Farm irrigation: I love it when things work.

Feel free to skip this post.

It isn't about politics. It isn't even about my vineyard. 

It is about the little problems farmers encounter. And their quiet pleasure when thing work as they should.

It is about the pleasant sounds of an irrigation system. 

Medford, Oregon has a Mediterranean climate. We have cool wet winters. That means that there is a green lushness to the local plants. But then we have a hot, dry summer. The lush plants expect and need water. It takes irrigation.

I liken irrigating to a father bottle-feeding his infant. A farmer is the caretaker for vulnerable plants and I get the same feelings of nurturing that I felt about settling down and feeding my hungry infant. I am a caregiver and nurturer.

Sometimes the baby is fussing for some reason other than hunger. That is why there is a sense of relief when giving the baby a bottle and sucking starts. The baby is happy; problem solved. You don't always know. Sometimes it's something else, something unknown, and the baby stays fussy.

Irrigation systems have many points of potential failure. There could be a lack of water at the water source. The water there could be gritty or have plant material, and when pumped, it fouls  the lines. The foot valve -- the part of the irrigation line in the water -- may have problems being fully submerged when it is in a shallow ditch, and therefore draw air. The pump motor may not start, or keep working when started. There may be leaks at the joints of the distribution line. The sprinkler heads may be stuck in an open or closed position for some reason. The sprinkler heads may be fouled by grit sucked up from the ditch. The spray from the sprinkler heads may not cover the ground needing irrigation.  

And this litany of problems starts with a premise that one has all the water rights and other legal requirements, including the right to pump that water, the right to pump it from the place you want to pump it, the right to access that place, the right to put that water where you want to irrigate, and the ability to measure and report what you are pumping, if required, and the ability to show that that water came from flowing water, which you can use, not ground water, which you cannot. (Those issues are all fine for me, so I ignored them in listing points of failure, but they are big, big deal-killers for lots of farmers.)

Yesterday's irrigation was as good as it gets. My pump is in a good spot, with ample water, and the foot value is secured under water by a rock that holds it down. The water is clear of silt and debris. The distribution lines have little leaks at the joints, but they are minor and unimportant. I am running ten sprinkler heads, which cover the ground I want to irrigate. I moved the pipes 50 feet across the field from where I had irrigated the day prior, and everything moved and reattached easily. My nephew poured ethanol-free gasoline into the tank without incident. He pulled the starter cord exactly once. Once! (I love this Honda pump.) The Honda motor started, making the choked-engine sound as it ran. After two seconds my nephew moved the choke lever from ON to OFF, and the engine sped up and made the everything-running-great humming sound it makes while the pipes fill up. After 30 seconds the line filed up, the seals on the pipe closed, the sprinkler heads started spraying water. There was now pressure against the pump so the pump motor sound adjusted again. This time it made the all-pressured-up-everything-working-routinely sound.

If this always worked so perfectly , there would be no sense of relief. This time everything worked.

I have two short videos, each about seven seconds. The first is what a happy pump sounds like. Hummmmmmmmmmmmm. It is a nice sound, an everything-is-OK sound.  Enjoy.

Click Here: YouTube

The second video captures what sprinkler heads sound like as they go chi, chi, chi, chi, chi, chi. The pump motor is audible faintly about 200 yards away.

Click Here: YouTube

Feeding my infant son was one of the quiet, simple pleasures in my life. That experience is gone, but new ones arise in their place.

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Take their oil. What could go wrong with that?

Trump, 2016: We should have taken Iraq's oil.

Trump, 2026: We took Venezuela's oil.

Trump, 2026: We should take Iran's oil.

The USA has a long history of interfering with other countries domestic politics for the purpose of securing resources. Sometimes bananas. Sometimes pineapples. For the last hundred years, oil.

We say we are in it for the "democracy." That is the excuse and cover story. We want the resource. 

Jack Mullen has a theme to his guest posts: The foreign policy problems facing the USA today have roots in our forcing regime change in small countries to secure a resource. We don't care about "democracy" there, or a nation's leader who prioritizes the interests of his own people. In fact, that is a negative. We want countries whose leaders exploit their own people so we can enjoy their resources on good terms for us. 

Jack Mullen attended Medford, Oregon, schools, then the U. of Oregon. He worked beside me in local orchards during high school, and we worked together in the congressional office of Jim Weaver (D) in the 1970s. As a student he read history and still does. Jack is retired and lives in Washington, D.C. where he and his wife recently examined the reflecting pools.

Mullen

Mullen, at the reflecting pool this week

Guest Post by Jack Mullen

Significant presidential decisions

Ken Burns views the American Revolution as the most significant event in world history since the birth of Christ. The Revolution established a radical experiment in democracy. Strong headwinds plague 250 years of this radical experiment in self-governance.

The Industrial Revolution, with the rise of the modern petroleum industry, became a stress test for the viability of certain democracies. Mexico survived the stress test petroleum played in confronting its democracy. Iran did not.

The role the United States government played in Mexico and Iran's efforts to control their own natural resources is telling.

FDR and Mexico

A major consequence of the Mexican Revolution was a provision in the 1917 Mexican Constitution that asserted Mexican ownership of all "subsoil," including any natural resources discovered below the ground, which included oil.

Mexico became the world's second-largest producer of oil in the 1920s. Most of the oil produced in Mexico was exported to the world market with oil companies keeping most of their profits. The fact that the oil companies paid Mexican workers half of what they paid other workers in the same capacity led to the inevitable resentment that caused President Lazaro Cardenas, on March 18, 1938, to nationalize Mexican oil.

The U.S. oil industry was livid. So was Secretary of State Cordell Hull.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, consulting with his cabinet, sided with his Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, in allowing Mexico to nationalize its oil.

Roosevelt and Morgenthau felt it best to keep warm relations with Mexico. After all, Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy was in effect. As a Good Neighbor, the United States did not oppose Mexico's expropriation of foreign oil.

Mexico kept its end of the bargain of being a good neighbor by paying a $29 million compensation to American oil firms. The United States avoided its penchant for invading Mexico.

Every March 18, Mexico celebrates Oil Expropriation Day.

Truman, Eisenhower, and Iran

The 60-year D'Arcy Concession had granted the British one-sided control over Iran's oil. Both houses of the Iranian Parliament took the opportunity to claim control of oil within its borders and, in March 1951, voted to nationalize all its oil — not unlike Mexico in 1938.

British Petroleum (BP) met with President Truman to seek help in overthrowing the government of Iran. Prime Minister Churchill wanted America's help in forestalling the dwindling power of the British Empire wherever he could, especially in Iran, which bordered an expansionist Soviet Union.

Iran's Prime Minister, Dr. Mohammed Mosaddegh, came to the U.S. in October 1951 to make Iran's case before the United Nations and appeal to the American public.

Mosaddegh first stopped in New York to deliver a speech to the United Nations, then moved to Philadelphia. The Iranian prime minister addressed the American public in a speech, symbolically, in front of Independence Hall. In part, he spoke with an eloquence similar to what an American president expressed in defense of his country's commitment to its young democracy 90 miles away, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania:

"If my contrast of your own abundant freedom with our shackled liberties is touched by envy, it is because we share with you a love of liberty and because we have been less fortunate than you in wrestling our prized freedom from that country which in 1776 had to yield it to you."

After the speech, Prime Minister Mosaddegh walked over to touch the Liberty Bell. The next day he was to meet with President Truman at Blair House (the White House renovation was not yet complete).

The world emerging from World War II was a world of a rising Soviet Union along with nations yearning to toss off the yoke of their imperialistic masters. Under the circumstances in these changing times, Harry Truman met with Mohammed Mosaddegh on October 23, 1951. The meeting resulted in the United States taking a stance of neutrality with regard to the differences between Iran and the United Kingdom. While not the total win Iranians craved, Mosaddegh, for his efforts, became a hero in the Persian world and beyond.

Presidential elections matter. With Truman soon out of office, the arduous diplomatic efforts of the Truman administration's chief diplomat, Averell Harriman, to settle differences between the UK and Iran, were quickly tossed aside by the Eisenhower administration. The British Petroleum Company found favor with President Eisenhower along with his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, Allen Dulles, the new director of the CIA.

Swayed by the British arguments, in August 1953, the CIA, coupled with British intelligence, orchestrated a coup that toppled Iran's democratically elected government and sent Dr. Mosaddegh to prison for three years.

With Mosaddegh sent away, and with the help of the United States and the United Kingdom, the Pahlavi dynasty, founded in 1925 by Reza Shah Pahlavi, returned Reza's son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to power as the Shah. The new Shah proceeded to establish the Bureau for Intelligence and Security for the Imperial State (SAVAK). Censorship of the media began. The Shah's reign lasted until his overthrow in 1979 by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Consistency in United States foreign policy, and democracy's forward march, often become bogged in the smog of oil.

 

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Iran and Vietnam: A president needs to save face.

You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you sit back and watch
While the death count gets higher
          Bob Dylan, "Masters of War," 1963

March, 2026: Trump: we will leave "in two to three weeks."

April, 2026: Trump: we will leave "pretty quickly."

May, 2026: Trump: we are willing to wait "a few days."

June, 2026: Trump says "very soon."

Trump wants a way out of the Iran war that doesn't look like losing. 

Trump is scrambling. The polls are bad. Gas prices are high. Republicans expect to lose the House, even with all the gerrymanders. Senate Majority Leader John Thune cannot round up 50 Republican votes to meet Trump's demands. The war that was supposed to be quick, decisive, and glorious has become a political liability.

The strategic goals of the war — regime change, elimination of Iran's nuclear program, end to support of regional proxies — are unmet. The regime is still in place, with younger leadership and a fresh sense of national grievance. Their nuclear ambitions remain, only now inspections are a matter of negotiations. And Iran has acquired something more dangerous than a bomb: control of the Strait of Hormuz. Before February 28, the strait was an international waterway. Now it isn't. Iran can threaten the flow of oil the world needs. Countries that depend on it are seeking side deals. The goalposts have shifted so much that now we are negotiating to try to keep the strait from becoming a toll road for Iran. 

This war may bring regime change -- at the U.S. Iran can flip the power balance in the U.S. House by what they can do to the price of gasoline and the mood of the stock market. This war gave Iran "the cards."

Today's Wall Street Journal

So the war continues. Not because we can turn this into a win, but because Trump needs a formula that lets him say we won. He cannot pretend we won if Iran keeps shooting at ships and lobbing missiles into the oil kingdoms of the Gulf. We are supposed to protect them and their fragile, exposed economies, but we have shown we cannot. The oil kingdoms can protect themselves, though, by making nice with Iran and demanding we remove our regional military bases. 

This war is a loser, but the war continues.

I've seen this before.

In 1971 I was in my last year of college. My student deferment was expiring. When I graduated, I would be eligible to be drafted and sent to Vietnam.

My lottery number was 202. The army estimated that it would need to call up the first 195 numbers, unless something came up and they needed more. I was seven numbers from a war that Nixon and Kissinger had concluded could not be won. I didn't know that then. I thought they thought we were fighting for principles of democracy and anti-communism. I thought our leaders were sincere, but wrong. They weren't. The tapes and diaries that were revealed after their terms of office showed that they were cynical, selfish, and immoral. They were fighting to win an election. American lives were just the price to pay to avoid Nixon having to admit the war was pointless.

Here is what Nixon and Kissinger knew, and said to each other privately:

They said the war was unwinnable. Soldiers would be sent there, some would die, but the outcome was already determined. The Pentagon, State Department, and CIA had told them that even after Vietnamization — the plan to train the South Vietnamese to defend themselves — Saigon would not survive without U.S. combat support. Leaving meant losing. Our military was going to leave as soon as it could do it without endangering the 1972 re-election. Nixon wanted to claim "peace with honor." Since it couldn't, it needed to wait until the re-election was safely squared away. Then admit reality.

On December 21, 1970, White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman recorded in his diary that Kissinger "argues against a commitment that early to withdraw all combat troops, because he feels that if we pull them out by the end of '71, trouble can start mounting in '72 that we won't be able to deal with, and which we'll have to answer for at the elections."

On March 19, 1971 — the year I would have been drafted — Kissinger told Nixon on tape: "We can't have it knocked over — brutally — to put it brutally — before the election." Nixon's response: "That's right."

On August 3, 1972, Kissinger told the president: "We've got to find some formula that holds the thing together a year or two, after which — after a year, Mr. President, Vietnam will be a backwater."

They called it a "decent interval." A face-saving delay between when American troops came home and when the communists took over — long enough that Nixon wouldn't have to own the loss before Election Day.

What they did not discuss, in any of those conversations, was what it meant for the men who would fight and die in the interval. Miller Center of Public Affairs historian Ken Hughes, who spent decades on the Nixon tapes, noted this specifically: "Neither man mentioned the additional losses that prolonging the war would cause — there is nothing about what it meant to American POWs in the North, American soldiers in the South, or the Vietnamese on either side."

More than 20,000 Americans died during Nixon's first term. 

Trump is now doing a version of what Nixon did. He is carrying on a war with a strategic outcome baked in, willing to accept any "deal" so long as it gets us out of there, with the stock market happy and gasoline prices down. Karl Rove wrote about it frankly in a Wall Street Journal column on Sunday: We are settling for a very bad deal because we want out at any cost. When Trump loses Karl Rove and The Wall Street Journal, all that is left is pretense and the politics of the midterm elections. 

Young Americans are in harm's way while a president worries about how to avoid embarrassment while pretending there is some higher purpose for the war. A decade from now, lives lost, money spent, diaries and documents and tell-all memoirs by aides will reveal that it was all done for the self-serving political goals of the president. I have seen this movie.

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Easy Sunday: Baby grapes

 I scared people with this photo a week ago.

The photo wasn't staged or cherry-picked. It was me at 11:29 a.m. on a day that was already heating up. I had been working in the vineyard, putting floppy, unruly vines in between wires that shaped the plant into a narrow, vertical one. I had been out there for about five hours by then. I was quitting for the day.

People called and texted me and said I looked "terrible." One said I looked like "death warmed over," a phrase I hadn't heard for decades. Their point was that I needed to take it easier.  

Here I am five days ago, also at end-of-day, at 11:23 a.m. I am doing the same job, but going through the vineyard now on a second pass through. It is lighter work now that the job is dealing with only the previous week's growth. I think I look OK, i.e., not killing myself.

Yesterday I took photos of the grapes in progress, photos to create a record and for analysis by the vineyard operators at Valley View Vineyards, who have been supervising my vineyard from the beginning. 

Each variety of grape plant is different in the vigor of the plant, the natural shape of the vines, the shape of the leaves, the shape of the canes, and the size of the grapes and how big the harvest.

The varieties are on different clocks, too. Pinot Noirs bud out and blossom early; Cabernet Sauvignons are about three weeks later. Malbecs are in the middle. The frosts we had in April damaged the Pinots and Malbecs, because their buds were out and vulnerable. The Cabernets were still dormant and apparently unaffected.  Toward the season's end, I picked an exploratory crop of Pinots on October 6 -- enough for Valley View Vineyards to buy on spec to ferment, barrel, and age for a year to see whether 100 percent pumice-grown conditions are as good for grapes as they are for melons. These are Pinots:

There were negligible Cabernets to pick in that third year. But my Malbecs were advanced and they bear a heavy crop; it was going to be a giant harvest even this first harvest-year for the vineyard -- except the starlings which had not noticed my Pinots discovered my Malbecs and ate the entire crop in two days, just before we planned the harvest. I will put up nets this year, another expense and bother.

This is what Pinot Noir grapes looked like yesterday, June 27.

The Pinot Noir vines are vigorous -- if anything, too vigorous. I am avoiding watering my grapes to try to keep the vine growth manageable. The roots are finding the water and nutrients they need without my help.

My Malbec vines shown below are even more vigorous, again without fertilizer or water. The giant growth we see in the new floppy canes has all taken place in the last week. My nephew, Liam Flenniken, who is helping me all summer, is six feet, three inches. These canes have grown out of the top pair of wires at five feet off the ground, and need to be clipped so they don't flop over and shade the plant. It will be fast work, but there is a lot of it, because every plant in the two acres planted to Malbecs looks like these. 

Liam and I decided to take Sunday off. We will get to the Malbecs and Cabernets next week. Then back to the Pinots, which we just finished. The work continues all summer.

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Unreliable

"Call me irresponsible, call me unreliable
Throw in undependable too"
          Lyrics by Sammy Cahn, "Call Me Irresponsible" 1962. Winner of Academy Award for best original song, 1963

The U.S. is no longer considered trustworthy in matters of trade and national defense.

We are irresponsible, unreliable, and undependable. 

The rest of the world is making adjustments. 

American voters wanted change. We got conned.

Middle-class Americans had been falling behind for years — not all at once, but gradually, enough to feel it. I saw the discontent up close at Trump rallies in 2015 and 2016. The crowds were hearing a barely-coded economic and racial message they recognized. You are getting screwed, Trump told them. The system is rigged against you.

He punched down at Black Americans who he said had gotten ahead illegitimately. Obama was a fraud — born in Kenya, he claimed. Immigrants from Mexico and Muslim countries were criminals, terrorists, freeloaders. The elites had built a swamp. Trump alone knew how to drain it.

We bought it. And we bought it again in 2024.

Donald Trump is on us — the American electorate. We knew he stiffed vendors. We knew he lied to his wives, his banks, his bondholders, and to us. We knew he dealt in fantastic exaggerations and outright fabrications. But the man can sell. He seems so frank, so direct, so certain.

Donald Trump is a package. When you elect the man who shakes up America's immigration system, election system, and constitutional order, you also get the man who shakes up the international system. He flipped American support from Ukraine to Russia. He's walking away from NATO. He invented arbitrary tariffs on long-established trading partners, threatened Mexico and Canada, and declared he wants Greenland. He partnered with Israel to go to war against Iran, then abandoned the effort when it went badly.

Foolish Israel. It trusted us.

The Pew Research Center has put numbers on what the world now thinks of us.

                                          ------   ------

Trump successfully made the argument that being liked and respected by foreign governments was a negative, evidence that they took advantage of weak former presidents, including Republicans, but especially Obama. Foreigners liked us because they sponged off us in matters of trade and defense spending. George Bush went to war with Iraq for principle, not for plundered oil; what a wasted opportunity. China, Mexico, Canada -- heck, everybody -- got access to our markets for free and we got screwed. We were saps.

Our reputation with foreigners cannot be repaired by a successor to Trump, whether Democrat or Republican. The U.S. voters re-elected Trump, proving that he wasn't an aberration and mistake, but a democratic choice. The arbitrary and changing tariffs on everyone demonstrate that the U.S. has hostile intent and wants to keep all options open all the time. No alliance is secure. No trade relationship is fixed. Everything is subject to instant change for reasons of the personal pique or political advantage of a president. 

The Gordie Howe Bridge connecting Canada and Detroit is a physical symbol of the unreliable USA. 

Under an agreement with President Obama and Michigan officials, Canada paid six billion dollars to build the bridge. Now, at completion, Trump says he won't allow traffic to cross it. Prime Minister Mark Carney called it "a great example of cooperation between our two countries." Michigan's leaders praised it as "an incredibly important infrastructure project" for jobs and the state economy. Trump is unhappy with Canada and Carney, so he's holding the bridge hostage until Canada hands over half of it and compensates the U.S. for an ambiguous "everything we have given them."

There is a wrinkle. The bridge competes with another bridge — one that pays tolls to a major Trump donor.

The bridge will presumably open eventually, under some arrangement. But Trump has leverage, because Canada has already spent the money. The bridge is worthless if it can't be used. Canada made the classic mistake: doing the work first, then letting itself be exposed to Trump reneging. Trump built a career stiffing contractors who did exactly that on his real estate projects.

Foolish Canada. It trusted us.

The world is taking note.

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Are Democrats committing brand suicide?

"We are all outlaws in the eyes of America. . . 

We are obscene, lawless, hideous, dangerous, dirty, violent
And young"

        Jefferson Airplane, "We can be together," 1969

Democratic pundits are wetting their pants. I'm not.

I'm not a Democratic Socialist. But I feel pretty serene about what happened in New York's primary on Tuesday. Three Democratic Socialist candidates won Democratic nominations for Congress — two of them defeating incumbents. Democrats need a shakeup, and they're getting one.

The candidate drawing the most attention is Darializa Avila Chevalier, who wrote things on social media between a half dozen years ago that will sound extreme to a lot of voters, including me: Abolish all policing, abolish prisons, abolish all national borders, nationalize utilities and hospitals, seize property from landlords. Fox News will repeat this on a loop and call it Democratic Party policy.

She tried to delete those posts. The internet never forgets.

But I discount to approximately zero the things political activists write in graduate school. Universities are hothouses — incubators for brainstorms, new paradigms, ideas tried out free of the constraints of inertia, opposition, and how the ideas get paid for. That's their purpose. I take these candidates seriously, but not literally.

What we saw in New York wasn't a policy agenda. It was youth, impatience, and energy. Voters wanted the Pepsi Generation vibe — politics for "those who think young." The incumbent Chevalier defeated is 69. She is 32.

Mamdani

Zohran Mamdani is, whatever else, charismatic and good-looking. He smiles. He's bright, articulate, and energetic. Do I agree with everything he says? No. But his most ambitious proposals won't happen — the weight of opposition and inertia will see to that. What I'm ready for is politics that feels cool again. The establishment face of the Democratic Party is not cool.

Democratic voters want someone who makes politics feel like it can change the world. They want candidates who address unaffordable housing, the widening gap between new billionaires and shrinking middle-class incomes, naked corporate pay-to-play, and the feeling among young people that the generation in power has left them holding the bag.

I understand that impatience. Fifty-four years ago, I dropped out of graduate school because I decided historians wouldn't change the world — but good politicians might.

Sixty years ago, young people looked and sounded weird and offensive to those in power, as we pushed for disruptive change on race and the role of women. We frightened Johnson, Nixon, and Reagan. Jefferson Airplane sang about being transgressive, upsetting to the Establishment, and then the final insult: "young." 

The Beatles asked for a nonviolent revolution. "We all want to save the world," they sang. It was inspiring. I wanted to be inspired. JFK had inspired me. America could be a force for good. It is exciting to think that some great, good change is possible. 

I see the New York results as a crack in the wall. Will this destroy the Democratic brand? Not if Democrats absorb and co-opt the best of these ideas — diluted, moderated, made workable. Democratic Socialists will see them as watered down and moderated, and they will complain. This is a feature, not a bug, for Democrats. A Jon Ossoff, Pete Buttigieg, Josh Shapiro, Gavin Newsom, or someone not yet on our radar will be a stronger candidate in the battleground states if voters see this criticism from his left flank.

Edgy, cool candidates from bright-blue districts are how positive change starts. Change is hard. Change is slow. But it starts somewhere.

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Showdown: Tina Kotek vs. Christine Drazan.

Democratic incumbent Governor Tina Kotek is stuck with the gas tax and what it represents. 

Her Republican challenger, state Senator Christine Drazan, is stuck with Trump and what he represents.

Christine Drazan and Tina Kotek

Eighty-three percent of Oregonians voted "NO" on Measure 120, the gas tax, registration, and fee hikes referendum. Democrats passed the measure in a special session to keep the Oregon Department of Transportation from laying off snow plow drivers and closing DMV offices. Republicans quickly gathered petition signatures to put it on the May ballot, giving voters a chance to rescind the "Democratic tax." Democrats have large majorities in the legislature, and Democrats hold all the statewide offices. Tina Kotek is up for re-election this year.

The measure was a litmus test on how feel people about taxes, yes, but also about how they feel about Democrats. Oregonians were voting about the cost of living, homelessness and homeless encampments, Oregon's low rank in education, the hollowing out of Portland's downtown, the high cost of housing, job losses in Oregon, Oregon's 10 percent state income tax, and Oregon losing population because people are moving to other states. 

Tina Kotek has a problem. Drazan is a credible candidate, an establishment Republican. If the election is a referendum on Kotek, I predict Kotek will lose.

Kotek needs to change the frame and make the election about Trump and his Republican enablers and sycophants. Kotek is an incumbent, so it is inevitable it will be in part about her; she is stuck with that. But she isn't stuck with its being a referendum on her alone. It can be two referenda: on Kotek and Trump. Trump makes that possible; inevitable, even. He insists on being the center of attention, always making news, always shocking, always ferocious in his opposition to Democrats. The news is about him, him, him. That suits Kotek's frame perfectly. Trump has been open about targeting blue states, and his attempts to ban vote-by-mail put this attack front and center right at election time. 

Let the two faces in the voters' minds be Kotek's and Trump's. Let Trump be seen as the dangerous disrupter.

Shape the referenda with Kotek in the role of Oregon's embattled defender; Trump is the troublemaker.

--  Gasoline prices are high? Kotek didn't go to war with Iran; Trump did.

--  Tariffs raising prices and destroying the markets for wheat and wine? They are Trump's tariffs. Oregon led the states in filing objections to the tariffs.

--  Grocery prices are high? Blame Trump's ICE for targeting the wrong people: farm workers in stead of criminals. 

--  Home building is down? Trump's tariffs on Canadian softwood and steel raised the price of new construction.

--  Education is struggling? Trump cut the Department of Education.

--  Forest management is neglected? Trump's DOGE made disastrous cuts to the U.S. Forest Service, over Oregon's objections.

--  Taxes are high? Trump gave tax breaks to billionaire campaign contributors.

On Tuesday I wrote a controversial post saying that a Democrat running for Congress has a longshot chance of winning election in my bright-red congressional district. How? By avoiding making it a comparison election between a Democrat and a Republican. Instead, make it a referendum election on Trump and his GOP enablers.

Kotek has the same opportunity.  A comparison election with Drazan makes it about Oregon discontent, and voters want change. That positions Kotek as the villain. But a referendum on Trump makes Kotek a hero, Trump the villain, and Drazan a sidekick of the villain. Trump likes being the strong guy in charge of everything. Let him play that role. Be the guy who created this status quo.

Drazan will be talking about the gas tax, as the symbol of what is wrong with Kotek. That's her best play. Kotek will be talking about Trump, as the symbol of what is wrong with Drazan. That's Kotek's play.

Kotek is more popular than Trump.

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