Could a Democrat win a Congressional seat in a bright red district? Usually, no. This year, maybe yes.

I am holding an event for Chris Beck, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Representative in my district.

It is this Sunday, at 2 p.m.

Yes, readers are welcome. Come say hello.

The invitation below is unusual. Instead of a red, white, and blue banner and a big photo of the candidate, there is a note from me where the Beck photo should be. I make the argument that voters have a binary choice, yes-or-no, on the Trump presidency. The incumbent Republican, Cliff Bentz, is a down-the-line enabler of the Trump agenda. He may have private reservations about Trump; he said he does. Private reservations don't count. Private reservations just show Bentz knows he is failing to do his duty. He has a job to protect the Constitution and the country with his votes and he does not do it.

Chris Beck would. So voters have a choice: A Trump enabler or an independent check on Trump.

If you live locally, come see Chris Beck.

Here is the invitation the campaign sent out:

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We are being chased out of the Middle East

Osama Bin Laden's 9/11 goal: The U.S. out of the Arabian Middle East.

We cannot hold up our end of the bargain with the Gulf's oil monarchies: We were to protect their oil infrastructure, they sell oil in U.S. dollars.

It turns out we cannot protect them. We cannot even protect our military bases.

CBS News published these photos of damage to U.S. bases in the region. They are undated photos but were presented as damage from recent Iranian strikes. There are multiple sources of confirmation that U.S. bases in the region are no longer safe or usable to place troops or weapons.

Prince Sultan Air Force Base, Saudi Arabia.

 Camp Buehring, Kuwait

Camp Arifjan, Kuwait

This isn't Trump's mess. It is America's mess, too.

In 1821 President John Quincy Adams said America "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy." Since World War II the U.S. has ignored that advice. We have the capacity to try to fix things in countries that have resources we want or governments we dislike, and we have used that capacity. The world has seen our hypocrisy even if the U.S. has not. 

On February 27, the day before we started up this phase of the war with Iran, we were in negotiations to deal with Iran's nuclear facilities. Diplomats from Oman were on their way to Washington, D.C., with a draft agreement to freeze Iran's nuclear program. Ships passed through the international waterways of the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea. Oil kingdoms pumped and refined oil and exported it. The U.S. was presumed to have such overwhelming military power that Iran did not dare threaten passage of commerce, nor threaten Gulf neighbors, nor threaten American facilities in the region. Oil was bought and sold in dollars, which meant that those sales got recycled back into U.S. Treasuries, which funded our deficits. The U.S. was presumed to have strong alliances with NATO countries and Middle East countries. American warships could be in the area as ominous threats to potential adversaries and as reassurances to countries dependent on our security architecture.

NY Times

Even Murdoch's MAGA-oriented NY Post is reporting the damage

Today, Iran and other countries in the region have learned the lesson that the U.S. would launch a surprise attack under the cover of negotiations. Iran has shown it can close first one and now two essential waterways of world commerce. Iran has shown Gulf monarchies that the U.S. cannot protect them. Iran has bombed American bases in the region, making them no longer usable, forcing our air power to retreat to the remote island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. China and Russia have drawn closer to Iran; China is now doing oil business in yuan. The Gulf monarchies are furious with us. Our NATO and other allies have told the U.S. that we are on our own there.

Meanwhile, the residual goodwill that Americans had for Israel has diminished dramatically. Candidates in both parties need to deny they are getting campaign help from AIPAC or other readily identifiable pro-Israeli groups. Our support for Israel enabled it to worsen its relations with the rest of the world and to reduce its security against rivals in the region. 

Moreover, the U.S. made assassination of foreign leaders and decapitation of foreign governments, done under cover of peace negotiations, the policy and practice of the U.S. government. What could go wrong with that?

Amid this disaster of bad strategy and outcome, the fact that is moving our politics is that gasoline and diesel are 30% more expensive than they were last year. In Medford, Oregon gasoline is now $5.30 a gallon, up from $4.00. The U.S. thought we had "the cards" against Iran; we could bomb them at will. It turns out that Iran had the cards because they had leverage where it mattered; Americans will tolerate a giant reset of U.S. standing in the world, a matter of generational consequence, but we won't tolerate higher gasoline prices.

Irony is not dead.

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The REAL reason the Supreme Court defied Trump

I wasn't worried that the Supreme Court would let Trump implement his Postal Service plan. And it didn't.

It would have been unpopular.

The Supreme Court protects Trump from himself. 

To be fair, sometimes the court acts like the one we imagined in high school civics: an honest, fair-minded interpreter of the Constitution. Maybe that is even true most of the time. Those are the cases where there is no particular partisan interest. This year, for instance, a 9-0 decision held that a defendant who lived in San Francisco, and was investigated there, could not be tried there if the underlying crime of giving false documents to police took place in Seattle. The Constitution says you're tried where the crime was committed, and there's no Democratic or Republican position on trial venue. The court played it straight.

But on issues with a partisan interest, the court finds a way to vote that interest. Tea leaves, sheep entrails, and the Constitution can be read to meet the need of the moment. The six Republican-appointed justices gave Trump immunity from prosecution. They allowed race-based gerrymandering as long as jurisdictions assert the racial component is incidental (wink-wink) to helping elect Republicans; southern states immediately gerrymandered out of existence districts with Black representatives. They ended Roe v. Wade, letting Trump fulfill his promise to the GOP's anti-abortion wing.

Yet the court says NO to Trump when he tries to do unpopular things. His effort to end birthright citizenship would put everyone's citizenship status in doubt. The current rule is simple and enforceable: born in the USA, you're a citizen; and we have good evidence of where people are born. Even so, as Trump's own claim that Obama's hospital and state records were false shows, an intransigent accuser can turn citizenship into a controversy. Under Trump's proposed rule, a parent's legal status and a father's paternity would all be subject to challenge. Neither hospitals nor state vital-records offices were ready to implement Trump's executive order. So the court said no. Chaos avoided; Trump protected.

That's also why the justices voted to stop Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs, a case where I filed an amicus curiae brief. The tariffs were unpopular, and the GOP Congress didn't dare defy Trump, so the court did what Congress feared to do.

Trump's plan to make the U.S. Postal Service the enforcer of voting eligibility, rolled out less than seven weeks before the election, would have forced mail-voting jurisdictions to build backup in-person systems overnight, unfunded. Trump may have imagined disenfranchised Democrats; the chaos would have hit red and blue states alike. County clerks across America would have erupted. Even unengaged voters would have noticed the chaos, and that it was Trump's doing. The implication was unmistakable: Trump was messing with the election to steal it. And what a mess!

The court made a wise political decision: this was a bad idea, badly planned, impossible to implement, and bad for Trump and Republicans alike. 

I almost hoped Trump would get his way. Give him rope. Sometimes it takes a catastrophe to make people vote for change; 1932's bank failures, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and the 2008 financial collapse were all clarifying moments. Voters shake things up. People realize it is a new era. Republican officeholders might stop fearing being "primaried" by a Trump-endorsed challenger. Congress might start doing its job.

But I only almost wanted it. The trouble with chaos is that we never know how it resolves. Even amid anger at Trump, the votes that would be cast and get counted might come out exactly as Trump is trying to arrange. The lesson the world might learn is not that Trump is dangerous. It might be that democracy is easy to subvert if you control who votes and whose vote gets counted.

The Supreme Court ran interference for Trump. Two justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, voted their partisan id. Four wiser Republicans said no. 

The result is a win-win-win for the GOP:

-- The court majority gets to look independent of Trump. See! We aren't his toadies!
-- Trump avoids a political setback.
-- And Trump gets to fulminate at rallies about how much better things would have gone had he gotten his way.

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Trump: "Cheat like hell." How it might happen.

"Cheat like hell."

Trump has a system that works. He tells us what he is going to do. He is shameless about it.

Then, when he does it, we aren't shocked. It was already on the table. He normalized it. 

President Trump is scrambling for a way to game the 2026 midterm elections. He got the extreme gerrymander done. He is trying to get the Postal Service involved. He has people with a history of election denial working in local election jobs, ready to find pretexts to object to the voting if a Democrat wins. He has posited declaring martial law amid a national emergency.  He has mentioned using ICE to cause disruption at heavily-Democratic polling places. 

We aren't being forewarned. We are being groomed.

College classmate Erich Almasy read my "Easy Sunday" post that listed two ways to cheat in an election and that got him thinking of others. He sent me these, perhaps in the manner of a person telling a ghost story around a campfire. After graduation Erich Almasy went to Harvard Business School, then had a long career on the consultancy/business management track. He and his classmate wife, Cynthia Blanton, live in Mexico.

Guest Post by Erich Almasy.

I try not to be a doomsayer, but after my comment on Peter’s Sunday column, I have compiled a few potential scenarios that should keep Democrats up at night. 

First, my comment that House Speaker Mike Johnson won’t certify Democratic Party wins, opening the way for the existing House to negate them after January 3rd. Various pundits have suggested this, including Bryan Tannehill of Byline. In this scenario, Mike Johnson, as Speaker, would not certify Democratic wins, and the current House configuration, with a Republican majority, would remain. This “rump” House would negate the election, throwing the entire process into the Supreme Court, with who knows what result. 

Second, my wife, Cynthia Blanton, believes that the recent firing of qualified military leaders by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is a prelude to what would essentially be a coup with troops deployed to polling stations to intimidate or interfere with voters in key locations. By eliminating fair-minded generals and admirals, the stage is set for a “Seven Days in May” scenario in October. She bases her theory partly on what she witnessed in Arizona while caring for her dad. The nearby army bases were infested (my word) with born-again Christians, all avid Trump supporters. 

Fox News: just a temporary loss for Trump

Third, will the Supreme Court rule against the United States Postal Service's involvement in screening mail-in ballots? It seems straightforward that this step interferes with the constitutional role states play in administering elections. But reports suggest that, behind the scenes, the Postal Service is steaming ahead (and possibly steaming ballot envelopes) with plans to interfere. Will anyone trust that their ballot actually got to the proper election authorities? Oregon is the only state with 100 percent mail-in voting, but several states are not far behind, and the overall percentage nationwide in the last two elections was 31 percent. Even the president uses an absentee mail-in ballot. 

Detroit News headline

Fourth, and possibly the most likely scenario, is that President Trump, who seems to have a penchant for them, declares a national emergency either just before or just after the elections. Many of Trump’s followers, especially the White ones, still buy into his claim of widespread voter fraud in 2020, despite his losing over 60 court cases and there being no evidence of any significant fraud. This has not stopped their belief in fraud, and by playing to that, Trump could offer disinformation regarding voting machine manipulation, foreign country (probably China) interference, non-citizen voting, and/or mail-in ballot forgery. CNN rates this possibility as low, mainly because of the short time left, but the Missouri attorney general’s willingness to defy both his own Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court is dire indeed.

Finally, the president and the Republicans who are willing to tamper with America’s democracy may simply choose to amplify voter confusion. How will anyone make an informed voting decision with so many lies? Will even vigilant voters stay home? Will the results align with expectations? Will challenges diminish future support for voting? If any part of these scenarios happens, we may have seen the last true elections in the United States.

[A note from Peter: My wife and I have never trusted the Postal Service to deliver our ballots. We bring our filled-out ballots to the drop box in front of the county election office. Are we paranoid? I think not. We are being prudent.] 

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Good Event: Grass roots one-on-one politics.

What "moves the needle" in an election campaign? 

Do meet-and-greet fundraisers? Does knocking on doors? Do TV and social media ads? Do lawn signs? 

You never know, so you try them all.

Denise Krause met and talked with about 55 people Sunday afternoon.

Campaign fundraisers for state and local campaigns have a pattern. The candidate lines up a host and venue. The campaign and host invite people. The event last about two hours, starting with mingling for the first 30 to 40 minutes. The candidate makes the rounds. Then someone, usually the host, goes to the microphone and welcomes people. The host introduces someone well known to the audience who shares positive thoughts about the candidate for a couple of minutes. The candidate speaks and answers questions for about 40 minutes. Then someone other than the candidate makes a wrap-up speech urging people to donate money.

That is pretty much it. 

Sometimes the well-known person speaks briefly after the main-event candidate's speech, instead of before. That is what happened yesterday. A popular former Democratic county commissioner, David Gilmour, M.D., played that role.

On Sunday a guest, David Lane, stood up and shouted out an impromptu appeal to fellow guests to donate more than they had planned.

I did the wrap-up appeal for donations.

My wife later told me I went on too long. I reiterated a point I have made multiple times in this blog. Krause's opponent makes no mention of being a Republican. He presents himself as "working across the aisle" and opposing "rubber stamp" politics. That is smart messaging, but it belies the very partisan behavior of the organization he led, the Medford Chamber of Commerce and its PAC. It also belies the extraordinary amount of partisan Republican money he is receiving, which he is using to buy commercials saying he is neither partisan nor Republican. I watched CNN for 10 minutes this morning while making coffee. Hicks had two 30-second ads during those 10 minutes. 

I made the point that Trump has nationalized state politics. He has attacked Oregon's vote-by-mail system and his Big Beautiful Bill cuts the Affordable Care Act's support for insurance premiums. This is causing a cascade of cancelled insurance, cuts to the Oregon Health Plan, and distress and closure of Oregon's rural hospitals because the care they provide is billed but uncollectable. Republicans could publicly object to this, but don't. That means, even if they pretend otherwise, they are partisan Republicans.

I urged people to donate money, but Krause need not match Hicks' spending. Even casual followers of politics notice all the ads: Wow! The message is independence but the meta-message is a pawn in a party of billionaires. The public's unease with data centers and financial and industrial elites shows the danger in that meta-message. His being a former Chamber of Commerce executive further locks in that association: the candidate of very very big money. My own sense is that this is a structural disadvantage for Hicks, and more money doesn't cure it. Meanwhile, Krause has a structural advantage: a single mother, a long career in health policy, and scrappy survivor of both cancer and an insurance company that tried to deny coverage to her and women like her. 

Some voters will prefer Goliath in any contest. He represents powerful people and some voters trust that. My sense is that more people will prefer David here, especially this year. All David needs is a few stones to make her point, and that is what this fundraiser was about.

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Easy Sunday; Trump: "Cheat like hell."

President Donald Trump: 

     “Please raise your right hand. I pledge, to the greatest president in the history of the United States, that loves us so much he can’t even breathe, that I will go out with my family, my friends, I’ll do it any way, I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m gonna try and cheat like hell like they do."

No matter how low Trump goes, there is always something lower.  

Republican officeholders and candidates are silent. They are establishing new norms of what is acceptable behavior for a Republican. 

i don't welcome a messy 2026 midterm election, but I can see how easy it is to create one. In a state like Oregon, with mail ballots, I expect to see something like this from people inspired by Trump:

Partisans will watch for when ballots are mailed and go to homes that had lawn signs for Democratic candidates. They will follow the mail delivery truck open the target mailbox, and steal the ballot. They will fill it out, voting Republican, and send it in. When the Democrat complains to the county clerk that they didn't get a ballot, the clerk will see they had already submitted a vote, and that the signatures don't match. That ballot won't be counted. The Democrat will be offered a new ballot and get to vote, and that one will count.

If the Democratic vote is counted, what's the point? The chaos and news of election fraud is the point. The county clerk will warn of mailbox ballot thefts, and there will be police investigations. It will make local news. GOP party officials can blame Democrats, and call it a false flag operation. The big takeaway for the public would be that elections are insecure and there is massive fraud. The real winner in a now "questionable" election is the party that declares victory, i.e.,Trump's party, and his party controls the postal inspectors, the FBI, and the White House. The GOP will insist that it won, and stick to the story. 

No need to worry about a federal prosecution, even if one's fingerprints are on the stolen ballot and saliva on the stamp. Federal prosecutors won't be interested in this crime. Moreover, in the rare chance of prosecution,you will be protected by a blanket pardon, just like the January 6 rioters. Whatever you did, you did for a noble purpose, and Trump protects his foot-soldiers.

Here is how to do it  on a wholesale level, in Oregon or any state with clusters of Democrats in certain areas, most likely in the state's most urban area.

Create disturbances in that area on or before election day. Find rough guys to march, block traffic, and generally disturb the peace. Make pretext accusations about suitcases of ballots based on photographs of the trunks of cars or Amazon delivery vehicles. How can anyone prove there weren't suitcases of ballots in that vehicle? Flood the zone with accusations. The goal is to create suspicion that votes in Portland's Multnomah County, Detroit's Wayne County, Atlanta's Fulton County, and Phoenix's Maricopa County were "questionable" and therefore should be uncounted.

One fact is on Trump's side: The vote in those counties will almost certainly be more Democratic than it will be in rural parts of the state. Aha!! That Democratic imbalance is proof of vote tampering. Accuse. The fact of accusations make the votes "questionable." 

Will any of this happen? I expect it. After all, it did happen.

Republican officeholders and voters ratified this strategy by rejecting the candidacies of Mike Pence, Chris Christie, and Nikki Haley who called it out. They instead chose Trump. Trump tried this approach in 2020, but was confounded by Republican officeholders in key places who found the idea new and transgressive. Things are different now. Those people are gone. A Republican-majority Senate confirmed election deniers into the positions that confounded Trump in 2020. Voters chose election deniers in state and local offices. Trump changed the norms, telling Republicans to cheat, saying it aloud, in public, on camera. Cheat like hell. 

Until a Republican candidate or officeholder openly and publicly condemns Trump for this corruption -- and very few dare do this, and those who do become pariahs -- I consider them to be a quiet consenter to Trump, a collaborator. They are protecting their careers in GOP politics rather than fulfilling their oaths of office. 

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We are picking a fight with Canada

Do any of my readers dislike Canada?

Does anyone think Canada was a bad neighbor, a threat, or that it was taking advantage of us?

Does anyone feel a happy twinge of national pride when we see our president troll, insult, and start a trade war with Canada?

I don't.

The Trump administration is destroying over a century of good relations with a neighbor, ally, and trading partner, and for what? So that the U.S. would look bigger on a map? So that we could absorb Canada and then ourselves have to deal with the Canadian issues such as Quebec's French culture? So we could bring our own success and expertise to relations with their indigenous people? 

Trump posted this image on Truth Social. Take that, Mark Carney!

I don't get it. Bullying Canada is bad economics, bad foreign policy, bad trade policy, and bad politically for Trump. This is the baggage Republican candidates carry as the price of not having the courage openly to criticize their party leader. If they reject the baggage, then object, loud and clear. Silence is consent. Silence says this is normal and OK.

My Canadian college classmate, Sandford Borins, is professor of Public Management Emeritus at the University of Toronto. Originally an economist, he began to study and teach political narrative. His comment on relations with the U.S. was published at http://sanfordborins.com and republished at his own Substack: https://substack.com/@sandfordborins

Guest Post by Sandford Borins

Since the Government of Canada rejected a trade agreement with the Trump administration on August 22, Trump has “renamed” Lake Ontario and released numerous memes disparaging Canada and Canadians (Trump bodychecking “Governor Carney” to the ice) and his cabinet secretaries have followed his lead (Bessent calling Canada a “little yippy dog,” Hegseth ridiculing a Canadian Armed Forces recruit). One wonders if the cabinet secretaries’ response is coordinated in some way, such as with a memo from the Chief of Staff, or if they know that an essential job requirement is to mimic Trump’s puerile verbal attacks.

Not Just Dissing

Prime Minister Carney has referred to this as “doing memes” and “throwing shade.” Similar terms, originating from contemporary culture, would be trolling, dissing, or talking trash. But all these terms connote reciprocal actions. People diss, troll, or talk trash to one another. This round is almost entirely one-sided, with few if any Canadian public figures or even ordinary citizens responding to Trump and his acolytes in kind.

Something more substantial is going on, and I think it is important to call it by its name. Using lies, ridicule, and threats, Trump has launched a campaign of psychological warfare against Canada, so that he can live rent-free in Canadians’ heads, distracting and demoralizing us. It has similarities to psychological warfare used by both sides during World War II and during the Cold War (Radio Free Europe, Radio Moscow). The big difference is that in the past psychological warfare relied on official radio stations. Now it can readily be waged through the universally accessible affordances of social media.

Trump’s campaign against Canada might also be intended to build support for the Republican Party in the mid-term elections by defining another enemy and encouraging Americans to unite behind his party to fight us. My concern here is not whether such a campaign is plausible or effective. Given the history of solidarity in war and cooperation in peace between the two countries, such a campaign would strain credulity. It will be for American pundits and pollsters to probe its effectiveness in the weeks leading up to the midterms.

The psychological warfare is intended to capture attention, which it does very effectively because Canadian media report every attack and the Canadian public then discusses the attacks at length. The attacks contain two contradictory messages, the first that Canadian individuals and firms are dishonest, taking advantage of the US, and the second that Canada and Canadians are weak. The first is easier to shake off. Canadians follow the law when they do business with the US. There is no dishonesty. The message of weakness is more problematic, because of the US’s advantage of scale as an economy and a population that are an order of magnitude larger.

Fall in Line – Or Else

The message of weakness has several dimensions. The Trump administration is saying that it can inflict more economic damage on Canada than Canada can inflict on the US. The renaming of Lake Ontario is intended to convey the message that the US can redefine our geographic reality. The threat is that the US can make Canada, in Trump’s words, “fall in line” in terms of its culture and its trade, strategic and military alliances with the rest of the world – in effect to make Canada a vassal state.

The timing of these intensified verbal attacks may be a response not only to the impasse in negotiations but to the Alberta separation referendum. Perhaps Albertans who feel that Canada is weak will vote for separation, not necessarily because they believe Alberta on its own would be any stronger, but rather because they see Alberta separating from Canada as the first step towards its annexation by the US.

The timing is also ironic because the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of 9/11 is also a commemoration of everyday, but extraordinary, acts of Canadian solidarity with the US. Perhaps Trump and his lackeys are hoping that their verbal attacks will obscure recognition of our shared history.

Fighting Back

Prime Minister Carney has said that Canada will not negotiate with the US until Trump and his followers cease their attacks. In the next few days before the Trump administration’s counter-counter-tariffs take effect, we will see if he maintains his resolve.

How should the Canadian public respond? First, we should recognize that while Trump has been waging psychological warfare against Canada almost since the day he was elected in 2024, the current trade impasse has led to a major intensification. It is important to call this what it is. We might wish the media would not keep reporting the latest anti-Canada memes, but that is impossible. Just as Prime Minister Carney’s Davos speech was an important act of truth-telling about the Trump administration’s hegemonism, it would be equally important if he or someone else in the government would engage in truth-telling about Trump’s psychological warfare. Then we can discuss what patterns of thought and action can help evict Trump and his administration from our heads.

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