The Super-Spreader in Chief and The Blue Tsunami

 On the day that the U.S. first surpassed the previous highest number of Covid cases in a 24 hour period set this summer, Homegrown Hitler held a rally of seniors and other unmasked, pressed together in Florida.  This is the most literal version possible of the President of the United States as the Grim Reaper, a horror of Hitlerian proportions, once the numbness wears off. 

It is also the day--Friday-- that USA Today published the numbers that show that Covid cases grew at a faster rate than before in five counties following one of  the Superspreader-in-Chief's maskless rallies:  two counties in Pennsylvania, two in Minnesota and one in Wisconsin.  And these rallies were before the current madness of several a day when Covid cases are climbing fast.

And we are just entering this dark tunnel of a runaway epidemic this fall and winter.  But the light is ongoing, leading to eventual relief: the election which is already in progress. 

 The US Elections Project out of the U. of Florida estimates that 150 million votes will be cast this year, less than Fivethirtyeight's projection, but enough to top 65% turnout, the highest since 1908.  It may be a conservative estimate.

But if that's the final number, then at least a third of it is already done.  In Texas, it's 70% of the total votes in 2016.  

Some thousands of those votes are going to be thrown out or never counted presumably. But the total numbers of votes may be too great  for such suppressions to change the outcomes.  Further, it may well be that the surge in early voting is at least partly due to voter rebellion against perceived suppression tactics by Republicans like the Governor of Texas.  He tried to severely limit drop boxes for mail-in votes, especially in huge Harris County.  Voters caught on to this and turned to early voting--to the tune of over a million so far, in a county of 2.5 million registered voters.  Early votes have now nearly equaled the total votes there in 2016.

Two other positive indications also emerged Friday.  First, not only do Democrats have a large early vote lead in the swing states, but they are turning out infrequent and newly registered voters at a higher rate. 

Second, the youth vote is soaring in early voting compared to 2016.  In Florida, over 250,000 have voted, versus 44,000 at this point in 2016.  In North Carolina it's more than 204,000 versus 25,000.  And in Michigan it is a phenomenal 145,000 versus only 7,000 in 2016.  Some analysts worried that the youth vote, notoriously unreliable, would be hurt even more by the Covid chaos on campuses.  But these numbers say something else.

The Post-Debate Landscape

At the moment there are four instant polls that asked who won the presidential debate, and all four say Biden, by margins roughly corresponding to his national poll numbers, or better.  Most commentators say this as well, noting it was his sharpest performance.  The best that is being said for Trump is that he wasn't as obnoxious as in the first debate, and some Republicans are taking some solace from this, hoping that Trump voters who were uneasy about him were reassured.  Maybe.  But on balance, no.

Nor did Trump "stop the bleeding" as one network commentator suggested.  Instead, Joe Biden sealed the deal.  He came across as competent and caring.  That's the reassurance any wavering voters are looking for.  CNN had a group of 15 or so undecided voters in North Carolina.  After the debate, none of them thought Trump won.  More importantly, of the nine that said they were now decided, all nine chose Biden.

Of course that's not proof.  But it confirms my sense of it.  Just about everyone now realizes that the decisive issue is going to be character.  On child separations alone, Trump lost the character issue.  

But the debate did not produce what I consider the most significant political news of the day.  That was the FiveThirtyEight/Nate Silver projection that turnout for the election will total 154 million.  The  projected range is 144 to 165 million.  They saw those voter enthusiasm numbers I pointed out yesterday.

That's a major turnout election.  In 2016 turnout was 137 million.  Except for maybe a few states and downballot elections, there is nothing about high turnout that is bad for Democrats, especially now.  Turnout on the high side tends to validate poll numbers (the mediocre turnout was a major problem in 2016.)

The last round of polls will begin appearing next week, taken after this debate.  What turnout on the order of 154 million likely means is that, in figuring margins in state polls and national polls, you should consider Trump's number as the maximum he will get on Nov. 3, and Biden's number as the minimum.  Because turnout could be even higher.  Then add the early votes (including mail-ins) already sent at about the rate of the polls up to now, which have been pretty consistent nationally, at the proportion of the likely total vote.  (Right now it's something like 60 to 80 million votes already cast.) 

High turnout most likely means that the candidate with even a 2 or 3 point lead in the final poll for a given state is likely to win that state on Nov. 3, though it does get tricky with votes already cast.

Right now the Houston Chronicle is touting a poll that shows Biden ahead in Texas.  The New York Times may be the only outfit to poll Kansas, and they have just found that Biden is down by only 7 points there.  Neither of these states should even be close.  It's like saying Trump is ahead in New York and down 7 in California.  And by the way he's not.

Trump must win Florida, North Carolina and Arizona to have a chance.  If Biden wins just one of them, he's all but elected.  He could lose them all and still be elected, provided he wins PA and the upper Midwestern states in which he currently leads by 5 to 10 points.  But if Trump loses Texas, the Republican party will just about be down to six members of the Supreme Court.   

This is Not A Reality Show. This Is Reality.

President Barack Obama is known for his eloquence. But that’s due to more than word choice and cadence or even clarity. He is incisive. In his first speech since the convention, his incisiveness sliced and diced the trumpery and landed square upon the central element at issue in this election. 

 He spoke about the Covid crisis and other individual issues, and cut to the chase of competence and problem-solving, which are not within the realm of the Trump. “This is not a reality show. This is reality,” he said, “ and the rest of us have had to live with the consequences of him proving himself incapable of taking the job seriously.”

 Concerning the Covid crisis he said:

" We literally left this White House a pandemic playbook that would have shown them how to respond before the virus reached our shores. They probably used it to I don’t know, prop up a wobbly table somewhere. We don’t know where that playbook went. Eight months into this pandemic, cases are rising again across this country. Donald Trump isn’t suddenly going to protect all of us. He can’t even take the basic steps to protect himself."

 On the economy: "Donald Trump likes to claim he built this economy but America created 1.5 million more jobs in the last three years of the Obama-Biden administration than in the first three years of the Trump-Pence administration. How you figure that? And that was before he could blame the pandemic. Now, he did inherit the longest streak of job growth in American history but just like everything else he inherited, he messed it up. The economic damage he inflicted by botching the pandemic response means he will be the first president since Herbert Hoover to actually lose jobs."

   Healthcare: " Now, they’re trying to dismantle your care in the Supreme court as we speak as quickly as they can in the middle of a pandemic with nothing but empty promises to take its place. It’s shameful. The idea that you would take healthcare away from people at the very moment where people need it most, what is the logic of that?"

  He talked about basic competence and the basis for democratic governance:" Our democracy is not going to work if the people who are supposed to be our leaders lie every day and just make things up. And we’ve just become numb to it. We’ve just become immune to it."

   He called for a return to common American values. “We have to get these values back at the center of public life.” 

 But then he got to the heart of it. He talked about how things would change with a return to those values under Joe Biden. "We’re not going to have a president that goes out of his way to insult anybody who doesn’t support him or threaten them with jail. That’s not normal presidential behavior.... We wouldn’t tolerate it from a high school principal. We wouldn’t tolerate it from a coach. We wouldn’t tolerate it from a co-worker. We wouldn’t tolerate it in our family, except for maybe a crazy uncle somewhere. I mean, why would we expect and accept this from the President of the United States?"

" And why are folks making excuses for that? “Oh, well, that’s just him.” No. There are consequences to these actions. They embolden other people to be cruel and divisive and racist, and it frays the fabric of our society, and it affects how our children see things. And it affects the ways that our families get along. It affects how the world looks at America. That behavior matters. Character matters. “

 And that is turning out to be the central issue of this campaign: character. Voters are frightened by the covid crisis, alarmed about the economy, the prospect of losing healthcare, and issues from racial justice to the climate crisis. But they are sick to death of a loud lying egomanical cartoon psychopath in the White House. And millions of them are eager to reject him, while millions more are quietly willing to reject him. 

 I’ve read reporters in the field who see this. I noted it in a story about the first day of early voting in Wisconsin—a reporter was lucky enough to interview a woman who said she literally did not know who she would vote for when she got into line. She no longer wanted Trump, but somehow she felt that she would betray her Christian religion if she voted against him. But in the end she did, and she told the reporter it was because Joe Biden has empathy, and Trump has none.

 And that in the end is going to make the difference. Because character matters. And this is not a reality show anymore. It is reality. 

Video of Obama's speech in Philly is here.  A transcript is here.

 One More Thing....

The poll numbers continue to show Biden with a strong lead: nationally just below or above 10%, which if it holds will guarantee victory. (The New York Times analysis says that even if the polls are off as much as they were in 2016, Biden would still be getting 309 electoral votes.) But apart from the head-to-head numbers (with three PA polls showing a 7 to 10 point lead for Biden) I spotted two intriguing findings in Wednesday’s batch. 

 A new Pew Research poll shows that only 4% of voters surveyed said they planned to vote for the presidential candidate of one party and a candidate for the federal Senate or House from another party. So-called “ticket splitting” used to be fairly common, but this suggests a huge wave in either blue or red. (This poll also found Biden has a 10 point lead nationally, 52-42. Which by the way is the minimum of what I expect.)

 A new CNBC/Change Research poll finds 91% of likely voters nationally say they are “extremely motivated to vote,” including 92% in the battleground states of Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And that is further evidence of probable high and even record-breaking turnout, at least before things like voter suppression and interference, both foreign and domestic.

It Has Begun

                                                        Wisconsin early voting today

I’ve voted, and my vote will be counted in the next few days. Opportunities and rules vary from state to state, but voting has begun—with resolve and enthusiasm.  

 And a full two weeks before the official Election Day, it has begun big. That’s especially visible in Early Voting states. 

 In lines that started forming in Georgia at 4 a.m. on the first day of early voting, with Georgians refusing to leave before casting their ballots, even with 4 hour, 6 hour, 11 hour waits.  Think of the determination it takes to do that.

 

On Monday Floridians lined up in the rain in unprecedented numbers on their first day. Twice as many mail-in votes have been received in Florida than in 2016, more than 2 million. Florida is unusual in that it has a tradition of early voting and mail-ins, predominantly by Republicans. Nobody quite knows what it means that this year there are slightly more Democrats. But at the least it signals Democratic enthusiasm and determination to vote.

 On Tuesday, voters lined up in the Wisconsin cold. As the day began, some 30% of the total votes cast there in 2016 had already been cast through absentee ballots. By the end of the day, it was half. 

 Early voting also broke records in Texas, D.C., Ohio, North Carolina, Minnesota and Virginia—so far, everywhere.

 And apparently these are not necessarily all just voters who would have shown up on Election Day anyway. At least 20% of North Carolina early voters didn’t vote in 2016. Early voters are trending younger and more diverse than before, and their numbers and determination suggest a major turnout election, perhaps breaking records.

 The revolt of suburban women against Trump is showing up in early voting—for instance in Michigan suburbs, where most voters were Democratic women.

 

And there’s really something happening in Texas. Despite Texas being the hardest state to vote in, there are signs of huge turnout and interest. In Travis county (which includes Austin) an impossible 97% of eligible voters in the population of some 1.2 million are registered this year. In Bexar County (San Antonio) more than 60% of mail-in votes have already been returned, easily a record. 

 Texans have also been lining up for early voting, and have already cast the most votes in the nation—a number equal to all the votes that Trump got in Texas in 2016.  (In fact this is already the case in 5 states.)

 Even in states of confusion, there are positive signs. Though new (and changing) voting rules are roiling things in Pennsylvania, especially for mail-ins, a record number of (mostly young) poll workers have signed up for Election Day. And that’s also true in other states like Wisconsin, where extra help means faster counts.

 As for mail-in votes like mine, all records are certain to be broken. Based on requests even by late September, some officials expect a majority of ballots to be mailed in this year. 

Since most of those mail-in ballot requests came from Democrats, what’s left for Election Day but Republicans? That’s a big unknown at the moment, but reporting suggests that a lot of early voters went to polling sites because they don’t trust the Trump-corrupted Postal Service chief. They may continue to do so in November. Similarly, if voters keep hearing and reading of rejected mail-in ballots—one of the biggest unknowable factors this year—they may change their plans and vote in person on November 3. 

 Even if most of the votes banked before November 3 came from voters who otherwise would have voted anyway, this frees campaign workers to reach out to more potential voters and get them to the polls on November 3. And if many Democrats have already voted, the expected Election Day thuggery, chicanery, intimidation and suppression won’t have as many targets.

Mail-in votes (at least in states unaccustomed to them) obviously suggest the influence of the Covid Crisis.  But early voting, in addition to suggesting worry about the process, are demonstrating that many voters have made up their minds, and probably want to get this all over with.

 But another big message of early voting that is becoming clear is this determination to vote. It also suggests a very high turnout election—and that favors Biden and the Democrats everywhere.

 So it has begun—but it’s only the beginning.

Poetry Monday: North

North

 “The mind of which we are unaware is aware of us.” R.D. Laing 

 The rising sun not beet

 or blood,

 but sea-rose red.

 I amplified my heartbeat

 one thousand times; 

the animals at first confused,

 then decided I was another

 thunder being. 

 While talking directly to god

 my attention waxed and waned.

 I have a lot on my mind. 

 I worked out

 to make myself as strong

 as water. 

 After all these years

 of holding the world together

 I let it roll down the hill

 into the river.

 One tree leads

 to another,

 walking on

 this undescribed earth.

I have dreamed

 myself back

 to where

 I already am.

 On a cold day

 bear, coyote, cranes.

 On a rainy night

 a wolf with yellow eyes.

 On a windy day

 eleven kestrels looking

 down at me.

 On a hot afternoon

 the ravens floated over

 where I sunk

 myself in the river.

 Way out there

 in unknown country

 I walked at night

 to scare myself. 

 Who is this other,

 the secret sharer,

 who directs the hand

 that twists the heart,

 the voice calling out to me

 between feather and stone

 the hours before dawn?

 Somehow

 I have turned into

 an old brown man

 in a green coat.

 Having fulfilled

 my obligations

 my heart moves lightly

 to this downward dance.

 --Jim Harrison

I think I first became aware of a writer named Jim Harrison in the late 1980s, through his prose pieces in Esquire and Smart, a new magazine for which he wrote a column.  In particular I recall one column that introduced me to the work of Chippewa writer Gerald Vizenor.  Harrison was known for his fiction, and it wasn't long before I was reading it.  He was already famous for the novella "Legends of the Fall," made into a Hollywood film.  One of the first of his fictions I remember reading was the novella "Julip" when it was published in full in Esquire.  He was credited with reviving the novella form (longer than a story, shorter than a novel.)

Since then I've read all of his published novellas and 10 of his 12 novels, plus two volumes of non-fiction.  I continue to believe that his linked novels Dalva and The Road Home are worthy candidates as the Great American Novel of the second half of the 20th century.  I've reviewed several of these books, for (among others) Orion Magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle Sunday Book Review.

But it was a little while before I connected this Jim Harrison to the author of a book of poems I acquired in the early 1970s (Outlyer and Ghazals.)  But they are the same person.  Eventually I caught up with his collection of selected and new poems in the late 90s, titled The Shape of the Journey.  The poem above is in that volume, which had the feeling of elegy, of last words.  Nevertheless he published several more volumes of poems after that, as well as a lot more fiction.

I didn't know Jim Harrison, though I knew or met several people important in his working life, like the poet Denise Levertov, who championed his early work and got his first book published, his lifelong friend and poet Gary Snyder, the writer Jack Turner, even his literary agent, who at one time considered representing me, and offered opinions of a list of my proposed article subjects, approving of all but one, because nobody was interested in shopping malls and American culture.

So if I feel as if I knew him it's because of his words: his writing and his talk in many interviews published over the years.  He shared with Gary Snyder a deep experience in the natural world and an interest in Zen philosophy and meditation.  But he was quite different in other ways, or at least more public about it.  His characters are funny, outrageous, ribald and victims of their vices and their innocence.  We can only guess how much like them Harrison was in his complex life.

Writing was central to Jim Harrison's being, and he felt closest to his poetry.  "To write a poem you must first create a pen that will write what you want to say," he wrote.  "For better or worse, this is the work of a lifetime."  Jim Harrison died suddenly in March 2016, pen in hand.