Your Excellent Feedback December 3, 2024 But first my two cents: Joe should have waited for Hunter’s sentences to be handed down later this month . . . . . . which might have been nothing more than community service and an acknowledgement that criminal charges are almost never brought for either of these crimes, and thus the normal “sentence” for committing them is . . . no sentence at all. If one of the sentences had involved prison, Joe might then have commuted it — but not issued a pardon. Or Hunter might have done a truly patriotic thing and prevailed on his dad not to pardon him. He might have said: “Let’s not let them equate my transgressions with theirs, Dad. Bashing cops in the head, trying to subvert the election, and maybe hang the vice president, is nothing like failing to file your taxes. I can spend a few months in jail for my country.” Either way — what was the rush? Two more cents for the PRKR shareholders among us: Diving into the ParkerVision Litigation Against Qualcomm. And now your excellent feedback to yesterday’s post, Why We Lost: The Elephant In The Bathroom. Steve S.: “Another important reason: Biden should have stuck to being a transitional president which most of us believed meant a one-term president. Had he done so, there would have been ample time for whoever was the nominee to put together a campaign that dealt with all of the issues you cited.” Norm O.: “You forgot Covid frustration. People suffered mightily with shutdowns and school closures. If you had two in a family working to make ends meet, and one had to stay home with kids, or if you had seven in a family stuck for a year or more in a tiny apartment 24/7, your lives were upended, and the sense was that the scientists, doctors, elites — and Democrats — were insensitive, just spouting ‘It’s the science!’ Dems think actions speak for themselves. No empathy. That was a huge part of the revolt against elites, the establishment, the experts. Trump exploited that brilliantly.” Eric M.: “The elephant in the room is none of what you cited. Since 2014, there has been an information war going on, but the only side fighting has been MAGA. The goal of this war, best but not solely waged by Steve Bannon, is not to advance one party, but something more strategic — to shift American culture to the right and create an irrational cult around that shift. The methods include psychological warfare techniques paired with social media and right-wing-controlled traditional media. The strategy and tactics of this prolonged initiative are made plain in the book Mindf*ck and elsewhere. Until we build campaigns that take a long view . . . leverage psychology to shift how people think rather than focusing narrowly on how they vote . . . and manage (build and dominate) the communication channels, we will continue to fail.” Paul B.: “The reason Democrats lose is simple. Republicans pick 2 or 3 subjects and repeat them over and over and over whether or not any of it is true. It is one of marketing’s basic tenets: A customer needs to hear something seven times to hear it! Republicans do this! Immigration, inflation, trans! Democrats scatter shot a couple dozen messages. Any one person is lucky to hear one twice. Also: Democrats are horrible at taking credit for what they do! So bad that we allow Republicans to steal that credit! And, lastly, Democrats are so worried about fairness that they will make a statement but then hedge it with some qualifier that steals from the original statement!” Bryan N.: “I agree with your reasons but would add the lack of response to Republican attack ads. We saw it in 2020 with GOP ads running in Florida, endlessly, that showed Biden, Castro, and Maduro ‘together’ and labeled them socialists. The ads said ‘socialist’ over and over. There was no pointed response from the Dems. This year, if you watched football, you saw the anti-trans ads over and over with no response. It was the same strategy: Push the same button over and over, harder and harder.” → You are exactly right. We should have countered — over and over — with a former football star, or maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger, saying: Hey – let’s leave the issue of trans athletes to the coaches, not the politicians. OK? The NCAA is all over this with a sensible approach you can read for yourself. [A QR code appears.] Trump just wants to distract you from his plans to enrich billionaires and stick it to working families. [Another QR code, linking to Project 2025] Enjoy the game! (Hindsight is so easy, isn’t it?) Michael H.: “When I was in public high school in L.A., you were given ‘points’ based on age, height and weight if you wanted to play interscholastic sports. If you had a lot of points, you had to play Varsity or JV; if you had lower points, you could play B level or C level. (If you were good enough, you could play up but not down.) Boys and girls played on different teams then but the same principles could apply to resolve the trans issue — and it could be done, as you suggest, on a community by community or league by league basis. PS — The trans community spokespersons need to stop saying that anyone who disagrees with them is guilty of ‘genocide’!” Dan W.: “I’ve long wondered why no one brings up the analogy of a wrestler who is missing a leg. (Not as uncommon as you’d think.) Let’s say he normally would compete in the 152-pound category, but based on his actual weight he competes against 126-pounders. Plus, he has two other advantages: He’s learned to compensate throughout his life and has developed more upper body strength than his competitors. Plus – crucially – he practices every day against wrestlers with two legs. His opponent has never wrestled anyone with one leg before, though – so he has no way to figure out what to do when, for example, the leg he always goes after for a takedown is not there.” Jane A.: “Our country throughout its history seems to swing from one extreme to the other, passing the middle only on its way to one extreme or another. America so far has not inherently been a country of moderation. Perhaps we’re still too young. And it’s also possible that our 2-party, dialectic system feeds into that. Do we need a centrist third party? For now, I hope the Democratic Party continues to move in the direction of being the party of competence and common sense. We support the right values and good solutions. We just need to sell them a whole lot better.” → The solution, I think, is not a third party but, rather, open primaries and ranked-choice voting. To win, you’d have to appeal to the great common-sense middle. That would empower moderates, disempower the extremes. David Z: “W.O.K.E. = World Of Kindness & Empathy. That’s it. None of our candidates actually ran on it but the thugs kept demagogue-ing it anyway. They spent a fortune on ads about pronouns and trans healthcare in prisons.” BONUS The Republican false-flag effort to turn off Kamala Harris voters worked really well. Trump got just a few more votes than he had in 2020, when he lost by 7 million to Biden. But enough Democrats stayed home to put him back on the throne. Joe Klein on weakness being our weakness — and other important points to ponder.