Frank's Musings

The Constitution stipulates that the federation is based on certain common beliefs (truths) held by the people.  Implicated in that stipulation is the common acceptance by the people of the definition of individual personhood when it comes to the civil rights the Constitution guarantees to citizens.  The right to life of those individuals is their most fundamental one, and certainly cannot be subject to currents of political thought that may vary by section of the federation.  Moreover, so basic a right should not be subject to changing codes of morality over time.  Ironically, this is an instance in which the concept of originalism does indeed defeat the concept of a living constitution.  No matter how much the latest medical technology allows us to stretch backwards an organism’s civic existence, there is only the threshold of viability for it to cross before it merits being treated as an independent subject of the rules of our society.  (Even though that threshold is commonly widened by several years after birth when it comes to criminal liability.)

A mother is graced with a biological power that not only allows her to give birth, but also to nurture or interrupt, for any reason, the growth of an organism in her pregnant body at least until its rights are reasonably guaranteed by society’s rules, i.e., the Constitution.  No provision or amendment of the Constitution deprives mothers of that power.

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It’s uncanny the parallels in Adam Gopnik’s review of Tomas W. Ryback’s book, “Takeover,” in the March  25, 2023, New Yorker, between the threat of autocracy in the U.S. if Donald Trump is elected as President again and the rise to power of Hitler.  From the media mogul, Hugenberg, and Rupert Murdoch, to the close confidantes wishing to take advantage of his appeal to disaffected petite bourgeoisie, shopkeepers, rural residents and domestic workers, like Hindenburg, von Papen, and General von Schleicher, and Hitler’s transparent solipsism when it came to his vaunted policies, Hitler never disguised his motivations, and they were ignored by both an overwhelmingly segment of the voting public as well as by a nonplussed liberal and educated sector of society.

He’s not anti-Semitic—Kushner us his son-in-law!

He’s not racist—he has also suffered discrimination!

He doesn’t have money to burn—his wealth is tied up in real estate!

He’s not xenophobic—he only wants to keep undesirable foreigners out of the country!

Those who want to call Trump names are just trying to control him.  That’s why the MAGA Crowd identifies with him—they’re just as fed-up with taking orders from anyone.

Biden’s liberal-democratic policies lower the cost of living, increase national security, and improve our general well-being not just theoretically, but also in at least eight practical ways:

1.      Well-funded and controlled open borders bring in laborers with needed skills allowing businesses to expand.
2.          NATO and other honored alliances maintain world order and promote the exchanges of ideas and people that improve living conditions.
3.       International peace enables leisure, ancestral-heritage, and business travel.
4.       Free trade and capital transfers facilitate inexpensive imported manufactures.
5.       Unobstructed trading routes reduce transportation costs and inflation.
6.       Reciprocal world environmental accords ultimately benefit all global inhabitants.
7.       Similarly, making domestic technologies available worldwide ultimately benefits   us, too, by increasing IT sales income and reducing the price of imports.
8.       Fulfilling treaty commitments is a two-way street, e.g., we owe support of Ukraine's resistance to Russian aggression as fair compensation to Europe for their support when the U.S. suppressed the Taliban's sheltering of terrorists in Afghanistan.

Campaign slogans should also include concrete examples of the harm that MAGA policies and blunders caused during Trump’s prior administration, including:

1.      Withdrawal from Paris climate accord—global warming gets worse when any country, even alone and particularly when exceedingly more intensively, refuses to collaborate.
2.       Admiration of foreign authoritarian leaders only encouraged their aggressive behavior, viz. the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Chinese obstruction of sea lanes.
3.      Appointment of conservative Supreme Court Justices led to the robbing of a woman’s right to choose.
4.       It also led to further loosening of gun ownership control at the increased risk that deadly weapons will be handled threateningly and recklessly.
5.        Trump’s legal debts are making him vulnerable to influence by deep-pocket special interests (cfAll-In with Chris Hayes on X: ".@chrislhayes: Part of Trump's appeal in 2016 was the lie that his personal wealth would allow him to self-fund his campaign and make him immune to outside influence. That's even less true today. Trump is strapped for cash, and his political positions are up for sale. https://t.co/N9ZXnvgNoD" / X (twitter.com)).
6.        According to David French in the NYT, “The murder rate skyrocketed on [Trump’s] watch. Between 2019 and 2020, America experienced the largest single year increase in the murder rate in more than a century, and that was under Donald Trump.”  The rate dropped to its lowest level in fifty years under Biden.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

• A recent NYT / Siena Poll reports the preferences of “likely voters” in the 2024 presidential election. Assuming that that category is self-selected, the poll obviously is biased in favor of those citizens who feel most highly motivated to plan ahead and devote the time and personal inconvenience needed to carry out that intent.

  The question is whether the statistical margin of error adequately accounts for a possible change in the strength of that motivation as the voting date approaches. This change can work in either direction.  History is replete with public opinion polls that proved to be contradicted by subsequent election results, e.g., Truman vs. Dewey in 1948 and Trump vs. Clinton in 2016.  Voters who thought then how they would vote and that they were or were not likely to vote when asked the question for the opinion poll apparently changed their minds.

  With the growing evidence that Donald Trump’s civil and criminal legal troubles are diminishing the enthusiasm of his supporters, it may be reasonable to distrust current public opinion reports as reliable predictions of the likely election results in November 2024.  Nevertheless, the Biden campaign mustn’t relax the forcefulness of its messaging on the superiority of the current president over his predecessor, particularly with respect to the improved benefits of his programs and performance for the public, not to mention the danger that Trump’s reelection will mean for the security of the U.S. and for the health of our democracy.