A Republic, If You Can Keep It

There is no question to anyone that watched that the Biden / Trump debate on June 27 was a DISASTER for Biden. More importantly, it was a disaster for anyone that cares about America's direction. Biden's failure to connect has placed the country closer to a point where apathy will drive the country past a point of no return.

Biden's performance in the debate was abysmal not because of some absolute objective scoring of his answers, truthfulness and clarity. He's a highly erratic "performer" from a speaking standpoint. HIs performance was ABYSMAL because Biden GOT THE DEBATE on his terms but he not only failed to CAPITALIZE on those terms, he failed to "train" for the potential PITFALLS of those terms regarding his own performance.

MUTED MICS -- Biden asked for the opponent's microphone to be muted during answers. GREAT. That eliminates the problem from prior debates where Trump simply overtalked his opponent when they WERE making points. However, that comes with a downside. If no one can hear the opponent while you are talking, then ALL THAT VIEWERS HEAR is you. If you cannot fill that time with a clear, coherent statement, the viewer can only attribute that problem to YOU. Biden was incredibly ineffective at using his uninterrupted time with his answers. In large part, that was due to the next problem.

FLOODING THE ZONE WITH @*#) -- With muted mics, it was also impossible to interrupt Trump for two minutes as he unloaded a continuous stream of vitriol and lies about weak generals in Afghanistan, immigrants bankrupting Social Security, the latest "through the looking glass" debate about Trump's "very fine people" in Charlottesville, etc. Biden and his team clearly prepped Biden to appear in a debate. You know, a public performance involving an intellectual battle between opposing parties involving actual facts and truthful statistics. When Trump arrived with his FLOOD THE ZONE gameplan, Biden wasn't prepared and seemed preoccupied during Trump's talk time trying to remember all of the BS he was going to refute in his turn. When Biden finally did respond in each round, what came out was a list of half-bullets Biden collected over the prior two minutes of Trump's comment, strung together with additional confusing conjunctions that took up time and resulting in NO complete thought being expressed. With zero sound coming from Trump, with nothing to distract a viewer from attributing the lack of coherent response entirely to Biden.

How should have Biden and his team prepped for this event?

First, they should not have prepped for it like a debate. The opponent has no compunction against lying about ANYTHING. Any event or fact is fair game to be distorted. As a result, you CANNOT plan to spend your talk time refuting every BS point brought up by the opponent. Instead, Biden's campaign staff should have pre-built a shortcut on his campaign website, something like:

https://joebiden.com/floodthezone

and have his campaign staff fact check Trump in real time and post actual facts linked to timestamps in the debate where Trump lied. Voters have been DYING for someone to do this anyway. This would absolutely connect with younger voters and memorialize every lie and make it shareable in social media.

The rules of the debate say you can't bring any notes to the podium and you can't communicate with campaign staff during the debate. The rules HAVE NEVER stated your campaign staff cannot update a web site in real time identifying BS stated by the opponent. Instead of reciting his fractured bullet lists, Biden could have simply started his turn by shaking his head, saying "I don't have time here to refute 2 minutes of BS in one minute but my campaign does. Check biden2024.com slash flood the zone to compare what you just heard to reality." At that point, Biden could pick ONE thing out of Trump's rant to refute as part of themes Biden should be communicating.

Some examples:

TRUMP: No general was fired after the disaster of Afghanistan.

BIDEN: The timetable to leave Afghanistan was dictated by terms the Trump Administration negotiated with the Taliban. You expressed no concern with the timetable when you agreed to it. My administration knew the American people had withdrawn their support for continuing our presence and, in that light, we stuck to the agreement.

TRUMP: He left billions of dollars worth of equipment in Afghanistan.

BIDEN: When you are evacuating a war zone that is reverting to control of the enemy you are fighting, it isn't worth the risk to the TROOPS being evacuated to spend time trying to ship back equipment that has already been in use in a war for 6 to 10 to 20 years. You destroy it in place and get your soldiers out as safely as you can. If Trump knew anything about military operations, he would know that.

TRUMP: Biden is bankrupting Social Security by encouraging millions of illegals to enter the country and sign up for benefits.

BIDEN: If they are illegal immigrants, by definition, they have no Social Security number assigned which means no Social Security benefits, either or disability or retirement, can be paid to them. But they still likely have Social Security TAXES withheld from paychecks which means they're contributing to a benefit they will never collect. You know as much about Social Security finances as you do about who pays for the tarrifs you are proposing.

TRUMP: What they’ve done to some people that are so innocent, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, what you have done, how you’ve destroyed the lives of so many people. When they ripped down Portland, when they ripped down many other cities, you go to Minnesota, Minneapolis, what they’ve done there with the fires all over the city, if I didn’t bring in the National Guard, that city would have been destroyed.

BIDEN: And your point? Those events occurred during YOUR administration. I've only had to deploy the National Guard to help after flooding, hurricanes and fires.

========================

But Friday morning quarterbacking is pointless.

The post-debate landscape is one in which America has a choice between two geriatric candidates with profound communication issues. One candidate cannot speak for two minutes without lying and projecting his own failures upon everyone around him, calling into question his grasp of reality. The other candidate lacks the "mental tempo" required to dodge and parry a flood of BS that has become the unified modus operandi of the opposing party and is unable to consistently organize his own thoughts and priorities and express them to combat the threat posed by the opposition.

In Biden's case, he and his advisors clearly lost sight of the difference between the skills needed to WIN or RETAIN the Presidency and the skills needed to OPERATE within the Presidency successfully. Biden's legislative accomplishments clearly indicate he has the skills required to BE President (even after a horrible debate performance) but legislative and administrative actions aren't the sole criteria for overall success. If you LOSE the White House and the opponent comes in and reverses all of your accomplishments, you have netted very little.

For America, a 2024 election that returns Trump to the White House and returns control of the Senate to Republicans will trigger long lasting changes that would unleash political conflict not seen in American history, including the Civil War. The Civil war involved profound moral conflict but 1860s America was not also being manipulated by parties and shadow organizations leveraging billions of dollars contributed by ultra-wealthy individuals and corporations seeking to extend their already-obscene shares of wealth and power.

Republicans are making no secret of their goals should they regain the White House. They are PROMISING to gut Civil Service regulations to purge independent professionals from government who are unwilling to toe an extremist party line. They are PROMISING to abuse prosecutorial powers to punish anyone they deem their enemy. The fact that such public promises have gone UNQUESTIONED by even a single sitting Republican Representative or Senator at the federal or state level means the inertia gained by such a result will be impossible to halt. Every single corrective measure enshrined in the Constitution will have been eliminated in actual form or function.

So that's the landscape in America as of June 28, 2024. Even after Biden's horrific debate performance, Trump still only likely has 40 to 42 percent support across all CITIZENS. But that measure is meaningless. Trump doesn't have to win support from 51 percent of all CITIZENS. He doesn't even have to win support from a majority of VOTERS. He only has to win a majority of electoral college votes. That means the fate of the country is still in the hands of VOTERS who do not support Trump. But what will they actually DO? Will they vote based on energy level in a contrived debate environment or results in office? Will they vote against a candidate who fumbled legitimate points about policy and vote for a candidate who aggressively lied about nearly everything but did so confidently? Will they yawn and throw up their hands with fake sophistication and stay home, allowing all branches of government to fall under the control of a party that is profoundly anti-democratic?

I won't attempt to predict the result but the odds for avoiding a bad outcome have never been lower. Profound failures have already been exposed in our checks and balances that have led to this current predicament. Those checks and balances were not designed with the assumption their use would be required on a daily, monthly or yearly basis. They were designed as circuit breakers to block what should be outlier, once-in-a-generation situations. More importantly, they were designed to be operated by people who understood and agreed with their purpose.

In 2024, America is faced with a choice between a candidate and party promising to destroy every remaining check and balance in our system and a candidate who cannot consistently, convincingly articulate why that would be such a profoundly bad outcome for individual citizens and the survival of the country to engage voters to avoid that outcome.

A republic, if you can keep it, indeed...

WTH

America's Know-It-All Supreme Court

On June 28, 2024, the United States Supreme Court added to its track record of gutting prior established precedent in service to the interests of big business. The court issued rulings in two parallel cases -- Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless v. Department of Commerce -- that both argued that a regulation involving the presence of federal inspectors aboard herring boats that required boat owners to PAY for the inspector's presence overstepped the authority of the agency involved, the National Marine Fisheries Service.

A 1976 law established a requirement that boats allow federal inspectors to ride to monitor compliance with limits on fisheries. In 2020, a regulatory ruling stated that boat owners would also have to pay $700 to the agency to cover the cost of the inspector's presence. That ruling triggered these lawsuits, leading to this ruling. These suits were reviewed in TWO different federal court districts and upheld by two different appeals courts, citing a 1984 ruling in Chevron v National Resources Defense Council that stated courts should defer to regulatory authorities to settle ambiguities in language involving regulatory enforcement.

Given the facts of this SPECIFIC case, it seems arguable that an agency imposing a $700 fee on boat owners to cover the cost of a mandatory on-board inspector IS an "arguable" dispute. One worthy of being heard in a court. It's not even clear who is "right" in this situation? Is charging a fisherman $700 for a ride-along reasonable? If a day's fishing haul is only worth $3000, maybe that's too high. If a day's fishing haul is worth $30,000 and one day of over-fishing can wipe out a fishery? Then the charge would seem perfectly viable. Is this over-stepping on the part of the regulatory agency? THAT'S WHY WE HAVE COURTS.

The USSC has been signaling through written opinions for years that it had members eager to reverse the precedent set in the 1984 Chevron case and wrestle administrative power from federal agencies. These prior written opinions were providing a roadmap for litigants to find the "right case" with the "right set of facts" they could use to rationalize a complete rejection of a prior precedent. This is an established modus operandi for the Roberts-led USSC.

It's worth noting the stated motivation for this reversal, as stated directly by Chief Justice Roberts. Said Roberts: "(A)gencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do."

So says the Chief Justice of a Supreme Court that simply makes up history when seeking to rationalize its "originalist" conclusions regarding matters of law.

In a highly complex, industrialized society, it is likely that any federal statute or regulatory ruling might have a bullet or clause that says something like this:

Businesses in industry W are required to submit quarterly paperwork X reflecting emission levels of chemical Y to agency Z within 30 days of the end of each calendar quarter or face penalties of 1% of annual revenue per day after each filing cut-off date.

Given that language, if someone wants to argue that the regulatory agency choosing the penalty level of 1% is beyond its power and that such decisions require legislative clarity, that concern makes perfect sense. However, if an affected business is attempting to argue that the regulatory agency has no authority to define acceptable emissions levels or the exact nature of the test used to measure emissions, those are NOT topics more suited for a JUDGE to decide. A trial judge or appeals court judge assigned at random to a lawsuit filed by a business is NOT likely to be expert in the subject matter. It can be argued that by the agency being managed by an elected President, an administrator in that agency has more accountability to the public's current preferred interpretation of any ambiguities than a judge.

As further proof of the hypocrisy of this new reversal from the USSC, it's worth noting the original USSC ruling from 1984 being gutted was seen at the time as a conservative win. The case originated from an attempt by an environmental group (National Defense Resource Council) suing to force the EPA to use an extremely literal interpretation of a law requiring chemical plant operators to obtain permits and conduct environmental impact reviews on ANY change to equipment within a plant. The EPA had devised a "bubble" concept in which as long as NET emissions from a plant weren't expected to change, plant operators could ALTER existing equipment without permits / review. The Chevron ruling DEFERRED authority on what types of changes required review TO the EPA because in that original case, the EPA was being LENIENT to Chevron and providing greater flexibility than desired by environmental groups.

How influential is this prior precedent and how impactful is the Court's gutting of the precedent? The New York Times reports that Chevron has been cited in SEVENTY United States Supreme Court decisions since 1984 and has been cited in SEVENTEEN THOUSAND lower court cases.

POOF. Gone.

To be clear, the intent of the Supreme Court in gutting this ruling wasn't only to resolve this "fishy" issue regarding herring boats. Their intent wasn't only to wrestle decision making power away from administrators within federal agencies and swing that power to the courts. Their intent was to trigger a WAVE of new litigation in which any prior lawsuit by big businesses throughout the country that was "lost" in "deference" to a regulatory agency gets re-litigated and potentially tossed after landing in a friendly court.

But that's not all. By rejecting the principle that "details" can be delegated to regulators in highly complex matters, this ruling will PARALYZE nearly any future attempt at passing new laws regulating business due to the difficulty in writing language clear enough to allow enforcement without allowing special interests to kill the proposal before exiting a Senate or House sub-committee. And even if such a miracle law survives that gauntlet to be enacted, if the underlying technology used to provide a sample is improved or a better criteria for measuring compliance is devised, this ruling will be used to reject any change in interpretation and instead require NEW laws to be passed, through the same gauntlet corrupted by big business lobbyists. This will tie the hands of regulators and allow multi-billion dollar corporations to continue existing operations knowing tighter rules will take years or decades to impose.

WTH

Who's Dumber? Kansas or Missouri?

What's the Matter With Kansas was published in 2004 by an author baffled at how a state he thought he understood as a resident and a state that was arguably doing okay economically began adopting ultra-conservative policies that quickly began producing obvious harm to the state's economic well-being. Even though the book came out in 2004, the phenomena it described continued in Kansas all the way until 2018 after two terms of leadership under Governor Sam Brownback acted as a wakeup call and triggered an about-face in state politics. The title What's the Matter With Kansas? has remained a catch-phrase to describe the puzzlement people sense as they watch others continue to support policies that are NOT in their self-interest.

The original book is now twenty years old but the original author, Thomas Frank, could have an opportunity for a follow-up in the making. It just isn't clear yet if the theme will be one of a hard lesson learned that has "stuck" and is helping to avoid future folly or one of temptation and backsliding into dubious boosterism based on the lure of professional sports. The answer may come down to this... Who's dumber? Kansas or Missouri?

As of Summer 2024, owners of both the Kansas City Chiefs and the Kansas City Royals have begun directly stating that new stadiums are required to replace their fifty-year old facilities, directly stating that public subsidies are absolutely required and directly stating that relocations will be considered if viable local plans cannot be finalized. Missouri-side officials have already put their opening bids on the table which fell far short of the owners' expectations. Sensing an opportunity, politicians in Kansas are now considering the merits of tossing in Kansas State subsidies to keep the Kansas City Chiefs and Kansas City Royals in place but on the Kansas side of the current Kansas City metro area. This latest potential bidding war has unique geographic and economic dynamics worth considering but will still likely boil down to another race to find the stupidest taxpayers in the country.

Here are some factors the citizens of Kansas need to consider before showering two sport franchises owned by billionaires with taxpayer money.

1) The KC metro area is evenly split between the Missouri side (featuring primarily Kansas City, Missouri, Independence, Lee's Summit, Gladstone and Liberty) and the Kansas Side (with cities like Mission, Mission Hills, Leawood, Shawnee, Overland Park, Lenexa, Olathe and Kansas City, Kansas).

2) If I had to guess, I would say the population split is probably about 50/50 between the MO/KS sides but the WEALTH split is probably 70/30 in favor of the Kansas Side.

3) The Missouri and Kansas Rivers do snake through the area but most of the population in the area doesn't need to cross any bridges to move between states. In much of the lower half of the metro area, the state line is just a road incorporated into a typical urban street grid. Fans and revenue both already cross state lines freely.

4) The current venues -- Arrowhead Stadium and Kaufman Stadium -- sit together in a tract of land roughly bounded by Interstate 70 and the area's "ring" interstate I-435. This makes both venues very easy to reach from anywhere in the area BY CAR -- a very dated,1970s approach to urban planning and traffic -- but also means the environment isn't one where existing restaurants, bars and hangouts catering to fans on game day are all tightly clustered around the venues.

5) That supporting bar / restaurant ecosystem is already diffused more widely across the metro area -- INCLUDING the Kansas side -- than might be typical in other stadium extortion scenarios.

6) The State of Kansas is not looking at a scenario where these new stadiums would be economically viable ANYWHERE ELSE in the state except for the KANSAS side of the metro KC area. If the teams move to Wichita, Kansas, the Chiefs could probably sell out their ten games per season but there's no way 16,000 people are going to drive 200 miles from KC to Wichita or even 63 miles from KC to Topeka to see 81 home appearances of the Royals.

7) Because the KANSAS side of the metro area is significantly more affluent than the Missouri side, there is no way the residents of cities like Mission, Leawood, Overland Park, Lenexa, etc. are going to favor locating TWO new stadiums and all of the traffic next to their $700,000 homes. There will be a huge NIMBY force applied to any proposed site decision.

8) The only part of the Kansas half of the metro that ISN'T populated by affluent voters or even moderate densities of lower-income voters who might push back is Kansas City, Kansas itself but that area poses a different problem. It houses a lot of heavy industry, particularly rail yards and stock yards. It might be possible to drop two stadiums in that area but doing so would essentially recreate the current Arrowhead / Kaufman dynamic with giant venues in the middle of a concrete desert with no other attractions nearby -- a vibe completely out of sync with every new modern stadium built in the last twenty years.

What do all of these factors mean economically?

First, changing the ZIP code of two stadiums will not likely materially change the destination of all SECONDARY cash flows stemming from having two professional sports teams playing in the area. Those dollars are already likely diffused across bars and restaurants across the same community that will still follow the team regardless of whether the ZIP code is 64129 (Missouri) or 66106 (Kansas). That means any Kansas politicians promising a boost in "economic impact" beyond actual ticket revenue for the state of Kansas are deluding themselves and taxpayers. And remember, most ticket revenue goes into the pockets of the owners and their revenue sharing league partners, not the local community. The community or state is primarily netting sales tax revenue on the tickets, maybe 8% of the face value.

Second, the voters of Kansas need to carefully ponder both the COST of any "modern" stadium built in the last twenty years AND the "lifetime" of that venue. The most recent NFL or MLB stadiums have wound up costing a minimum of $1.3 billion dollars in 2024 dollars. But even cities with stadiums built less than twenty years ago are being approached by team owners to cough up money for "upgrades" whose costs approach original construction costs. In St. Louis, owners of the Cardinals are already pressing city and state officials for $500 million in upgrades to the current Busch Stadium which cost $365 million to build in 2004 (about $598 million in 2024 dollars) and opened in 2006. In St. Louis, it is worth noting that the original plan for the rebuilt Busch Stadium included "Ballpark Village", a cluster of condos, restaurants and bars filling the hole left by the old stadium that would contribute to a hipper "night life" vibe around the stadium for game days and beyond. The first phase cost $100 million, didn't open until 2014 and used $49 million in public funding. Work is still in flight for "phase II" and planning still in progress on "phase III". Cardinals owners have not paid a dime in financial penalties for the project remaining incomplete as called for in the original contracts between the team and the city.

The skyrocketing costs and ever-shortening lifespans of these venues before requiring new outlays make them less of an "infrastructure project" where a capital project pays off over 40-60 years and more like a square wave jump in ongoing expenses for city, county and state governments. These same entities often toss in tax abatements as deal sweetening "stay bonuses" that further cripple investments in supporting infrastructure, both physical and social. Perhaps a more effective way for politicians and the public to grasp the stakes involved with new stadiums is to perform a few crude algebraic calculations to put the costs into a per-seat, per-game basis then compare those costs to current "willingness to pay" as reflected in ticket prices. Only then do the tremendous disparities become obvious.

In the case of Arrowhead stadium, surely the Chiefs would not build a SMALLER stadium, right? The current Arrowhead seats 76,416. Similar sized stadiums have cost a minimum of $1.6 billion. If $1.6 billion is spent and twenty years later, ANOTHER $1.6 billion is required to "rehab" the original stadium or replace it, then essentially the asset has a twenty-year life whose cost is being amortized over the guaranteed events being hosted. For an NFL stadium, the only "guarantee" per team is ten games per season (2 home pre-season games, 8 home regular season games). Sure, over that twenty year period, there MIGHT be a combined Mick Jagger / Taylor Swift Goodbye farewell tour in 2038 to sell another $76,416 seats at $500 per pop but that's not enough to change the result much and those types of acts are better at pocketing most of that ticket revenue.

So a "New Arrowhead" seating 76,416 and costing $1.6 billion to construct and lasting twenty years would amortize over 200 games in its lifetime, equating to $1,600,000,000 / 20 / 10 / 76,416 or $104.69 per seat per game. In the case of the Chiefs, their payroll is about $193 million per season equating to about $252 per ticket per home game. Thus the cost of fielding the team (stadium + payroll) is about $356 and the demonstrated willingness to pay for the product based on average ticket price is $132. (NOTE individual ticket prices are much higher -- around $300 -- but the average reflects a high number of season tickets being sold for MUCH less.) Presumably the difference between the $356 ($104.69 + $252) for the raw "product" and the average willingness to pay of $132 is covered by shared NFL ad revenue, parking and concessions.

The key here is that in this NFL example, the stadium cost is very near the average fan's current demonstrated willingness to pay for the product.

In the case of Kaufman Stadium, it currently seats 37,903 but the relatively small KC market means filling a larger stadium over 81 games per year would be very difficult. Assuming a replacement of similar size would cost about $500 million and again last twenty years before requiring "upgrades" amounting to a complete rebuild, the per-seat per-game cost would come out to $500,000,000 / 20 / 81 / 37,903 or $8.14 per seat per game. Seems much more realistic, except that the Royals don't sell out every seat for 81 games per year. The Royals are currently averaging 18,407 in the 2024 season but more typical averages for attendance per game are between 14,000 and 16,000. That amounts to $19.29 per occupied seat per game. Royals payroll for the 2024 season is estimated at $122 million or about $94.14 per occupied seat per game. The average cost of a ticket for a Royals game is around $72 dollars so the delta betweeen the fielding cost (stadium + payroll) and average willingness to pay is $114 - $72 or $42 dollars, presumably being made up by ad revenue sharing within MLB and local parking and concessions.

The key here again in this MLB example is that the likely stadium cost being considered of roughly $19.29 per seat per event is MUCH LESS than the currently demonstrated willingness to pay of $72 dollars, providing a larger margin of error in the decision for the public to chip in or not.

The only downside to this analysis is that ALL of these numbers are subject to change. That's why this "margin of error" is so crucial.

The league (NFL or MLB) could change revenue sharing terms that currently subsidize small market teams at the expense of big media market teams, suddenly starving small teams for revenue.

A change in revenue sharing could trigger small market team owners to cut payroll, making the team less competitive on the field.

A less competitive team on the field can cause attendance to plummet, reducing ticket revenue, parking and concessions in the venue and equally hurting secondary revenue for hotels and local bars and restaurants.

The owner could be the type that doesn't care about fielding a competitive team, they only want to milk their monopoly, enjoy the revenue sharing subsidy generated by interest in more successful teams and sit back and lose, tanking fan interest, tanking attendance and tanking all of those secondary economic benefits originally promised when locking in public subsidies.

The owner could decide to move the team when lease contracts between the team and venue reach their endpoint. The stadium may last twenty years but if the team's contract to play there ends after just five years, the community is taking a huge financial risk.

In fact, the only economic figure here that is guaranteed to be UNCHANGED over time is the debt owed on the stadium. It is no coincidence that construction costs are the component team owners are most interested in transferring to the public.

Of course, there is one other intangible to consider. Will either pro football or pro baseball still have the same draw that they do now, across the "stadium lifetime" of the venue being constructed? NFL football is certainly more popular than MLB baseball but the NFL has a growing raw materials problem... Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. Could litigation stemming from lawsuits from retired players eventually alter the nature of the game to materially change the product on the field and shrink demand? That seems not only possible but likely. Even without litigation changing the rules on the field in an attempt to reduce injuries, could the supply of talent dwindle on its own as parents and kids more accurately balance the allure of football with its life-altering after-effects and avoid the sport? If a significant portion of the violence is filtered out of the product, will the product still sell at current rates and prices?

Baseball has a fundamentally different problem -- a mismatch between the dynamics of the sport and any audience that essentially results in a surplus of the product. The sport itself has a season that lasts 162 games and each game lasts often three hours yet only offers possibly fifteen minutes of actual action split up by interminable, often boring waits. At the same time, the potential audience is increasingly ADHD driven, distracted every second by smartphones and has other forms of entertainment explicitly designed for delivery and distraction on a smartphone to choose as alternatives.

So is there anyone in the state of Kansas paying attention to these dynamics? Will Kansas be the next city/state consortium to get screwed with its proverbial pants on by corrupt monopolistic sports leagues and their billionaire owners, all in the vain pursuit of being able to say they have a "major league city" in their midst? Or will they wake up in time and instead allow politicians in Missouri to do the same? Or will both states read the tea leaves, hold the the line on these public subsidies for private billionaires and win a more reasonable deal or let the teams flee to other communities waiting to be the next greater fool?

Stay tuned.

WTH

The Mythical Undecided Voter

June 14 is two weeks past a history making guilty verdict in a criminal trial involving a past President and current Presidential candidate and two weeks prior to the first of two promised debates between the two Presidential candidates. That's as good a time as any to dispense with the fallacy of the undecided voter and pre-emptively debunk all remaining "news coverage" of the 2024 race. Here's the news flash:

There isn't a single American who hasn't made up their mind on their preference for President, US Senator, US Representative, Governor, State Senator, State Representative, Attorney General or Secretary of State. Even if their state hasn't completed primaries for these races, I doubt a single American is truly undecided about how they will vote. R or D it is. The actual name doesn't matter.

The only problem with predicting the outcome of the election is that some percentage of potential voters don't want to discuss their choice, even with an anonymous pollster and some percentage are so clueless about the consequences of this election that they might feign sophistication and disgust at "how political" everything has become and not vote at all because "it's all so meaningless."

Since 2016, a dynamic which first took hold after the 2000 election turmoil has come to dominate any attempts at political chit chat at work or around the neighborhood. In a small enough group -- bigger than one on one which becomes immediately awkward and smaller than (say) six where hinting at "politics" might be viewed as coercive -- any talk of current events will tip toe round the economy, inflation, employment trends (especially involving lazy youth and immigration) and "law and order." At some point, I find those I suspect lean "conservative" will then very... very... gingerly hint that the current President is "out to lunch" or "looks absent minded at the podium," etc. Then they'll back off as if "got my point across..."

I make it a point not to draw people out in public situations nor do I attempt to counter every point (or even any of them) being made. However, I find it interesting to test their awareness of events and facts on all sides any particular topic or issue. This week, in this kind of conversation, some gaffe that Biden made was brought up in this exact kind of conversation. I listened to the point, listened to others weigh in on the point as well, then quietly asked... "If you think Biden is having trouble connecting the dots, did you see Trump's rally in Las Vegas where he wandered off script when talking about electric cars? He started by outlining his thoughts on how he would want to die if he was in an electric vehicle that fell into the water and risked electrocuting him as the water shorted the battery out then went on a further tangent about dying by electrocution versus being bitten by a shark."

"Nope. Never seen that..."

That was it. No more conversation. End of that topic. I don't think I "won" my point. I don't even think it registered. I didn't expect it to register. I don't think the person involved has any interest in accepting new information about their presumed preferred candidate. They have internalized the idea Biden is "feeble" and "feeble" means "weak" and they don't want to vote for anything that makes them contemplate "weakness" so their mind is made up.

To be perfectly clear, there are people who might be inclined to vote either Democratic or Republican who fall into the "sophisticated cynic" camp. These people are equally idiotic and completely ignorant of history and the potential impact on the rule of law and the operation of our judicial system based on the outcome of this election.

So what SHOULD voters be contemplating in 2024 if they really want to make a sound decision about the two looming candidates? Perhaps the best way is a modern day resurrection of a series of old Doonesbury comics from October of 1980, a series Gary Trudeau called "In Search of Reagan's Brain - Brought to you by Anacin."

If you don't get the reference, check it out here:

https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1980/10/27

I strongly recommend clicking the single arrow button > to step through that entire week's strip.

Here in 2024, America has had four years to observe the brain of BOTH candidates in the highest office in the land. America now faces a choice between two elderly men facing equal problems with energy level and the ability to connect points of thought in their head accurately and rapidly for extended periods of time.

HOWEVER...

One candidate's head is filled predominately by accurate facts about the physical world, economics and government and new ideas that are formed regarding his official actions seem to have a consistent pattern of trying to provide economic or social improvements to OTHERS. He has an entire cabinet of officials with similar collections of reality-based facts about the real world they use in assisting him. When he vacated his Senate seat to become Vice President, he was among the least wealthy Senators. His current net worth is estimated to be around $10 million dollars, much of it from appreciation in real estate from owning two homes. He clearly did not make a life of politics with the intent or result of exploiting his position or inside information for money.

The other candidate's head is filled with fractured fairy tales, a horrifically incomplete understanding of history, science, the arts, etc.. The other candidate already burned through any halfway rational actor who might be willing to serve in his cabinet in his first Administration and it is now clear the bar on the rationality scale isn't just low, the candidate demands IRRATIONALITY and a willingness to abuse power in exchange for admittance to his circle. Even prior to his first Presidency, this candidate had a 30+ year track record of financial failures, civil fraud convictions and personal moral failures across three marriages. More importantly, any action taken by this candidate can be consistently, repeatedly traced to his own financial or legal self-interest and most can be consistently traced to immediate and long-lasting bad outcomes for America. Everything this candidate undertakes is animated primarily by hate, greed, fear and revenge.

If I am forced to choose between two candidates with equal deficits in "connecting mental dots" together, I will opt for the choice who at least has dots based on reality and isn't animated in every waking moment by such vile motives. And for the record, that is not damning Biden with faint praise. Many questions can be posed about the financial wisdom of the college debt relief program or US strategy regarding Israel and the Hamas war but overall, Biden's Administration has achieved what EVERY other industrial economy dreamed of at the outset of COVID -- a rapid financial recovery rather than a depression and a "soft landing" as stimulus was pulled back from the economy. US labor markets and competitive forces are not perfect but would workers feel better with unemployment at seven percent and economic growth at one percent instead of three? Uhhhhh... No.

The reality in 2024 is that there are no truly undecided voters left to sway. There are only those that have made up their mind and will share their preference, those that have made up their minds but will not share their preference and a smaller block that are too clueless to vote. The only factor changing poll results is the random selection of those polled. The only factor that can change the final outcome is apathy in those that can't be bothered to vote. But even the apathetic have made up their mind.

WTH