Easy Sunday: My GLP-1 experience follow-up

"GLP-1 drugs are going to be a more impactful technology than AI.  

        I think GLP-1s are dramatically under-hyped and AI is dramatically over-hyped."

     Scott Galloway, investor and public intellectual

UPS delivered a styrofoam box that contained four of these little bottles of a GLP-1 drug. I have almost completed three four-week cycles, and I was ready for my next four-week batch. GLP-1 vendors set up a regular schedule of deliveries.

So far I am a happy customer of a GLP-1 drug, Zepbound.  It immediately changed how I thought about food.

These drugs are being marketed on social media and TV about as casually as any over-the-counter drug. There are dozens of vendors. Answer a few screening questions at their website, get approved by their in-house licensed provider, enter your credit card number, and you begin getting the drug. A shopper can now get the drug in various doses for about $200/month, all things included.

The drug changes something that I had presumed was my essential nature and personality: my appetite for food. I had a big appetite which, on reflection, was never fully satiated. Within hours of taking my first dose I realized it was dinnertime and I didn't particularly care. I wasn't hungry.  The drug changed how I thought and felt! And food didn't cross my mind as something particularly interesting or desirable. I liken it to the drug turning off an irritating itch. I feel relief.

The Wall Street Journal this week reported "More than 12% of Americans reported taking GLP-1 drugs for weight loss last fall, up from 6% in early 2024, polling firm Gallup found. Women and people ages 50 to 64 reported higher usage rates."

Wall Street Journal gifted article

I first realized I was part of a movement when I attended a little neighborhood gathering where the hostess had set out some food, which I politely refused, mentioning that I was taking Zepbound. "Oh, so am I," the hostess said. "Isn't it great?" Then the woman next to her said, "I am, too. It is such a relief, isn't it?"  The cheese, crackers, and fancy cookies sat untouched.  

The drug isn't a diet drug, in my experience. It is an appetite drug. Weight loss takes care of itself. It is easy to cut back on food intake when you feel "full," even when you haven't eaten.

It prompts me to reflect on the chemical and hormonal nature of personality. I had considered myself mostly-rational. I had agency. There is an "I" inside my head that controlled my choices. 

Well, maybe not so much. I have a new perspective that hormones and chemicals shape that thing I call "I." I have new empathy for a Medford-area MAGA Republican troll who writes me daily complaining about this blog with angry references to his top-of mind-subject, homosexual pedophilia. He may not have genuine volition about what is on his mind. It may not be "him," exactly. It may be out-of-whack brain chemistry doing the talking.

A giant medical experiment is taking place in America. If there is a hidden health time bomb in the drug, it hasn't shown up yet. Maybe the time bomb is that the drug works so well it becomes a near-universal adjustment for people who need it, as eyeglasses are for people who need a different refraction. Then maybe Americans as a group end up living a few extra years and Social Security goes broke sooner than we had planned.

We Americans have gotten heavier over the past 50 years. Maybe this is an era-linked phenomenon, like iron lungs for polio or people living with big goiters in the Upper Midwest "goiter belt." Maybe 50 years from now children will ask their teachers why photographs of people in this 1970-to-2030 era showed so many people looking so big. Teachers will have to explain that it was the style back in the olden days before the invention of certain medicines..

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog by email go to Https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.] 

Quick update: Field Report by Denise Krause

Denise Krause is going door to door looking for last minute voters. 

It is too late to mail the ballot. Now Oregon voters need to bring their ballots to a dropbox. 

A Report from the Campaign Trail by Denise Krause

Phoenix. Talent. Medford. Ashland. Jacksonville. A swing through Ruch and the Applegate.

Here is some of what I found.

In Phoenix, a woman in her late seventies walked me out to the spot where her original house had stood before the Almeda Fire came through. She lives in a manufactured home on the same lot now. The insurance fight alone took eighteen months. She told me she still doesn’t sleep well in August and September. Then she pivoted, without losing a beat, and asked me what I planned to do about pharmacy benefit managers. She had the acronym right. She knew her grandson’s insulin had gone from $30 to $140.

She wasn’t venting. She was interviewing me.

In Talent, a nurse who had worked at Ashland Community Hospital told me the birth center closure hadn’t surprised her, but the inpatient closure had. She wanted to know how many of the legislators who voted on the last health budget had ever spent a Saturday night on a med-surg floor.

I told her I didn’t know.

She said, “That’s the problem.”

In Medford, a man in his sixties opened the door, looked at my literature, and said, “Krause. You ran for commissioner. I voted for you.” We talked for 15 minutes about Jackson County’s charter reform. He invited me back to meet his neighbors.

I’ve spent 25 years working as a population health scientist. When I told people that most of them said "good." Then they moved straight to the next question: What do I think about Asante? About Southern Oregon University’s financial situation? About drought and wildfire preparedness?

The conversations were never really about me. They were about the work that still needs to be done.

One idea I shared resonated: partnering SOU with Oregon Health and Science University to build a medical program alongside the existing nursing program, and repositioning Ashland’s hospital as a teaching hospital. It would anchor institutional investment in a region that has been watching its healthcare infrastructure quietly disappear. The full proposal is on my website. www.denisekrause.com

I keep coming back to the woman in Phoenix, standing on the lot where her house used to be, asking me about insulin pricing, not sleeping well in late summer. 

[Note: If any other candidates want to send me a brief field report or observation about their campaign, send it to me at peter.w.sage@gmail.com. I may publish it if it is interesting and short.]

For local readers: Drop box locations in Rogue River, Eagle Point, Phoenix, Ashland, and two in Medford:

https://www.jacksoncountyor.gov/departments/elections/ballot_box_locations.php

He's stealing from us.

     "No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up."

               Lilly Tomlin, 1985. 

Let's enjoy a happy thought: 

We will look back at this era of Trump as a strange, wild, short-term aberation. A mistake. An idea that went very bad. Like Prohibition.

That happy thought embeds a premise that the changes Trump is making to our system of government and our norms and values reverse themselves. It presumes that voters decide they won't tolerate from anyone else the level of crony capitalist grift that Trump does openly and proudly. 

It could happen. Voters seem to keep a close eye on self-serving behavior of state and local politicians, and those politicians get in trouble for it. The big, flagrant self-serving corruption -- the financial grift, the sale of pardons, the open conflict of interest in the billions of dollars -- is mostly a Trump phenomenon, trickled down to the federal agencies, but stopping there. And since Trump has his secure base of support, and appears to be impeachment-proof, Trump can get away with things that neither a blue-state nor red-state governor or state legislator could. Maybe our federal system has a stop-loss provision. That is a comfort.

But guest post author Bruce Van Zee sends up a warning that I may be too sanguine. Trump-style fearless open grift is an infection spreading through the culture, he argues. Van Zee is a retired physician who, like me, writes a blog post from his home in Medford, Oregon. He is an insightful, self-described "Never Trumper." He publishes three times a week. He writes less about the optics of politics than I do, and more about the big trends in our culture, and especially about medicine. He tends to show his work with links. Read him at: https://bvzcvz.substack.com

Guest Post by Bruce Van Zee

Corruption is infectious

There is some evidence that during the Trump years, there has been an increase in sports betting, prediction markets, and insider trading (here). And it is obvious that crypto, markets that clearly are favored by unscrupulous traders and money launderers, have proliferated under his watch – in no small measure because the Trump regime has favored them and even started crypto markets of their own (here). We learned last week that Trump’s meme coin, $TRUMP, has earned he and his family millions at little to no risk (because he profits from either sale or purchase of the coin) while his investors lost 96% of their investments (here).

A further insult – 600,000 eager MAGA folks who put $100 down payment a year ago for a soon-to-be-released “gold-plated” Trump cell phone, are still holding the bag. Quietly, the release date has been deleted and there is no promised return of the down payments. Here’s a 30 second video by one of Trump’s victims explaining the con job. It’s sort of funny unless it’s your $100, but I’m not laughing – because it’s our president who is behind these schemes.

Instagram video: ripoff!

And that’s the point of this post. The cell phone scam is minor compared to the systematic grift and corruption that permeates Trump’s presidency. Mona Charen documents the details here. The list and shear amount of corruption is mind-boggling. The Trump family is at least $1.4 billon richer since 2025 because of some of these schemes. But because this con man is our president and leader, his grift and corruption rub off on those who follow him and those who have shaky moral compasses. Trump sets the stage for corruption. And if you’re part of his team or have something to offer, you can count on a pardon if you’re caught with your hand in the cookie jar.

Since the Iran war started, the crude oil futures market has gyrated like a yoyo. There have been well documented large purchases and/or shorts just before presidential announcements of events in the Middle East that would affect the market (here).

I’d be surprised if there is vigorous investigation into these occurrences, in large measure because Trump fired most of the Inspector Generals, internet watchdogs, consumer financial protection agencies, and other built-in governmental protection against fraud and abuse shortly after taking office in January 2025.

It all speaks to a dark moral center of Trump’s mind and what he values. Folks, it’s all about money and power – his, not yours. I really think Trump values little else than wealth accumulation and power. Altruism and empathy are for suckers. Patriotism is good to talk about to get votes, but no self-sacrifice for the Trumps. Remember “old bone spurs”? And Trump’s disparagement of wounded or dead soldiers. Speaking about John McCain who was shot down over Vietnam, captured and tortured, “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured”. And you can rest assured that Barron will not be enlisting anytime soon and that the “Trump Foundation” was not a philanthropic institution.

Unfortunately, his grifting and moral depravity have become infectious because he happens to be president; hence the increase in these dubious schemes – insider trading, crypto, sports betting, gambling, prediction markets like PolyMarket and Kalshi. Because he’s the leader, people think it’s okay. It’s the mantra of “get rich quick” schemes that is spreading. A little may not be so harmful to society, but when productive work is sacrificed for these schemes, society may suffer as well.

At his core, I don’t think Trump believes in the concept of white collar crime, at least not if he’s the one committing it. His pardons speak loudly to that belief.

Based on analyses of his two terms in office, President Donald Trump has used his clemency power extensively, with white-collar offenders making up a significant portion of his pardons and commutations. Reports indicate that over 50% of his 88 individual pardons during his second term’s first year were for white-collar offenses. This includes at least 27 individuals in his second term, with over 70 allies and donors with fraud convictions benefiting from clemency across both terms. (here).

We see this same mindset in our tech tycoons where wealth accumulation to an obscene degree seems the only value that matters. Mark Zuckerberg plans to lay off 8,000 Meta/Facebook employees in the name of “efficiency” while having the audacity to say, “People will be more important in the future, not less”. For more on Zuckerberg and the failure of his company’s once aspirational promise, see NYT , “Meta is Dying. It’s About Time.” And then there was Musk, decimating USAID, among other government agencies, all in the name of efficiency. Perhaps 500,000 children, mostly in Africa, have died as a result of the cessation of nutrition and medicine (here). USAID was less than 1% of the government’s budget and represented enormous good will and “soft power”. And the cruelty did not result in lowering of the national debt.

During the Trump era we have seen the uber wealthy move to the right politically. Maybe because it was politically and personally expedient, or because the stigma of being a modern-day robber baron was removed a bit by the cover of Trump’s favor. And we have seen “Christian Nationalism” adopt very unchristian tenets, like “empathy is a weakness”. Then there were the companies, previously proud to offer diversity, equity, and inclusion in their organizations until it became politically risky. All under the influence of our Grifter-In-Chief.

I am not an anti-capitalist. Like everyone else, I want to have enough income to live comfortably and not worry about my next meal or shelter or financial security. But, come on, this absurd quest for ever more wealth to where three mega billionaires own more wealth than the bottom half of American families has got to stop. There are other important values in life – kindness, empathy, compassion, fellowship, honesty, fairness, freedom, enjoyment of nature, health and wellness, art and music, and so much more. America needs a reawakening to the fullness of life. And ask yourself, do Trump, Musk, Zuckerberg, Theil, and others like them represent people you want your children to emulate? And do they seem happy, fulfilled individuals?

Ultimately wouldn’t it be nice if American capitalism morphed a bit to include other values than shareholder earnings? How about a little respect and value given to the employees and their service over time and that they are not easily discarded like yesterday’s trash. Japan, for instance, has a deeply-rooted allegiance between corporate employees and employers leading usually to life-long employment and good job security. Does that make Japanese companies less efficient than American ones? Possibly, but again, that is not the only, or even most important value that counts.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog by email go to Https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.] 

Party brands: Democrats are "weak." Republicans are "extreme."

Neither political party has a popular brand.


-- April polls showed Democrats with a net favorability of minus 21.

-- April polls showed Republicans with a net favorability of minus 26.

Yikes!

My May 2 post was titled "How Democrats can win elections." I said that some of the positions that were identified with the Democratic brand should be abandoned because they did not express the party's core values. Moreover, they were unpopular with voters. Democrats, I said, had adopted positions that even most Democrats don't like. Get back to its roots, I said. Get real. Get popular again, and win elections.

Mark Dennett commented on that post and then agreed to share his observations about the parties's brands. I consider him an expert on branding and product positioning. He developed America’s first frequent flyer program (1980) while he was a senior airline executive. He was a founding partner of Medford’s Laurel Communications, a respected Northwest ad agency. Mark’s career also included being an author (Powershift Marketing), an adjunct college instructor at Southern Oregon University, an award-winning broadcast writer/director/producer, blogger, and a successful internet entrepreneur. Today, as a semi-retired marketer, he still conducts a limited number of research projects (www.DCGResearch.com).

Guest Post by Mark Dennett

 

Peter asked me to give my thoughts on the current brand of the two major political parties. I am certainly not a branding guru, but over the years I’ve worked with dozens of firms on branding, and I have been fascinated by why it is so hard for a business to create and maintain a brand.  

 

First, it is pretty easy to create a brand. You just need to understand positioning. This term, invented in the 70s by Al Ries and Jack Trout, is simply a statement of why the public should support you. As they state in their book, it is “a brief written description of the customer benefits offered and the value position to be occupied that makes your brand clear and promotable.” It’s hard for me to discover the positioning of the current Republicans and Democrats. 

 

Some of us are old enough to remember Republicans’ historic brand: small government (stay out of our lives), live within your means (balance the budget), welcome immigrants, and support free trade. Well, that brand is gone. Vanished. In fact, in 2024 the national Republican Party couldn’t even come up with a platform, which is basically a very long-winded positioning statement. They simply stated that whatever Trump wanted was what they wanted. Bye, bye Republicans. 

 

So now the Republican brand is the Trump brand. Of course, if you read Peter’s blog (May 2 post), that shouldn’t surprise anyone. Trump has always been a better marketer than politician. He knows that marketing in its purest form is just finding out what is important to people (their hot buttons), then promising it. In politics the promise is always more important than the delivery.   

 

Trump understands positioning. While he may be tainted, besmirched, and in every other way discredited as a human being, he is very consistent with his positioning: “The world and America are in trouble, and I alone can fix it.” This may reflect more of a cult identity. Many MAGA believers see him as above human, and thus beyond the reach of pesky "facts". That is called charismatic authority. He worships his brand and keeps building monuments to it. (Spoiler alert: The Iran War might become his “Waterloo.”) 

 

Now let’s look at the Democratic brand. Their historic brand focused on protecting the working man, and supporting unions, environmental regulation, green tech developers, and guaranteeing a social safety net. Even the perceived Bernie conflict is overstated, as many of his ideas were in Kamala's platform.  But I do believe that the Democratic brand has been hijacked by infighting, which makes their brand look weak and ineffective. Aging (some would say ancient) leadership is focused on personal power and wealth. They appear in constant conflict with young liberal elitists who are even more out of touch with the mainstream. 

 

A recent NBC Poll shows that Democrats are not happy with their brand. Republicans are not happy either. 

 

·      Only 62% of Democrats questioned viewed their party positively. 

 

·      Only 37% of Republicans questioned view their party positively, with 51% seeing the GOP in a negative light.  

 

·      Overall, 30% of registered voters view the Democratic Party positively, compared to 52% who view it negatively. Hard to win a national election with those numbers. 

 

Peter outlined four ways that Democrats could pivot their brand (May 2 Post) to better match Democratic voters. I agree with Peter. But because of the brand failure of the two established parties, wasn’t he really providing a blueprint for winning the third force in American politics: Independents? 

 

For purposes of this discussion, I am grouping Independent, Green, and Libertarian party members with unaffiliated voters who register to vote without joining any political party. Today this is the largest voting group in America.

 

In 2024 Edison Research did a national survey of 22,900 respondents that is representative of the national electorate in terms of gender, age, race, and geography. It clearly shows that people are turning away from the two party system. Many are just not voting.  

 

·      There were 4.3 million fewer votes cast for president in 2024 than in 2020. 

 

·      Republican voters decreased by 3.5 million.

 

·      Democratic voters dropped by 11.2 million. 

 

·      But 11 million more people who identified themselves as Independents cast ballots in 2024. 

 

Independents are not really a voting bloc. There is a lot of diverse political thought in this group. It goes from green to libertarian, which is left to right in the extreme, and then it includes the center, which is different from either of them. These inconsistent characteristics make it hard to call this a “voting bloc.” Could they be? Well, they do share one belief: They reject the two-party duopoly system. But this does not unify them in any identifiable way. 

 

To explore if they could become a brand, I looked at some research from The Independent Center – THC (https://www.independentcenter.org/insights). While not exactly peer-reviewed research, it does provide some interesting discussion points. 

 

After analyzing Independent voters with their proprietary AI technology and polling techniques, THS believes they have discovered recurring themes and words. THC believes Independent voters are more cohesive in their worldview than either Democrats or Republicans. Meaning, Independents take a holistic approach, connecting issues and thinking deeply about tradeoffs. So, if you are going to build a voting bloc, according to THC research, your brand needs to recognize the following:

 

Independent Voters are Fiscally Focused – Words like competition, equal opportunity, merit, fairness, and choice arise repeatedly. In their own way, Independents seem to navigate between the left and right views of the market economy. 

 

Independents Voted with Affordability and Inflation in 2024 – The candidate most capable of addressing these two key issues got their vote. That turned out to be Trump. They will pull support if affordability and inflation are not prioritized.

 

Independent Voters are Socially Tolerant – Their take on social issues is distinct. They favor gay marriage and LGBTQ+ rights, but they take them as a given. They’re settled. And they don’t think men should compete as women against women. 

 

Independent Voters Believe in Maximizing Choice – Independent voters view choice as an essential part of their belief system. When asked what could make government more effective, the answer is always the same: more choice and competition. THC got the same answer when they asked about choice in politics. People want more choices. 

 

Current Pew Research also supports these THC assumptions. Their research shows that Independents tend to believe in autonomy, fairness, and tolerance. They value the freedom to pursue personal and family goals while respecting others’ choices. 

 

One last thought. Years of doing marketing research has taught me that few people really have brands they love. So they are often forced to choose the “least objectionable” one. It is like watching TV. You looked through all your streaming choices and TV channels (if you still have TV channels) and can’t find anything you really want to watch. Do you turn the TV off? No, you choose the least objectionable program and binge watch. 

 

As long as Democrats and Republicans struggle with their brands, the battle for the “least objectionable” brand will add power to Independents. If they vote. That is the big question. Since neither party has enough base support, Independent voters are in a powerful position. Yes, current gerrymandering battles are certainly hurting our democracy, but Independents if they vote will determine the midterm results. 

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog by email go to Https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.] 

 

 

Redistricting Oregon: Let's discuss it as a serious idea.

"There's nothing you can know that isn't known
(Love) Nothing you can see that isn't shown. . .

John Lennon and Paul McCartney, "All you need is love," 1967

John Lennon's words described the Overton Window 20 years before political scientist Joseph Overton introduced it as a concept of the evolution of political ideas. You cannot know an idea until it is known. An idea has to be thinkable before it can be considered. 

People familiar with political science commentary know the chart:

Political concepts, and indeed brands, art and music genres, and all ideas generally ,float somewhere in this universe of unthinkable, acceptability, and popularity. Yesterday I floated an idea: Oregon should respond to Trump's demand that red states do extreme congressional district remapping to make their state delegations as Republican as possible. 

I wrote yesterday that the current Oregon map is partisan, but fair-minded, with one red district and two swing districts. It fails the Trump test for red states. It is nowhere near as partisan as possible. A map with six Democratic representatives is easily possible. Oregon Democrats would be doing exactly what Republicans are doing right now. Do Democrats dare take action?

Democrats find Trump so corrupt and dangerous that it blinds them to what a change-agent revolutionary he is. He is like the girl in the story who shouts "But the Emperor has no clothes!" That would be the positive way to describe Trump. Trump-the-truth-teller. Trump the guy who shakes America out of group-think as the country slides into middle-class distress as our manufacturing jobs move offshore. Trump who noticed that the working class was angry. Trump who noticed that immigration was out of control and Americans didn't like it. 

And the dark side: We have a Trump who recognized that Americans and their institutions are about as prejudiced on race and religion as liberal critics say they are, and Trump finally gave Americans permission to voice that prejudice publicly. And a Trump who recognized that many men have the barely-concealed predatory and misogynist views of women that feminists claim they do, and that men were looking for some politician who would acknowledge and praise them. Trump said it aloud: he can grab women by the genitals without asking, and they let him do it, and then they elect him president having heard it. Is this a great country, or what?

Trump moved the Overton Window of acceptable self-serving partisan warfare. Democrats watch it but have a hard time quite believing it. They remain shocked at the bold disregard for democratic fair play. There is still a remnant of "If they go low, we go high." Democrats accepted small hypocrisies, which muddles their criticism of Trump. President Biden tolerated his son, Hunter, doing nepotistic grifting, getting $50,000 a month from Burisma, and then President Biden pardoned him. Some Democratic and Republican legislators trade stocks, apparently on inside knowledge. It is small potatoes compared to Trump's family grift-- thousands, not billions -- but Democrats are a flawed critic. Democrats are hypocrites. Trump and MAGA don't bother with hypocrisy.

My suggestion that Democrats do exactly what red states do with mid-cycle redistricting breaks new ground. It is no longer "unthinkable." It is now "radical." If a Democratic state senator were to propose it, it would move up to "acceptable." I would not expect Governor Tina Kotek to discuss it as an idea worth exploring until some elected state officials promoted it as something they support. That support puts it onto the public stage as a proposal, not just a supposition. If one of the five Democratic U.S. Representatives in Oregon voiced support, the idea would move immediately to that boundary between "acceptable" and "sensible."

Oregon Republicans candidates will oppose the proposal. This is a bad issue for them because they would be condemning Democrats for doing what they are doing proudly and aggressively. It is especially bad for incumbent 2nd District Rep. Cliff Bentz because he has done nothing whatever to protest his party doing it elsewhere, and he is the beneficiary, with an improbable district that combines LaGrande and Grants Pass, an eight-hour drive apart. He sits pretty in flagrant hypocrisy.

It is a good issue for Governor Kotek. She would be standing up to Trump, and she needs issues like that.

It is a good issue for the six Democratic candidates for Congress in the 2nd District. They would be arguing that Bentz is a silent puppet of Trump, out of touch with the interests of his district because he has a district that allows him (he thinks) to ignore Democrats.  Remember: Congress has an approval rating of about 15 percent. He and the GOP caucus oppose national rules to prohibit partisan gerrymandering. 

But nothing moves until Democrats speak up. Silence keeps the idea unthinkable. I don't think redistricting is unthinkable. I think it is a necessary adjustment in a world being remade by Trump.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog by email go to Https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]

Gerrymander Oregon: If you can't beat them, join them, part two.

I consider the map below of the partisan makeup of the U.S. House to be an image of democracy on its sickbed.

But not hospice.

It is the image of Democrats facing reality and taking strong medicine temporarily to cure an illness.

It is a realistic image of the future.

 

What we see here is a map in which every red state is doing the extreme gerrymandering that Trump demands. The map depicts a future in which Democrats didn't act like passive victims; they responded in kind.

California set the way forward for Democrats. California Governor Gavin Newsom described California's action as reaction and temporary. California's goal is national reform for fair districting. Congress has the power to require states to establish nonpartisan district-forming commissions. Republicans oppose the law. They think they are advantaged by hyperpartisan districting. Appeals to higher goals like "democracy" or "fairness" or "representation" have no effect. Democrats need to make Republicans see the advantage to ending hyperpartisan districting. Some Republicans need to feel the pain. 

Cliff Bentz, Oregon's sole Republican House member, needs to lose his job.

In an August 7, 2025 post I posited that Oregon might redistrict. The world has changed dramatically in the past nine months. Trump's hints became plans of action, now underway.

Oregon's own districting was partisan, but by the standards of the current era, far too reasonable and fair to Republicans. Here are the congressional districts as they stand today:One of the six congressional districts was designed to give the very sparsely-populated portion of Oregon its own district. To get the population up to 725,000 people, the  2nd district needed to extend west to include my own area, the Interstate-5-linked Jackson and Josephine counties west of the Cascades.

This districting pattern created two districts that are very contestable "swing" districts. In fact, one of them elected a Republican, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, in 2022, who then lost her seat after one term. Oregon Democrats did not need to be so generous in their districting. They were operating under old rules of fair play.

There are 988,000 registered Democrats in Oregon and 737,000 Republicans. Democrats in charge of redistricting could allocate those Democrats approximately evenly, assigning an extra 42,000 Democrats to each reconfigured district. Under the current map, Democrats wasted their advantage, giving a Portland-centered 1st district a whopping 109,000 Democratic lean, with 189,000 Democrats and 82,000 Republicans. Was that reasonable in light of what Trump has initiated? No, alas. It creates a district so blue that its representative risks being out of touch with the state. Worse, it makes Oregon a patsy. Oregon isn't playing the game as Trump has revised it. And it fails as policy leverage; it doesn't incentivize Republicans in Congress to establish a nationwide reform of districting.

But didn't Democrats pack Republican voters into the red 2nd district? Yes, they did, creating a supposedly-safe seat for Bentz, who sits quietly as fellow Republicans gerrymander themselves into majorities in red states. He has no incentive to complain.

A map that creates a Columbia-River-adjacent district, one that includes Portland, the ports in Hood River and Wasco plus the wheat-growing farmland of Eastern Oregon would be logical, connected, and have a common interest. It would divide Bentz's comfortable district into two, and it would create a 40,000-voter Democratic majority. Bentz would need to stop being an obedient Trump tool and would need to represent the district. Realistically what would happen is that he would lose, and the district would elect a Democrat who would oppose tariffs and cuts to the Medicaid subsidies that keep the district's hospitals open. That sounds to me like democratic government at work.

Above is a draft map of Oregon with six Democratic-majority districts. I am not saying this configuration is a final one. Map makers would create a map looking closely at existing county lines and natural features. But this sketch shows that a new map can be drawn that divides Democrats approximately evenly. There is commonality of interest in an Oregon district that includes the coast plus the western coast-oriented suburbs of Portland. And commonality in districts that include suburban Portland and the wine country to its south. And a district that is centered on the college towns of Eugene and Corvallis that then includes the Interstate-5- connected cities of Medford and Ashland. 

Because of the already-established election calendar, it may be impossible for Governor Tina Kotek to call a special session to redistrict Oregon with representatives elected into new districts in 2026. Oregon would be two years behind Texas, Florida, and the others, with new seats established for the 2028 election, but better late than never. A proposal to establish new districts could be included in her re-election campaign now. Make it an issue. She could call it a first item of housekeeping in the legislative session to begin next year. It would send a message to Bentz and to the GOP nationally, that Republican representatives in blue states are subject to the same punitive redistricting they are dishing out.

And in Oregon, I suspect this would be a good campaign issue for Kotek. She would look feisty and smart. Democrats would like seeing that she is fighting Trump. I assume her Republican opponent would need to oppose her redistricting plan, and do so while failing to condemn Trump for doing the same thing elsewhere, an embarrassing bit of hypocrisy. Issues that force Republican candidates to defend Trump's worst excesses against the interests of Oregon (end mail balloting, closing Oregon's rural hospitals, cuts to Forest Service research, tariffs that damage wheat exports) are good issue for Kotek. Issues that tie Republicans to Trump, especially the need to resist Trump's aggressive partisanship, remind Democratic voters of the stakes of this election.

Last August I floated redistricting as an improbable, half-serious idea. Times have changed. Events have made it plausible, and indeed necessary.

The political peril for a Democrat with the power to act has reversed. Now a Democrat who accepts the status quo and is passive in the face of Trump's initiatives is the one at political risk -- another feckless, worthless Democrat. 

Democratic voters don't want a patsy. 

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog by email go to Https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]

Paper Tiger

I had written that the U.S. had a glass jaw. The American public would not tolerate taking a punch, not at the gas pumps. 

It is true, but it isn't the point.

The point is that our trillion-dollar military is not accomplishing our strategic goal. It accomplished Iran's. 

We are a paper tiger, and the world sees it now.

Trump entered the war thinking it would be another Venezuela, an easy win, a good distraction from Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, and it would shore up relations with Israel and Israel-hawks within the U.S. He named the war "Epic Fury."  Mr. Tough Guy. Overwhelming military force would make Iran a whipped and obedient dog. 

Instead, we learned that we can win battles but lose the war. We have weapons of mass destruction, but Iran has the will and the geography. 

Before the war, the Strait of Hormuz was open. It belonged to the world. Today, ships pass only if Iran allows. Insurers realize the U.S. Navy and Air Force cannot protect shipping. 

Before the war Iranian oil exports operated under an extensive sanctions regime. Today, those sanctions are unenforceable. Nations make side deals with Iran.

Before the war West Texas and Brent crude was priced about $70/ barrel. Now oil markets are driven by scarcity and war news, with a price bouncing around $100/barrel. It results in unpopular price-hikes for American consumers and windfalls for Iran and Russia.

U.S. bases

European satellite view of damage

Before the war the U.S. gave security to Gulf oil kingdoms while they provided oil to the world, reliably and at a stable cost, priced in U.S. dollars. They allowed the U.S. to place forward bases on their land. The war destroyed that arrangement. Not only can we not defend their oil infrastructure, we cannot defend our own bases. 

Before the war, going back to when Trump took office in 2017,  the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was in place. It allowed inspections of Iran's nuclear program. Trump voided the deal, so Iran restarted its nuclear buildup. Bombing last year supposedly obliterated it. Epic Fury supposedly obliterated it a second time. Now Trump is scrambling to negotiate a new nuclear agreement to give him an excuse to abandon the war and declare a tremendous success, only this time from a weaker position than Obama's. The clock is ticking on Trump. Fuel prices are high in the U.S., poll numbers are dropping, foreign countries are rationing gasoline, the world may fall into recession, and it is Trump's doing. Trump, not Iran, is under the gun.

Before the war the U.S. interest in discouraging nuclear proliferation was addressed by the presumption that the U.S. military could protect countries against invasion by neighbors.  That implied guarantee is gone. Every country learned the bitter truth that the only real protection against invasion is to build or buy nuclear weapons that can be delivered by missile or shipping container. The world is more dangerous.

Before the war Iran was led by its aging clerical establishment scrambling to maintain order. We killed them. They are replaced by younger, hardline nationalists. We got regime change, but in the wrong direction.

Before the war the U.S. arsenal of weapons looked untouchable. Such aircraft carriers! Such stealth bombers! Such firepower! The war revealed that we provisioned for 20th-century wars. We use 10-million-dollar missiles to shoot down 50-thousand-dollar drones. Swarms of drones or self-piloted small boats can stop shipping where it really matters. Our aircraft carrier is a target.

Before the war, the U.S. still had presumed allies and friends that would stand with us in joint actions in the Middle East. Trump insulted European countries and NATO, placed tariffs on their products, mocked and picked fights with their leaders, and then entered this war without consulting with them. Trump asked them for help in opening up the Strait of Hormuz. No one offered help. The world learned: America is alone.

The 2020 election of Biden let the world conclude that Trump was a hiccup, a one-off aberration. Then Americans re-elected Trump knowing who he was and what he wanted to do. This is for real after all, a new America, weak and unreliable. The world is recalculating everything.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog by email go to Https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]