Harris on the Wane

Democrats to Blame

Before I head off into this topic, I want to remind readers of my comment policy. If you decide to use this forum’s comment section to attack me or other commenters personally, I will ban you from commenting. Permanently. Disagree. Make an argument. But do not violate that rule.

Now that THAT is out of the way…

We are less than a month away from the election, and whatever lead/bounce/vibe/feels/joy Kamala Harris had coming out of her convention and her clear debate win seems to have dissipated. I’m no poll aggregator, but things look VERY tight right now, probably leaning to Trump.

Where is the Joy?

As readers know, I do not think this is a good thing for the nation. I’m not thrilled with Harris either, but she has not attempted a coup, and so for now, she gets the benefit of the doubt when it comes to who I would rather see inaugurated.

That said, the fact that we are here, weeks from the election with a demonstrated threat to American national security leading the race, is a credit to the timidity and lack of imagination of the Democratic Party and its standard bearer. Allow me to explain.

First, I believe the defenestration of Joe Biden by party Brahmin was a good thing. It showed a political party capable of carrying out its main function, which is to put forth good candidates. This is a function that the GOP not only no longer accomplishes, let alone undertakes. But that was the last good thing the Party has done.

That they were forced to do so by an addled octogenarian who seemed to indicate during the last election that he would be a one-term, transition President, is the first strike against the Democratic Party. Party leaders should have been reminding him at every opportunity of his age and the need to push fresh faces forward; instead, they participated in a coverup of epic proportions that no one believed. They tried to get us to buy that Joe Biden was stroking on all cylinders while our own eyes and ears told us that he needed to go.

The second strike against them was their failure to conduct a primary of any kind to determine who would be the Party’s choice in Biden’s absence. That the Party quickly coalesced around the Vice President showed an admirable level of organizational acumen, but revealed a stark lack of strategic insight. I don’t want to take anything away from Kamala Harris’ debate performance. She defeated Trump soundly, or more to the point, sounded sane while he did not. The bar not having been high, she got over it. But as we saw in 2019, Kamala Harris is not a good candidate, and the degree to which her own team shields her from inquiry is simply trying to run out the clock. I can hear some of you now—”yeah, but she’s a better choice than Trump, how can you not see that.” I do see that. But that is insufficient rationale for Joe and Jen Six-Pack to get off the couch and go down to the polls to vote against him. She speaks in the broadest generalities, she is unable to distance herself from her unpopular boss, and her (welcome) policy evolutions (fracking among them) strike many as untrustworthy. She dropped out of the 2020 race before the first primary FOR A REASON, and those reasons are increasingly on display. A primary—of ANY KIND—including the classic “smoke-filled room” convention, where others could have MADE THEIR CASE about what kind of country they wish to have—could have provided a better choice, or more likely, would have forced Harris into leveling up her game. Instead, she was coronated, and the Dean Smith strategy was begun.

The final strike against the Democratic Party was its inability to dissuade Harris from picking Tim Walz as her running mate. She picked a Samwise Gamgee when she needed an Aragorn, and the Aragorn was Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. That she feared his stature and ambition speaks volumes to her own self-confidence, putting aside the fundamental fact that winning Pennsylvania is crucial to her being in a position to have to deal with it them. She made a timid choice, it shows, and it may prove decisive.

So here we are, and if I had to bet money, I’d say Trump wins. I realize many of you simply cannot conceive of how this might be, but I urge you to (as I try to do) poke your head up out of your own foxhole and see the truth. We are a deeply divided and troubled country, our sense of unity is shaken, and we are retreating to dark tribal notions. Modern technology has given us the ability to finely curate the information we are exposed to, and so we do so enthusiastically. In the process, we miss the important fact that half the country disagrees with us.

Fall Simplifying

Excess

I wrote last February of having too much stuff and my efforts to change that, and I took a bold step forward over the weekend during my shift to fall/winter clothes. Realizing that I have come to prefer a very simple casual wardrobe that is not all that varied, I ruthlessly attacked the fall/winter stuff as it came out of the bins, and I performed the same culling of the spring/summer stuff as I moved to store it. Of note, a goodly number of pretty nice suits will now make their way out into the thrifting world for savvy shoppers to scoop up. I still have too many suits and sport coats and dress shirts, but I see a day coming when that will not be the case.

Additionally, belts that I will never wear again and a number of neck ties and bow ties also will make their way back out into circulation. The plain truth of the matter is that there are a lot of nice things in those four trash bags, but I’ve gotten to the point where I am somewhat less interested in being fashionable. Nirvana will be when I’ve cut down so much that I don’t have to do seasonal switches.

RIP Bagheera

Bagheera “Mr. Baggie-Pants” Murphy went to his eternal reward last week at the age of 21. He was a good cat and a much-loved member of the Murphy/McGrath family here on the farm. He has of late struggled with debilitating arthritis, blindness, and deafness, but whatever part of his physiology was responsible for purring was highly functional until the very end.

Bagheera, in better days

Bagheera and his litter mate Mowgli (who predeceased him) joined the Murphy Household before I did, when then four-year old Hope claimed Bagheera as her own (two-year old Hannah claimed Mowgli). Hope is now in grad school in California, so Hope, Bagheera, and I had a video call to enable them to say their goodbyes.

Family lore has it that a black cat was desired as they were a favorite of the girls’ deceased father, and grey Mowgli pitched a vocal fit to be taken too. Both Mowgli and Bagheera were hybrid “indoor/outdoor” cats for much of their lives, until a few years ago when we espied two giant owls flitting about, for whom our cats would have made a tasty meal. We as a family were known to—mostly in the autumn—put on our muck boots and warm wear and troop around the farm and through the woods. We call these “Farm Stomps” and for a long time, Catherine, me, the girls, our dogs (ZuZu and the late Baloo), and BOTH CATS would take to the fields for our inspection tours. The cats simply would not be left behind. I wish I had a photo of all eight of us.

Bagheera gave me an awful scare just a few weeks ago. When I do a speech in public, I write it out and then record myself reading it. I then listen to it over and over again when doing mindless things, and by the time I give it, it isn’t “memorized” per se, but as soon as I look down I know what the paragraph will say. Bagheera has spent his last few months in my office with me, and while I was recording, he sounded off with a series of very loud calls. A few days later when I was driving to the airport and listening to the speech, I hear these Bagheera howls and I pulled over in a panic to see how he’d gotten in my car. Duh.

This has been a hard year for goodbyes, with my father, Catherine’s sister-in-law, good dog Baloo, and now Bagheera having left us. I reminded Hope in our call the other night of my metaphysical certainty in the existence of God and everlasting life, and my just as confident sense that we will be reunited with those we love in that afterlife—including our beloved pets. I get that this isn’t canon, so sue me. She seemed to take solace in my suggestion that her Dad would look after Bagheera in the meantime.