In praise of Kamala Harris: A guest post.

     "Now that we are learning about Harris, what’s not to like?"
          Herb Rothschild

This isn't just relief. It is optimism.

Guest post author Herbert Rothschild has called Biden probably the best president of his lifetime. Biden succeeded in passing into law legislation that will improve the lives of Americans, and did it with razor-thin or nonexistent majorities in Congress. He got done what neither Bill Clinton nor Barack Obama could, and Obama briefly had 60 --yes, 60! -- Democratic votes in the Senate. But it is time to turn the page from Biden, Rothschild writes, and from Trump, too. Rothschild is optimistic about the future of a Kamala Harris presidency. 

Rothschild was a professor of English at LSU. He has been a lifetime activist on behalf of peace, justice, and the environment. He is the author of The Bad Old Days, a memoir of his years as a civil rights activist in Louisiana. He was the founder of ashland.news, a now-thriving online newspaper for Ashland, Oregon. He writes a weekly column, and this post appeared there earlier this week.

Amazon

Guest Post by Herb Rothschild

Right after the debate between Biden and Trump, I wrote a column that was published with the headline, “Even I no longer believe that Biden is fit for the office.” I ended it by writing, “I am deeply troubled by this development. A second Trump presidency will be much worse than the first. . . . My best hope is that Biden will withdraw in time for a more eligible Democratic nominee to emerge and prevail.”

When that hope was realized, I breathed a sigh of relief along with perhaps half the adult population of the U.S. It was as if a great weight had been lifted from us, and we responded with an enthusiasm that was expressed in measurable ways. According to Kamal Harris’s campaign, in the first week it raised more than $200 million dollars and signed up over 170,000 new volunteers. Of the donors, 66% hadn’t given to Biden.

That it took Biden so long to acknowledge that he was leading his party—and thus his country—to disaster worked out for the best. Democrats expended no time or money, nor created any intramural grievances, deciding who would take his place at the top of the ticket. And it’s become apparent that Harris is probably a better standard bearer than the person who would have emerged from primary contests.

Her charisma had no scope to manifest itself in the crowded field of the 2020 primaries. And despite the current necessity of crediting her with a share of Biden’s accomplishments, in fact she was no exception to the rule that vice presidents are kept on the periphery of presidential power. Thus, she was largely unknown to most of us.

Now that we are learning about Harris, what’s not to like? She projects strength even as she projects human warmth. That may be the undoing of Trump’s candidacy, because his entire schtick is projecting strength, and meanness is a part of it. That self-presentation worked in proximity to Biden. In proximity to Harris, Trump as strong man seems like a head pushed through the hole in a cardboard cutout of Superman.

For a misogynist, that a woman projects more strength than he adds insult to injury. It seems to have confused Trump. How else can one account for his bizarre claim that “I’m a much better looking person than Kamala”? He said that on August 17 at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, PA after referencing Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan’s assertion that Harris’s beauty gives her a big advantage. After saying he had never thought about that before, three times Trump said he was better looking than she. I infer that, troubled by finding his “manhood” (i.e., his power to dominate) challenged by a woman, he was emotionally impelled to challenge her “womanhood” (i.e., her physical beauty).

On the last night of the Democratic convention, former Illinois Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger gave utterance to the gathering sense that Trump as Rambo is a phantasm. “Donald Trump is a weak man pretending to be strong. He is a small man pretending to be big. He’s a faithless man pretending to be righteous. He’s a perpetrator who can’t stop playing the victim. He … puts on quite a show. But there’s no real strength there.” That truth needed to be made explicit at the convention, but only once. When Harris appeared shortly thereafter, she communicated it by being herself.

Those who composed the messages of the convention and orchestrated the various ways they were pitched did a superb job. The phrases “turning the page” and “We’re not going back,” the second of which became a mantra, resonated in multiple ways. Most obviously, they communicated that we’re not going back to a Trump presidency. But they also exploited the turn of events that has made Trump the old candidate. plucking from his hand one of his winning cards. And more subtly but also effectively, they cast Trump as an entertainer past his heyday, an act that has become stale.

The campaign organizers worked hard and intelligently to undermine the perception that Trump is a champion of workers without college degrees, those who, truth be said, were abandoned by Democrats as well as Republicans from 1980 to 2016. Those folks needed to realize that nothing changed in 2017 but the rhetoric, that Trump was a faux populist. Some speakers, such as UAW president Shawn Fain, tackled the assignment head-on, pointing to the Trump and Biden (/Harris) records. But there were less straightforward tactics. Several changes were rung on the contrast between the working-class backgrounds of the Democratic nominees and Trump’s, such as Harris’s stint at MacDonalds. And simply by being who he is—a white, male, Midwestern former football coach without a portfolio of stocks and bonds—Tim Walz greatly helped make the case.

But what struck me as the best salvo was when Michelle Obama spoke of “the affirmative action of generational wealth.” In a speech that was the best I heard at the convention, she dismantled Trump’s claim to champion working people against the elites. He was born into the elite class and remains loyal to it because he remains loyal to his material self-interest. But that phrase, “the affirmative action of generational wealth,” was a brilliant way of communicating to the white males whose grievances Trump has hitherto exploited so effectively that he has turned their gaze away from the real cause of their grievances.

The convention gave women and people of color multiple reasons to vote the Harris/Walz ticket. Freedom, specifically applied to reproductive freedom, freedom to vote and freedom from fear of gun violence, was a message sure to appeal to them. And the prominence of women and people of color at the podium, culminating with Harris herself, was an even more effective appeal.

Whether the convention gave enough white working-class males sufficient reason to vote the Harris/Walz ticket remains to be seen. Frankly, the Democrats don’t need a majority of them to win. Still, were they to start voting Democratic again, it would signal an end to the politics Trump epitomizes.

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The inside story on Trump Steaks

"The World's Greatest Steaks"

College classmate Tony Farrell is an expert on branding and marketing specialty merchandise. He has written guest posts here that apply his experience with brands to political subjects. In my introduction of Tony's posts, I have always mentioned that he handled the Trump Steaks account. I was teasing him: So you are responsible! I was also qualifying him: He handled big sales campaigns readers know well. For years, Trump Steaks were the archetype symbol of overpriced Trump-branded merchandise personally hyped by Trump. In recent years Trump Steaks have been joined by other improbable products, including Trump trading cards, NFTs, bits of fabric, Bibles, MAGA wear, "collectable" coins, and sneakers.

I have been asking Tony to tell the story of Trump Steaks, and he finally relented.

Last December, shopping in college logo-wear

Guest Post by Tony Farrell 

Since my connection to Trump Steaks keeps coming up, I tracked down Conan O’Brian’s memorable take on it from 2007, a hilarious six-minute video clip that shows the Donald has always been the same guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0JiOXSSgzk

For 14 years, displayed in my man-cave is a framed catalog from The Sharper Image (June 2007) autographed by Donald Trump in his fat gold signature that launched a thousand executive orders.

As classmate Peter Sage has often touted, as Senior VP Creative Services for The Sharper Image from 1998 to 2008, I helped guide the “Exclusive Introduction!” of Trump Steaks, “The World’s Greatest Steaks,” and all I can say now is, “Who knew?”

Since 2016, when I relate my career highlights, I always mention Trump Steaks and then apologize, “If that spoils the karma for you, forget I said it.” But I must say: No one forgets it.

Like a few select catalogs (Neiman-Marcus; Lands’ End), The Sharper Image catalog was renowned for featuring unusual and extravagant gifts, singularly aimed at generating buzz. (Mel Ziegler, co-founder of Banana Republic, once offered me brilliant marketing advice: “If you want word-of-mouth advertising, give people something to talk about.”) 

Funny story: The month before I joined, the featured big gift was a $10,000 Hummer golf cart. The Sharper Image sold only two -- one to an Arizona man as a surprise gift for his wife, and the other to that same wife, as a surprise gift for him!

So, whose idea was this steak business? Not me (not my job); not the head merchant's (his job); and not the founder's, Richard Thalheimer, the promotional genius behind the enterprise. It bubbled up from the outside group of deeply cynical corporate raiders from New York who took advantage of Sharper’s troubled stock to, essentially, take over the company's board in early 2007. This gaggle had no retail experience, but the leader’s wife loved shopping. It was his idea.

In fairness, it's not crazy to sell food via catalog. In the 50s, my parents were big fans of Fruit of the Month club out of Medford, Oregon; Omaha Steaks is a grand success; and I'll bet that over half the revenue from Vermont Country Store's catalog is from food and candy. Sharper Image could sell almost anything, from clothing items to personal-care consumables. Electronics were the signature category but sales were not nearly as big as the public assumed. But we hadn't done food yet.

As the inventory planners struggled to gauge what sales, if any, would result, I sent my creative director to Trump Tower to shoot our now-famous cover. Trump’s licensing manager wanted him outfitted in a tuxedo, but we convinced her he’d look like a waiter. We settled on his already familiar blue suit, white shirt, red tie.

Funny coincidence: The first word my creative director chose to describe his experience was “weird.” He said Trump was “big” and “orange,” and surrounded by hundreds of photos of himself (we shot in his office). But he also said the experience was surprisingly positive. 

Too often, celebrities are practically impossible to manage in these scripted and confined situations. Often, it's necessary to hire a “celebrity wrangler” to keep the suits away and the star sober, on time, and prepared.

Trump required no wrangler. He arrived on time, greeted each participant, learned people’s names, understood my team's roles and concerns. He courteously followed directions and was patient with the process, which ran long.

Tony's catalog, signed in gold ink

Later, as promised, Trump autographed a good number of the printed catalogs. And I got mine.

Because of the steaks’ high cost and low margin, our merchants mixed burgers into the package: lots of burgers to get the margin and average order-size higher. (Omaha Steaks does this.) But Sharper Image customers didn’t buy it, or buy them.

If the goal of this idiotic idea was to generate buzz, it was a staggering success. Unfortunately, it was relentlessly mocking buzz. Mocking Trump was a popular sport then, as now. Despite Trump's fame and The Sharper Image's iconic status, we sold almost nothing. 

Within a year, The Sharper Image went bankrupt, not because of Trump Steaks but for myriad other reasons: macro-economic; micro-economic; personnel; merchandising; the new World Wide Web; an ill-considered lawsuit. But Trump Steaks' launch was the perfect denouement, a vestige of the doomed invasion of our lovely, fun California company by clueless takeover clowns from New York City who were infatuated with Trump’s celebrity.

I lose sleep thinking that if I'd only done a better job selling Trump Steaks, The Donald would not have needed to find another job. 

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--

Is sex-shaming a two-way street?

Warning. Parental Advisory.

This post discusses Trump and his campaign calling Kamala Harris a slut. I raise the question whether Democrats should respond by using a sexual humiliation weapon of their own. Would that help Harris by showing she can handle herself in a fight? Or would sex-shaming backfire on her, because men can do it to women, but women cannot do it to men?

If the subject offends you, skip today's post.

     “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
          Margaret Atwood

 

Trump is defining Kamala Harris, saying she is stupid, that she got ahead because she is Black, and that she is a slut.

For sale at Trump rallies and stores

Trump is relentless in calling Harris "low IQ." I don't consider it a particularly plausible charge -- she is an articulate professional-sounding lawyer -- but Trump gets value from it. The nasty insult shows his contempt and dominance, even if it doesn't land. Anyone you can publicly insult is lower-status than you. The public gets the message that Trump can bully her with impunity. 

The low-IQ insult "makes sense" to people with the racial presumption that Blacks are less intelligent. Harris' rise in politics can be explained, Trump says, by the affirmative action boost she got by being female and Black. Trump's insult plays to White resentment that she is taking a spot that some White man better deserved.

Yesterday Trump re-tweeted a post referencing "blowjobs" that Harris surely gave her one-time boyfriend, Willie Brown. Here is what Trump posted:

Sexual subservience by the female in heterosexual acts is part of Trump's effort to position Harris as a Jezebel. She learned her trade "under Willie Brown," one Trump-supporting commenter to this blog wrote me. Ha-ha. Another commenter made reference to her being on her knees in front of politicians who supported her campaigns. Ha-ha. The idea out there among Trump supporters -- or at least male ones -- is that it is okay is to shame and humiliate Harris for being a woman who presumably has sex. 

An element of the Trump brand is Trump-the-stud. Women service him. He is the guy on top. He takes what he wants, politically, financially, sexually. The Access Hollywood video and the assault/defamation charges against Trump have not hurt him with his base. They are on-brand for Trump.

So here is the question: Can Harris -- indeed must Harris -- respond in kind? Dukakis failed to respond to charges that he was soft on crime and national defense. He considered the charges ridiculous and unworthy of a response. He blew a 19-point polling lead. John Kerry had a similar view on the Swift Boat attacks. The guy with Purple Hearts and medals for courage is the coward? Ridiculous. He, too, lost. The attacks stuck.

Mother Jones

Stormy Daniels testified that she had reluctant sex with Donald Trump. It was a classic "casting couch" situation. He was the executive producer of a TV show and she wanted a part. She wrote, 

It may have been the least impressive sex I'd ever had, but clearly, he didn't share that opinion.

She wrote that his penis was "smaller than average," although "not freakishly small." Her primary observation was its shape:

He knows he has an unusual penis. It has a huge mushroom head. Like a toadstool.

I lay there annoyed that I was getting fucked by a guy with Yeti pubes and a dick like the mushroom character in Mario Kart.

This is the Mario Kart character:

Teasing Trump for being a selfish sex partner does not injure his brand. But being an unimpressive one does. And having a small, weird-looking penis most certainly does. It goes right at the heart of Trump-the-stud, alpha male brand. It makes Trump laughable.

Laughable is poison to the Trump brand. It pops the balloon of self-importance. The opposite of strong is silly. Trump understands that, which is why he gives demeaning, humiliating names to opponents. Pocahontas. Little Marco. Low-energy Jeb. Ha-ha.

Teasing Trump over his small and weirdly-shaped toadstool penis is a low blow. Male voters may resent it and it risks backfiring. No man wants women gossiping about him having an inadequate penis. It would not be Harris doing it; it would be Stormy Daniels doing it for her, but it is dangerous. Sexual humiliation is rough territory, and maybe only men can do it.

I think Harris should keep her distance. Humiliating others is Trump's brand, not hers. But it needs to be done. Harris must not be another foolish Democratic presidential candidate "above the fray." People analogize between how one fights in a campaign to how one would deal with the Russians or Chinese. 

She can delegate this task. Let the Lincoln Project do it. Let PACs that don't have her name on it do it. Let the message rattle around social media: Trump has a small, weird, toadstool-shaped penis. Ha-ha.

Trump will hate it and deny it. When Marco Rubio teased about small hands, Trump hastened to assure people that there was "no problem." The more Trump denies this and complains about it, the faster the meme spreads. Is Harris a slut? A more interesting question is just how small and weirdly shaped is Trump's penis? 

So far, the weird-penis meme has had almost zero traction. There are hundreds of stores and sites online where one can buy products calling Harris a whore, but only this single, tiny bumper strip available from one seller on Amazon.

Amazon

George W. Bush kept his distance from Swift Boat critics of Kerry. That was smart. It gave them credibility as indignant veterans, not campaign operatives. Harris' brand represents turning the page from Trump-style name-calling and insults, but the brand cannot be that she is a slut who sexually serviced powerful men to get to the top. It especially cannot be that she takes the insult lying down, while she lets Trump, Mr. Superhero, with trading cards to prove it, get away with insulting her.

Sexual humiliation cannot go just one way. Trump is vulnerable to counterattack. Stormy Daniels was a very dangerous person to mess with.

 

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In praise of flip flopping

     "My Administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights."
          Donald Trump

     “[Trump's] is not a pro-life position, it’s not an acceptable position, and it does not provide the contrast on this issue to the degree that we have had in the past between him and Kamala Harris.”
          Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council

Trump had bragged that he is the most pro-life president in history, the man who appointed a Supreme Court majority that overturned Roe and is considering banning abortion drugs nationwide, enforcing the Comstock Act, and overturning the decision that guaranteed the right of married couples to use contraception.  

Atlantic: shared link

Trump is doing what politicians do in a democracy. They see the drift of public opinion, and they adjust to get in sync with it. His switch on abortion is unprincipled, a betrayal of his supporters, cynical, and very possibly a lie about his true intent and future behavior. It is also smart.

Trump understands that the positions taken by the anti-abortion faction of the GOP are broadly unpopular. Being "pro life" is a litmus-test requirement to be a Republican in good standing. Pro-choice Republicans have been squeezed out of the party. Officeholders have been saying they are anti-abortion for so long and so often that they are stuck. They have promises to keep. There are giant swaths of the South and Mountain States where near-total abortion bans are in effect. Those states are a cautionary note for voters nationwide. Those abortion bans are a problem for Trump

Like Prohibition, banning abortion is more popular in ideology than in practice. Also as with Prohibition, the bans failed to do what was intended. Drinking went up. Alcohol was easier to get during Prohibition than both before and after, when it was legal but regulated. Abortion numbers had been in decline, but now abortions have gone up.

Guttmacher Institute: "Despite Bans, number of abortions in U.S. increased in 2023"

Trump has no compunctions about being inconsistent or a disappointment to his most loyal supporters. He moved to popular positions. No national ban on abortion. No ban on IVF. No ban on mifepristone. No Comstock Act. He will let the states act, but he wants limits on what they can do.

Democrats are dismayed. They want Trump to stay consistent with his past unpopular positions. Democrats bash Trump in speeches and ads, showing his old statements, saying that he hasn't changed and to be afraid of how he will ban abortion nationwide if he has the chance. He hasn't changed, they say. Don't believe him. He is as bad as ever.

There is an irony at work here. Kamala Harris is doing the same thing as Trump, shedding unpopular positions that seemed reasonable in 2019 and 2020. In the aftermath of the slow murder of George Floyd, Democratic primary voters pushed candidates to be "lite" versions of Bernie Sanders, but without his "socialist" label. In that era, her having been a DA who prosecuted street crime was a disadvantage. Now Harris returned to her prosecutor, child-of-immigrants roots that emphasize hard work and grit, not identity. She is the prosecutor; Trump is the unapologetic felon and sex abuser. Public opinion changed and she changed with it.

Republicans are dismayed at Harris' new tone. They want her to stay consistent with past unpopular positions. Republicans bash Harris in speeches and ads, showing her old statements, saying she hasn't changed, and to be afraid of how she will govern if she has the chance. Don't believe her. She is as bad as ever.

Personally, I don't mind politicians adjusting their views in order to be popular. I expect it. Democracies cannot be stuck in the past. Popularity is better protection against tyranny and foolish policy than is ideology and orthodoxy.

But Trump cannot shed one part of his past. He openly and proudly attempted to overthrow the 2020 election, with a plot involving fake electors, false claims of election fraud, and an effort to get his vice president to ignore the Constitution and discard Democratic electoral votes. Trump is stuck with that history.

Like Macbeth's spot, it remains and cannot be washed away.

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Unfair to White people? Was the Democratic convention too Black?

     "Peter, I think Democrats went too far at their convention. Too many Black speakers compared to White ones. They bent over backwards to have people of color doing the speaking. It was out of proportion."
            A Democratic activist and donor.

In fact, it was in proportion. 

My perception of what America "looks like" needs to catch up.

I was happy to see non-White speakers -- as was my correspondent. But we each feared that White voters might resent seeing so many of them. 

Some decades ago I began noticing Black people showing up in TV advertisements. In a group of five or six young men having fun drinking Budweisers, one would be Black. I recall later seeing Hispanic and Asians slipped in, too. In recent years they aren't in background; they are the central character upgrading a cell phone plan or singing the praises of Ozempic. Advertisers were representing a diverse set of customers. 

My correspondent and I each estimated that about half of the people on the convention stage were people of color. We thought that half was far more than an equitable proportion, that it was an example of overzealous "inclusion." We thought it would play into the White-displacement fear that Trump has made a centerpiece message. The choice of speakers, we thought, was likely to undermine the Democratic message that they had moved away from the overzealous DEI policies. As a mixed-race woman, Kamala Harris was the ideal candidate to stop talking about race, and start talking about self-reliance, work, and achievement. She could do it without being accused of being prejudiced against Blacks, Asians, and women.

I was unconsciously counting how many White people spoke at the convention. I wasn't angry -- but I noticed. I thought it unfair. I was wrong. Half was fair.

The GOP is over 75% White, but Democrats are just over 50% White. 

Because voters must be age 18, voters are older and more likely to have college degrees than the country as a whole, which number includes children. Notice the left side of the chart. The Democratic Party is perfectly in step with America. The Democratic line in blue is right atop the line tracking the demographics of the country.

I am married to an immigrant. I like immigration. Immigration addresses a labor shortage and the balance between workers and retirees. I perceive the changing demographics in America as a combination of inevitable and good, as long as young, ambitious people want to come here, and so far they do. 

Republican voters -- fueled by relentless stories of crime, caravans of invaders, a misperception of who gets public benefits, and accusations of voter fraud on Fox and in Trump's rallies -- see the changing face of America with alarm. I am not alarmed, but I am surprised. My mental image of America had not caught up with reality. The line-up of faces at the Democratic convention wasn't anybody bending over backwards. It reflected reality. Democrats are a party that looks like America.

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P.T. Barnum: "There's a sucker born every minute."

Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey present: 

The Greatest Show on Earth

 

Now facing Kamala Harris, Donald Trump has kicked things up a notch. Trump sounds desperate, like a salesman who is losing a sale on a big-ticket item. Trump is wallowing in superlatives. 

College classmate Tony Farrell, who had a great career in marketing for The Sharper Image and The Nature Company, then culminating in producing TV infomercials, said the secret of informercial marketing is "to make no small promises." Make big promises. Products aren't merely good; they are stupendous! Trump Steaks, one of Tony's clients from his The Sharper Image days, marketed the product as "The World's Greatest Steaks." The meat was supplied by a subsidiary of Sysco, a national food supplier to schools, hospitals, restaurants, including the ones at Mar-a-Lago, but also grocery stores. Reviews were poor, with people complaining that the meat was good, but wildly overpriced. The package needed to include a bunch of hamburger along with the steaks to get the weight up to an acceptable level. The product quickly failed and was discontinued. At some point the mis-match between marketing sizzle and product reality became too apparent to too many people.They weren't the greatest anything. It was hype. 

Trump has moved into the frantic, manic, over-the-top stage in his language. Trump calls Harris "Commie Kamala," "Low-IQ,"  "really dumb," and "the worst vice president in the history of the country by far." It isn't just bad, "it's a disaster." 

Superlatives and catastrophe. 

It works on some people all of the time and some people some of the time. There is an audience for Trump's marketing. Second only to political party, White racial animus was the strongest predictor of Trump support in the 2016 election. Americans have made enormous progress in reducing racial prejudice during my lifetime, but old prejudices persist quietly in the background. Trump exploits that. Trump skillfully pushed Harris into re-affirming that she is Black, by gosh, by accusing her of having obscured her true race. Trump tickles the idea that his Black opponent surely must be inferior and unqualified. I'm really smart, Trump says, but she is low-IQ.  Really, really, low-IQ. She's really bad, stupendously bad. And stupid.

Make no small promises.

Kamala Harris graduated from college then law school, passed the nation's hardest bar exam, became a prosecutor, an elected DA, the attorney general of California, a U.S. senator, a vice president. It isn't the resume of a low-IQ person. She doesn't sound stupid. She presents like a professional woman. She isn't Sarah Palin. MAGA voters like what Trump says and believe it. They hear on Fox and in conservative media that Kamala Harris is stupid and has a funny laugh, surely someone who benefited from affirmative action. She must have cheated some better-qualified White person. That message is affirmation for Trump's base. Marketing to some of the people all of the time is good business. 

But Trump's hyper-drive insult-driven superlative marketing is too much. It reads as hype and dishonest. His campaign advisors -- plus Fox opinion hosts -- are trying to get him to chill out and moderate. Trump cannot or will not dial back. He is a true believer in himself and in making no small promises. He is the greatest, the greatest president ever, better than Lincoln, better than Washington. The best!

Biden -- oops, now Harris -- is the very, very worst.

Trump thought he had the sale wrapped up, and then a competitor stepped in at the last minute. The sale may be slipping away. People sense his desperation. 

The final act of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, has a description of a salesman in Trump's position, facing the end of a career:

He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back--that's an earthquake. And then you get a couple of spots on your hat, and you're finished.

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Easy Sunday: Don't attack police officers.

A man was convicted of assaulting the Capitol police on January 6.

He is a Montgomery County, Maryland, police officer.

Justin Lee had a two day trial. He was part of the mob on January 6, 2021, partially disguised by a gaiter covering his face. Lee took the smoke bomb from another protester, pulled the pin, and threw it into a tunnel being defended by police. The smoke bomb bounced off a police riot shield. The police were being pelted at the time by hard "rock-like" objects being thrown by rioters. Justin Lee joined others in "spotlighting" the officers by pointing powerful flashlights into the eyes of Capitol defenders. A judge convicted him on two felony counts and three misdemeanors. 

A Montgomery County police spokesperson said they did not know about Lee's involvement in the Capitol attack, or that an FBI investigation was underway when he was hired. Following conviction of the felonies, they placed him on unpaid leave, pending termination. Sentencing is scheduled for November.

Lee has been on administrative leave since July 2023 incident involving a man suspected of stabbing four people at a thrift store. Officers were responding to calls when they confronted a suspect holding a butcher knife. The suspect ignored officers' commands to drop the knife and lunged at Lee, according to the department's news release. Lee shot and killed the man.

My takeaway: Police are called into chaotic situations. The law grants them the use of deadly force to protect themselves and others. Lee benefited from the presumption of his right to use deadly force when confronting an attacker. Lee is burdened by that presumption when he participated in the attack on the Capitol. Lee was lucky he wasn't shot by a police officer blinded by the smoke and fearing being overrun by a mob. 

In what world of lunacy or privilege do Americans of any political opinion think they can attack police officers defending the Capitol, and not presume they won't be stopped by police using deadly force?

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RFK Jr. is weird.

RFK Jr. joined forces with Trump. 

The Trump campaign just made it easier for Harris. Trump doubled down on weirdness.

Harris is trying to solidify her brand as the normal, get-things-done, moderate candidate. 

Trump is doubling down on manic, conspiracy, over-the-top high drama, i.e. weird.

RFK Jr. is in the midst of getting known. What Americans know about him is that he is the scion of a Democratic legacy, but that he isn't a Democrat anymore. 

We know his family members publicly condemn him, saying that he has become consumed by conspiracy theories. We know he has a reputation as a strong environmentalist. We know he had been a drug addict. We know he has some sort of neurological problem that gives him a croaky voice. We know he is strongly anti-vaccine and that he condemns the CDC, Dr. Fauci, drug companies, and the medical establishment. We learned from him that he had a worm -- yeah, a worm -- that ate part of his brain, then died, but that RFK Jr. himself survived, missing that part of his brain. 

And we just learned that he picked up a dead bear cub from a road, planned to cook and eat it. But he didn't have time, so he deposited it in Central Park in Manhattan and put a bicycle on it so that it would appear to have been hit by the bicycle. When it when it was discovered, it became a big New York news story.

A campaign does not need to exaggerate to make RFK Jr. sound weird. 

Readers of this blog know that I think that on the margin, and generally running in background below the level of rational consciousness, people choose their president based on gut feelings. They are choosing between two parties and their archetype leaders. It is a Hollywood casting decision: which person looks and feels right for the role of president. The campaigns create caricatures of the candidates to simplify and clarify the choice. It is a war of brands. 

A brand's strength contains its weakness. Trump is bigger than life. He speaks in absolutes and superlatives. He breaks conventions of decorum and decency. Trump's behavior makes him fascinating and beloved by many. His being outside the norm is central to his attraction. It makes him ghastly and weird to others, probably a majority of America's voters. 

Harris is busy walking away from the woke-Bernie-Sanders-look-alike brand she presented back in 2019 when she was in the Democratic scrum seeking the presidential nomination. The political center for the country moved, and she moved with it. Her being willing to switch is now part of her brand. She just demonstrated that she isn't stuck with ideological purity, even if the left wishes that for her. She wants what the political center wants. Now she wants to be Candidate Normal. 

Candidate Normal is the alternative to Weird Trump, the Lear raving in the night.  

RFK Jr. did Harris' work for her. He solidified the weirdness contained in the Trump brand. Trump's narcissism, criminal history, sex and defamation judgements, felony convictions, January 6 behavior, and cranky-old-man-tweeting-insults brand just added a side dish of brain worm and eating bear road kill. Weirdness squared. 

Voters have a choice. Harris is trying to be normal. Trump is trying to extend the era of high-drama weirdness another four years. Each of them think they are in sync with what the public wants.

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Kamala Harris' log cabin story.

"Only in America can a guy from anywhere
Go to sleep a pauper and wake up a millionaire
Only in America
Can a kid without a cent
Get a break and maybe grow up to be President"

      Jay and the Americans, 1963

Kamala Harris presented her log cabin story.

The log cabin story is a validation of American virtue. It is proof that America works and individual merit is rewarded in America.

Americans like the immigrant story, even if they sometimes resent immigrants. Come to America and work your butt off, but succeed. Immigrants teach their children ambition and guilt, telling them of their sacrifice so that the kids can live better lives. Harris said she was taught to overcome prejudice, not to sulk about it. Get ahead through smarts, hard work, grit, ambition, and good character.

The immigrant story is reassuring to Americans. It reassures us that prejudice may exist, but it isn't debilitating. A good person can push through it. 

The log cabin story has been going through a rough patch in recent decades. Bi-partisan neo-liberal policies that presume that markets are both efficient and moral created enormous wealth on the whole, but that wealth didn't trickle down well. Social mobility is lower in the U.S. than in Europe, a direct contradiction to the only-in-America idea. This year saw close attention to unfair privilege. Legacy admissions to Harvard, something that affects fewer than a hundred 17-year-olds a year in a private institution, became a matter of national news. Voters are still resentful that banks got bailed out in 2008, but so did bankers. They got their bonuses and they didn't go to jail. Meanwhile, the "donor class" who fund campaigns moved upscale, from people who made thousand-dollar contributions to people who made multi-million-dollar ones. 

Trump presented himself as a reversal of the benefits of elitist power. He said he was so rich he could self-fund his campaign. He was so rich he didn't need to sell out to special interests. He said he could drain the swamp. It seemed plausible in 2016.

Kamala Harris' speech last night reclaimed the log cabin immigrant story as her story and the story of the Democratic Party. She told the story of a single mom, of neighbor caregivers, of being told anything is possible in America if you work hard and are a good person. It is less a story of her being the first Black, the first Indian, the first female president. Instead she emphasized something common to all working Americans: the struggle to pay bills.

She may be late to tell this story. Just as every battle plan gets rewritten when it makes contact with the enemy, every framing of a political biography becomes complicated when opponents tell a contrary one. Trump has been calling her "low IQ," and an obviously unqualified DEI hire. He says hers is a story of unfair privilege of race and gender. White guys like Trump are the disadvantaged ones. Trump allies are pointing to her relationship with California power broker Willie Brown, sometimes very crudely, and say she used sexual favors to get ahead. 

But Harris told her log cabin story well, and the notion that Harris is unqualified and "low IQ" probably looks more like a flailing Trump, no longer hiding his prejudices, not reality. She is an attorney who passed the most difficult bar exam in the country, California's, and her public performances on the senate floor show her head-to-head with U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, flummoxing him. Trump's jibes make the case that she pushed through and succeeded despite the headwinds of boorish males of privilege.

Willie Brown is not cooperating in giving the Harris-the-Jezebel story traction. Possibly there is a double standard that would disapprove of Harris but give Trump kudos for his multiple sexual conquests, but the image Harris presents is one of a professional woman with a serious career. Trump is the one with the high-drama sexual reputation. Net-net, I think the topic of sex hurts Trump more than Harris.

The main issue in this campaign remains Trump. It is a referendum on Trump. Do Americans want four more years of him, or do they want someone who is more normal, someone lower-drama. Harris does not need to be highly defined. Trump is defined, and the question is whether we want a second helping of him. To be not-Trump she has to be something voters can define in a phrase that they find understandable and generally good. 

Who is the alternative to Trump? Kamala Harris, a normal Democrat from a middle class immigrant family who worked her way to the top. Only in America.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.]