A Tale of Two Uncles

By Michelle Naranjo

The 2020 presidential candidates have become known as virtual “uncles” to many. 

Biden is known as Uncle Joe, while since 2015, Trump is the humorous, albeit a Chrome browser plugin, your drunk uncle at Thanksgiving.

The welcome final chapter of this election debate saga was lower-key, revealing a more subdued pair of uncles, and some absolute clarity about where each candidate stands on some of the issues facing Americans, increasingly exhausted by both the election and the pandammit. 

Both candidates appeared to have a more reined-in edition of their personalities this round. But the new debate “mute button” wasn’t entirely successful. 

Trump appeared to have been schooled by his handlers on how to behave better. He appeared as the uncle who was asked not to be drunk at Thanksgiving. Still, like a willful child (or a dry drunk), he came across as trying to stifle a temper tantrum, declaring that he is not a racist and yet referred to border refugees as having “the lowest IQ.”

Most of what Trump tried to impart was arcane stories that are the fodder of social media but have little context or meaning to most voters. There were unsubstantial sound bites: accusing Biden of harming the Black community with a crime bill from 1994, accepting foreign money, and of course, trying to drag Biden’s son Hunter into the mix.

Biden exercised adult-like stoicism and ironic approach, more akin to a caring uncle who has been around his share of unruly kids. He explained to Trump that it was a Republican Congress that delayed and even killed much of the eight years of the Obama/Biden team efforts. He apologized for the widely accepted yet long-gone crime bill, refusing to engage in unfounded claims proved to be untrue.

There was only a momentary blip of an angry Uncle Joe. And, not falling too far into the bickering, Biden elevated the conversation from pithy rumors to stating directly to viewers, “It’s not about his family and my family. It’s about your family.” 

When he wasn’t swatting away the foul balls, Biden presented sincere plans on what he called “Bidencare” and social and economic equity for all Americans while still giving short retorts to the salacious accusations.

Trump only offered that he has plans, but it sounded more like musing on a grand cruise based on seeing an ad on TV.

Some people enjoy having that one crass, rabble-rousing uncle at the table once for a few hours and then sending him away, so they can go on with their lives. 

Most people want an uncle who will take an interest, care, and be proactive with family when they are sick and hurting.

Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news

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Debate Audience Wins as Trump and Biden Mind the Mute Button

By Charles Dervarics

Voters claimed at least a small victory Thursday night when the major party presidential candidates had to accept a tool familiar to anyone working in remote video meetings during the pandemic – the all-important mute button.

Both President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden had to follow this new rule, which significantly reduced interruptions during their final debate in Nashville. The president showed occasional frustration at having to wait for an open microphone, but the new guideline kept shouting to a minimum and gave viewers a chance to hear the candidates’ views on key issues.

During the 90-minute debate moderated by NBC’s Kristen Welker, the two candidates sparred over every issue from COVID-19 and race relations to China, North Korea, immigration and climate change.

On COVID-19, Trump laid blame primarily on China and said that “we’re rounding the corner” on the virus with a vaccine announcement likely within weeks. “We can’t close up our nation or we won’t have a nation,” he said. Biden countered that the president’s performance has fallen far short with 220,000 Americans dead from the disease. “Anyone responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States,” he said.

The former vice president also said he planned to implement “Bidencare,” with Affordable Care Act improvements such as lower premiums and drug prices and the ability of low-income individuals to opt into Medicaid. Trump criticized this plan, saying it would lead to socialized medicine and a loss of private insurance for 180 million Americans. 

An extended segment on race relations saw the candidates approach the issue from different directions. Trump touted his administration’s passage of criminal justice reform and more funding for historically Black colleges, saying the Obama-Biden administration failed on these and other issues. “I ran because of you,” he said. “If I thought you did a good job, I would’ve never run.”

For his part, Biden said he regretted past support for minimum sentencing laws and promised to give states $20 billion to eliminate these standards and create drug courts so offenders go to treatment rather than prison. “We should fundamentally change the system, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

Some of the most heated moments came when Trump challenged Biden over alleged misdeeds by his son in gaining international business and whether the former vice president benefitted from deals in China and Ukraine. Biden denied any wrongdoing and the debate turned to Trump’s own international business dealings, bank accounts and unseen tax returns. At one point, Biden turned to the camera and noted that the election is “not about his family or my family. It’s about your family, and your family’s hurting badly.”

With the debates now complete, both candidates head into the final 11 days of campaigning. Nearly 50 million Americans already have cast early votes, with Election Day set for Nov. 3.

Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news

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All the Metaphors

By Andrew Boyd

I struggle to talk about these debates in the fashion of the day, as if we were watching something as superficial as a UFC bout; but as political heavyweight contests go, there were no big surprises. Adopting as non-partisan perspective as I can manage, I thought both men got in their shots, but the roundhouses were few and far between, and neither combatant went face-to-canvas. 

Trump’s best line of attack was the right hook to Joe’s legacy as a careerist pol, and the watery, flavorless stone soup of ‘accomplishments’ over 47 long years that should do little to satiate anyone’s desire for a candidate possessed of the capacity, desire or will to affect meaningful change in any direction. 

If fate elects Joe, I’ll take what solace I can in the fact that he’s no ideologue and mostly just a guy looking to fill out his political butterfly collection with the rare Potus-excremus.  Nothing new, certainly nothing better, but probably no worse than business as usual.

I’m in the species of conservative who thinks Washington is rotten down to its core, whose vote for Trump was a message to the D.C. establishment, left, right and center, that the game is up.  And it’s that same disgust for Washington’s three-card monte that will pull the lever for DJT once again.  

I think Donald, for all his many foibles, has a genuine love of country and a desire to do the right thing by his countrymen and women. That, for me, is the trump card in a deck full of one-eye jacks.  Establishment Washington wouldn’t know a straight deal if they saw one; and worse yet, if they did, they’d form a posse to hang that dealer, which is more or less what played out as the Mueller probe over the past three years.  

Get in there Donald and break some shit!

Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news

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While Rome Burns

By Stephen Macaulay

On February 7, 2020, Donald Trump told Bob Woodward of COVID-19, “It goes through the air. That’s always tougher than the touch. You don’t have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”

On March 19 Trump told Woodward, “I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

According to reporting by The New York Times, on Feb. 24, hours before Trump tweeted, that COVID-19 was “very much under control,” and that “Stock market starting to look very good to me!”, “senior members of the president’s economic team, privately addressing board members of the conservative Hoover Institution, were less confident.” It seems that Tomas J. Philipson, a senior White House economic advisor, told the group that he couldn’t estimate the economic effects of the COVID.

The Times reporters write, “To some in the group, the implication was that an outbreak could prove worse than Mr. Philipson and other Trump administration advisers were signaling in public at the time.” [Philipson in late June quit his new post as acting chief of the White House Council of Economic Advisors to return to the University of Chicago, two days after Kevin Hassett announced his departure as the council’s chief.]

Apparently this was a three-day affair of getting inside insights into COVID from White House officials.

A hedge fund consultant attended the event of the Hoover board and created a document about it. The Times reporters write, “’What struck me,’ the consultant wrote, was that nearly every official he heard from raised the virus ‘as a point of concern, totally unprovoked.’”

Here’s the thing: the information that the rest of us got from Trump and his minions was “Nothing to see here, move along.”

The information that was given to the Hoover people, which then went to a hedge fund, Appaloosa Management, was far less sanguine.

According to the Times, “legal experts say. . .it is not apparent that any of the communications about the Hoover briefings violated securities laws.”

So let’s see: Trump and his people tell you and me that there is no problem; people in the business of using information to buy and sell—and they sold in this case—were given insights that the rest of us would—what?—panic if we knew?

It would be the old case of the rich getting richer if it were also not the case that the sick were getting sicker and the dead, well, dead.

It is somewhat incomprehensible how people who are in the middle class and below think that Trump has any concern for their well-being.

Wall Street is doing great. Main Street has a whole lot of “For Rent” signs—and many more to come.

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Department of Failed Land Reclamation

By the Editors

Four years ago, Donald Trump appealed to many disaffected voters by promising to “drain the swamp.” He built a loyal support base who believe a successful businessman in the White House is far more trustworthy than a career Capitol Hill politician. 

The phrase was used in a speech in Colorado Springs on October 18, 2016 and is prominent on Trump-2020 banners and lawn signs in red-leaning neighborhoods today. According to reporting in USA Today, the swamp metaphor was to get rid of the “rigged system that rewards the wealthy and well-connected at the expense of the common man.”

In recent weeks The New York Times has published several in-depth articles that question the president’s business acumen, including news that he faces $421-million in debt that may come due in the next four years.

Trump initially called the Times story “fake news.” When Savannah Guthrie of NBC News asked the president about the debt in a Q&A on her network that replaced what was to be the second presidential debate (competing for ratings with Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s ABC News town hall), Trump called the money owed a “peanut.” Not a big deal.

“It’s a very small amount of money,” he said on the home network of his TV show, “The Apprentice,” although it should be pointed out that he rounded down the number to $400 million.

Trump called The New York Times’ collection and scrutiny of his tax returns “illegal,” then added…

“And just so you understand, when you have a lot of real estate, I have real estate, you know a lot of it. Okay? Right down the road, Doral, big stuff, great stuff. When I decided to run, I’m very underlevered (sic), fortunately, but I’m very underlevered (sic).” I have a very, very small percentage of debt compared … $400 million compared to the assets that I have, all of these great properties all over the world, and frankly, The Bank of America building in San Francisco. I don’t love what’s happening to San Francisco. 1290 Avenue of the Americas, one of the biggest office buildings.”

The Trump organization doesn’t own outright either the Bank of America building in San Francisco or the Avenue of the Americas building in New York City. According to Forbes, it owns 30-percent of each. In a story about the Trump organization’s building holdings published March 31, 2020, before the near-total evacuation of Manhattan, it was estimated that Trump’s 30-percent of 1290 Avenue of the Americas was $446 million, or enough to pay off that loan with some left over. . .though one wonders whether there hasn’t been a significant drop in value.

Trump resisted selling any such assets ahead of his January 2017 inauguration, and in fact the Trump Organization has turned his hotel in the Old Post Office building in Washington into a meeting place for foreign potentates and Republican power brokers. In mid-October, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up congressional Democrats’ Emoluments Clause claims against Trump for profiting off of foreign governments through such properties, thus handing the president a victory in the lawsuit.

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Overexaggerated Fright

By Henry Payne

When 2020 began, America’s elites claimed the biggest threat to the planet was global warming. They were caught flat-footed by a real threat, coronavirus, despite the obvious warnings of H1N1 and SARS before it.

But, like climate change, government elites have seen in COVID an opportunity to grab power while exempting themselves from their own rules.

Stoking fear and burying science, Democrats and their media allies pushed America into destructive shutdowns while ignoring the real threats coronavirus presented. 

Despite his usual bluster, President Trump and his party enabled American federalism – allowing states to manage the virus while providing critical federal support. Partisans have tried to spin a narrative that the Trump administration covered up the seriousness of the virus. 

The New York Times – fresh off its false narratives about Russian collusion and Kavanaugh sexual deviancy – claims knowledge of the White House downplaying the virus.

But while experts scrambled to understand the outbreak in the early months of 2020, the record shows the Trump administration aggressively pursued mitigation strategies from early shutdowns of U.S. borders, to mobilizing an “arsenal of democracy” to make medical devices, to the White House Task Force coordinating with states.

Like environmental scaremonger Al Gore flying in private jets, this COVID high-handedness played out nationwide. Speaker Nancy Pelosi flogged San Francisco rules mandating masks and closing beauty parlors. After insisting on a national mandate for masks, Joe Biden dropped his own.

This tyranny of the ruling class might have been national policy had Democrats been in the White House. For all his unwelcome bluster, however, President Trump and his party enabled American federalism.

Outside the New York/D.C. media bubble, states learned to live with the virus on their terms. They managed risk just as they have other public safety threats. I’ve visited multiple states. In Georgia, for example, businesses were open in October– free to determine how best to protect their clientele. Working on data showing young people are at low COVID risk, schools were open. 

As a result Georgia’s unemployment rate is 30 percent lower than Michigan while the Peach State suffers slightly fewer deaths per capita. 

Government elites can afford to impose edicts by Zoom. But the working middle class has to travel, has to educate its children, has to deliver food. They have listened to the medical experts at the New England Journal of Medicine, at Stanford and Harvard and Oxford – and to non-partisan journalists. 

They take heart from a great leader who once said: the “only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

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Coal, Jobs & Cronies

By Stephen Macaulay

In 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump was barnstorming with a message about coal. 

“Clean coal,” he called it. Which, as is sometimes said, “isn’t a thing,” but we will let that go.

Trump would proclaim: “We’re going to get those miners back to work . . . the miners of West Virginia and Pennsylvania . . . Ohio and all over are going to start to work again, believe me.”

“We’re going to have an amazing mining business.”

They believed him. Trump won West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. And how did those miners do? According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in November 2016 there were 50,400 people employed in the U.S. coal industry.

How did he do? How many of those people did he get back to “an amazing mining business?”

In September 2020, the number of people involved in the coal-mining industry is 44,500. 

Note that this is not a COVID-19 phenomenon. Coal jobs have been on a decline throughout the Trump presidency. What’s more, in October 2019, Murray Energy, the “country’s largest privately held coal miner” filed for Chapter 11 in October 2019, according to NS Energy, which covers the coal industry among other energy-related subjects. It became “the eighth U.S. coal producer to file for bankruptcy in the past year.”

NS Energy noted that company owner Bob Murray “has long advocated for government support for his industry and was a strong critic of the country’s former president Barack Obama, whose time in office he described as ‘eight years of pure hell.’”

“The coal tycoon has long been a supporter of President Donald Trump, and is believed to have played a major role in the reshaping of environmental policies over the past three years… .”

One might change the verb in that statement to “dismantling.” 

Still, that did not seem to work out so well. According to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, renewables, which it defines as “utility-scale solar, wind and hydropower,” is increasingly important. “Renewables have now generated more electricity than coal on 131 days in 2020 — more than three times the 2019 results and with some 80 days left in the year.”

IEEFA concludes, “the data show coal power’s economic viability continuing to shrink … .”

Working people need to take his claims about coal into account when he talks about the jobs he has created and will create. Trump undoubtedly created more wealth for his cronies than for the stalwart men and women who once worked the mines can ever imagine. 

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The Coal Industry Continues to Falter, but Trump Can Still Rally the Miners

By Todd Lassa

Near rural Salisbury, Pennsylvania, just north of the Maryland border, there is a large building just off the state highway with a sign, “Trump Digs Coal.” 

It’s a standout sign in this rural area filled with pro-Trump signs and campaign banners, the single sign calling out an industry that has helped define this part of the country for more than a century. There are far more “Pro Life, Pro-Trump” signs on lawns on the roads to Meyersdale, where we spoke with a Trump and a Biden supporter earlier this month [“Talking to Trump and Biden Supporters in Small-Town Pennsylvania,” Oct. 5]. 

The Biden supporter we interviewed, Jennifer Clark, said she thought it was time for locals to move beyond the coal industry and train for jobs in a modern industry. Because of natural gas production, spurred in recent years by the fracking process, the coal industry is declining on its own, independent of President Trump’s support for the electrical power source. 

Pennsylvania is the third-biggest state for coal production according to a September 2018 report in Mining Technology [ https://www.mining-technology.com/features/five-largest-coal-producing-states-us/]. Wyoming was first with 297.2 million st/year. Even the next four biggest producers in the U.S.; West Virginia (at 79.8 million st), Pennsylvania (45.7 million st), Illinois (43.4 million st) and Kentucky (42.9 million st) don’t add up to the production from the nation’s least-populous state.

According to The New York Times’ recent deep-dive into the industry [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/05/us/politics/trump-coal-industry.html?searchResultPosition=1] 145 coal-burning units at 75 power plants have been idled since the president’s 2017 inauguration, enough to power about 30 million US homes. “Another 73 power plants have announced plans to close,” the Times reports, including the Navajo Generating Station in northern Arizona, which went offline October 2019, months before the coronavirus pandemic shut down major parts of the country and led to reduction in the burning of fossil fuels. 

A positive effect of these shutdowns is that sulfur dioxide emissions are down nearly 30% for the first three years of the Trump administration, according to the Times. Coal burning accounts for about 20% US electricity production, down from 31% in 2017. Meanwhile, renewable energy, spurred by Obama administration policies, accounts for about 17%, NPR reports [https://www.npr.org/2020/10/19/925278651/what-would-a-2nd-trump-term-mean-for-the-environment]. 

Mining coal long has had a reputation as a dirty, dangerous, and life-shortening job. Former Murray Energy CEO Robert Murray has filed an application with the US Labor department for black lung benefits, according to West Virginia Public Broadcasting and Ohio Valley ReSource [https://ohiovalleyresource.org/2020/09/30/bob-murray-who-fought-black-lung-regulations-as-a-coal-operator-has-filed-for-black-lung-benefits/].

Despite the potential dangers, coal miners have prospered over the years, and the biggest threat to small towns and rural communities might be the wages lost. According to the Times report, miners at the Navajo station that closed late in 2019 earned an average of about $117,000/year.

Please address your comments to editors@thehustings.news

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Coal Miners are the Blue Collar Superdelegates that Still Support Trump

By Bryan Williams

How many years have we been hearing about “green jobs” that will employ blue-collar workers in obsolete smokestack industries, and how they will transform the American economy while curing the climate “emergency”? 

Every election cycle, politicians say they will help foster more green jobs, which usually involves spending billions. This time, it’s $2 trillion if Democratic candidate Joe Biden gets to implement his plan. Four years ago, Hillary Clinton even went so far as to promise she would “destroy” the coal industry and then help the miners find training or new employment.

How did she expect this to play out in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and other blue-collar job states, such as Michigan and Wisconsin? She practically handed that to Donald J. Trump, who shrewdly swooped in to rescue the coal miners.

There were about 90,000 coal miners in the US, according to The Guardian (U.K.), and about half that – about 45,000 – currently. 

Why all the hubbub over so few workers? I think it comes down to this – coal miners are superdelegates for all blue-collar workers. 

Since I started paying attention to politics in the early 2000s, I have heard politicians of all stripes make claims that we must transition our economy and provide training for workers in obsolete blue-collar jobs. Twenty years later, what have we got? 

I’m sure there are success stories of coal miners who have transitioned to green jobs. But for nearly a generation, politicians have told these workers, “I have a plan for you. It will take away your job. There might be some money to retrain you and then you might get a new job after.” That rings pretty hollow and is disingenuous.

Along comes populist Trump in the 2016 presidential race, promising to save blue-collar jobs and revitalize American manufacturing. Since his inauguration he has done quite a few things that many other presidents and elected officials have not. 

Has he been successful? Not in the case of the coal industry. The market has helped kill coal, but so have government policies. I have a cousin who used to work at a coal plant here in California. The company had invested millions in clean coal technology to burn the fuel with minimal pollutants. The plant’s officials tried for years to get Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and then Gov. Jerry Brown to take a tour and see how their stringent environmental policies weren’t necessary. Neither governor would even send a representative, and my cousin finally moved to Texas to find work. How many coal miner families can relocate? The political abandonment was felt – my cousin felt it deeply as well, I’m sure, by coal miners and their families in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Trump may not have been successful in bringing back those obsolete jobs, but what’s more important, I think, to those coal miners is they finally feel like someone powerful has their back.

They will vote for him again.

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Don’t be Lulled by Biden’s Big Lead in the Polls

By Chase Wheaton

After predicting, like most of the country did, that Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 presidential election by a landslide, and being proved quite wrong, I’ve been hesitant to make any predictions this year. Even now, the story of this election cycle feels eerily similar to that of the 2016 election: The Democratic candidate leads in virtually every national poll, while negative news story after negative news story is uncovered about President Trump, which then further infuriates the left while seemingly emboldens the right, and so on. While my conservative counterpart believes we’ll repeat history and see a slight Trump victory again, I must cautiously disagree and predict that Joe Biden will be victorious, although just barely, come Election Day.

Why am I so cautious with my prediction? My counterpart makes a lot of good arguments. An unenthused Biden voter myself, I agree that the average Trump voter’s enthusiasm is higher than that of the average Biden voter, largely due to the disenfranchisement that a lot of progressive (not Democratic) voters feel towards the Democratic Party after candidates like Bernie Sanders were disregarded by party establishment without being given a fair chance to succeed during the primary. Additionally, there are a huge number of voters that feel ashamed to voice their support for President Trump, but who will be the first in line to vote for him, and I’m sure that the number of people in this “silent majority” has only increased since 2016. 

Going even further, the Electoral College, an archaic institution that needs to be abolished, makes it hard to feel confident about a Biden victory, as it has historically favored Republican candidates in presidential elections (in fact, only one Republican presidential candidate in the last 28 years has won both the popular and electoral votes in the general election). I’d also be remiss not to mention the hard-fought efforts by the Trump administration in recent weeks to suppress votes by denying adequate funding for the U.S. Postal Service, by fighting to remove ballot boxes in battleground states, and by spreading misinformation about the validity of mail-in voting during a global pandemic.

With all these factors in play, it’d be reckless to believe Biden will win this election with ease, and I caution other Democrats against feeling any sense of comfort or victory just yet. Yes, almost 21 million people have already voted in this election, 10 times the number of early voters at this point in the 2016 election. Yes, Biden has consistently held a double-digit lead over Trump in almost every national poll to date. And yes, the list of President Trump’s failures and offenses is seemingly never-ending. Unfortunately, I don’t believe it’ll be that easy, and I believe we’ll need every vote we can get if we want to rid ourselves of the nightmare that’s been the last 4 years.

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Biden Holds a Big Lead Over Trump, but How Reliable Are The Polls This Time?

By Todd Lassa

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden holds an 8.9-point lead over President Donald J. Trump (51.2 percent to 42.3 percent) according to an average of major political polls by Real Clear Politics. It is reasonable to ask whether the president’s Friday morning tweet slamming Sen. Susan Collins helps or hurts the Republican senator from Maine now fighting for her political life, who has said she will not vote in favor of Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. Collins faces a daunting challenge from Democrat Sara Gideon, Maine’s House speaker, in the Nov. 3 elections.

The president’s Friday tweet reads, “There is a nasty rumor out there that @Susan Collins of Maine will not be supporting our great United States Supreme Court Nominee. Well, she didn’t support Healthcare or my opening up 5000 square miles of Ocean to Maine, so why should this be any different. Not worth the work.”

Closing in on two weeks before the Nov. 3 national elections, the real threat of a Blue Wave accompanying a Biden win would entail a big swing from the GOP’s 53-47 Senate majority, and potentially has Democrats building on their 233-196 majority in the House. Even relatively secure Senate Republicans may be hedging their bets.

Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Nebraska, as a member of the Judiciary Committee handled Supreme Court nominee Barrett with kid gloves earlier this week but criticized President Trump’s Thursday night Town Hall on NBC in a conference call to constituents, the Washington Examiner reports. 

Trump “kisses dictators’ butts,” “sells out our allies” and “trash-talks evangelicals behind their backs,” Sasse reportedly said. He further slammed the president for “mistreating women” and initially “ignoring COVID.” Trump supporters will note that Sasse is considered an early contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, a race Donald Trump Jr. may fight if the GOP balance of power remains in his family’s orbit. 

While having brushed off polls showing a huge deficit to former Vice President Biden for many weeks, Trump himself has predicted a repeat of his 2016 campaign performance, which means he’s closing in, especially in the final week. Four years ago Trump gained on Hillary Clinton after the former secretary of state led many polls only by four or five points, often within statistical error of a tie. This year, Trump must overcome landslide-style deficits nationally as well as large margins in battleground states, and even in erstwhile Republican strangleholds like Arizona and North Carolina, where Sens. Martha McSally and Thom Tillis face potential losses to their Democratic challengers. 

Our right-column pundit thinks President Trump has a big chance of pulling off another upset, and our left-column pundit, having been gobsmacked by the 2016 election worries the argument holds many valid points.

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Incumbent Trump is Set to Pull Out a Second Upset

By Bryan Williams

Predictions can be a wily business. Some tout that they have never been wrong since Dewey vs. Truman (and go on to be right), and some make grandiose claims and flame out. Others stick to a version of, “It’s the economy, stupid,” and base their prediction off what Wall Street investors think/say/invest in. Here is my first ever presidential prediction: Donald Trump will eke out a slim win (again) and get four more years. Here’s why:

Since 1952, political “outsiders” or candidates who are younger than their opponent have had advantage in key races. World War II general and war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower had far less political experience than Democrat Adlai Stevenson, yet beat him by a landslide, twice. Reagan had less political experience than Mondale, Clinton had less experience and was younger than Bush 41 while Bush 43 had less experience than either Gore or Kerry, and Obama had way less experience than McCain and is younger than Romney. Trump had no formal political experience and beat Clinton, and often compares his 45 or so months in the Oval Office to Biden’s 47 years Inside the Beltway.

 Advantage, Trump.

Enthusiasm level: Who’s excited about Joe Biden? His supporters’ excitement appears to be, he’s “not Trump.” Will this equate to black and Latino voters turning out in big numbers for Biden? I am dubious. Trump voter’s enthusiasm level is also higher than Biden’s, according to David Sirota in the left-leaning online magazine Jacobin, citing a September Fox News poll that gives the president an 11-point margin in this category. Advantage: Trump.

Vote shaming: This is the common occurrence of people feeling their support of a candidate is shamed by popular opinion, as fueled by news and social media platforms. It’s safe to say that there are a lot of people afraid to admit they plan to vote for Trump. Many of those who like Trump will let their voices be heard at the ballot box. These are the voters Richard Nixon called “the silent majority.” Advantage: Trump.

While Trump had an obvious and clear electoral college victory by midnight Eastern time – 9 p.m. my time four years ago – pundits this year are predicting there will be no clear winner before Nov. 4, and perhaps not until much later. This is where the “Two Vs,” Valencia County, New Mexico, and Vigo County, Indiana, will come in handy. As small-population rural counties, their numbers should be counted not long after the polls close on Nov. 3. Vigo County has chosen the president all but twice since 1888, and Valencia County has been perfect since 1952. Keep your eye on Valencia and Vigo. I predict they will lead the nation to four more years for Trump.

But it’s gonna be close, folks.

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Of Time, Bells & Meaning

By Stephen Macaulay

In 1787 Paul Revere opened a bell foundry in Boston. In addition to things like copper spikes and bolts that were used for shipbuilding, Revere cast his first bell in 1792. One of them was produced for the USS Constitution. During the War of 1812, the bell was put out of commission by a British ship, HMS Guerriere.

(For those of you who have forgotten their American history classes, the War of 1812 pitted the U.S. against the United Kingdom, which would seem unthinkable today as the U.K. is now one of our closest allies—well, given the way the current administration has treated our closest allies, maybe it isn’t so unthinkable. Anyway, during this war the U.K. and Native Americans were on the same side; the U.S. tried to get chunks of Canada; the Brits burned the White House. Again, much of this seems bizarre, but things were different 208 years ago. Hang on to that thought.)

While Revere’s bell foundry is somewhat obscure, it is worth noting that in 1787 the U.S. Constitution was signed.

According to the official White House website, “The founders also specified a process by which the Constitution may be amended, and since its ratification, the Constitution has been amended 27 times.”

Which is germane because it is clear from this that the founders didn’t think that what they had created was carved in stone tablets.

Even the White House understands that. Things change. Even words.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett has described herself as a “constitutional originalist” and that she takes a textualist approach to the law.

During the hearings for her appointment to the Supreme Court, Lindsay Graham, a former JAG lawyer (there is no evidence that he, like Harmon Rabb, suffers from night blindness, although he seems to be vexed by a tendency to behave as a presidential lickspittle), asked Judge Barrett what all that means in a way that could be understood.

She replied, "So in English, that means that I interpret the Constitution as a law, that I interpret its text as text, and I understand it to have the meaning that it had at the time people ratified it."

She added, "So that meaning doesn’t change over time and it’s not up to me to update it or infuse my own policy views into it."

“The meaning doesn’t change over time.”

Really? 

So the words as written in 1787 have the same meaning as they do today? Back when Paul Revere was casting bells?

Let’s look at Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3, which is important vis-à-vis the recent decision regarding the U.S. census as this is where taking the census every 10 years came from:

“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.”

Note how there seems to be a randomized capitalization of words. Presumably were one to write that way on one a paper submitted to Judge Barrett when she was teaching they would have been in a World of Hurt because We don’t capitalize Nouns Nowadays. 

What’s more, there is the word “Persons” not “citizens” (or Citizens). There are Persons counted as fractions (or Fractions).

And meaning doesn’t change over time? 

Macaulay is a cultural commentator based in Detroit.

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Barrett is on Her Way to Senate Confirmation before the Election

By Todd Lassa 

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has scheduled the panel’s vote on the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court for 1 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22. The committee, comprising 13 Republicans and 10 Democrats, is considered a sure bet for approving Barrett, whose hearings with the panel concluded Wednesday.

The full Senate will vote to approve Barrett before the presidential election Nov. 3, Graham said. With just two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, having earlier opposed seating a replacement for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg before the election, the GOP still maintains a majority to approve President Trump’s nominee before the month is over. 

In her appearances before the Judiciary Committee Tuesday and Wednesday, Barrett carefully demurred on questions from Democratic members over concerns the nominee would rule with the court’s fortified conservative majority on potential disputes over the Nov. 3 election, as well as a case the Trump administration brought to the courts over the Affordable Care Act. For the longer term, Democrats interrogated the conservative Catholic mother of seven on her views regarding the 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court case that made abortion legal nationally. 

But on these and other matters, Barrett repeatedly declined to answer on potential future cases. 

In her opening remarks, Barrett described herself as an “originalist” in the mold of her mentor, Justice Antonin Scalia, whose replacement after his death early in 2016 resulted in Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocking President Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland.

“That means that I interpret the constitution as a law, that I interpret its text as text, and I understand it to have the meaning that it had at the time people ratified it,” she said.

Jeffrey Toobin, legal analyst for CNN and The New Yorker , told NPR Thursday morning that while several Supreme Court nominees have called themselves “originalists” since Scalia in 1982, “she may be the first one to actually mean it… .” 

Barrett told the committee, however, that she is not a carbon-copy of her mentor.

“If I were confirmed, you’d be getting Justice Barrett, not Justice Scalia …,” she said. “I share Justice Scalia’s philosophy, but I never said I agree with him on every issue.”

She did give Democrats some hope in not ruling out the question of recusal from votes on next month’s election and on the ACA ruling, but again declined to answer Sen. Kamala Harris’, D-Calif., question on whether she believes in climate change, because of the potential for a case coming up before the court. [Republicans had singled out Harris, the Democratic vice presidential candidate,  for what they considered aggressive questioning in Justice Brett Kavenaugh’s Judiciary committee hearing in 2018.]

Committee Republicans praised Barrett as a justice who will inspire young conservative women and girls the way Justice Ginsberg inspired young liberal women and girls.

“This is the first time we’ve nominated a woman who is unabashedly pro-life,” Graham said.

Please address your comments to editors@thehustings.news

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Barrett Acquits Herself Well — Will Voters Care?

By Bryan Williams

Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hasn’t turned into the sort of disgusting hack job that afflicted Brett Kavanaugh’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee. ACB’s qualifications are unquestionable in my opinion, and she acquitted herself well in the hearing.

The headlines that have grabbed my attention are not about ACB, but regard my state’s senator, Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Many on the left were reportedly worried that the senior senator is not up to the task of grilling the nominee due to her advanced age (she’s 87) and diminished stamina. I was shocked when Feinstein ran for re-election in 2018 -- hasn’t she done her part for King and Country?

Democrats seem to have a thing for senior states-people hanging on to their office. News reports following her question time suggested that Feinstein, like the nine other Democrats on the committee failed to land a punch on the nominee. NPR ran a recording of the hearing for ACB’s nomination to the circuit court, in which Feinstein called her “dogmatic” in her devotion to her Catholic faith. 

Really? Have we returned to the late 1950s, when opponents questioned John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism and devotion to the Pope? The “dogma” that put fear into Feinstein and the media is another way to build up the left’s fear that with Barrett on the court, Roe vs. Wade soon will be overturned.

But what effect will her inevitable confirmation have on the presidential election? I’d like to think that President Trump will get a nice bump from nominating such a qualified jurist whose experience, intellect, and opinions will shape our culture for up to 40 years. Let’s not forget, ACB is taking over for RBG and liberals are hopping mad that Trump and the Republicans are shoving through this confirmation with heaps of Merrick Garland-flavored hypocrisy. 

This will only serve to please the Trump base and inflame the Left. How will the small slice of independents feel about this, and will it affect their vote? I can’t say for sure, but I really don’t think the average American voter has the Supreme Court on his or her mind in this weird year.

Williams is a mental health professional in California and a former Republican party official.

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