I’ve expressed skepticism—on many occasions—that the country’s Moral Guidance Counselors at The New York Times are determined that Donald Trump won’t return to the White House and immediately turn the country into a fascist state, where urban dissenters aren’t even given a last cigarette before facing the public firing squad. J.D. Vance’s apprentice makes the pundit mind hum, all that material and attention for catering to a left-wing base that may or may not really give a hoot about the upcoming election. However, I won’t put Maureen Dowd in that camp: at 72, she’s wealthy, has access to her choice of political and Hollywood figures and has nothing left to prove. That suits me: you know where you stand with Dowd, unlike Ross Douthat, Thomas Friedman (who still watches the click-o-meter on his Apple digital smart toe clasp) and the relatively young Ezra Klein, who’s fashioned a living by aligning himself with the Democratic Party but in such a way that, given some truth serum, or maybe even a Bud Light, that Trump Redux is good for business.
Dowd’s Oct. 12th column—half of which is a to-and-fro with James Carville, the now-elderly (79) quote-for-a-nickel (Clinton Inc.’s rascal is still pretty funny, even with spittle dropping from his face, and must give a hell of a toast at weddings and long-winded, but fascinating, eulogies at funerals)—is a departure from her usual Beltway/L.A. quip-laden essays in that it’s so blunt. Her conclusion: “It’s disturbing that Harris can’t get over the hump and outpace Trump. As Carville says, we need less mulling and more action in a do-or-die moment. She needs to do [that] so we don’t die.”
That’s more than the standard “democracy’s in peril” patter that’s run out of steam, upping the ante that Americans will die if the guy who’s “better at riffing” than Kamala moves back to the White House. At least she didn’t say the “crisis” is “existential,” and made no allusions to “clown cars.” I believe that a worn-out Trump—traumatized by two assassination attempts that still haven’t received appropriate attention—won’t do much if he pulls a Grover Cleveland and wins a non-consecutive presidency. He just doesn’t have the attention span to follow through on some of his crazy campaign proposals (that, like Kamala’s, shift from state to state), and that means government gridlock, the best citizens can hope for.
Veering away from the Times, I hadn’t thought of filmmaker/provocateur (that’s kind, I won’t “go there” to the old stories of him taking a limo for one block to his NYC apartment years ago) Michael Moore in a long time. But I came across mention of his Substack on Twitter last weekend and, feeling mischievous, waded in. It was worth the read, for Moore is just as much a functional kook as I remember. The headline of the Oct. 4th type-in-the-dark rally-the-populists picker-upper reads, “Do The Math: Trump Is Toast,” with no allowance for the fact that this election can’t be predicted, at least by the sane, from one day to the next.
He says, “If you know how to really read the polls,” the “election was over weeks ago.” Never averse to cliché-ridden nonsense, Moore writes: “The vast majority of the country, the normal people, have seen enough and want the clown car to disappear into the MAGA vortex somewhere between reality and Orlando. The swift and explosive momentum for Kamala Harris is unlike anything that’s been seen in decades… As it stands now, here are the basic conclusions I’ve come to by simply being around my fellow Americans who are shopping at Costco, having fun making TikToks and eating once a week at Chilli’s.” His “basic” conclusion: Kamala wins big, perhaps by a 55-42 percent margin, powered by the female vote. I won’t be joining Mike at Costco soon—too claustrophobic—so that that means more bags of withered carrots for him.
I was put off by a soft, and lengthy, article about the vile 46-year-old Donald Trump Jr. by Molly Ball in The Wall Street Journal on Oct. 6. Ball says, “the crown prince of MAGA world wears many hats,” and takes credit for his father’s selection of J.D. Vance. He’s also an “occasional” hunting and fishing companion of slipped-down-the-escalator Tucker Carlson. The “crown prince” (God save the republic) tells Ball: “’My role will be to make sure that those bad actors are not getting into the administration to subvert my father and his policies,” Trump Jr. said. “Now we know who those people are. In ’16, we had no idea.’”
Curiously, Donald Jr.’s younger brother Eric is mentioned just once in the article, and brother-in-law Jared Kushner not at all. Skip Eric, as obnoxious as his brother, but I wonder why the far-smarter (if equally sleazy) Kushner was pushed aside for this year’s attempt at restoration. Could be that Kushner, 43, in the prime of his real estate career, decided he simply wants to make money and avoid the spotlight.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023