Monthly Archives: October 2024

It’s Getting Harder To Ignore

A few days after Trump’s debate with Kamala Harris, an article in The Atlantic focused on his increasing incoherence. It began by noting Trump’s routine boast about passing a cognitive test.

The former president has repeatedly bragged over the past several years that he has passed various mental-status exams with flying colors. Most of these tests are designed to detect fairly serious cognitive dysfunction, and as such, they are quite easy to pass: They ask simple questions such as “What is the date?” and challenge participants to spell world backwards or write any complete sentence. By contrast, a 90-minute debate that involves unknown questions and unanticipated rebuttals requires candidates to think on their feet. It is a much more demanding and representative test of cognitive health than a simple mental-status exam you take in a doctor’s office. Specifically, the debate serves as an evaluation of the candidates’ mental flexibility under pressure—their capacity to deal with uncertainty and the unforeseen.

The author–a psychiatrist–readily admitted that he was not in a position to diagnose either candidate and was not offering any specific medical diagnoses, having never met or examined either of them.

But I watched the debate with particular attention to the candidates’ vocabulary, verbal and logical coherence, and ability to adapt to new topics—all signs of a healthy brain. Although Kamala Harris certainly exhibited some rigidity and repetition, her speech remained within the normal realm for politicians, who have a reputation for harping on their favorite talking points. By contrast, Donald Trump’s expressions of those tendencies were alarming. He displayed some striking, if familiar, patterns that are commonly seen among people in cognitive decline.

Trump’s mental decline is finally being widely noted. As a recent article from the Daily Beast reported,

An increasingly incoherent and profane former president Donald Trump, 78, is rambling at his rallies at previously unheard-of lengths and showing signs of confusion that could indicate mental decline, according to a New York Times analysis.

An average rally speech by the elderly Republican nominee for president—who has promised to release his medical records and cognitive tests and then refused to do so—lasts 82 minutes this election cycle, nearly double the 45 minutes he averaged in 2016, a computer analysis by the newspaper found.

In addition to Trump’s well documented rambling, repetitive and winding addresses—punctuated with strange asides about things like his “beautiful” body—among the potential signs of cognitive change are that he curses 69 percent more in speeches than he did in 2016. That could be a sign of disinhibition, a kind of impulsivity that is sometimes attributed to mental decline in old age, the Times said.

Of course, Trump didn’t exactly occupy a high place from which to decline– intellect has never been his strong suit. (One clue– he threatened to sue his university if it disclosed his GPA.) The article quoted a linguistics expert who questioned whether Trump had declined by pointing out that his “starting point” wasn’t particularly high.

On the other hand, Pennebaker said Trump has relied on unusually simple words and sentence structures going back to the days before he was president, suggesting he has simply always been an incredibly simplistic thinker.

One analytic metric he used—which tends to place presidential candidates in the 60 to 70 range—placed Trump speeches at 10 to 24.

“I can’t tell you how staggering this is,” he told Stat News. “He does not think in a complex way at all.”

References to sharks and his preference for death by electrocution, admiration for Hannibal Lecter…and still, the MAGA base remains solid. I have frequently referred to that base as a cult, and its continued idolization of an obviously mentally-ill,  uninformed and unintelligent 78-year-old man supports that characterization. Wikipedia tells us that cult members submit to absolute authoritarianism without requiring “meaningful accountability,” and that they have no tolerance for questions or critical inquiry. That description certainly fits.

As he sinks further into incoherence, Trump also engages more and more in projection. As The Hill recently noted, his attacks on Harris’ intelligence are especially telling.

Innate and acquired intelligence is clearly not Trump’s long suit. He has demonstrated a staggering ignorance about American history. He has alleged that the noise from wind turbines causes cancer and that vaccines cause autism. He doesn’t understand that tariffs raise retail prices on imported goods, in essence imposing a national sales tax on all Americans….

Those of us in the “reality-based community” look at Trump’s babbling, his third-grade vocabulary, his slurring of words and his increasing incidents of projection, and cannot understand why any rational voter could seriously consider returning him to office.

The only conclusion: the Trump cult isn’t rational. The open question is: how many of them are there?

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About Those Polls

Those of us who are obsessed with the upcoming election–now less than a month away–tend to focus on the the daily polling results. I have previously explained why I don’t think today’s polls are particularly predictive–while they can show which way the wind is blowing, I simply don’t trust their “likely voter” assessments. (As I’ve explained, all pollsters have developed methods for determining who is likely to vote–and their polls are almost always based upon the preferences of those “likely” voters–not the entire universe of registered voters.)

I feel reasonably confident that we will see a lot of votes cast by “unlikely” voters this time around.

But there is also something new–and dishonest–that has emerged in the polling during this election cycle, as Simon Rosenberg recently reported in his Hopium Chronicles. (Paywalled) He calls them “Red Wave Pollsters.”

Red Wave Pollsters Stepped Up Their Work This Week – The red wavers stepped up their activity this past week, releasing at least 20 polls across the battlegrounds. It’s a sign that they are worried about the public polling in both the Presidential and the Senate, and have dramatically escalated their efforts to push the polling averages to the right and make the election look redder than it is.

While they released polls in many states this week the states that have received the most red wave polls over the past few weeks are Montana, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Over the past 10 days, depending on how you characterize the pollsters, they released at least 5 and as many 7 polls in Pennsylvania alone. Their recent flood of polls in NC and PA tipped the Real Clear Politics polling average for each state to Trump, which then in turn got Trump to 281 in their corrupt Electoral College map. Yes, in Real Clear Politics Trump is now winning the election due to their gamesmanship.

I now count 27 Republican or right-aligned entities in the polling averages: American Greatness, Daily Mail, co/efficent, Cygnal, Echelon, Emerson, Fabrizio, Fox News, Insider Advantage, McLaughlin, Mitchell Communications, Napolitan Institute, Noble Predictive, On Message, Orbital Digital, Public Opinion Strategies, Quantus, Rasmussen, Redfield & Wilton, Remington, RMG, SoCal Data, The Telegraph, Trafalgar, TIPP, Victory Insights, Wall Street Journal.

Rosenberg says it’s time for those who publish their analyses of polls to acknowledge the emergence of this type of poll , which he describes as “red wave, right-aligned narrative polling that only exist for a single purpose – to move the polling averages to the right.”

They are exploiting the “toss it in the averages and everything will work out philosophy” of these sites to once again launder these polls and game the averages – and thus our understanding of the election. Party leaders should expect them to keep these polls coming, and keep working the averages until it looks like Trump is winning in all polling averages. It is what they did in 2022, and it worked. They are doing it again this time, and once again it is working as the averages are moving and everyone is treating this movement like an organic rather than a deeply corrupt process.

Simon Rosenberg and Tom Bonier of TargetSmart were the only two pollsters who predicted the non-emergence of the widely hyped “red wave” in the 2022 midterms–a wave that was widely forecast partly on the basis of voting history and partly on the basis of similar “red wave” polling.

Reputable pollsters face a number of daunting challenges–the shift from landlines to mobile phones, the reluctance of many (if not most) people to answer calls when they don’t recognize the number, evidence of the increasing willingness of respondents who do answer to lie… Despite those challenges, nearly all reputable pollsters find Harris ahead nationally by somewhere between 2 and 5 points. While I’m reluctant to rely on their numbers, I do think they demonstrate that the Democratic ticket has the momentum–that the electoral “wind” is blowing in the Harris/Walz direction.

What we do know with certainty is that this will be a turnout election. Early voting is open in most states right now, and the most effective thing we can do is vote early and work to make sure that every Blue voter we know gets to the polls. As the GOTV experts tell us, every solid Democratic vote that is cast early means that the GOTV effort can concentrate on getting those who are farther down the “reliable voter” list to the polls. 

We’re down to the wire, and as the saying goes, the only poll that counts is the one on election day.

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Biden Administration Bragging Rights

A few days ago, I wrestled with the question that I still believe is THE question–how can anyone look at Donald J. Trump and see a person qualified to be President (or, frankly, dog-catcher)? Today, I want to focus on a different question: why has there been so little public appreciation of the incredible performance of a transformative and incredibly successful Biden Administration?

The most recent jobs report (a report Simon Rosenberg characterized as “Smoking Hot”) showed the addition of 254,000 jobs in September–far in excess of expectations. Not only that, but routine revisions from the previous two months added another 72,000 jobs. Both liberal and conservative economists agree that the American economy is currently the strongest advanced economy in the world.

That strong economic performance has allowed the administration to accomplish other important tasks.

Under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris we’ve had the longest period of low unemployment in a peacetime American economy since WWII and the best job market since the 1960s. The stock market is breaking records. GDP growth has been 3% over 3 years. We have the lowest uninsured rate in American history. The rate of formation of new businesses is at an all time high. Wage growth has been running ahead of inflation for some time now. The battle against inflation has been won. The deficit is lower. Crime is down. Drug overdoses are down. Obesity is down. The flows to the border today are lower than at the end of Trump’s Presidency. We passed the first bi-partisan gun safety bill in 30 years. Domestic oil, gas, renewable production are higher than they’ve ever been and we are more energy independent today than we’ve been in decades. The three big Biden-Harris investment bills will be creating jobs and opportunities for American workers for decades to come, while accelerating the energy transition needed to keep the planet from warming.

Read that paragraph again, and unless you have been lobotomized by Faux News and its clones, you can’t help but be impressed. Despite the constant, bizarre and increasingly frantic lies of Trump and his MAGA minions, crime is down. Inflation is way down. The deficit is lower. We are finally combatting climate change. And much more.

Unlike Trump, who is a publicity hound entirely focused on occupying center stage, and entirely uninterested in governing–or honest work of any kind– Biden approached the Presidency as a job. He was so focused on performance rather than publicity that in the third year of the administration, Politico ran an article titled “30 Things Joe Biden Did That You Might Have Missed.” Among them: expanded overtime pay guarantees; first over-the-counter birth control pills; making renewable power the nation’s #2 source of electricity; rules preventing discriminatory mortgage lending; crackdowns on junk fees and overdraft charges; and a wide variety of measures aimed at ensuring a level playing field for American business vis a vis China.

And that was before the administration engineered lower prices for several lifesaving medications–including insulin, which is capped at $35 for Medicare recipients.

American society is certainly not perfect, but these facts are so positive–especially given the chaos inherited from Trump and the pandemic–that Republicans have resorted to simply lying about them. Marco Rubio responded to the most recent jobs report by insisting that it must be “fake.” Trump and his allies lied about FEMA’s response to hurricane Helene, calling it inadequate, despite the fact it was characterized by Republican governors as excellent. And Trump has continued lying about endorsements.

Here’s the thing: As we enter the last few frenzied weeks of the Presidential campaign, it is easy to get caught up in the lies and the constant name-calling–to attend more to the horse-race and less to the candidates’ demonstrable policy and performance differences.

Most of the people who will go to the polls this year lived through a Trump administration characterized by constant turmoil and turnover, not to mention the sight of a U.S. President openly consorting with autocrats while demeaning and undermining America’s allies. For the past four years, those voters have thrived under the Biden-Harris administration.  Citizens who care about policy, who base their votes on verifiable facts and experience and who care about the common good, will vote for Kamala Harris. Those who are motivated by bigotry and resentment–voters who reject reality and whose sole interest is culture war and animus–will vote for Trump and the profoundly regressive MAGA movement promised by Project 2025.

Harris is running on the premise that Americans won’t vote to go back. I hope she’s right.

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Braun And The American Idea

If you were hiring someone to manage a manufacturing business, would you hire someone who didn’t know anything about the product your factory produced? What about a nonprofit executive who disagreed with the organization’s mission?

The answers to those questions is pretty obvious, but for some reason, when it comes to government, we don’t require evidence that candidates for office understand what government is and– just as important– is not supposed to do.

As early voting gets underway in Indiana, Hoosier voters are going to the polls to choose between two statewide tickets. One of those is composed entirely of candidates who neither support nor understand America’s constitutional system. Beckwith, Banks and Rokita are out-and-proud Christian Nationalists waging war against the First Amendment’s Separation of Church and State. They simply reject the system put in place by the Founders. Braun–who seems motivated only by a desire to be important–rather clearly doesn’t understand the role of government or the structure of American federalism.

One of the TV ads being run by Jennifer McCormick–who does understand those things–shows an earlier interview with Braun in which he enthusiastically endorsed the Dobbs decision that allowed state-level governments to ban abortion. When asked if he would also support criminalizing the procedure, he said he would. Less well-known was his opinion, shared in another interview, that decisions about same-sex and inter-racial marriages should also be returned to the states.

Evidently, Braun has never encountered the Fourteenth Amendment, which–among other things– requires state and local governments to govern in a manner consistent with the Bill of Rights, and forbids them from denying to their citizens “the privileges and immunities” of American citizenship. For over fifty years, those privileges and immunities have been protected by a doctrine called substantive due process, often called the “right to privacy.” That doctrine confirmed the principle that  “intimate” individual decisions—including one’s choice of sexual partners or the decision to use contraception (or more recently, the choice of one’s marriage partner) are none of government’s business.

Permit me to slip into “teacher mode.”

Constitutional scholars argue that the right to personal autonomy has always been inherent in the Bill of Rights, but it was  explicitly recognized in 1965, in Griswold v. Connecticut. Connecticut’s legislature had passed a law prohibiting the use of birth control by married couples. The law prohibited doctors from prescribing contraceptives and pharmacists from filling those prescriptions.The Supreme Court struck down the law, holding that whether a couple used contraceptives was not a decision government is entitled to make.

The Court held that recognition of a right to personal autonomy—the right to self-government—is essential to the enforcement of other provisions of the Bill of Rights.  Justices White and Harlan found explicit confirmation of it in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment—which is where the terminology “substantive due process” comes from. Wherever it resided–in a “penumbra” or the 14th Amendment—the Justices agreed on both its presence and importance.

The doctrine of Substantive Due Process draws a line between decisions that government has the legitimate authority to make, and decisions which, in our system, must be left up to the individual. I used to tell my students that the Bill of Rights is essentially a list of things that government is forbidden to decide. What books you read, what opinions you form, what prayers you say (or don’t)—such matters are outside the legitimate role of government. The issue isn’t whether that book is dangerous or inappropriate, or that religion is false, or whether you should marry someone of the same sex, or whether you should procreate: the issue in America is who gets to make that decision.

Not the federal government. Not state governments. Individual citizens.

I will refrain from pointing out the impracticality of “states rights” on these intimate issues. (If you are in an inter-racial marriage and move to a state that forbids such unions, are you suddenly unmarried?) The more fundamental point is that allowing any unit of government to decide such matters violates the Bill of Rights and the libertarian philosophy that underlies our constitutional system.

Indiana’s MAGA GOP is offering voters an entire statewide slate of men who neither understand nor respect the Constitution–men who are applying for jobs without demonstrating any familiarity with the job descriptions.

Voters who feel comfortable allowing Indiana’s deplorable legislature to decide who they should be allowed to marry or whether they should be required to reproduce should vote for Braun and his merry band of theocrats. The rest of us will cast our votes for the Democrats.

Note: I voted early afternoon yesterday, on the first day of early voting. I stood in a fast-moving line for nearly an hour. If this year’s election will be decided–as I believe it will be–on turnout, it was a fantastic sign. 

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Some Arguments Just Go On And On…

Back in the day, when I served in the Hudnut Administration, I marvelled at the persistence of some issues. The city battled over drainage, for example, year in and year out. And while the particulars have changed, Hoosiers–and all Americans–have engaged in pitched battles over education policies as long as I can remember. Can children be required to pray in the classroom? Is racial segregation constitutional? Can universities engage in affirmative efforts to diversify their student bodies?

What about privatization–aka “school choice”?

Many of these issues have more in common than appears at first glance. “School choice” programs, for example, especially appeal to parents who want their children ensconced in classrooms occupied primarily by others who look and pray like them.

I have frequently posted about the importance of public schools and the damage done to those schools and to civic cohesion by Indiana’s costly voucher program. That damage is one reason among many to vote for gubernatorial candidate Jennifer McCormick, our former Superintendent of Public Instruction, and not Mike Braun, who wants to make Indiana’s vouchers universal. 

We now have enough experience with vouchers to assess the original claims made for privatizing our schools.

We know, for example, that vouchers don’t improve educational outcomes, that they are used primarily by wealthier families, that they increase racial segregation, and that they are particularly harmful to public schools in rural areas that lack sufficient population to support private competitors. There has been less attention focused on the educational deficits of a large number of participating private schools, although we do know that many religious academies substitute creationism for science and deliberately whitewash American history.

A few years ago, a colleague and I wondered how many of Indiana’s voucher schools taught civics. Did they teach about America’s Constitution and Bill of Rights? About democracy? The structure of government? Was civics instruction a condition of their receipt of public money? After all, the civic mission of public schools is central to their importance.

The (depressing) academic article reporting our research is here. Here’s the abstract:

America’s public schools have not been exempt from the enthusiasm for “privatization” and contracting-out that has characterized government innovations over at least the past quarter century. A number of the issues raised by school voucher programs and to a lesser extent charter schools mirror the management and efficacy questions raised by privatization generally; however, because public education is often said to be “constitutive of the public,” using tax dollars to send the nation’s children to private schools implicates the distinctive role of public education in a democratic society in ways that more traditional contracting arrangements do not. We explore the unique role of primary and secondary public schools in forging a broad consensus about the nature and importance of America’s constitutional ethic, and growing concerns that vouchers, in particular, are failing to address, let alone facilitate, an ethic of citizenship.

As we noted, arguments about providing educational competition ignore both the civic mission of education and the multiple ways in which education differs from ordinary consumer goods.

The civic mission of public schools includes the teaching of America’s history and the transmittal of the country’s core constitutional values, what I call the “Constitutional ethic.” A sound and accurate civics education provides students with an understanding of the genesis and evolution of the rules that shape and constrain public service in the United States.  The public mission of the schools requires teaching students about this country’s approach to and experience with the principles of democratic self-governance. As we wrote,

When citizens lack a common understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of America’s approach to governance and fail to form an ethical commitment to those common undertakings, a diverse polity inevitably fragments into tribal components contending for power and influence.

Indiana has very good standards specifying what our public schools must teach. As we discovered, however, oversight of the private–overwhelmingly religious–schools receiving vouchers runs from minimal to non-existent. As a result, the past few years have seen several scandals, including “virtual” schools that falsified enrollments, defrauding the state of millions of dollars.

There has been little to no research investigating the impact of voucher programs on civic knowledge and cohesion. There are no standards or procedures for assessing whether individual schools are even trying to create knowledgable, responsible American citizens.

It’s telling that Mike Braun’s pitch for a universal voucher program is “parental choice”–not educational outcomes and certainly not fiscal prudence. 

Early voting in Indiana starts today. I will cast my early vote for Jennifer McCormick, who understands that reproductive choice is good, and educational “choice”–aka vouchers–isn’t.

Join me.

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