Cagle World

It’s time for the Veepstakes, a cherished American pastime. But at the risk of ruining our current fun – who’s gonna partner up with Kamala Harris? – it’s my sad obligation to point out that rarely, if ever, does the choice of a running mate make a big difference in the balloting.

Granted, it’s possible that the neophyte laughingstock JD Vance could weigh like an anchor on his fascist partner and help drag him down to defeat. But even bad picks don’t necessarily doom a national ticket. Witness deer-in-the-headlights lightweight Dan Quayle, who, despite his dearth of presidential creds, didn’t stop George H. W. Bush from winning big in 1988; in fact, that was the most decisive Republican victory – popular vote plus Electoral College – in the last 36 years.

There’s much chatter right now about tapping a running mate who can “deliver a key state,” notably someone like Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro. But recent history is replete with picks that didn’t work out. In 2012, Mitt Romney chose Paul Ryan in the hopes that Ryan could deliver swing state Wisconsin. Didn’t happen. In 2004, John Kerry chose John Edwards (pre-sex scandal) in the hopes that Edwards could deliver North Carolina. Didn’t happen. In 1992, Bill Clinton chose Al Gore mostly to reinforce the theme of “generational change” (two Baby Boomers on the same ticket) but also because he hoped that Gore could deliver his native Tennessee. Didn’t happen.

Indeed, two political scientists, Kyle Kopko and Christopher Devine, have long studied the “delivery” scenario and concluded: “The vice presidential home-state advantage is, essentially, zero.” Which helps to explain why various successful presidential candidates have ignored that scenario entirely. In 1968, Richard Nixon picked a stiff named Spiro Agnew, from minimally important Maryland, and won the election anyway (while losing Maryland). In 2000, George W. Bush teamed up with Dick Cheney of Wyoming – a red state with minimal electoral votes. In 2008, Barack Obama chose Joe Biden of Delaware – a blue state with minimal electoral votes.

Presidential candidates who advertise “ideological balance” don’t necessarily impress the voters, either. In 1996, Bob Dole was viewed by many conservative Republicans as too wishy-washy, too pragmatically moderate for their tastes. So he balanced the ticket with hard-core conservative Jack Kemp…and got waxed in the November election. In 1988, Mike Dukakis was widely viewed as a Boston lefty, so he balanced his ticket with moderate Senate fixture Lloyd Bentsen of Texas…and got waxed by Bush-Quayle in November.

Nor is there any guarantee that a veep nominee who’s entrusted with delivering a key constituency will succeed in that endeavor. Democrats were stoked in 1984 when they chose Geraldine Ferraro, the first-ever female veep nominee, because they thought she’d galvanize women voters en masse. She and the guy she ran with, Walter Mondale, wound up losing 49 states. And nearly a quarter century later, John McCain thought Sarah Palin could help deliver women voters. I’m still laughing about that one.

So it likely won’t make much difference whether Harris plucks Shapiro or Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly or Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz or Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear or Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, because, post-Veepstakes, it’s the presidential candidates who dominate the news. This election will turn on whether Harris can leverage the Biden administration’s policy achievements to her advantage, and successfully prosecute the case against the convicted felon and his weirdo sidekick. Any of Harris’ white guys will nicely fill the bill and echo her message.

But governing is ultimately what matters most. “Balance” and “deliver” issues aside, her pick should be the person best suited to ascend in an emergency. That’s a great way to highlight the wisdom chasm that separates Harris and Trump. She’ll choose a bona fide grown up, while he chose a callow child.

Perhaps that will be the takeaway message from the 2024 Veepstakes.

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Copyright 2024 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

The next four weeks, culminating in the Democratic National Convention, are crucial for Kamala Harris.

Half-buried until now in the thankless job of vice president, Harris has an excellent second chance to make a favorable first impression – to successfully define herself and her candidacy, trumping Team MAGA’s tsunami of smears.

In the brief passage of time since her ascent to the nomination (raising more than $100 million in roughly 48 hours), she has been denounced as “a Marxist,” as “Lucifer,” as an immoral “Jezebel,” as “a DEI hire” (because a woman of color is, by definition, not as qualified as a white person), as too lazy to work hard (you know what they say about Black people), as an “illegitimate” candidate (fact check: she was born in America), and other stuff I deem unprintable. Plus, Trump said this week she’s “dumb as a rock,” which is rich coming from the guy who’s been described by former top aides as a “dope,” a “moron,” and an “idiot.”

Going forward, there will be relentless attempts to paint Harris as an “elitist” who’s out of touch with “real Americans.”

Indeed, the MAGAts road-tested that theme way back in November 2021, when the new veep visited Paris and had the temerity to spend $500 of her own money on some cookware.

Fox News’ website duly assailed her for “dropping 516 euros on pots and pans,” and the GOP’s official website huffed “While Americans are struggling to pay more than EVER for the holidays, Kamala Harris is out buying a $375 pot.” They also said she “faked” a French accent while in France (in truth she speaks some French, having once attended a French language school in Montreal).

The cookware attack drove a few MAGA news cycles, but I thought it was kinda weird, given the fact that Melania Trump spent $75,000 on a Birkin bag and $51,000 on a Dolce & Gabbana jacket, Her husband spent $10,000 on a painting of himself (using money from one of his charities), and we taxpayers spent $141,000,000 footing the bill for the future felon’s golf trips. Indeed, Harris would’ve had to spend $500 a month on cookware for the ensuing 260 months in order to equal the $130,000 that Trump spent to keep Stormy Daniels quiet.

(By the way, anyone who thinks that $500 for cookware is wildly lavish clearly needs to get out more. A set of stainless steel cookware at Crate and Barrel retails for around $1,400. Williams Sonoma’s Le Creuset cookware lists for around $1,300.)

Presumably, Trump and the MAGAts will focus on stuff more substantive than cookware. They’ll try the “California liberal” label. They’re reportedly researching her old record as a prosecutor for evidence that she might’ve been “soft on crime” – like in 2004 when she declined to seek the death penalty for a guilty defendant who killed a San Francisco cop (the guy was sentenced to life in prison). They’ll also call her “soft on migrants,” and try to tie her to recent crimes committed by migrants (although studies have found that people living here illegally are less likely than native-born Americans to have been arrested for violent crimes).

Presumably she’ll be ready for those attacks. But while MAGA Republicans scramble to define her in their inimitable fashion, she got ahead of the game this week with a campaign address that introduced her anew to the electorate, on her own terms – using relevant bio material to craft a smart attack on the convicted criminal.

“Before I was elected as vice president, before I was elected a United States senator, I was the elected attorney general of California. And before that I was a courtroom prosecutor,” Harris said. “In those roles I took on perpetrators of all kinds. Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type…Are we ready to get to work?”

And presto: A287092 new national poll, conducted after Joe Biden stepped down, has Harris two points ahead of Trump (and four points up when RFK Jr. is in the mix). The Democratic reboot is already paying off.

For months, it felt like we were witnessing the beginning of the end. But now it’s all just beginning.

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Copyright 2024 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

The presidential race has just received an historic reboot, thanks to Joe Biden’s selfless decision to stand down in the national interest. For those of us who loathe the looming totalitarian threat to our democratic values, the president’s passing of the torch feels like a shot of adrenaline to our aching hearts.

For starters, the baggage of the Biden age issue has been magically swept away. The focus now shifts to the MAGA nominee – the oldest presidential candidate in history, a convicted criminal who’s been found liable for rape and financial fraud, indicted for plotting a coup, and determined to rule with a fascist blueprint drawn up by 140 former aides.

Maybe this existentially consequential election is winnable for the Dems after all. As evidenced by all the polls (including the Dems’ internal soundings), Biden had a very low ceiling. But now it feels like there’s room to grow. Kamala Harris – anointed by Biden and not seriously challenged – comes to the fore with a message tailor-made for 2024 combat: She’s an ex-prosecutor running against a felon. She’ll put Trump on trial in the public square. Since the judges won’t do it, she will.

Plus, she can string sentences together without losing her train of thought (“Ultimately, in this election, we each face the question: What kind of country do we want to live in?”); indeed, she can make the case for the Biden administration’s major achievements – infrastructure, climate change investment, lower drug prices, the western world’s strongest economy – far more coherently than her lame duck boss.

She’ll zero in on the MAGA ticket’s biggest vulnerability: its war against women’s bodily autonomy. She’s been doing that for more than a year (“We have worked too hard and for too long to see our daughters grow up in a world with fewer rights than our mothers”), and she’s already connecting the abortion issue to the broader fight to preserve all the freedoms that are currently imperiled.

Biden was tanking with young voters (especially voters of color), age 18 to 29. She’ll bring them out en masse. She might be a tougher sell for white voters than Biden was in 2020, but she can address that potential deficit in the swing states by teaming up with a great white guy – one of the many successful governors, or perhaps Mark Kelly, the Arizona Senator and ex-Navy combat vet.

The bottom line is that the campaign narrative has been overhauled; whereas before the Dems were drowning, now they’ve surged to the water’s surface. Harris’ team raised more than $81 million in just 24 hours, according to the Associated Press. An activist group led by Black women held a Zoom call and expected 1,000 participants; they got 40,000.

Granted, the MAGAts will unleash a tsunami of attacks – highlighting border immigration (Biden gave Harris that thankless issue early on), tying her to the inflation that long plagued the Biden team (although inflation has been ebbing), and of course serenading her with racist and misogynist dog whistles. They don’t like the way she laughs, and Kellyanne Conway told Fox News that “She does not speak well. She does not work hard.”

But Trump is clearly freaked out. On social media, he signaled that he may try to weasel out of the scheduled September presidential debate (the last thing he wants is to risk getting stomped by a Black woman). And best of all was his plaintive whine; with Biden out and Kamala in, “Now we have to start all over again.”

What we’re seeing now is the starkest contrast between a pro-democracy party and an authoritarian cult. Much as the Democrats loved and respected Joe Biden for the great work he has done, they openly questioned whether their leader had the skills to win again. Whereas the cult is led by an aging criminal who brooks no dissent, who inspires the mindless to bandage their ears.

This will be an election season like no other, and we should salute Joe one last time for teeing it up. In 2020 he saved democracy by running against Trump. In 2024, if Harris wins, he will be hailed in history for saving democracy by standing down.

The entire chessboard has been reset. Let’s get to work.

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Copyright 2024 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

I’m in a musical mood. Cue Joni Mitchell:

All the news of home you read
Just gives you the blues
Just gives you the blues

Having taken a short vacation from the news, I’m tanned, rested, and ready to report that the fundamentals of our nightmarish and unwanted presidential tourney haven’t changed much since Saturday night, when a registered Republican white boy armed with an AR-15 wreaked havoc at a MAGA hate rally. (Easy access to AR-15s is an all-American staple, thanks to MAGA Republicans. But I digress.)

The state of play basically remains the same:

1. The guy who’s on the cusp of another GOP nomination is the same fascist threat to our teetering democracy as he was before the kid shot at him. I’m relieved that Trump wasn’t killed – the national trauma, from every angle, would’ve been so much worse had that happened. But whereas many members of the mainstream media (having still learned apparently nothing) have been sucking up to his brush with blood martyrdom by suggesting that he has been “humbled” and “changed,” certain facts remain stubbornly self-evident.

He’s still a convicted felon. He’s still under indictment for plotting to violently overthrow the peaceful transfer of power. He’s still on record using Nazi rhetoric, railing that undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of the country.” He’s still thirsting to use unchecked power, granted to him by the MAGA Supreme Court, to prosecute political opponents. He’s still the guy who boasts about restricting women’s bodily autonomy. He’s still a pathological liar at war with factual reality. He’s still the vehicle for Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint (crafted by scores of his allies) that intends to erase anti-discrimination protects for women and gays. He’s all that and much more, and no ear bandage can retroactively beautify him.

Only a fervently unified Democratic party, led by a fervently energetic presidential candidate, can dispel the dark clouds looming on the horizon. Which brings me to what else hasn’t changed.

2. Joe Biden, whom I’ve long boosted and supported, is still sucking us toward the abyss. With each precious passing day, with each new release of dire poll numbers (a new sampling shows him sliding ever further in seven swing states, while another new sampling says that nearly two-third of grassroots Democrats want him to withdraw), he nevertheless grows more delusional.

Earlier this week on his I’m-not-too-old tour, he told a cable TV interviewer: “When I originally ran…I said I was gonna be a transitional candidate, and I thought that I’d be able to move from this, just pass it on to someone else. But I didn’t anticipate things getting so, so, so divided. And quite frankly, I think the only thing age brings a little bit of wisdom.”

Hang on. He didn’t anticipate “things getting so, so, so divided”? If memory serves, he took the oath of office only 14 days after MAGA goons stormed the Capitol, killed some people, and smeared feces on the hallowed walls – stark evidence that things were already so, so, so divided. Now he’s claiming that he’s running again because he “didn’t anticipate” what he already knew to be true. That rationale running again is thinner than dental floss.

And, as painful as it is for me to say this, wisdom is not “the only thing age brings.” Cognitive issues are common, too. One of my fiercely anti-MAGA friends, an eldercare specialist based in Atlanta, publicly posted some worthy thoughts on July 6:

“I had been thinking for months that (Biden’s) apparent frailty would repel voters. But I wasn’t worried about his actual cognition. I was mainly worried about his ability to beat Trump. But now I’m thinking geez, this lovely man really does have cognitive deficits. I’m not a doctor, but for many years I worked with neurologists and neuropsychologists to assess older adults suspected of having cognitive decline. Many patients who were diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment or early dementia had anosognosia, the inability to recognize their own deficits. It’s not denial – it’s different. They had no insight into their problems and so they’d become very offended and angry when concerned others told them otherwise… I hate being so negative but I just don’t think this gentleman is fit to have the hardest job in the world.”

I too hate being so negative, but unless Democratic leaders and delegates see fit to stop the party’s death spiral…well, I said at the outset that I was in a musical mood. Take it away, Paul Simon:

Slip slidin’ away
Slip slidin’ away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you’re slip slidin’ away

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Copyright 2024 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

We in the press are rightly questioning President Joe Biden’s fitness for a second term. I believe he has stayed in the game too long, the way Willie Mays did in 1973 after his skills had eroded.

Unfortunately, by focusing so fervently on Joe’s mounting woes, we’ve taken our eye off the ball. We’re ignoring the pathologically lying fascist, the convicted felon who’s still up for sentencing, the indicted coup fomenter who’s been held liable for rape and financial fraud.

Can’t we cover both fellows at the same time?

With that goal in mind I wish to remind everyone that the cult’s presidential nominee is, for starters, a very sick puppy, a particularly malignant case case of narcissistic personality disorder. That alone should disqualify him.

Admittedly, I’m not a mental health professional. Nor, in all probability, are you. So I decided to do something different, something interactive. Knowing everything I know about Trump’s detestable shtick, I took an online narcissistic personality test, answering as he would if her were honest.

I clicked on all of Trump’s personality traits, and he easily scored a 32 — a score so high the psychiatric website diagnosed the narcissistic disorder as extreme. And here’s how the disorder is defined:

“Narcissistic Personality Disorder…is characterized by a long-standing pattern of grandiosity (either in fantasy or actual behavior), an overwhelming need for admiration, and usually a complete lack of empathy toward others. People with this disorder often believe they are of primary importance in everybody’s life or to anyone they meet…”

According to the shrink site, the symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder include any five of the following:

– Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)

– Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love

– Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)

– Requires excessive admiration; has a very strong sense of entitlement, e.g., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations

– Is exploitative of others, e.g., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends

– Lacks empathy, e.g., is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others

– Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her

– Regularly shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

Those are the symptoms. Sound like anyone we know?

Thinking back to the June 27 debate, Trump had a classic narcissistic moment (deranged grandiosity sub-category) when he was asked to critique the ever-worsening climate change crisis. Remember the climate-denier’s non-answer?

“I want absolutely clean air, and we had it. We had H2O. We had the best numbers ever,” Trump claimed. “I had the best environmental numbers ever.”

And here’s my punchline: With the exception of today’s three opening paragraphs, most of what you’ve just read has been lifted from a column I wrote on May 16, 2016.

In other words, I’ve been warning about the evil lummox nonstop for eight long years, with no intention of easing off the accelerator. Nor should anyone else in the press. The Biden age story is urgently legitimate and warrants most of the coverage it’s receiving, but we should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Regardless of whether Joe stays or go, voters need to know a helluva lot more about the fascist blueprint Project 2025 – coupled with fresh scrutiny of the personality-disordered criminal who’d serve as its frontman. Only then will voters hopefully come to their senses and join the British and French electorates who’ve rejected a right-wing future.

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Copyright 2024 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

We’ve known for many months  this day was coming. It was inevitable that the MAGA-infested Supreme Court would concoct the requisite flowery language to help Donald Trump weasel out of his criminal predicament prior to the 2024 balloting. And now it has done so.

With Monday’s ruling, it’s now official: Thanks to Trump’s six accomplices, there’s virtually no possibility, pre-election, that a federal jury will have the opportunity to decide whether he’s guilty of fomenting the violent Jan. 6 insurrection, of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss, and of plotting to sabotage the peaceful transfer of power. Indeed, it’s now highly unlikely that the long-in-limbo federal trial will even get off the ground.

As expected, the MAGA majority has decreed a president has “absolute immunity” for all “official” acts while in office – perhaps even pressuring one’s vice president to refuse to certify election results. The majority does admit, “There is no immunity for unofficial acts,” but since it’s left unclear where the line should be drawn between “official” and “unofficial,” the MAGA judges have predictably kicked that issue back to the trial court – which now “must carefully analyze the indictment’s remaining allegations to determine whether they too involve conduct for which a President must be immune from prosecution.”

That’s exactly what Trump and his lawyers were hoping for – a friendly ruling that throws a wrench in the machinery and slows the clock to a crawl, ensuring that voters will cast their ballots without full knowledge of what Trump has done to sabotage democracy, without hearing from witnesses and sifting evidence presented in open court. The MAGA lawyers and prosecutors will now tangle, in a blizzard of motions, over what’s “official” and “non-official” – Jack Smith will surely contend that pressuring state officials and abetting the fake electors scam were “non-official” acts – but whatever is decided will likely be appealed, and the machinery will grind to a halt again when that happens.

Tanya Chutkan, the federal judge in the now-sandbagged trial, had trashed Trump’s immunity claim in a ruling last December: “By definition, the president’s duty to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed’ does not grant special latitude to violate them.” A few months later, a federal appeals court rejected Trump as well. Seasoned jurists of all stripes mocked Trump’s bid to escape accountability; former federal appeals judge J. Michael Luttig, a renowned conservative, warned earlier this year: “If a president cannot be held accountable under the Constitution for having attempted to overturn an election that he lost fair and square, remain in power, and all the while preventing the peaceful transfer of power, then that is to cut the heart and soul out of America’s democracy and the rule of law.”

But now the high court’s MAGAts have cut the heart and soul out of our democracy.

They’ve crafted the conditions that will quite likely help Trump get off scot-free for his trampling of the Constitution. It is not hyperbolic – as it once was – to state the obvious, that we’re being goose-stepped in slow motion toward home-grown fascism.

That’s hard for many Americans to fathom, especially naifs who think we’re magically immune from human nature’s darkest impulses. But the potential consequences of today’s predictably treacherous ruling are indeed obvious. If Trump wins in November, he’ll cancel the federal trial-in-limbo.

And then he’ll be free to do whatever he wants. He can gut the U.S. Civil Service, replace those workers with MAGA flunkies, and be immune from punishment because it’s an “official” act. He can send in the military to shoot peaceful protestors and be immune from punishment because it’s an “official” act. He can jail critics because it’s an “official” act. Read the ruling: “Nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts.”

Here’s a passage from Justice Sotomayor’s clear-eyed dissent, for what it’s worth: “When (a president) uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders a Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold on to power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.”

If you’re old enough, you may remember what Richard Nixon said a few years after the Watergate scandal compelled him to quit in disgrace. He insisted: “If the president does it, it’s not illegal.” He was widely mocked for saying such a thing. Now this runaway Supreme Court has blessed it.

What’s next, DT armbands?

I’ll close with another question. It’s directed at all the liberals and Dems who stayed home in 2016 because they thought Hillary Clinton was insufficiently perfect, or that she wasn’t Bernie, or that her voice was shrill, or But Her Emails, or whatever:

Happy now?

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Copyright 2024 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

I get that people who love democracy and detest MAGA fascism are alarmed about President Joe Biden. I share the concerns.

What’s astounding – and it speaks to how numb we’ve become – is that virtually no one with a public megaphone, in the wake of last week’s debate, is calling for Donald Trump to get the hell out and leave us in peace.

Yes, Biden ratcheted up the age issue anew with his oft-enfeebled performance. Perhaps the Democrats would be better off if he withdrew and cleared the decks for a more vigorous candidate (assuming that can be done without intramural chaos). The New York Times editorial board and most of the paper’s pundits want him gone. But before we deep-six this good man and his effective presidential tenure, we need to get our priorities straight.

The pathologically lying convicted criminal, who has been held liable for sexual assault and financial fraud, who’s still criminally charged with fomenting a coup and trying to overthrow the peaceful transition of power, who’s still criminally charged with stealing secret classified documents and stashing them in his bathroom, who’s still criminally charged with trying to overthrow his 2020 loss in Georgia (“I just want to find, uh, 11,780 votes”), is the one who really needs to go, pronto.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, my ex-employer, posted an editorial calling for Trump to withdraw. Kudos to the paper for putting things in the proper perspective. Why aren’t there more voices urging the same? All anyone needs to do is reference the garbage he disgorged during the debate – much of which has been overshadowed by the focus on Biden.

No candidate for president should disparage the rule of law and our judicial system. Trump attacked the integrity of the judge and prosecutors in the Stormy Daniels-election interference trial, ignoring for the umpteenth time that he was indicted by a grand jury of ordinary citizens and later convicted by a jury of his peers.

No candidate for president should threaten to pull out of NATO, the western alliance that has provided collective global security since 1949. When Biden asked Trump whether he would make good on his previous threats to yank America out of NATO, the felon shrugged and refused to answer.

No candidate for president should play fast and loose with the public’s health. On the stump, Trump is threatening to withhold federal funds from schools that mandate vaccines. During the debate, he took no responsibility for his imbecilic response to the Covid pandemic and failed to mention that The Lancet, a prominent medical journal, concluded in a 2021 report that Trump’s “appalling response” to the pandemic “expedited the spread of Covid” in the United States. According to the report, as many as 40 percent of the 470,00 deaths that occurred on his watch could have been avoided, had he acted rationally.

And, worst of all, no candidate for president should dodge this simple question: Will you accept the democratic election results if you lose? He refused to accept his 2020 loss, and he’s already signaling that he’d refuse again in 2024. He is a traitor to all that we stand for.

Late in the debate, Trump was asked three times whether he’d abide by the results. Three times he categorically refused to say yes. He even shrugged off the violent insurrection he fomented on Jan. 6: “A relatively small number of people went to the Capitol and in many cases were ushered in by the police,” thereby lying (yet again) about what we all saw with our own eyes.

When pressed for the third time to answer the election question, here’s what he said: “If it’s a fair and legal and good election – absolutely. I would have much rather accepted these but the fraud and everything else was ridiculous that if you want, we’ll have a news conference on it in a week or we’ll have another one of these on – in a week.”

Translating the incoherence: He’ll “absolutely” accept the 2024 election results – if he wins; if he loses, he’ll say it wasn’t a fair and legal and good election. Just like he did in 2020 when “the fraud and everything else was ridiculous” (the courts, including Trump-appointed judges, found no fraud).

Conclusion: If he loses, he’ll tee us up for another round of fascist-style chaos, arguably worse than Jan. 6’s rehearsal. No candidate for president should ever do that. It is traitorous.

And that alone is why – outside the MAGA Republican cult – a public call for Trump to step down should be unanimous. The fact that we seem solely fixated on Biden’s acuity is a sad commentary on how much the tyrant’s lies, rants, and criminality have been normalized. Have we lost all sense of perspective?

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Copyright 2024 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

If you’re bored by the pablum that passes for conversation on sports broadcasts – if, like me, you’re long past fed up with all the cliches and predictable jock jocularity – I urge you to watch (if you haven’t already done so) Reggie Jackson’s soul-baring soliloquy.

It was a breath of fresh air to hear a baseball great speak so painfully, live on national TV, about the racism he suffered as a young player during the 1960s – two decades after Jackie Robinson, and well within many of our lifetimes.

Left unspoken was this self-evident truth: When the convicted felon currently seeking the presidency vows to “make American great again,” he’s stoking nostalgia for white racist greatness.

Last week, Major League Baseball hosted its first-ever game at the historic Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, in honor of the late Willie Mays and other Negro League players. Fox Sports televised it. Reggie Jackson, who played for Birmingham’s minor league team on his way to The Show, joined the panel of talking heads. Alex Rodriguez teed up Reggie with this rote question: “How emotional is it for you to come back to a place where you played with one of the greatest teams around?”

If you watch sports, what usually happens next is that the respondent will say something like, “How right you are, it’s so emotional to be back to Birmingham, what a great team we had and how great it was that I had the opportunity to play here…” and blah blah for another 30 seconds. Instead, here’s what Reggie said during the next three minutes – an eternity in TV-time:

“(Back then) I walked into restaurants and they would point at me and said, ‘N—-r can’t eat here.’ I would go to a hotel and they said, ‘N—-r can’t stay here.’ We went to (team owner) Charlie Finley’s country club for a welcome-home dinner, and they pointed me out with the N-word and said, ‘He can’t come in here,'” Jackson said.

“Had it not been for my white friends, I never would’ve made it,” Jackson added. “I was too physically violent, I was ready to physically fight someone, I would’ve gotten killed, I would’ve beat someone’s ass, you woulda saw me in an oak tree somewhere.”

Rest assured, nobody on the panel or in the Fox front office saw that answer coming.

I’m duty bound to say Reggie mis-remembered a few things. He said at one point he played in Birmingham one year after local Klan members bombed a Black church and killed four little girls; actually, he played there in 1967, four years after the bombing. He said nobody was ever indicted for the bombing; actually, a number of Klansmen were tried and convicted in 1977, 2001, and 2002. And he said that Birmingham lost its minor league team for awhile starting in 1963; actually, the team disbanded in 1961. But racism was indeed the reason. The entire league, known as the Southern Association, broke up in 1961 because it refused to integrate. Birmingham returned to the field with an integrated team, in a new league, in 1964.

Regardless, it was refreshing to hear a Hall of Famer pierce the pablum. And I have to wonder whether that kind of straight talk can even be taught anymore in MAGA enclaves like Florida and Texas, where white snowflakes have decreed the full history of white racism is too delicate a topic for budding intellects.

At least 14 states have enacted restrictions on what teachers can say; reportedly, these laws are “leading many teachers to simply mention important figures in Black history without getting into the racism they faced.” And during the past year, lawmakers in 30 states have floated new bills to stymie classroom talk.

Denialism is a powerful impulse, but we can’t confront racism today if we whitewash not just history but the sins of living memory.

So bravo to Reggie for performing a public service and reminding us – to borrow a quote from William Faulkner – that “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

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Copyright 2024 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

Well, hallelujah! At long last, Democrats are poised to highlight our highest court as a top-tier campaign issue.

The opposition camp has been doing this for decades – to devastating effect, as you may have noticed – so it’s nice that the Dems are finally waking up. It’s a tad late, of course, but better late than never.

President Biden made the wake-up call at a fundraiser last weekend. He correctly warned that if Trump is reinstalled in the Oval Office, the convicted felon will likely have the opportunity to appoint a few more MAGA jurists to the Supreme Court.

Or, as Biden himself put it, “he’s going to appoint two more flying flags upside down,” a barbed reference to you know who. That would be “one of the scariest” aspects of a convicted felon administration.”

The president said, “The Supreme Court has never been as out of kilter as it is today, I mean never,” citing the theocratic decree that overturned women’s right to bodily autonomy – although he could easily have mentioned any number of decisions (including last week’s ruling that puts rapid-fire machine guns back into the hands of American lunatics), plus the court’s slow-mo deliberations on presidential immunity, which have all but guaranteed that the convicted felon, prior to the 2024 election, will not face a federal jury verdict for fomenting an attempted coup.

But Biden did call out crooked Clarence Thomas’ recent contention that the court “should reconsider” its rulings codifying contraception and gay marriages. Regarding the latter threat, Biden said: “Not on my watch.” (Why would the court reconsider those rulings? I thought that conservatives pride themselves on respecting judicial precedent.) So bravo, Joe.

Granted, the Biden campaign needs to highlight a lot of things – like his first-term domestic achievements (a huge list, starting with the strongest post-pandemic economy in the western world, assuming that voters are willing to process factual reality), his second-term goals (all of which have been itemized, assuming voters are willing to pay attention), his vow to defeat fascism at home, and his characteristic decency – in sharp contrast to the felon’s babbling imbecility.

But between now and November, Biden and his surrogates need to hammer the Supreme court issue 24/7. Just as conservative Republicans have been doing for umpteen presidential election cycles dating back to the late 20th century.

I’m frankly at pains to explain why most blue voters (especially blue-leaning voters who stay home) have never seemed to understand that whoever sits in the Oval has the power to shape the bench that has the final say on virtually every hot-button issue in American life. Conservatives said that out loud in 2000 when they coalesced around George W. Bush – who later gave us Sam Alito. They said it with peak fervor in 2016 when they rallied around Trump. They knew he was a lowlife, but so what.

John Boehner, the ex-House Republican speaker, said it best in 2016. He admitted that Trump’s behavior “disgusted” him, but “the only thing that really matters over the next four years or eight years is who is going to appoint the next Supreme Court nominees…The biggest impact any president can have on American society and on the American economy is who’s on that court.”

They didn’t care about purity; they understand what it takes to seize and exercise power. By contrast, the Dems in that consequential year didn’t campaign on the future of the court; they were far too invested in finding fault with Hillary Clinton. And the subsequent exit polls told the tale: Among the 14 percent of voters who said the court was “a minor factor” in their balloting decision, Clinton won by nine points; among the 14 percent of voters who said the court was “not a factor at all,” Clinton won by 18. But among the 21 percent of voters who cited the court as the “most important” factor, Trump swamped Clinton by 15. And those stats don’t include all the Democratic leaners who embraced Jill Stein or simply sat on their rears at home.

Presumably – if Biden’s comments are any indication – Dems have finally learned their lesson. If the death of Roe v. Wade can’t wake them up, nothing will.

To update James Carville’s old strategizing slogan: It’s the Supreme Court, stupid.

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Copyright 2024 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

Hunter Biden, the president’s son, was found guilty of illegally buying a gun while using narcotics. While he stood trial, you may have noticed the quietude outside the federal courthouse and on the information highway.

No demagogic puppets from Capitol Hill showed up to attack the rule of law or slime the judge and jury.

No whining from the defendant about how very unfair and disgraceful everything was, a sham the likes of nothing anyone has ever seen before. No fuming about a courtroom “icebox.”

No Democratic denunciations of the FBI. No Democratic demands that a “weaponized” Justice Department should be defunded. No Democratic warnings that if “they” could come for Hunter, “they” could come for any of us.

No complaints from the president that the entire justice system was being “rigged” against his son. And no nonsensical predictions that businesses will flee Delaware in retaliation.

(Indeed, the president has been busy with presidential tasks – like managing a robust economy that the World Bank says is powering a global recovery; planning for the G7 summit in Italy; touting gun reform at a safety summit in Connecticut; denouncing fascism at D-Day events in France.)

A Delaware jury said Hunter Biden broke the law? Fine. In a case brought by his father’s Department of Justice? So be it.

Hunter himself has refused to play the victim card, simply stating, “I am more grateful today for the love and support I experienced this last week…than I am disappointed by the outcome.”

Hunter’s father – the president who wants to set a good example for the nation – released a statement: “I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process.”

As for the MAGAts, they’ve been scrambling for a unified response. Some of the usual suspects, like Steven Miller, are hewing to their paranoia by insisting (get this) that Hunter’s conviction is meant to distract us from the real crimes of the Biden family. But some Republicans with functioning brain cells rightly believe the verdict against the president’s son undercuts the MAGA mantra about how the justice system is (purportedly) weaponized against Trump.

Dan Eberhart, a major Republican donor, tells NBC News (with his name on the record! amazing!) that Hunter’s conviction “definitely weakens the (MAGA) argument. To me, the justice system is working.” A Republican strategist who chooses to remain anonymous – to avoid incurring Trump’s wrath, according to NBC News – says that Hunter’s conviction “at a minimum slows the momentum” for Trump’s “weaponization” mantra. “It’s less of a bumper sticker than it was before.”

What’s particularly striking – hilarious, really – is how so many of the same MAGAts who denounced the court system two weeks ago, when Trump was convicted of 34 felonies, are lauding the court system now that Hunter has been convicted. Do these people hear themselves?

Case in point, Fox News’ Jesse Watters. Two weeks ago: “The republic has been wounded.” This week: “It gave me a little confidence in the American legal system.”

Case in point, Laura Ingraham. Two weeks ago: “It’s a banana republic.” This week: Thanks to the courts, the Bidens’ “luck ran out.”

Case in point, Sen. Charles Grassley. This week he opined on Hunter’s conviction: “You gotta rely on what the judges and juries decide…and you got to conclude justice was done. But when asked if that standard applies to the Trump conviction, he said nope. Because “it’s an entirely different situation.”

Guess what, MAGAts. You can’t laud our justice system only when its verdicts please you. Tearing the system asunder whenever it rules against you – damaging the credibility of a bedrock American institution – is, quite frankly, fascistic.

Contrast that with how Democrats treated Hunter’s trial. How refreshing it has been to bask in the sounds of silence.

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Copyright 2024 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]