Friday, August 23, 2024

This Is Getting Tiresome

 Kamala Harris needs bigger margins to survive the shit Donny will throw at her. She needs to win enough states to squeak through if Trump manages to hang up two of them with some kind of frivolous legal challenge.

Bush v Gore settled that issue.  It didn't prompt a 12th Amendment nightmare (apparently the only result of invoking the 12th is nightmares), because the Court ruled Florida had to go with the count it had.  The Florida Supreme Court had put the matter on hold, to review the vote count.  The Supremes said (per the ECA) time was up.  EOD.

Any frivolous challenge from Trump will yield the same result.  You may not like "Bush v. Gore." But odds are, you will. 

Kamala addressed this broader audience, fairly early in her speech, making a promise that defined much of what came later.

And let me say, I know there are people of various political views watching tonight. And I want you to know, I promise to be a president for all Americans. You can always trust me to put country above party and self. To hold sacred America’s fundamental principles, from the rule of law, to free and fair elections, to the peaceful transfer of power.

I will be a president who unites us around our highest aspirations. A president who leads and listens; who is realistic, practical and has common sense; and always fights for the American people. From the courthouse to the White House, that has been my life’s work.

She addressed principle.

I think that's the part of her speech making me sweat this morning: 

Not exactly warming the cockles of my child-of-the-sixties heart, but I'll take it anyway.  She's not wrong; I'm just not a politician.

But if Kamala Harris succeeds in this race, American is long overdue for a reckoning on what these values mean. We got into this mess — Donald Trump’s demagoguery resonated with far too many people — not just because the financial crisis left so many behind, not just because of the racism bred into America from the moment of its founding, but because a War on Terror that left many damaged also poisoned much of the claim to American exceptionalism, leaving others devoid of their source of self-worth.

Further back.  The Cold War.  That was bred out of American Exceptionalism, too, and victory over Germany and Japan, and a sense we couldn't continue 19th century isolationism, but what would we do?  American Exceptionalism is as old as 19th century America, too.  I'll just refer you to Martin Chuzzlewit's visit to mid-19th pre-Civil War America, and leave it at that.  Pretty sure America has been leaving the "other" devoid of their source of self-worth since Columbus landed and started making slaves of the natives.  That kind of evil demands a high cost, and we've been paying it ever since.

I'll just point out the post I'm quoting starts out discussing whether or not the VP should salute military officers and enlisted personnel.  My understanding is that military protocol does not require any civilian to return a salute, nor any person not in military uniform.  I think the salute by the POTUS started with Reagan (along with American flag lapel pins, which I also think Obama finally ended, although all anyone remembers now is the tan suit incident.  For a brief period, failure of a politician to wear a flag pin was almost a confession of Communism.).  Whether or not I'm correct, I don't remember Kennedy or LBJ or Carter, or Nixon, routinely returning the salute at Marine One, or elsewhere.

It's a stupid thing.  Let it go.  The military should salute the C in C, as a mark of where real military authority lies.  The civilian is not require to ape the military in this matter. 



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