Joy is not the enemy of good Policy
The Democrats had a triumphant Convention, but the Debbie Downers continue to whine
[I want to apologize for not posting lately, I’ve been house hunting and it’s been pretty stressful.]
Well, a lot has gone down in the last couple weeks in the political world. Democrats had a loud, raucus and Joyful convention featuring President Biden, Clinton and Obama. They had great music from Stevie Wonder to John Legend and the Chicks on stage. A DJ playing state themed song during the ceremonial Roll Call vote and finally a rousing speech by Vice President Harris as she accepted the nomination. The entire event at 22% greater ratings than the RNC weeks previously.
It was warm, welcoming and glorious.
But the naysayers are still out there, and they are loud as well.
The day after the Convention ended the GOP popped their big surprise — RFK jr ended his campaign, endorsed Trump and joined him at a rally where they played Foo Fighters “My Hero” as he came out.
This started a kerfuffle with the band because they never granted permission for Trump to use the song. However, the Trump campaign did pay the licensing fee to BMI. (This is pretty much what a local bar with a jukebox has to do.) Yeah, I don’t think that’s enough to satisfy Dave Grohl who is a fairly proud and open Democrat.
Additionally, Isaac Hayes Jr is suing the Trump campaign for their use of his father’s song “Hold On, I’m coming” to the tune of $3 Million in back license fees.
All told, there are 18 different artists who have a beef with their music being used by Trump, including Beyonce, Celine Dion, the Rolling Stones, Taylor Swift and the Village People.
Obviously, Trump and his people seem to have a problem with the idea of “Consent.”
And they have frankly tried a litany of attacks and complaints about the Harris campaign.
They say that “nobody voted for Harris” — but it was pretty much understood that she was on the ticket. A vote for Biden was also a vote for Harris. His delegates were essentially her delegates. This is why an “open convention” was never going to be a viable option. And even if that had happened, then no one who came out on top would have had any votes at all.
They attack Harris saying “You’re already in control - why don’t you do everything you’re promising right now?” But this ignores the obvious fact that she’s Vice President, not President. She’s in the passenger seat, she isn’t driving the car. But more seriously, the Biden White House *has* tried to do most of what she’s saying - such as restore the Voting Rights act or implement Border reform — but those bills were blocked by the GOP House and Senate.
Trump himself sabotaged the Border bill.
So this complaint is yet another crock of shit.
Then you have surrogates like Lindsay Graham arguing that “things were better” under Trump while Jake Tapper lets him spout lies and distortions without any pushback at all.
Brought on to talk about the current presidential campaign pitting Trump against Vice President Kamala Harris, host Tapper first pointed out that Graham has lightly criticized the former president for centering his campaign on personal attacks on Harris instead of addressing policy differences.
Last week Graham said on NBC, “President Trump can win this election. His policies are good for America, and if you have a policy debate for president, he wins. Donald Trump the provocateur, the showman, may not win this election."
Tapper let him LIE for 5 minutes straight. He claimed "Inflation is out of control, the border is overrun and the world is on Fire." Which is all crap. Inflation is down to 2.9%. Border Crossing are down 57%.
Russia first invaded Ukraine way back in 2014!!! and Trump tried repeatedly to cut the sanctions against them for that - he would hand Ukraine over to Putin with a Bow on Top.
Then you have Scott Jennings giving CNN’s Token Democrat a bunch of crap that “people don’t want to feel joy.”
During the panel discussion moderated by host Jake Tapper, CNN analyst Kate Bedingfield described the just concluded Democratic National Convention as joyful, telling her fellow panelists, "She [Kamala Harris] is proving herself outside of her comfort zone. She has spent the last month since it was thrust upon her this moment where she had to rise to the occasion to take on the mantle of being the Democratic nominee, which is a huge moment and she's done it successfully."
"You've seen — you see momentum, you see people excited," she continued. "So this notion like joy isn't a strategy; joy is actually what people want. This is what they want to feel right now and they're feeling it from her. She's also laying out substantive policy proposals which she did in her nominating speech. And the idea that these two things are somehow mutually exclusive, I don't think that's true."
"The joy will continue until morale improves," conservative analyst Jennings quipped before adding, "People don't want to feel joy, they want to feel relief," which made Bedingfield laugh."The economic anxiety is real and it is — and you can say inflation is down and I know that's what the Democrats are going to argue," he persisted as Bedingfield looked on incredulously.
"Not a single person who was bought a single thing in the last four years or in the last four minutes, believes that and I think you get in trouble in politics when you tell people something that does not match their lived experience," he concluded.
"So a Republican strategist says people do not want to feel joy," a laughing Bedingfield repeated before adding, "That's quite a message."
This bullshit that all Kamala offers is "Joy, without Policy" is a pile of crap. She supports Reproductive Rights, she supports the child tax credit and a tax cut for the middle class while closing the deficit-busting cuts for the rich. She supports Police Reform and restoring the Voting Rights Act, ending gerrymandering and taking PAC money out of politics.
She negotiated with the Northern Triangle Countries to bring migration down by 50% and it's down by a total of 57% right now. She was the tie-breaking vote on the American Rescue Act and on the Inflation Reduction Act which has come down from a peak of 9.1% to 2.9%. Wages are rising at 3.6% and have been higher than inflation for the last 15 months. Under Biden/Harris the deficit was cut by $1.3 Trillion after Trump increased it to $3 Trillion.
We have, right now, the strongest economy in the world. We are producing the greatest amount of Oil and Green Energy Ever. We have 50-year record low unemployment, we have 40-Year record low Crime.
Corey Booker made this point earlier in the show.
On CNN's "State of the Union," the host pointed to comments made at the convention and pointed to former president Barack Obama stating," America is ready for a new chapter" as he endorsed Harris
"I mean, she's the incumbent vice president," Tapper remarked. "Democrats have controlled the White House for 12 of the last 16 years. How can Democrats talk about a new chapter, turning the page, you guys are the ones writing the book?"
"Well, you know that that's not true, Jake, because you know politics like I do," Booker shot back. "Right now, we see the MAGA Republicans in Congress killing all kinds of pragmatic policies that we need to get done on the most contentious issues.""We had a bipartisan deal settled on by Senator James Lankford (R-OK), are right-wing Republican and Sen. Chris Murphy, a blue state Democrat and what killed that deal, what killed that pragmatic progress wasn't the sensible Republicans, but really people who were kowtowing to Donald Trump. His influence is egregious and incredible."
Trump, on the other hand, is running the fuck away from his own Project 2025 like a scared rabbit. While arguing with a MAGA over this I countered the P2025 is really the detailed version of Agenda 47 which Trump has personally endorsed and promoted only to find that Trump has scrubbed Agenda 47 too.
What now appears on Trump’s site - instead of 30 detailed posts each with a video of Trump announcing each plank of his party platform - is a short list of 20 agenda items and a 16-page PDF.
Seal the border and stop the migrant invasion
Carry out the largest deportation operation in american history
End inflation, and make america affordable again
Make america the dominant energy producer in the world, by far!
STOP OUTSOURCING, AND TURN THE UNITED STATES INTO A MANUFACTURING SUPERPOWER
large tax cuts for workers, and no tax on tips!
Defend our constitution, our bill of rights, and our fundamental freedoms, including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to keep and bear arms
Prevent world war three, restore peace in europe and in the middle east, and build a great iron dome missile defense shield over our entire country -- all made in america
End the weaponization of government against the american people
Stop the migrant crime epidemic, demolish the foreign drug cartels, crush gang violence, and lock up violent offenders
Rebuild our cities, including washington dc, making them safe, clean, and beautiful again.
Strengthen and modernize our military, making it, without question, the strongest and most powerful in the world
Keep the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency
Fight for and protect social security and medicare with no cuts, including no changes to the retirement age
Cancel the electric vehicle mandate and cut costly and burdensome regulations
Cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, radical gender ideology, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children
Keep men out of women's sports
Deport pro-hamas radicals and make our college campuses safe and patriotic again
Secure our elections, including same day voting, voter identification, paper ballots, and proof of citizenship
Unite our country by bringing it to new and record levels of success
It’s pretty likely that Trump himself wrote many of these because the punctuation is sketchy. The PDF doesn’t add a lot of detail, but by and large these are some of the same policy planks as his original “Agenda 47” and also Project 2025. He’s just softened some of the wording but “Mass Deportation” is still there as items #1 & #2. Using the Military to crack down on “Democrat Crime”, “Gangs”,”Drug Dealers”, “Human Traffickers” as well as protestors — is still there. (#10 & #11) Implementing Theocracy into our Schools against LGBTQ and Black people is still there (#16 & #17).
So no real changes.
But what’s really funny is that they only changed the first page - all the detail pages for each of his previous policy positions are still there. Like this page on “Dismantling the Deep State” (Which is hollowing out the government and replacing career government workers with his own personal lackeys)
1. On Day One, re-issue 2020 executive order restoring the president’s authority to fire rogue bureaucrats.
2. Overhaul federal departments and agencies, firing all of the corrupt actors in our National Security and Intelligence apparatus.
3. Fundamentally reform the FISA courts, ensuring that corruption is rooted out.
4. Establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to declassify and publish all documents on Deep State spying, censorship, and abuses of power.
5. Launch a major crackdown on government leakers who collude with the media to create false narratives, pressing criminal charges when appropriate.
6. Make every Inspector General’s Office independent from the departments they oversee, so that they do not become protectors of the deep state.
7. Establish an independent auditing system to continually monitor our intelligence agencies to ensure that they are not spying on our citizens or running disinformation campaigns against the American people.
8. Continue Trump administration effort to move parts of the federal bureaucracy outside of the Washington Swamp, just like President Trump moved the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado.
Up to 100,000 government positions could be moved out of Washington.
9. Ban federal bureaucrats from taking jobs at the companies they deal with and regulate, such as Big Pharma.
10. Push for a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress.
FIRE ROGUE BUREAUCRATS AND CAREER POLITICIANS: President Trump’s plan will ensure that federal bureaucrats and politicians are held accountable to the American people.
All of that has now been reduced to item #9 on his new list.
9. End the weaponization of government against the american people
He’s hiding his plan. The short little sound-bite is still the same thing as what was in Agenda 47, and what is in Project 2025. He’s going to try to do the same shit.
He’s just gone quiet about it now because when people were able to read the fine print.
They didn’t like it. They still don’t like it.
Kamala Harris has the better plan. She not going to gut the government and try to turn everyone into her own personal flying monkeys. The DOJ will remain independent, even if that happens to be fairly frustrating. The government will not be censoring the books in our schools and libraries. They won’t accuse teachers and librarians of being pedophiles, groomers and sexual predators simply because they have a book written about a LGBTQ person.
They won’t send active duty military out to “round up the gangs and the migrants” and stick them all into massive detention camps without due process.
They won’t hand Ukraine over to Putin and they (probably) won’t let the IDF commit a genocide in Gaza.
Most importantly, they won’t LIE TO US about every damn thing in the world. And I like that a lot better.
Great summation, Frank. Hope the house hunting is going well. I’ll bet there are lots of pros here on Substack to give you a hand.