What Was That?
“He had become lonely in his mind, he knew: he no longer encountered other people even in his thoughts.”
― Tom Crewe
Still trying to process just what just happened this week.
The general consensus was that the Presidential race was going to be tight. In my eyes, maybe because of the people I hang with, Harris was always going to take it.
Maybe Trump would manage to squeeze out the electoral college win, but no way was he going to win the popular vote.
That's not what happened; he not only took every swing state on his road to the electoral college, but as of now, he's 4 million up in the popular vote. To add insult to injury, , Republicans took back the Senate and are poised to hold the House. Ouch.
Americans who typically prefer a split government, just gave full control to one party. That's an eye-opener. Or it should be.
In Tennessee, 6 months ago I felt confident predicting that the Democrats could flip 6 seats. I still feel confident that they could have, but they didn't. They didn't flip a single one. Not a one.
At a time when Tennessee's Super Majority party is regularly introducing legislation that gets schlacked in court, the opposition couldn't flip one seat. It does no good to be the smartest kid in the room if you can't get in the room. Maybe a little less time hanging with Joan Baez and a little more time at the local turkey shoot would have been time better spent.
But hey, Rachel Maddox loves the Tennessee Three. Me? I'd prefer to have the love of Tennesseans.
Looking through the local races, and in 90% of the races the margins of victory weren't even close. Its about as clear an indictment as possible that recent strategies arent working.
The challenge now becomes, are we going to cling to the excuses of racism and gerrymandering, or are we going to figure out how to craft a message that reaches Tennessee voters?
I look at this past election, both on the state and federal level, as confirmation of some things I have been saying for a while. Shaming people into compliance doesn't work, and the overreliance on identity politics needs to cease.
Forty years ago, when individual lives were much more homogenized, maybe you could expect demographic groups to vote in mass. Not today. Those groups, like America itself, have fragmentized. In some cases, to the point that the color of skin or sexual preference is the only commonality. That's only going to grow.
Former President Obama telling Black men that if they didn't vote for Harris, it was because they were misogynistic certainly didn't help, did it?
Those attempts at shaming were rampant through out the campaign.
Blogger Peter Greene writes in a recent Curmudgucation post:
Yes, Democrats made all sorts of mistakes; Bernie Sanders pointing out the failure to reach working class people may be on the mark. But to think Trump is the working man's friend requires a head stuffed firmly in an alternate reality. Treasonous Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election, and to believe otherwise is to accept a big lie. To think he's some kind of genius requires a stretch of miles and miles and miles. Trump stole classified documents and tried to weasel out of giving them back. He's a felon, a man found guilty of sexual assault, a serial grifter, a misogynist, a racist, a man whose character so lacking in character and honor that the notion of him as a Christian champion makes no more sense than the idea of a great dane teaching advanced calculus.
If we are talking evidence-based reality, over 74 million Americans either don't believe that Trump attempted treason or they reject the morality of it. You'll have a hard time convincing me of the latter over the former.
For the record, Trump was found guilty of sexually abusing and defaming a woman in civil court. While that in itself is despicable, he's never been found guilty of sexual assault in a criminal court. That may feel like a small distinction, but it is reality. The burden of proof in a civil case is much lower than it is for a criminal case.
To quote UC Davis School of Law professor Katherine Florey:
"This is a much lower standard than in criminal trials, in which the prosecution's contentions must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt," Florey said. "The preponderance standard could be satisfied if the jury is only 51 percent confident that the plaintiff's version of events is true, whereas in a criminal trial, the jury must have near certainty that the prosecution is correct.
Equally real is the belief that the felony charges stem from a politically motivated case.
Joe Biden arguably stole classified documents as well. A special counsel report reads, "Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen." However, there wasn't enough evidence to bring charges.
In Trump's case, they brought charges, but he's yet to be convicted, and it's doubtful he ever will be. So Green may believe that he stole classified documents, but there is no legal evidence to support that belief. Indictment is not conviction, and if you are going to argue for the truth, then you have to do so universally. Otherwise, you are engaging in the same spread of misinformation in which you are accusing others.
While you may believe that Trump is fascist and comparable to Hitler, I would argue that it's a hard sell to everyone else. Either you are smarter than everyone, or maybe, you are overselling your argument. either way, the argument is questioned.
If you put one aspect of your message into question, you open your whole message for questioning. That's what happened, and in this case, Americans rejected the whole thing.
Look I don't want to spend a whole lot of time defending a man that I didn't vote for and whom I personally find distasteful.
We can spend a lot of time either in mourning or making excuses. Or, we could do something else that I've long prescribed, talking to our neighbors. All our neighbors, not just the ones that agree with us.
You know the old saying, be the change you envision.
I can't help but reference a common sports trope here - when confronted with adversity, you can either get better or get bitter. Kinda fits, no?
As for the next four years, remember lots of presidents make promises on the campaign trail that they can't live up to once elected. I'm pretty confident that I'll still be paying taxes on tips next year.
The American system and the American people have proven to be better than expected. We are not perfect people, but we are all right,
And, it'll be all right.
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It wasn't talked about too much during campaign season, but now education talk is rising to the front of the conversation. Speculation is running rampant about who Trump will name as secretary of Education, and whether he'll follow through with plans to abolish the Department of Education.
In the case of the latter, i remain skeptical. It's easy to criticize from the outside looking in. Closer inspection often exposes inconvenient truths. Like Tennessee legislators, Trump is likely to find on closer inspection that the DOE is involved in much more than he thought. The question then becomes how do you do away with the bad while retaining the good.
It's also important to remember that the financial incentives offered by the federal government come from state taxes. If you are going to do away with the federal DOE, are you going to send that money back to individual states?
My experience has been that no level of government likes to return money, so I'd have to see it to believe it.
If they don't return the money, the states are forced to make up that money on top of current obligations. I think that'll be equally distasteful.
If I had to give an opinion, I would argue that a restriction of power and a downsized footprint are more likely to transpire.
Back to who is going to be in charge, that's an interesting one. While I have yet to hear former TN Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn's name mentioned, there are some equally disturbing names being tossed about.
Of course, Batsy DeVos is quickly mentioned, along with Mitch Daniels: The Reaganesque former Indiana governor and Purdue University president has a stellar record and reputation.
In another recent piece Greene shares the musing of DeVos, and it sounds like she's bucking for the gig. But if not her, she She thinks an ideal candidate would be a governor "who's led their state in reform issues. Greene says he's trying to think of a privatizing governor who would like to take his career on a side trip through Trump's education department. Unfortunately I know one, but he's a RHINO.
Jeanne Allen is another possibility. She’s been a fighter for education reform for decades and founded the Center for Education Reform to restore excellence to education, and built it into the nation’s leading advocate for innovation and opportunity in education. Per bio, “CER pioneered dozens of laws providing parents with choice and launched a nationwide movement that energized millions to engage in the fight.”
Glen Younkin, the Governor of Virginia has been put forth. His term ends in late 2025. That would put former TNDOE official Lisa Coons entirely to close to the palace for my liking.
In the recent past, Trump himself has floated a couple potential names who he said could oversee the dismantlement of the education department: Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur who ran for the GOP nomination before dropping out and endorsing Trump, and former U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York, who left Congress last year after an unsuccessful bid for governor.
Then there is Tiffany Justice, co-founder of the parents’ rights group Moms For Liberty. Cade Brumley, Louisiana’s state superintendent of education, and Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s state superintendent of public instruction, a couple cultural warriors, may also be considered.
Me, I'm pushing JC Bowman's name. Bowman is currently head of Professional Educators of Tennessee but previously worked in former Florida Governor Jeb Bush's cabinet. He's knowledgeable, passionate, and experienced. Come to think of it, he's probably overqualified.
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Tennessee legislators didn't waste a minute releasing their upcoming legislation promoting school choice.
On Wednesday, fresh off of election success, they released the latest version of the Governor's plan to bring vouchers to Tennessee. This bill is challenged and in need of some love. In other words, it is filled with holes.
We'll have lots of time to discuss this bill in the upcoming months. Especially sense by releasing the bill now, the odds of a special session are greatly reduced. What that means is that this bill is going to have to wind its way through committee, with everyone getting a shot at it.
That said, at this juncture, I also think it is safe to say that this won't be the final bill. Amendments are coming, some may be good, some may worse then what's already in here.
The most egregious elements included here are the attempted payoffs.
Lee prposes that each teacher, which I'm a little hazy on how they are defining "teachers", will receive $2 grand. Now that's before taxes. By the time they get it, it'll be closer to $1400. Once again, another indicator of how Governor Lee thinks about teachers.
His wife is a teacher, couldn't he have at least walked into the otjer room and asked. "Hey if I gave you two grand would it appease you enough to support something you were philosophically opposed to?"
That's the problem with constantly being for sale, you think everyone else is also for sale.
The other thing that should piss some folks off is the $80 million included to rebuild school affected by natural disasters. So not only is the Gov unwilling to dip into his charter school fund to help Tennesserans in drastic need, but he wants to use their need to garner support for his pet project.
My response would be, give me the damn money. If you want to get into an argument about, let's get it on...in public.
Those two items should be enough to put the bill on the ropes even without diving deeper.
Just another bad bill.
Can it be fixed? Maybe, but it'll take a deft hand.
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