Rebranding Trump. He's a weird loser.

"The affirmative action of generational wealth."
     Michelle Obama's observation on Trump, Tuesday evening

Democrats called Trump an existential danger to democracy. It made Trump look stronger. 

They are switching course. Now he is weird. Sick. A crackpot. A coddled loser. 

Democrats have good and sufficient reason to call Trump a threat to democracy. After all, he carried out a plan to overturn the 2020 election with fake electors, and it might well have worked had Vice President Pence gone along with the scheme.  

The threat continues. Trump says that he may not accept the 2024 election results if he loses again. After all, he could only lose if Democrats cheated, so in that case of course he wouldn't accept the results.  Trump has prepared his partisans to go along. In a poll taken this month, 69 percent of Republican voters say they believe -- or at least suspect -- that Trump won the 2020 election, and among those people, 67% expect as very likely or somewhat likely a civil war if Trump loses again. Either Trump wins or civil war. Or at least more post election denials, certification refusals, and Proud Boy chaos. Who knows?

So, yes, Trump is a threat to democracy.

The problem with pointing out this danger is that it tends to make Trump look formidable. After all, if a man is dangerous enough to be an existential threat to America, then he must be a giant among men. A person of consequence. The imagery about Trump is one of dominance. He may not be good, but he is strong. Trump presents himself as a soldier fighting on behalf of his tribe -- fighting dirty -- sure, why not? -- but fighting and winning. All's fair in love and war. Trump dislikes what his team dislikes. He makes liberals cry, and however he can do it is okay. 

The iconography around Trump is strength.

That is why the new word is weird. Weird changes the focus to his fitness. His mental health. His character. It makes his high-drama midnight rants relevant. They are screwball. He looks bouncing-off-the-wall manic. His name-calling is juvenile and weird. He is so stuck in the past he teases Biden for being old, but it is Trump who now is the old candidate; it's weird that Trump hasn't adjusted to the new reality. 

My own sense is that weird is not quite strong enough as a word. Look at his tweets. Look at his flagrant excessive language. Look at his willingness to make charges and accusations that are demonstrably untrue, including saying that Harris's crowds are computer generated. This is faked-moon-landing, pedophile-pizza-basement, conspiracy nut-job level of wacky.  Would any Republican businessperson go into partnership with Trump, seeing what they see of Trump's speeches and tweets? Then why trust him to be president?Would any Republican attorney put Trump on the stand as a witness who would face cross examination? Attorneys who plan to vote for Trump as president should ask themselves that. (Attorneys in exactly that position of course don't put him on the stand. It would be malpractice.)

A weird Trump is a diminished Trump. It is a direct attack on his strong-man brand. We saw a salvo in that new approach on Tuesday. Trump calls Kamala Harris "low IQ," a woman whose career benefited from affirmative action. Michelle Obama reversed the polarity. She said it is Trump who gets the unfair advantage. She said: 

[Kamala Harris] understands that most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward. We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth. 

If we bankrupt a business or choke in a crisis, we don’t get a second, third or fourth chance. If things don’t go our way, we don’t have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead. No.

We don’t get to change the rules so we always win. If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top. We put our heads down. We get to work.

It is a new look at Trump. He isn't the political colossus who threatens a 230 year old republic. He is a spoiled, coddled loser who has been bailed out repeatedly by the privilege of wealth. We will hear "the affirmative action of generational wealth" many times in the next 75 days. It is a powerful observation.

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Barack Obama: Turn the page on Trump. America is better than this.

Michelle and Barack Obama had a common message in speeches at the Democratic Convention:

America is kinder, better, and less divided than Trump would have us think. Character matters.

Trump is his own worst enemy. 

Michelle Obama spoke about values and community. She honored her recently deceased mother.

You see, my mom, in her steady, quiet way, lived out that striving sense of hope every single day of her life. She believed that all children, all — all people have value. That anyone can succeed if given the opportunity. She and my father did not aspire to be wealthy. In fact, they were suspicious of folks who took more than they needed. They understood that it wasn’t enough for their kids to thrive if everyone else around us was drowning.

So, my mother volunteered at the local school. She — she always looked out for the other kids on the block. She was glad to do the thankless, unglamorous work that for generations has strengthened the fabric of this nation. The belief that if you do unto others, if you love thy neighbor, if you work and scrape and sacrifice, it will pay off. If not for you, then maybe for your children or your grandchildren.

You see, those values have been passed on through family farms and factory towns, through tree-lined streets and crowded tenements, through prayer groups and National Guard units and social-studies classrooms. Those were the values my mother poured into me until her very last breath.

Kamala Harris and I built our lives on the same foundational values.

Barack Obama made the same point about values and character: 

Who will fight for me? Who’s thinking about my future; about my children’s future – about our future together? One thing is for certain: Donald Trump is not losing sleep over these questions. This is a 78-year-old billionaire who hasn’t stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago. It’s been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually gotten worse now that he’s afraid of losing to Kamala. The childish nicknames and crazy conspiracy theories and weird obsession with crowd size. It just goes on and on. The other day, I heard someone compare Trump to the neighbor who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day.

From a neighbor, that’s exhausting. From a president, it’s just dangerous. The truth is, Donald Trump sees power as nothing more than a means to his ends. He wants the middle class to pay the price for another huge tax cut that would mostly help him and his rich friends. He killed a bipartisan immigration deal that would’ve helped secure our southern border because he thought trying to actually solve the problem would hurt his campaign. He doesn’t seem to care if more women lose their reproductive freedoms since it won’t affect his life.

Most of all, Donald Trump wants us to think that this country is hopelessly divided between us and them; between the real Americans who support him and the outsiders who don’t. And he wants you to think that you’ll be richer and safer if you just give him the power to put those “other” people back in their place.

It’s one of the oldest tricks in politics – from a guy whose act has gotten pretty stale. We don’t need four more years of bluster and chaos. We’ve seen that movie – and we all know that the sequel’s usually worse.

The Obamas' speeches reminded us of the exhaustion many Americans feel. Trump has been the central figure in American politics for nine years. He reshaped the GOP.  He dominates the political conversation. Trump continues his schtick because a large body of Americans -- a majority of the GOP primary electorate --  like and demand what Trump presents. He is frank and unscripted. His precise words don't hold up to scrutiny, but his mood has appeal. He is angry, frustrated, resentful, suspicious, and belligerent, and a group of people connect with that. He represents a rugged America, an American Rambo.

The  Obamas' speeches remind voters that there is another tradition of American greatness. The good neighbor. The cooperator. It's a different mood and a different national character. It isn't elite. It is regular people who work hard and live normal lives, raising children with good values. It is common. Common decency.

The Obamas set up a contrast with Trump. They invited people to imagine four more years of anger, division, political chaos -- a neighbor with a loud leaf blower outside one's window.

They don't need to invent a straw man of bad-neighbor Trump. He writes it himself in all caps and he ad libs it at rallies. He has gotten worse recently. Trump isn't reading the room. His campaign staff cannot control him because being untethered is part of his schtick.

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Biden: "I love my job, but I love my country more."

Trump says that Democrats staged a "coup."

No. Democrats "called an audible on the field." 

Players on the field saw that the QB throwing arm was injured and could not make a long downfield pass. They persuaded him to do a handoff instead. The play was successful.

Biden pulled Democrats together last night.

Biden's debate performance was as consequential as a chest wound injury in an assassination attempt. Biden's gape-mouthed look of helplessness at the debate was an on-the-field injury. We saw it. It took on its own symbolic meaning, that Democrats were exhausted as a party, led by weak people, unable to shape the future, and trudging by inertia into a landslide loss with a leader long past his sell-by date. 

It was made worse because over half the country sees Trump as dangerously unfit. He is his own worst enemy, sounding ever more desperate and unstable, as in this message. 

What are the chances that Crooked Joe Biden, the WORST President in the history of the U.S., whose Presidency was Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him by Kamabla, Barrack HUSSEIN Obama, Crazy Nancy Pelosi, Shifty Adam Schiff, Cryin' Chuck Schumer, and others on the Lunatic Left, CRASHES the Democrat National Convention and tries to take back the Nomination, beginning with challenging me to another DEBATE. He feels that he made a historically tragic mistake by handing over the U.S. Presidency, a COUP, to the people in the World he most hates, and he wants it back, NOW!!!

He sounds like a crackpot. 

Trump is selling the "coup" idea. It is a "whatabout" diversion that makes his post-2020 election loss behavior less reprehensible. Democrats staged a coup, he says, and all he did was just ask questions and try to make right an election that was stolen from him.

Biden's speech last night resolved three things. The first is that Biden is still capable to serve out his term as president. The debate left a lingering question whether Biden should finish his current term. Maybe the vice president, cabinet, and White House team were perpetrating a fraud, hiding a thoroughly incapable Biden. Last night Biden looked clear-headed and up to the job. He is not young but he isn't crazy like Trump.

Biden also communicated that he was okay with the audible that replaced him as the nominee. It was forced on him, but he accepts the decision. Publicly, at least, he says it was his decision, and legally it was. A majority of delegates were pledged to him on the first ballot. He needed to release them for anyone else could get the nomination. It was an abdication, not a coup. He said:

I love the job, but I love my country more. I love my country more. And all this talk about how I’m angry at all the people who said I should step down — it’s not true.”

[Crowd: “We love Joe! We love Joe!”}

I love my country more and we need to preserve our democracy.

Biden did one more thing: He publicly passed the torch. He reaffirmed a norm in American politics: that a president willingly gives up power to a successor. Americans saw Biden praising Kamala Harris. He said she is capable and has integrity. He said making her vice president was the best decision of his presidency. "She will be a president our children can look up to." 

Last night was an extended ceremony. It likely will not arouse the attention of the un-engaged. It would only have done so only had it included surprises, rather in the way that a wedding would be newsworthy if someone stood up to object to its completion. The Democratic ceremony went off without a hitch, other than longwinded delays that pushed Biden's speech well past prime time. The protests and dissenters were outside the meeting, present, but in the background. Monday night we saw continuity. We saw loving tributes to Biden by his wife and daughter. Then we saw Biden saying everything was okay, and that America could do anything if we did it together.

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Grocery price gouging

CNBC headline:

"Harris to propose federal ban on ‘corporate price-gouging’ in food and groceries."

On Friday I wrote that food should not be cheap. There were a few months during Covid when Americans paid unemployment insurance to workers to encourage people not to go to work. We quickly learned that some workers are essential, agricultural workers among them. Those workers achieved bargaining power to get higher wages. As a farmer, I am paying them. I don't object. A lot of farm work is strenuous and tedious, done stooping over while outside in hot, cold, wet, dusty, or rainy weather. People who do hard, important work should not live in poverty. Those higher wages show up at the grocery store.

I realize that that is an unpopular comment. People want low prices and we are suspicious of "corporate greed." My own experience is that food is very price sensitive. Shoppers substitute food choices if prices seem out of line on some item. It is hard to "gouge." Moreover, factory-scale food sources are, if anything, too efficient and price competitive. Local, direct farm-to-consumer food is likely more expensive than grocery store prices. Non-corporate food producers compete on quality, freshness, and local-ness, not price. I could not compete with factory-farm melons coming out of California. Their melons weren't great, but they were good enough for consumers to choose, and they were cheaper than I could produce them. Food is a bargain in America.

College classmate Chip O'Hare works in a different segment of the food industry. He is a middleman, that essential, but easiest to criticize, segment of the food supply chain. Chip and his partners own and operate a grocery sales and marketing agency that represents over 600 clients. Over 80% of food sold in retail stores are sold by agencies, as processors and growers find it more efficient to outsource the sales function. Chip's company represents the brand whose products you see on grocery shelves.

O'Hare

Guest Post by Chip O'Hare

I’m enthusiastically voting Harris/Walz, but, like you, I was surprised and concerned when Harris announced a war on price gouging in the food industry, where I work and own a sales and marketing company. To me, it looked like pandering, as food inflation is now under control and Harris' attempt at "whack a mole" is no longer needed since the mole is basically dead. While Trump keeps telling voters that it's still alive, Harris would have been better off educating voters on how inflation is coming down thanks to Biden policies rather than feeding the narrative that greedy corporations are to blame.

Americans pay the lowest share of disposable income on food in the world at 11.2 percent. Plus, our country has the most efficient distribution system in the world. Europeans pay about 15%, and all other areas pay more, except communist countries, where the true numbers are not known but where shortages and under-nutrition are the norm. 

Food inflation is now down to 1 percent based on last month's data, which your graph showed in your Friday blog post. While profits did indeed increase under Covid, they were driven by market forces that were out of balance due to Covid. For example, restaurants closed and 95% of food consumption shifted to home preparation. But profits have now returned to normal. Did price gouging happen? Possibly, as companies found pricing power after several years of flat pricing, profits and share prices. 

Some of the largest corporations did make headlines that shaped public opinion, as Kraft-Heinz, the maker of Oscar Mayer, Jell-O, and Kool Aid, saw 2022 Q4 profits up nearly 450 percent and Cal-Maine Foods, the largest egg producer in the U.S., reported that its revenue doubled and profit surged 718 percent in Q1 of 2023. Kraft-Heinz saw demand surge and cost surge, which caused them to increase prices significantly. The jump in egg prices was caused when disease shrank the chicken population and some states passed laws on humane farming methods. The supply of eggs was down; demand for eggs stayed nearly even; the markets did what markets do. High egg prices were a signal to producers to rebuild their chicken populations, and they did. Egg prices are lower, but still relatively high thanks to new producers of humanely raised/high quality eggs like those from Vital Farms. The "gouging" that occurred is modest when viewed in the context of many years of modest inflation and mediocre returns, and it had a purpose. It brought a quick recovery in the chicken population.

I’m concerned that government interference in a market that is very efficient will have unintended consequences. Blaming corporate boogeymen doesn't match reality. Anytime things get out of balance such profiteering can happen. Then, in competitive markets like the grocery business, it disappears. I’m concerned that the anti-price gouging policy is reactionary. It is an attempt to control market behavior that no longer needs it. I liken it to investors chasing earnings from the prior quarter or year.

Also, as Peter noted, much of the inflation was caused by wage increases, which were a good thing given that the industry is low pay (i.e., Walmart) and food industry workers needed a boost. The Covid Relief Act, passed under Trump, ended up allowing workers to enjoy a subsidized strike, as workers decided to sit out the pandemic, thus causing an imbalance between workers and jobs. When things got out of balance, price increases occurred in a frenzy as companies sought to keep ahead of the cost wave. Wages at the low end of the supermarket business increased from $13/hour in 2019 to $22/hour today. But the frenzy is over. I'm concerned that government interference in a market that’s very efficient is poor policy. As many liberal economists have pointed out, history has shown that any attempt to control prices in a free market makes things worse.

The media blew up this past weekend on this issue, and that puts a damper on the honeymoon that Harris and Walz had enjoyed. It has also given grist to the mill of those who seek to tar the Democratic Party with a socialist brush. Even David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart panned the price-gouging policy announcement this weekend on PBS. This provides Trump with fuel for his argument that Harris is a socialist. It would have been better for her had she looked elsewhere for examples of corporate price fixing.  

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Easy Sunday: Branding photos

I have been watching and writing about presidential branding for nine years, 3,389 posts, and 2.5 million reader views. 

I have a simple point to make: Amid all the talk of policy, programs, and platforms, on the margin American voters are choosing an archetype. A brand. Someone and something that better represents them than the alternative brands. 

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Donald Trump's current brand is a revision from the 2016 brand where he was the successful, charismatic billionaire who would get tough on immigration. Now, amid his legal problems and his many detractors, he presents himself as strong, defiant, and indomitable in the arena of battle. 

He is in a boxer's pose, eyebrows down, defending against a blow. He will be hard and cruel to opponents because he fights to win. It is a tough world of no-holds-barred competition. He is fighting for his team.  

Kamala Harris has had her image made for her by two artists this week. I expect them to settle in as the primary look of the Harris brand.

The images by Charlotte Alter of Time Magazine and Shepard Fairey, the artist who created Barack Obama's "Hope" poster 16 years ago, show an idealized image of a young women looking ahead. Idealistic. Hopeful. Optimistic.

It lays out the choices for voters. Old fights vs. new hope. Negative vs. positive. Fighter vs. creator. Old baggage vs. new and fresh. I like Harris' chances here.

Democrats should not get too comfortable, though. Both images of Harris contain a vulnerability embedded in this brand. She is looking skyward and may not be grounded in practical realities. She may be a dreamer who will chase unrealistic programs created by ivory tower ideologues. In the effort to turn the brand negative, Trump calls her a low-IQ fool.

Harris turns Trump's image negative by describing him as a tiresome, narcissistic, criminal weirdo stuck fighting past battles.

Every strong brand has a negative side.

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The Kamala Harris plan of action

The Kamala Harris agenda: 

     So many.

     So complicated. 

     So many things to like or dislike.

I hope she can boil this down to three or four very simple ideas.

We are already hearing misinformation about the Harris proposal to address the economic concerns of average Americans. JD Vance claims it gives $25,000 to immigrants who come here illegally. The Wall Street Journal predicts empty store shelves. Trump calls it socialism and communism. 

Here is a four-page description of her proposals, issued by
the Harris/Walz campaign:

Click Here

I did my best to read the proposal and not start skimming. I urge readers to give it a shot. It was what pundits said she had to do: give some specifics. She did it. So now, it is okay to change back. 

I had a single, big takeaway when I read the proposal: This is a complicated set of laws that will have eligibility rules, qualifications and disqualifications, hoops to jump through. I was reminded of the red tape that made the ACA so unpopular for its first five years. In the effort to target money to specific situations, it becomes complex. It feels like "big government."

Meanwhile, Trump says he will fix everything with "a big tax cut," a 10 percent tariff the foreigners have to pay us, and kicking out of the country people who came here illegally to freeload. There is a simple, "cut through the Gordian knot" feel to Trump's message.

There is a rhetorical solution to this: Be as simple and clear as Trump. The meta message of the two campaigns is that Harris is new and lacks the baggage that manic, nasty, tiresome Trump carries. She is the generic, generally acceptable Democrat, so we are not stuck with Trump. 

What can Harris say about the child tax credits and the newborn tax credit? Maybe something that appeals to young voters and addresses the suggestion that Democrats are anti-baby and anti-family: 

We need to make it affordable for young families to have babies and raise kids. I love babie. I propose a $300/month, $3,600 a year, tax credit for every young child, and a $6,000 one time tax credit for that newborn's first year.

Stop with that. I can remember that message: Babies are good, and money will go to young families. That sounds reasonable to me. 

A second issue affects older people more than younger ones, but Harris can emphasize the generational turn of attention by saying this:

 We are going to cut costs to seniors and taxpayers by letting Medicare negotiate the best prices for prescription drugs. Republicans have fought that. We will cap the cost of prescription drugs to $2,000/year per person for everyone, young and old, not just seniors.

Okay. $2,000 max. 

Farmers have complained about middlemen since the beginning of agriculture. The villains are the railroads, the meat packers, the grain elevators, the commodity traders -- always that someone between the farmer and the consumer. I did not see enough praise of farmers to suit me. There are farmers in battleground states. How about she just praise farmers and criticize grocery chain consolidations. Less is more.

My own sense is that voters perhaps have mental shelf space for one more item. Housing takes up far more of a family's budget than it did in the past. Therefore, something like:

America needs far more new housing to make starter homes accessable. I support tax incentives for homebuilders who build starter homes. I oppose hedge funds and other bulk investors who scoop up homes in some markets, take them off the market for purchase, and then raise rental rates on people who would rather buy and build equity. 

Stop with that. 

Trump is the central issue of the 2024 campaign. Does America want him back, or does America want an acceptable alternative? If the details of the proposals are the issue, then Harris loses, because there is always something to dislike about specific proposals. If the issue is Trump, then Trump loses. There are ample things to dislike about Trump, and a majority of people have already made up their minds about that.

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Food should not be cheap.

Kamala Harris proposal:

“[T]he first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries — setting clear rules of the road to make clear that big corporations can’t unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive corporate profits on food and groceries."

This isn't a good idea on its own merits. It is an especially bad idea when opponents are trying to make her out to be a socialist.

I wish she weren't picking on food prices. People who feed us should be paid.

Maybe there is some "price gouging," whatever that is, going on. I don't see it. My own observation is that agricultural and food markets are efficient and highly sensitive to supply and demand. I sold a perishable crop -- ripe melons -- into a competitive market of melon producers, grocery stores, and price-conscious shoppers. Shoppers look for value. If an item is out of line on price, shoppers buy something else or somewhere else. 

The inflation is mostly gone, but grocery prices have settled in at about 15 to 20 percent higher than pre-Covid levels. Shoppers have noticed and object, which is why I don't think "price gouging" can be real for very long. Shoppers switch.

I am not in favor of cheap food. Cheap food comes on the backs of workers who aren't paid enough. Something big changed during Covid. We learned that we needed workers who showed up to work.

Unemployment insurance offered during Covid created the equivalent of a labor strike. People with low paying jobs in agriculture, or jobs in close physical contact with customers, for example people who cut hair, stayed home. Employers needed them. The workers acquired pricing power. 

I see signs all around my city today by employers seeking workers. School bus drivers. Grocery clerks. Laborers. Food service workers. McDonald's has signs saying employees start at $15/hour and more. At the height of the Covid shutdown, a Medford, Oregon, McDonalds made national news advertising that they would hire 14-and-15-year-olds to fill shifts. They weren't paying enough to attract 16-year-olds.

KOBI-TV

Walmart drew national attention in pre-Covid years for advocating food banks so their employees could acquire food they couldn't afford to buy at their own store. Full-time workers at America's largest private employer were paid so little that they were eligible for public assistance. People saw that as a problem, but nothing changed until Covid and the "strike."

Things are different now. I am paying $30/hour to people who work alongside me in the vineyard. There is work to be done. I need people who show up.

Three years ago it was difficult to get a haircut. Shops had closed. The ones that were open had short hours because they couldn't find workers. Yesterday I got a haircut at a franchise place. Appointments were readily available. There is inflation. Prices have increased from $15 to $23 (but only $20 for me, with a senior citizen rate.) When the stylist flipped the I-pad around for me to approve my credit card purchase, it had three big boxes for me to punch for a tip for each haircut, one for myself and one for my nephew who is down from Portland to help me put up trellis wire: $5. $7. $10. There was probably a place for a custom tip or no tip, but it wasn't prominent and I didn't see it immediately. I pressed a $5 tip -- 25% -- and felt a bit cheap about pressing on the lowest one. If stylists do three haircuts an hour at $15/hour, plus three $5 tips, they are making $30/hour, the same as my farm workers. Okay.

I admit I was startled for a minute at what turned out to be a $25 haircut ($28 dollars for my nephew.) I had anchored on the idea that haircuts should cost less than $20, but I am happy that hair cutters are showing up to work and getting paid. A person who works 2,200 hours a year at about $30 an hour is not living in poverty. 

We shouldn't fool ourselves about the actual price of cheap food. I was paying for the food three times. I paid once at the cashier. I paid a second time in taxes for public benefits (food, health care, and housing) for the working poor. I paid a third time to deal with the social problems that arise within an underclass that even when working cannot escape poverty.

We learned that we need "essential workers." Now we are learning that we need to pay them.

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