Posted on by rjonakait

Murder or War Crimes?

I was recently asked by a facilitator of a current events discussion group to talk about Venezuela. It reminded me of my only conversation with a Venezuelan, and it happened some years ago. He was sitting next to me at a jazz brunch, part of a Pennsylvania music festival. Surprisingly, he and his wife had a home in a nearby Poconos community. He explained how that came about, but I don’t remember the explanation. I knew very little about Venezuela, but I had wondered why baseball was so popular there when it was not in the rest of South America. My brunch partner did not have an answer, but he was a baseball fan and seemed to know of every Venezuelan who was in the major leagues. (Today there are more than a hundred.) I asked him about conditions in Venezuela. I was aware that the president, Hugo Chavez, was an authoritarian who styled himself a socialist and that economic conditions had been deteriorating in the country. My retired companion had been the head of the Venezuelan branch of an American insurance giant. He told me that one of his sons had already left the country for Panama, and he was about to buy a place in that country as well. He said that he and his wife worried that someday they might have to flee their country in a few hours’ notice, and they needed a place to go to. I tried to imagine how unsettling that must feel. Now my imagination can more easily encompass such thoughts, even though I have not investigated an escape route from the U.S. Got suggestions?

While many of the Venezuelan economic problems seem unchanged since my conversation with the jazz lover, I was asked to speak at the current events group about America’s recent actions around and possibly in the country. I started by saying that it was hard to talk about the legality of our sinking boats and blowing up humans because the administration has not made public justifications for our destruction. Slogans have been tossed around—self-defense, unlawful combatants, narcoterrorism, foreign terrorist organizations—but not any true legal rationales. We have not been given any facts. How did we know that the boats carried drugs? Even if they did, how did we know that the drugs were destined for the United States and not other Caribbean nations, Europe, or West Africa? These, too are destinations for drugs leaving Venezuela.

Without legal and the information, it seems that we are in an unauthorized war. If so, we may have already committed war crimes; if not, we may murdered people. Moreover, we don’t know how far Trump’s reasoning carries (if it’s reasoned at all). If we can blow up those who are supposed drug dealers, why should it only be in foreign or international waters? By Trump’s logic, drug dealers within the U.S. are aiding drug cartels that Trump labels foreign terrorist organizations. Drug distributors and perhaps drug users could be labeled unlawful combatants under his reasoning. Can Trump have them summarily killed in this country?

Trump has said that each of the ten bombed boats were carrying drugs that could kill 25,000 Americans. In his mind, he has saved 250,000 lives. The Centers for Disease Control collects information about drug overdose deaths. The latest reports are from 2023 when there were 105,007 overdose deaths from all drugs, which is a slight decline from the previous year. Synthetic opioids (primarily fentanyl) caused 72,776 of those deaths in 2023, also a slight decline. As tragic as drug deaths are, Trump’s figures are vastly exaggerated.

Of course, synthetic opioid deaths did not start with fentanyl and originally weren’t foreign. There were the prescription drugs oxycontin and oxycodone. In 2023, about 13,000 deaths came from these prescription opioids. Most meth, which has harmed many Americans, is not imported. Ask Walter White.

In Trump’s first term, which he does not mention, opioid deaths increased roughly 50%. One of his campaign pledges was to end the fentanyl crisis.

To put this in some perspective: There were 46,728 deaths by guns in 2023. About 18,000 of these were homicides. Another 27,000 were suicides. We don’t have a “war on guns.”

About 41,000 people died in motor vehicle accidents.

Is the drug problem in America an emergency? The War on Drugs was proclaimed by President Nixon in 1971. In 50-plus years we have not been able to quash the drug trade or drug use. One problem: Illegal drugs are a commercial product that Americans want and are willing to pay for. Trump says this is an emergency. Has he just learned about it?

Trump now hints at land actions in Venezuela. The National Security Act of 1947 authorizes the CIA to collect intelligence, conduct counterintelligence, and undertake covert action. The point to covert actions had been to be able to deny them if compromised. By publicly announcing “covert activities” in Venezuela, Trump is again a norm breaker. According to the 1991 Intelligence Authorization Act, the CIA must act only on the basis of presidential findings for covert actions, and the findings must be monitored by House and Senate Committees. This is not happening.

There have probably been many more covert actions in our history than we are aware of, but until now there have been two major realms of activities. The first came out of the Cold War. We undertook many actions fueled by anticommunism. The second came after 9/11 and were part of the War on Terror.

Our government now relies on another rationale, which we could call part of the War on Drugs, a war now longer than our war in Afghanistan and an even bigger failure. But the validity of the drug rationale is dubious, since Venezuela had not been a major supplier of drugs to the U.S. compared to other South American countries. Moreover, cocaine is primarily the drug that comes out of Venezuela, not fentanyl. (Cocaine overdose deaths were 29,449 in 2023.) Fentanyl most often comes from China through Mexico.

Perhaps there is a concern about Venezuelan drugs, but our actions really seem designed to convince Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro that he can’t remain in power. A recent Wall Street Journal article as well as other sources suggest that Marco Rubio has been the prime architect of our Venezuela policy. Rubio as Senator tried for a decade to oust Nicolas Maduro and now he is getting his chance as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State. In Republican circles, Florida, particularly Cuban-Americans in Florida, have strong anti-Maduro sentiments, and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Rubio are all from Florida. Bondi has placed a $50 million bounty on Maduro, accusing him of working with criminal organizations.

We have a heavy military presence in the region, which has been increased. Nuclear-capable B-52 bombers have been flying off Venezuela’s shores, and an aircraft carrier has been sent to the region. We have thousands of troops at our Caribbean military bases.

Venezuela has moved troops into position and mobilized its militia. This is scary stuff. What would be our reaction if Venezuela were sinking American boats? What if Venezuela shoots down the aircraft blowing up the boats and Venezuelans?

Why force Maduro out? One answer: Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves. Perhaps our foreign policy is truly always about oil.

But our policy may also be a throwback to the Cold War.  Maduro proclaims his socialism. Hugo Chavez, who was president of Venezuela from 1999 to his death in 2013, expropriated the assets of hundreds of companies. Nicolas Maduro was Chavez’s (last) vice-president and has continued many of these policies. General Motors and Kimberley-Clark are among the factories that have been seized.

But the situation is even more complicated. Venezuela has not expropriated the property of American oil giant Chevron, which has operated in Venezuela since 1923 and now accounts for about a quarter of the country’s oil production. Opposition leaders see Chevron as propping up the autocratic regime, but Chevron says it is a stabilizing force. Chevron’s role in Trump’s policies is not clear.

What is Trump trying to accomplish with all this saber-rattling? We are still guessing.

Posted on by rjonakait

Three Modern Free Speech Issues

I was asked by a leader of a current events discussion group to comment on some present free speech issues. I briefly commented on several.

1 . The first is the issue of self-censorship by media and other entities because of a concern about retributive governmental actions. Jimmy Kimmel is a prime example. Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Kimmel made comments on his late-night show, which were not disrespectful of TurningPointUSA leader, but included some misinformation regarding the political affiliation of the killer. Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed Chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), responded by saying: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies [Kimmel’s employers] can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Kimmel was promptly suspended by ABC, a subsidiary of Disney. It was certainly reasonable for Disney to think it was being threatened by the Chair of the FCC. Over-the-air networks like ABC require licenses from the FCC. Moreover, two companies owning affiliates that air ABC programs were negotiating a merger that needed to be approved by the FCC. They could see the FCC Chair’s statement as a threat to that approval.

Though seemingly unrelated to free speech, these (not so) veiled threats have a direct impact on free speech. Sometimes even without a threat free speech is affected because of potential government action. We saw this dynamic in action with the $16 million settlement by Paramount Global (owner of CBS) of the Trump lawsuits against CBS. At the time of the settlement with Trump, Paramount had an $8 billion merger on the table that required government approval. What does this have to do with free speech, one might ask. Answer: Media companies (no company) should not be required to cave to the petulant posturing of a president in order to secure government approval for their business. And yet, Paramount Global felt, no doubt, that it had no choice but to cave to the political caprices of the president.

Perhaps there has always been a concern that free speech would result in government retribution. But it is more concerning now. First, the open vindictiveness of president Trump has changed things. In addition, the playing field has changed dramatically because the Supreme Court is consciously allowing the president more power that increases the possibility and feasibility of presidential retribution. Here’s how: Agencies like the FCC or the Federal Trade Commission or the Securities and Exchange Commission were meant to be independent of the president. Ninety years ago, the Supreme Court held that commissioners on such agencies could not be removed at the whim of the president, but only “for cause.” The Supreme Court has not officially overruled that precedent, but it effectively has done so. The Supreme Court has now allowed Trump to “temporarily” remove commissioners while litigation goes on about whether the removals have been lawful. It is expected that the 1930s precedent will be formally overruled this year. In other words, the previously independent agencies will no longer be independent but must answer directly to the president. Thus, companies who need agency approval for something will naturally be concerned that they will be punished for actions that displease Trump. This is affecting free speech in ways it was not before.

An aside: Might conservatives have a point in the Jimmy Kimmel affair? Four over-the-air late- night hosts use the public airwaves: Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Myers, and Jimmy Kimmel. All can be characterized as anti-Trump. What if all were the comedy equivalent of Fox News? How would liberals react?

2. The second is another, non-Kimmel free-speech issue occurring in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

A recent newspaper article states that over 145 people have been fired or disciplined by their employers for comments about Charlie Kirk. These data are from public records, but there may be many more that haven’t been reported. Often the comments have been innocuous. For example, an employee of a public university commented on her private Facebook page, “If you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person, we can’t be friends.” She also said that she believed in the Resurrection and was praying for his soul. She was fired for these comments.

All the firings of employees for their comments while not on the job raise free speech issues, but not all raise First Amendment issues.  The First Amendment applies only when the government does something that limits speech. Thus, it comes into play when a public employer disciplines public employees for their speech. However, there are few legal restraints on private employers who often can fire for any reason.

But something new is also operating in this arena. Online armies are scanning for social media comments to get people fired. Those who have made comments critical of Kirk are often doxed and flooded with ugly and threatening messages scaring them and others into silence. The online scrollers want to punish and prevent speech they don’t like.

While the private firings and the doxxing may not raise First Amendment concerns, they do raise important free speech concerns. We need more discussion of how free workers should be to express their views while not on the job, and, further, how to prevent some of the terrible excesses of social media and the internet.

3. The new Pentagon leadership says it will require credentialed journalists at the military headquarters to sign a pledge to refrain from reporting information that has not been authorized for release — including unclassified information. Reporters, in effect, can publish only press releases. Journalists who don’t abide by the policy risk losing credentials that provide access to the Pentagon.

I asked a friend who had been a media attorney whether he knew of similar past directives. He says this appears to be unprecedented.

He did point out that this administration (and others) have cut off reporters who published stuff the president didn’t like. (Witness the AP and the “Gulf of America” controversy). But these restrictions on free speech were relatively mild. They only limited the access of individual reporters. They were not a blanket restriction on what can be reported.

The Hegseth directive for the first time tries to make those covering the Pentagon into something like state media. You may publish only what the government authorizes. We have not had this Pravda-like restriction before. If it stands up in court, it would be a titanic and dangerous change in how the government, the press, and the people interact with each other.

Posted on by rjonakait

Don’t Let Them Shut Your Mouth

Responses to mass shootings have been predictable. Calls for better gun control go out, and conservatives respond: How dare you! You are terrible and callous for trying to make political points in this time of grief.

The conservative reaction to Charlie Kirk’s murder has been different: This particular “time of grief” is, apparently, the time to suppress and punish opponents and dissenters. Trump and his allies speak of plans to target liberal groups, monitor speech, and revoke visas. Government officials are considering criminal prosecutions of those who speak out against Kirkian and Trumpian policies. Officials threaten government actions against the media, teachers, school board members, and many others, and in advance of any actions by these people, have begun to shut down critics. Jimmy Kimmel is just the most famous of their targets. Some who want something from the government, such as approval of a merger, preemptively censor. Vigilantes have helped remove people who speak out from private jobs. (Notably, the MAGA folks did not seek the removal of a Fox News host who urged that the mentally ill homeless be given lethal injections. An apology was good enough.)

Not surprisingly, the movement to stifle opponents has been accompanied by misinformation, which in this case means lies or willful ignorance. It has been given as a fact that politically motivated murders primarily come out of leftist ideology. The fact is that study after study has shown that the majority of such killings have been by right-wingers. If we go back to 9/11, Islamic terrorists were responsible for the most political killings, but since then, according to the Cato Institute, the right-wing share of politically motivated terrorist murders have been 63 percent while the left-wing share has been 10 percent. (Cato says that the conservative killers have been “motivated by white supremacy, anti-abortion beliefs, involuntary celibacy [incels], and other right-wing ideologies.” This list should also include anti-LGBTQ ideology.) The Department of Justice had come to a similar conclusion, but you will have trouble finding that study since our government, which proclaims to be “the most transparent ever,” has removed the study from its website.

It does not matter to the President, of course, that we have seen nothing indicating that Kirk’s shooter was influenced by any extreme leftist or even liberal group. Instead, all we know is that Tyler Robinson has said that his motivation was the hate spewed by Kirk.

Until a bullet pierced his neck, Charlie Kirk was not on my radar. I had seen his name and that of his organization, but I knew little besides that. Now I know more, and I am amazed by his sanctification. Charlie Kirk may have been a loving, open-minded person, motivated by a true desire to foster legitimate debate, and he was undoubtedly a charismatic entertainer. Nevertheless, his religious, societal, and political views, which carried undertones, at a minimum of racism, ethnic bias, misogyny, frivolity, and stupidity, furthered hate and closed the minds of others. For example, Kirk said that “Jewish dollars” were funding Marxist ideas in education and policy and contributing to opening the borders.” Kirk said: “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.'” Kirk said: “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.” Kirk said: “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage.” Kirk said about affirmative action and Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson: “Yeah, we know. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.” (Snopes.com is the source for these quotations.) This, of course, is only a small sample of Kirk’s tendentious statements.

Charlie Kirk was not a deep thinker, but he did know how to make money. Siri tells me that he was worth $12 million—not bad for a 31-year-old community college dropout. How much did he profit from those rallies and other activities whose stated purpose was merely to advance the political dialog?

Conservatives have said that millions “celebrated” Kirk’s death. I know none of them, and I doubt that number is true. Confirming evidence has not been provided.  An anecdote, even two, is not proof. Many, however, have come forward to criticize Kirk’s “teachings.” I would not be surprised if there have been millions, even tens of millions, of them. I certainly hope so. The attempt to honor Kirk has coincided with efforts to suppress and punish such critics of Kirk–a strange legacy for someone who supposedly stood for free speech and debate. If his ideas were sound, they should be highlighted. If they were sound, they would only benefit from critics. What are the Kirk supporters afraid of?

In these dangerous moments, I am reminded of another time when a supposed political murder was used to justify the suppression and oppression of those designated as enemies. On November 7, 1938, the Polish Jew Herschel Grynszpan shot the Nazi diplomat Ernst vom Rath. Two days later vom Rath died. Almost immediately, a pogrom against Jews was launched as a response to the murder. That event is now known as Kristallnacht. The murder by one person was used to suppress and oppress tens of thousands of others. Sound familiar?

As in 1938, many are seizing upon the murder by one person of Charlie Kirk to lead to oppression and suppression. Truly patriotic Americans should respond.

Don’t let them shut your mouth.

Posted on by rjonakait

In Spite of the People

Texas is seeking to further gerrymander its congressional districts in favor of Republicans. Two-thirds of Texas House seats are currently held by the GOP even though the statewide vote for Trump in 2024 was only fifty-six percent. The Texans are now seeking to ensure that eighty percent of the seats are filled by Republicans. Texas Republican votes will in essence be weighted more heavily than Democratic ones. Slightly more than half the voters will pick four out of five Representatives while slightly less than half will pick twenty percent of the seats.

The United States Supreme Court faced a similar situation in the second half of the twentieth century. At that time some states did not require periodic redistricting of their state legislatures. With population growth and shifts, legislative districts that once may have held equal populations became unequal, but each was still entitled to the same representation in the state capital. For example, in Tennessee, two-thirds of the state representatives were elected by one-third of the state’s voters. One Alabama district had a population of 634,864 and another had 15,000, and each had one state senator. Within each district, votes were equal, but when the state was looked at as a whole, votes were unequal.

This only changed because the United States Supreme Court adopted what now is called the one-person, one-vote doctrine. The constitutional guarantee of equal protection, the Court recognized, requires that each vote within a state be equal to all the other votes in the state, and therefore legislative districts must have comparable populations.

The Court actions comported with a constitutional theory about the Court’s role in our government. In 1938, the Supreme Court said that courts must have a strong presumption that our laws are constitutional. Under our system, the elected legislatures and executives (the political branches) adopt our laws. If a law is perceived as bad or unreasonable or unwise, it is up to those elected branches to change it. It is not for the federal courts to determine the wisdom of a law. However, the Supreme Court also outlined three exceptions to that strong presumption of constitutionality. First, constitutionality cannot be assumed for a law or action that appears on its face to violate a provision of the US Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights. The Court also said that it would scrutinize closely laws that discriminate against “discrete and insular” minorities, especially racial, religious, and national minorities, particularly those who lack sufficient numbers or power to seek redress through the political process. Finally, the Court should not grant a presumption of constitutionality to laws and practices that restrict the political process. The Court, in other words, should have a more active role when laws and practices prevent the political process from mirroring the will of the people.The political process in Tennessee and Alabama was not likely to change the inequality of voting districts. Representatives from small districts were not willingly going to give up their disproportionate power. The system that gave some voters more power than others stayed in place until the Supreme Court acted. The Court furthered political democracy by doing so.

Partisan gerrymandering is akin to those unequal districts the Supreme Court confronted in the twentieth century. The political process will not remove anti-democratic congressional boundaries when the line-drawing party perennially controls the state legislature. Although the minority party is not what the Supreme Court meant by a “discrete and insular minority,” it is very much like one since the political process cannot prevent discrimination against it. And if a party has gerrymandered congressional districts, it almost always also has gerrymandered state legislative districts. When that is the case, and it is true throughout this country, a mere majority in the state does not change the control of the legislature. Thus, a controlling party can distort the political process to continue its control. Gerrymandered state legislatures have drawn lines so that one party will have more state representatives than is warranted by the statewide popular vote. To change the legislature, the out-of-power party must not only retain its majority in the districts where it now wins but must also get majorities in the districts that are stacked against them. In reality, one party will need a supermajority of votes to get the governmental reins while the party that gerrymandered can retrain control with a minority of the vote.

The Supreme Court has recognized that “partisan gerrymandering” may be “incompatible with democratic principles.” Even so, the 5-4 2019 decision Rucho v. Common Cause, written by Chief Justice Roberts, said that “partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts [Emphasis added].” If gerrymandering is a “political question” as the Court stated, you might think that there would be a political process to address its abuses, but the Court, for the good reason that there is none, did not suggest any. It is as if the umpires turned their backs and walked off the field saying that while it does not seem right, the home team can call balls and strikes. And, thus, due to the Court’s inaction, the constitutional rights to equal protection and due process do not govern partisan gerrymandering.

With the abdication of the United States Supreme Court, some who seek better, more democratic government have gone to state courts contending that partisan gerrymandering violates state constitutions. The results have been mixed. Some state supreme courts have adopted the U.S. Supreme Court reasoning and will not consider partisan gerrymandering cases, while a minority of state courts have held that partisan gerrymandering does violate their state constitutions.*

In some ways, however, this just compounds the problem. Many states can freely gerrymander while a few states cannot. As a result, the political parties of the gerrymandering states have even more power than if all states gerrymander. They get the unwarranted number of representatives from their states and still get the deserved number from the other states.

Gerrymandering not only makes votes unequal. It also increases uncompromising partisanship. In a “safe” district, a candidate does not have to appeal to the other side — or even to the center — to get elected. The candidate merely must win the party’s primary. The candidate does not ever have to appeal to the majority of the electorate, but only to the partisans voting in the primary. And when elected, members from a gerrymandered district can indulge their partisan ideology without political retribution. We become a more polarized country as a result.

It also affects the mindset of elected officials. In the early days of the country, the electoral franchise was limited. Property requirements prevented some people from voting, and, of course, women could not vote. They, however, were not unrepresented. The elected official represented everyone in the district because everyone in the district was counted whether they could vote or not.** We see that today in a modified form. Children cannot vote, but the elected official represents them. The representative theoretically represents everyone in the district. But with gerrymandering that is not how many elected officials operate.

Recent raucous town halls should remind us of that. Conservative commentators point out that calls went out for Democrats to attend the town halls, and therefore the town halls should be discounted. In essence, the commentators are saying that critics should be disregarded. After all, those critics do not vote in the only election that matters in a gerrymandered district—the primary. When elected officials feel that they do not have to listen to people in their districts, they no longer feel that they have to represent them. But gerrymandering encourages our elected officials to act as if they represent only those who will vote in a primary.

The next midterms will raise important issues. The Republicans worked hard to pass that Big, Beautiful Bill. They claim it is good for the country. The tax cuts will increase prosperity. The changes to Medicaid will improve the program. Those who voted for or support the law should be willing to explain and defend the BBB. Those who voted against or oppose it should also be willing to tell their constituents why. And, of course, there are other important issues. Increasingly, however, the next and future elections will not be decided by the issues but will be decided instead by which side can gerrymander more and better.

It was funny, and ludicrous, when Pat Paulsen, the comedian a generation or so ago, who “ran” for President, said, “I want to be elected by the people, for the people, and in spite of the people.” We now live in a world where “in spite of the people” is, alas, a dominant political strategy.

_________________________________________________________________

*Civics courses have taught that the lower houses of the national and state legislatures are the most democratic and representative of our governmental institutions because the fewest number of voters select these representatives in frequent elections. With gerrymandering, however, these bodies have become increasingly unrepresentative of the people. However, officials elected in statewide elections are not gerrymandered into office.

Civics courses have often concluded that the courts are the least democratic of our institutions since they are the most removed from the electorate. But when state supreme court judges are elected in statewide elections, not in gerrymandered districts, the state supreme courts are more democratically selected than gerrymandered legislatures.

** Trump has now suggested that not everyone within a district should be counted for the census. Undocumented people, e.g., have heretofore been included in the census count, and hence should have been represented by the elected representatives of their district. Trump wants to exclude those people from the census. Will he exclude children next?

Posted on by rjonakait

Twelve Ways to Win

In the last post, “77 Million,” I wrote that the real story of the last presidential election was not the switch to Trump, which was not large, but the “lost votes,” the many who had voted for Biden but did not vote at all this year. A story in a Pennsylvania news source neatly illustrates the point. A Philadelphia district that is overwhelmingly Black had shifted to Trump, but in that district Trump had gotten only three more votes than he had in 2020. Harris, however, had received 81 fewer ballots than Biden had four years earlier.

After the previous post, a friend said that he agreed with my analysis but wondered what my explanation was for the lost votes. I thought more about that and realized that I did not have a single overarching explanation but only a collection of partial possibilities. Here are some of them.

One. Donald Trump is a remarkable politician. His dominant qualities—liar, ignoramus, bully, fearmonger, bad economist, embarrassing dancer—should make him a laughingstock, but despite these characteristics, or perhaps because of them, he connects deeply with a broad swath of Americans. They are devoted to him like teenage girls to a K-pop boy band. There’s a major difference, however: American devotion to him has not been a passing fancy; we don’t seem to grow out of it. Other presidents—Reagan, Clinton, Obama—had devoted admirers, but not like Trump. To me the attraction is inexplicable, but I recognize his draw.

Two. Americans have short memories, and Trump benefited. In 2020, almost all voters held strong and accurate images of the Trump presidency. Despite the pandemic, the economy was about the same as it was under Obama, with some indicators stronger and some weaker than in the previous four years. (E.g., inflation was low under Trump, but it was even lower under Obama.) However, all was not well in the country. Crime had started to increase under Trump which was disturbing. Life expectancy had started to fall even apart from the pandemic. The border was a problem, and Trump had failed to fix it. Even Obama had deported more people than Trump had. Trump’s wall seemed a joke. His attempts to erase the Affordable Care Act were disturbing. Deficits skyrocketed. He played footsy with dictators, which was disturbing. His many grift-like actions were disturbing. A lot of things were disturbing, but that was all forgotten four years later. Moreover, of all the bad things that were predicted to happen because of his four years did not happen. For example, Biden continued the China tariffs that liberals had decried ruinous. Biden continued Trump border policies that were labeled ineffectual and heartless. More and more politicians supported the border wall. Trump was still the same Trump, but to many he did not look as bad as he had in 2020.

Three. Americans are not only forgetful; they are ignorant. Americans want simple answers, and Trump benefited. The border problem has many causes. We need a reform of our immigration laws. We need more border agents. We need more immigration judges. The problem is fueled by criminal gangs and political unrest in various countries. The problem is exacerbated by poor economies in various countries. It is intensified by the wider spread of media coverage that tells more and more people that they can find a better life if they can get to the U.S. And so on. Americans don’t want to confront such complexities. They don’t want to concede that the problem has been years in the making. They want a simple answer. And to many, the border problem is simply the fault of the Biden-Harris administration. (When conservatives refer to 2017 to 2021, they never say the Trump-Pence administration.)

More simplistic thinking follows: If the border were tightened, for example, we could tackle our fentanyl problem. (We have already forgotten that Trump promised to solve the fentanyl crisis when he ran in 2016.) Inflation. Well, inflation was the consequence of many complex events, but Americans didn’t want to understand that. Neither did we want to know that many developed countries had a worse inflation problem than we had, and that perhaps our inflation, bad as it was, was not so bad. Americans did not want to hear that gas and oil trade in an international market, that supply chains are international, and that the U.S. government does not control these markets. Instead, we want a simple answer, and that answer was that inflation was the fault of the Biden-Harris administration.

Four. Fear sells, and Trump benefited. Many campaigns have tried to make the electorate fearful about the consequences of the other side’s actions. In the first election I paid attention to, JFK stressed a “missile gap” at a time when nuclear concerns were high. (That gap seemed to disappear once he took office.) This year Trump and his acolytes did a much better job of spreading fear than the other side—fear of crime generally, fear of immigrant crime more specifically, fear of immigration, fear of fentanyl, fear of transgender people. That last fear should not be underestimated. For most of the election season, I was in Pennsylvania, a swing state for the presidential election with a closely contested Senate seat and several close House races. It seemed as if every third political ad — and the ads ran nonstop — by those on the right brought up Democratic support for trans people. They damned Harris for supporting government payment for gender-transforming operations. They hinted that Democratic candidates were going to allow trans people to play girls’ sports and use girls’ bathrooms. This country may have become more accepting of gays, but many, many Americans see trans people as unsettling and dangerous. Trump and his supporters benefited.

Five. The media has had a fixation on Trump, and Trump benefited. News sources, including, or perhaps especially, liberal ones reported at length whatever Trump was doing or saying. This was not totally surprising. In the run-up to the election, Trump was on the receiving end of multiple lawsuits including his conviction of 34 felony counts in New York. Nevertheless, this coverage overwhelmed coverage of Biden’s accomplishments (how many of us can summarize what is in the Inflation Reduction Act?) and explanations for problems like rising prices or the border. Since memory-impaired Americans seemed less concerned about the bizarre and dangerous behavior of Trump in 2024 than they were in 2020, the media did Trump a favor by focusing on him and not other things.

Six. We don’t know how to handle misinformation, and that benefited Trump, too. A higher percentage of misinformation came from the right than the left, and listeners ate it up.

Seven. Liberals and Democrats are poor at messaging. Who named it the Inflation Reduction Act? I know. I know. It was meant to reduce inflation, and it certainly did help. But it was hard not to hear it as a laugh line when the cost of milk and eggs and gas and mortgages was unusually high. Why didn’t they change the name and start focusing on all the good the Act accomplished?

Eight. But perhaps the chief cause of Trump’s (narrow) victory came throughout Biden’s term. While Americans were concerned about the border and inflation, Biden seemed indifferent to those problems. He might have been able to do little or nothing about them, but he should have appeared more concerned about them. He did not. And Trump won.

Similarly, every third ad against Harris I saw featured her being asked what she would have done differently from Biden. The response was the blank look of a doe in the headlights with the answer of “nothing.” It was powerful each time, and I saw it many, many times. Such a question had to be anticipated. How could she not have had a better immediate response? (Later on — too later on — she did.) There was also the never-ending clip of her crowing about the success of “Bidenomics.” Democrats should have been ready to explain what they were hoping to accomplish and what they had accomplished. They did not. And Trump won.

Nine. In the eyes of many Americans the Democratic Party does not stand for anything, and Trump benefited. Worse: Democrats were seen as the party that stood for trans rights, defunding the police, DEI, and critical race theory. But what else? For many, Democrats didn’t stand for anything that benefited “ordinary” people. Biden’s support for the United Auto Workers made no dint in this perception.

Ten. Covid hurt Trump in 2020. It helped him this year. His inconsistent and bizarre reactions to the pandemic were fresh four years ago. Now many have selective memories of that time. Unless personally affected, few seem to remember that one million American died. Instead, today Covid is remembered by many as a time of unnecessary school closings that harmed kids and strained parents; of unnecessary face masks; of governmental overreach on vaccines and social distancing. These are all reasons to distrust the government, and Trumps surrogates did a great job of reminding us of this distrust. At the same time, some see the Democrats as the ones who believe in big government of the sort that made Covid more hellish. Trump benefited.

Eleven. Many are not ready for a woman to be the Commander-in-Chief. We cannot discount that this country continues to have a strong strain of misogyny. Trump benefited big time from it.

Twelve. What do you think contributed? I’d love to hear them.