By Stephen Macaulay
There is considerable hand-wringing and pearl-clutching occurring because The Washington Post management decided not to endorse a presidential candidate for the 2024 election.
And that response is one of the reasons why Kamala Harris may not win the election.
The people who read The Washington Post are likely to be voting for her. Do they need some sort of imprimatur to do what they plan to do anyway?
Jeff Bezos, who owns the Post, is a rich guy. As a rich guy, he wants to (1) become richer and (2) keep his wealth intact.
Bezos has a business including AWS, cloud services that can be sold to the government for some non-trivial amounts of money. To annoy someone who can make letting contracts for AWS isn’t good business. (Of course, that someone has been previously annoyed and he’s not known for letting grudges go, so odds are it doesn’t matter what Bezos says or doesn’t.) And while there are generally thought to be limitations to such things, it wouldn’t be beyond the realm of possibility that a call from the White House to the IRS could lead to certain problems for point (2).
But really: The Washington Post?
That’s going to make a difference to the outcome of the election?
(And the same can be said for the Los Angeles Times, though it is highly irrelevant for other reasons.)
This is scoliotic thinking.
The people who need to be reached and convinced are more likely to be listening to Joe Rogan than waiting on tenterhooks for still another Bob Woodward book.
“But Harris has Springsteen!” Yes, and the Boss, who appeals mainly to Boomers, is but a few years younger than Trump, and it is hard to imagine that he’s going to change any minds regarding who people vote for, of even if they vote.
Even Slim Shady doesn’t have the stuff he once had.
Beyonce is better — but again, singing to the choir.
The claim about Trump being a “threat to democracy” is largely irrelevant.
That’s because for the everyday person, it is, more or less, meaningless.
Does it mean that one can vote? Sure, we’ve got that, right?
And aren’t the Democrats trying to convince those who otherwise aren’t planning to vote that they may have that vote taken away from them?
This matters to those potential non-voters why?
Abstract nouns like “liberty” and “justice” are similarly not particularly compelling.
“Fight, fight, fight” is more tangible to many of these people. They “get” that.
So Trump may get them while the Democrats parse metaphysics.
The Democrats need to start making things more real.
For example, Trump is talking mass deportation.
He is appealing to an increasing number in the Brown and Black communities.
No one is in favor of “illegal immigrants.”
But wouldn’t it be worthwhile to talk about how mass deportation might work?
How many legal young Latinos are likely to be slammed into the back of a cop car because they don’t have acceptable I.D.? How many young Black men are likely to be hassled unless they, too, have acceptable creds?
The Democrats need to make that point.
Someone — girlfriend, sister, mother — get raped by an illegal? What then? Do these women carry to term — or get charged with a felony?
That’s real.
Then there are tariffs. While that sounds like some distant economic thing, in point of fact it is going to add to the price of lots of regular items.
Consider: According to Walmart, “Most of the products we source for our retail businesses in the US and other major markets like Mexico were made, grown or assembled domestically. For example, two-thirds of merchandise sold in Walmart US and 93% of merchandise sold in Walmart Mexico fall in this category. Because of the desire to meet customer demand for variety, quality and affordability for products ranging from mangoes to certain electronics, we also source products from around the world.”
So that means 1/3 of the products in Walmart and “certain electronics” (which probably accounts for damn near all of them: do you think TVs are made in America?) are made elsewhere, and if there is an across the board 20% tariff applied — and here this is on products from anywhereelse, not China, which will get a bigger tariff — this simply means that it is going to cost the consumer that much more.
No other government is going to “pay” for the tariff.
Every consumer is.
Make that clear. Want to buy a pair of Nikes or Adidas? Plan to pay more because they aren’t manufactured in the U.S. Those $100 kicks are going to cost $120 (at least) plus tax.
And this whole notion of “Made in America” may sound good, but don’t expect a whole lot of shoe factories or clothing plants to open any time soon. And electronics are gone, no matter what politicians say.
Work for the auto industry? The traditional domestics have invested billions in EV capacity (yes, in places like Detroit-Hamtramck and Dearborn). If the tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act are eliminated, as Trump has suggested they will be, then those companies are going to be in some financial peril, and your job, even if you’re making crossovers or pickups, may be in jeopardy.
Why haven’t the Democrats made this point?
People may not know anyone from Ukraine. That may seem to be part of a vague “somewhere else.”
But they may have grandparents from Poland or the Czech Republic or other countries in central Europe. Do they really want to have those places overrun by Putin should he have the whim to do so? Trump would apparently let that happen.
Explain that to your babcia.
There are probably more than a few Democrats who are at the upper echelons of the Harris campaign who know things like who Dr. Samuel Johnson was, something that most people don’t.
One of Johnson’s observations was “Example is more efficacious than precept.”
Perhaps there is still time — not much, but some -- to give up on the precepts and to explain flat-out what a Trump presidency will mean to the people they need to get to vote for their candidate.