of the game's lore and history, a significant contribution to our culture. They knew that what they wrote on a daily basis, while not necessarily anything a Pulitzer Prize committee might consider, would be ensconced in someone's library and archives forever. That status, they took very seriously.

I talked to just a few of them at later dates. They were crabbier, which meant I'd interrupted them in the middle of something, which could be any time of the day or night for baseball writers, who write about baseball generally besides the teams to which they are assigned. In no indirect way, then, they have to be 'on' 24-7, because staying in, maybe, Seattle, they might get a call about something in New York. They do not take fools gladly.

Considering all that, their stance against Rose being in the Hall of Fame makes sense. If they're the ones who measure the greatest of the sport they knew more about than just about anyone else, if it still means something very important to a vast bunch of us, then determining who gets that honor must still contain the essence of honor--being a cut above people who, even though a different kind of elite in that they, too, were major leaguers, didn't quite measure up. That means setting standards, standards they're allowed to set for the Hall, and thus for the sport.

But some of the BBWA's hallowed practices have bordered on the silly. After an obvious first installment, for a particularly long time, nobody got a placement on the first opportunity, after the five years that the BBWA required to wait for it. Willie Mays didn't. Hank Aaron didn't. (Go ahead. Look it up.) That was preposterous, a 'tradition' that made absolutely no sense and diminished the Hall of Fame's seriousness rather than extol it. It made the process look much like a conjured star chamber.

Rose, for his side, said he didn't bet against his team (though he would bet on them to win), and didn't throw any games to win bets. I believe that. I don't think he stooped as low as Joe Jackson, a member of the infamous Black Sox scandal of 1919, who did throw two games of the World Series, then changed his mind, except it was too late and too little to prevent his team's defeat.

But that didn't mean Rose's actions weren't highly questionable or beyond the realm of decent ethics. They were akin to insider trading. Betting on major league baseball games, when one has been a player and manager, means you're taking advantage of information and a sense of learning few others have about those who play the game, either genuinely because you've done it yourself, you know and have watched the people themselves, or implicitly because the game itself has to be played at a certain level and you can tell who can get it done and who can't. I've played the game at a Division III collegiate level, for instance, but I can't extend that experience to knowing how to hit, say, Corbin Byrnes of Baltimore, if I could at all. 

Pete Rose knew enough, or thought he did (though he ended up losing a lot of money, because the game is still full of inexactitudes, full of statistics compiled only after the fact), to think he could fool the system and make plenty of money on the side. He took advantage of a privilege that he had earned, but one that few can have, and to the hardworking members of the BBWA, that's being something of a sneak and a bully.

Rose never apologized, either. The road back to forgiveness belongs to the perpetrator, at least at first. Rose thought that not betting against his team was enough for him to secure a pathway to the Hall. But he played fast and loose with the rules. 4,256 hits should have been more than enough, and no one lives a perfect life. He also slapped the deciders in the face, though, again and again, and that tells you something about him. The writers hold the keys to the door. His key never fit. (Shoeless Joe Jackson apologized, but with more than 3000 hits, he's still been denied entrance, too. So there's that.)

I don't like attaching Rose's denial of entrance to Giamatti's untimely death at age 51, though. To say that speaks to a sense of the Salem witchcraft trials, where bad events were blamed on people who had nothing to do with them. My own heart attack can't be tied to anything going on in my life at the time, though I had just moved from a very nice apartment under duress because my rent had been jacked up and I felt a sense of betrayal about that (though business is business in that racket, too). My cholesterol count was way-way up there, though.

If Giamatti passed away that soon, something else would probably have gotten him, and not too far later. It's not like being commissioner of baseball is a cakewalk. Did Giamatti's good karma get drained by Rose's bad? Come on now. That means the bad guy won. You want to go with that?

No, let's not go there. Let's stay with the core issue: Rose isn't in the Hall of Fame because the Baseball Writers of America say he shouldn't be. Their reasons are fair enough. But the grudge match can be called off, too, now that Rose has passed. He can't enjoy it now, not even for a day. That might change the equation.

I leave that to you. It's still not an easy call. Much will be made of it on the sports talk shows. If it happens, it will probably have to be some time later, after the greyhairs of the BBWA (and many of us) are gone. 

Can certain values remain? Which ones? We'll be making a different evaluation of that, too, after November 5. That determination is still far more imporant.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

The V-P Debate: Could Be the Biggest Deal

The campaign, by all accounts, has settled into a photo finish catfight. Nobody knows how the swing states will split.

The country, in other words, has a chance of making the same terrible mistake it made eight years ago. Ex- has turned down the possibility of another debate, having been horribly thrashed earlier this month, but nobody believes he has made that a binding decision.

What will determine it could easily be what his running mate does in his upcoming debate on October 1.

With a race this close, people who aren't tied to policy matters want to see somebody come out ahead in something. They don't want to be wracked with indecision. Here may be their last chance, short of some revelations that may or may not be true.

Vice-presidential debates aren't supposed to matter much. This one may be different.

The polls are all over the place. MSNBC thinks Harris is pulling away. The New York Times believes ex- is tightening his hold on the Sun Belt toss-up states. It points to a public that is skittish and waffling, as difficult as that may be to understand. It needs something concrete. It may get it, regardless of its genuineness, next Tuesday.

J.D. Vance is the perfect clone of ex-. He has changed his mind more often than his clothes. He has no principles other than what's been declared before the American Revolution. I hesitated to say that he's out of his mind, because I'm not sure his mind has much left in it that's genuine. Yes, he wrote a best-selling book that doubles down on the victimization of Appalachia, but he has come around to even double down on that. Now, not only is abortion wrong across the board, but childless women have diminished value, regardless of whatever their minds and efforts can develop. Now, he can make up, a.k.a. lie, about things that advance what he believes to be a winning agenda, including that Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio.

The latter sentiment has thoroughly pissed off Springfield's mayor, a declared Republican. That apparently doesn't bother Vance or ex- at all, so I wonder, now, if that mayor would like to reconsider his vote in 

November. Those declarations have set off threats in Springfield's public schools such that state troopers have to be called out to reassure parents that their kids won't get blown up or shot up or otherwise harmed just for attending school.

I hope, indeed I pray, for Tim Walz to casually ease that into whatever conversation the two of them have, having been a high school teacher himself. I think Walz would be well advised to treat Vance as he would have in class a bragging student who has little if any accuracy attached to his statements. In all likelihood, Vance will try to pin Walz into a corner, probably about immigration. Walz can use facts, quietly and calmly, to refute Vance just like social studies teachers like me did when annoyed with some student who liked to sound off but had nothing behind it except what he wished were true, what's being slogan-ized on the street, and/or whatever someone else told him to say, cheap shots notwithstanding, which might be considerable.

Walz's ability to handle what will surely be Vance's outrageous comments might create a bulwark against nonsense that might just take whatever hesitation that's left of some voters and turn them blue. Ex- is doing a fine job of stepping on rakes; posing Vance as ex-'s mini-me might just drag them into the ditch together. 

But maybe not. Without ex-'s acquiescence to a second debate with Harris, this would be the final public, national showdown between the two campaigns. Both can point to a need to gain ground--one to overcome what's analyzed as a deficit, one to create space between the two and confidently drive to the end.

Either way, the two men must know the stakes. Walz can't necessarily win if he has a good debate, but he can lose if he has a bad one. Vance could lead a rally that creates a successful photo finish. Barely a month to go now. Tough for someone to recover from a lousy performance.

Vice-presidential debates are often the stuff of 48 hours of jabbering, followed by a return to electioneering as usual. This one may take that form, too. But maybe not. Tim Walz has a lot to prove Tuesday. If he walks away the winner, he'll make it tougher to deny him and his running mate the prize. New problems will emerge if that happens, but nothing like the devastation that will accompany the other side's triumph. Good luck, Tim.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Remember: He's Terminator 2. Do Not Forget This.

Well, she did it. Fabulously. It couldn't have gone better had she scripted it herself.

Now what? How do we look at things now?

It is over? Some would say that. I say no. The numbers have moved here in Wisconsin, and that looks promising. But the very fact that they haven't clinched the deal means that the cult of attachment to ex- holds tight and can be defeated only at the edges.

This monster is like Terminator 2. Remember that film? He was destroyed and blown to bits more than once. Turns out you couldn't rely on doing that, ever. He re-formulated himself, literally pulled himself back together, and went on attacking, meaning to kill.

This is that sci-fi come to life. Ex- has gone right on lying (Did you really expect him to stop?). Turns out the mayor of Springfield, Ohio is getting pretty sick of portraying Haitian immigrants as pet-eating barbarians. They're not. They're contributing members of that community. That awful, disgusting rumor is partly the brainchild of his running mate, J.D. Vance, something Ohioans should remember when going to the polls, and again when Vance, should he lose, runs for another Senate term.

Meanwhile, we're coming in on 50 days left. What will ex- do now, besides lie about everything?

I predict he will come up with video lies utilizing artificial intelligence. He has plenty of money to hire the most deceptive people; I'm sure Elon Musk is fairly poised to pounce like a cougar. He will make Kamala Harris look sleazy, dishonest, herself a liar. I predict there will be a new set of ads coming out within three weeks. They will attempt to be devastating.

The Republicans will have to pull the ad claiming that "Bidenomics isn't working." Because it is. The rate of inflation is finally flattening out--just in time. The same ad also brags that gas prices are going up. They aren't. The price of gas in the Milwaukee area is beneath $3.00 in several places. Can't remember when that happened. It has to be happening elsewhere.

There will be plans to intimidate voting officials anew, to potentially smear them where a breakthrough to victory is most possible. Ex- won't have to do it; his enablers can and will try it without attribution. The closer we get to Election Day, the more this will emerge.

There will be new threats to Harris' campaign because her victory is no longer a distant idea. Recall that an assassination attempt nearly took ex-'s life, inches from succeeding. Someone will get it in their heads that Harris somehow deserves the same treatment. Expect this, regardless of source. The Department of Homeland Security has wisely increased the security around the Capitol in anticipation of another January 6 uprising, regardless of result--but you know where it's aimed.

Meanwhile, ex- has said he won't debate Harris anymore. Don't believe this for a second. He wants to catch us off-guard, so he can somehow utilize the advantage of surprise: Look, I've changed my mind! But I highly doubt that Harris, with her savvy so nicely demonstrated last Tuesday, will bite on this ruse. In fact, she announced that she's ready for another one.

If the numbers turn and remain against him, he will call for debate so quickly it'll make your head spin. If he gains ground, he will hedge his bets. If a debate still happens, he will remember to look at her this time to make his insults look better. For him, it's nothing about substance; all about the image. It's worked so far. But he'll have to try it again if the numbers don't respond. Will his self-delusion finally finish him off? We'll have to see.

This kind of deception is old hat for him. Like obsessing with crowd size, we should just yawn. The shock factor is wearing off. He doesn't get that. Too bad for him. That's why he must try to change reality. See above.

Harris has him in a corner. He must either change his approach--he hasn't yet; no reason to assume he will--or she will just keep saying versions of "Had enough?"

But he has overcome what has appeared to be massive odds before. Like the Terminator, he finds a way to charge right back at his foe. And the attention of the voters never lasts all that long.

If anything, Harris has bought time for herself. There will be different challenges, those we haven't heard of yet. October is coming. New polls will be released. Keep breathing.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

"Joy" Is Running Out

I remember the last time "joy" was used as a campaign slogan. Or ploy, if you want to get cynical about it.

It was 1968. The purveyor was Hubert Humphrey. It might just have been the attitude he wanted from the start. Or it might have been something else.

Ex- isn't the only person running for office who's tried to get people to look over here instead of consider what might be aspects of his candidacy that might condemn him to defeat. Happens, in fact, quite often.

In 1968, the Democrats had lots of reasons to try to get people to look the other way. In August, they'd waded through an awful, chaotic, divisive national convention that included a riot in a nearby park that included tear gas and hundreds of arrests; a party hack at the front podium accusing the police of "Gestapo tactics" in the streets; and a 'no decision' on whether or not to support the withdrawal from a war that had already cost the nation more than 25,000 lives. In other words, a complete mess.

Humphrey, then the Vice-President, received a nomination more of less by default, since President Lyndon Johnson, who had supposedly withdrawn from running for another term that past March 31, had seriously considered changing his mind, swooping into the convention, and reclaiming the front-runner status. His control of the Democratic Party was that pervasive. He could still hover anywhere he wanted to.

Humphrey didn't even have the overall support of his own party back then. He began the campaign a full 16 points behind Richard Nixon, who was about to undermine Humphrey with secret negotiations with North Vietnam so he could take credit for getting the country out of the war--not Johnson, who tried a bombing halt just days before the election. North Vietnam didn't engage in progressing negotiations, choosing to wait until Nixon, hopefully, took office.

In the meantime, Humphrey's emphasis on the "joy" of politics and campaigning helped bring him closer and closer to Nixon, who sat on his lead the rest of the way. As we know, Humphrey just about caught him, coming within half a percentage point. He failed, though, partly because of George Wallace's independent candidacy, which freed six southern states from their traditional Democratic mooring.

All that looks to insert itself into this campaign, only two months from concluding now. Ex- will look to unravel that tonight at the debate--if that's what you want to call it.

Because he won't be debating. He'll be destroying, ruining, catastrophizing. His exaggerations and lies will stand on their own. Many on the other side can't wait to hear them--again. They've long ago succumbed to being misled. They've already disdained the possibility that America can find a better place in the world without him running it. Harris may try her best to discount his endless nonsense, but will only partly succeed.

The country that he wants you to conclude is genuine is false and wrong and hopeless. And yes, it can become that way--if he's allowed to be at the top of the decision chain for another four years. It would get there in a hurry now, because he can't wait to get back at those who have written and spoken against him, and he knows something about the mechanics of doing so. He would also hire sycophants who are slavishly loyal and pliant to his every wish.

If Harris' "joy" survives tonight in any form, she will win and perhaps even pull away. But he is frighteningly persuasive. His very presence overwhelms some people despite the phoniness. Force and power are all he knows--but they work.

We stand at that brink. I wish the country well.

You, too. Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark