The Fourth Turning Is Here---Part Three

In my series of blog posts on "The Fourth Turning Is Here" in part one I  provided an overview of the theory behind the The Fourth Turning and what we have seen in similar periods in the past.

In part two of this series I outlined where we are in The Fourth Turning and what might lead us to the climax period and when this crisis period we are in will end.

In this final blog post of the series  I will summarize what happens on the other side of the crisis period. 

What can we expect insofar as changes in the attitudes of the populace and how society might change as we progress through the final stages and beyond in The Fourth Turning,

When I first read the book, The Fourth Turning, over 25 years ago, the prediction of where we were heading was sobering and depressing.

As I was entering into the later stages of my life the last thing I wanted to hear was that crisis, chaos and societal challenges were in the future.

Then again, I also understood that the theory of The Fourth Turning and the seasons of history meant that everyone would necessarily have to endure the crisis period at some point in their lives.

Some were born into the crisis period. Others came face to face with it when they were just coming of age or in mid-life. Some saw it in their elder years.

Everyone would have to face the Fourth Turning challenge to our society at some point in their lives.

Despite the fact that there was a feeling of pessimism in me when I first read The Fourth Turning in the last 1990's looking to the future, the book also suggested that the seasons of history pointed to a more optimistic future on the other side of the crisis.

During a good part of my life, families had been weakening.

Virtue, values and ideals have been under attack.

Gender roles have gotten more confused and indistinguishable from each other.

Decisions were made more on what felt right than what worked or what was right.

Trust in our Institutions was consistently eroding.

Individualism ruled over the community.

There were deep divisions in society on almost all issues. There was little unity of agreement on anything.

The vision of the future became increasingly foreboding with each successive decade of my life.

The silver lining in The Fourth Turning is that it will inevitably cause the mood of the society to change.

It will have to change if society is to survive the crisis.

There are brighter days ahead once we get beyond this crisis period of history.

Families will become more important.

The gap in gender roles will become wider and more clearly defined.

Common sense and doing what works will become more important than what someone "feels" is right.

Our Institutions will be trusted again.

Community values will become important. Those that buck the system will be looked down on.

There will be a new unity of purpose and an optimistic outlook on life and society's future.

This graphic from the book summarizes how social moods change in each of the four turnings.

Credit: https://krusekronicle.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/moods.gif

 

We will not go back to the halcyon days of the 1950's and early 1960's. History does not repeat but it does rhyme.  However, we should be at a place with less division, a clearer view of what is right and wrong and a society in which there is more accountability and individual responsibility than has existed for a long time in the United States.

It is just sad that our society will have to be tested in ways that most of us have never experienced to get us to that point.

However, that seems to be necessary in order to get more unity, less division, more simplicity, less complexity, stronger families, children who are more independent and community values that are more clearly defined and accepted.

History tells us that there is real hope that there are changes for the better on the other side of the mountain in front of us right now.

The Candidate They Always Wanted

Over six years ago (in early July, 2018) I wrote a blog post on the candidate I believed the Democrat party elites and the media wanted to take on Donald Trump in 2020.

That candidate checked all the boxes on their wish list for a candidate.

There ended up being only one problem once the campaign started in earnest and the pollsters started asking Democrat voters who they wanted.

Democrat voters had no interest in the candidate they wanted.

That candidate never tallied one vote in the Democrat primaries.

She dropped out of the race before a single vote was cast in that she could not get beyond a couple percentage points in the polls.

That candidate was Kamala Harris.

I wrote that blog post before most people had ever heard the name Kamala Harris. 

It was also more than a year before Joe Biden named Harris his VP nominee.

The Democrat elites and the media appear now to have the candidate they always wanted on the Presidential ballot to take on Donald Trump.

It just so happens it is in 2024 rather than 2020.

It was easier this time.

Kamala Harris did not have to get one Democrat primary vote to become their candidate.

They were able to stage a coup on Joe Biden, circumvent the democratic process and their dreams have been fulfilled.

When I wrote that blog post in 2018 I stated I had no doubt about who the elites wanted to be their candidate.

She would undoubtedly get lots of favorable media and endorsements from Hollywood and the California wing of the Democrat party.

We are seeing that take place again.

However, I raised doubts I had  as to whether she would be able get the votes that mattered.

Kamala Harris checks all the boxes the Democrat operatives and the media want.

She is sure to get a lot of favorable press and favorable endorsements as we move forward. 

However, will Democrat primary voters buy what she is selling?

More importantly, does Kamala Harris have the ability to get blue collar Democrats and Independents to support her progressive, far left agenda against Donald Trump in the general election?

Kamala Harris checks a lot of the boxes that we hear are important for Democrats.

There is only one box that matters in the end.

Can she get voters to check the most important box?

It does not matter what the consultants, power brokers, office holders, donors, pundits and mainstream media want. Donald Trump proved that. 

The voters control the only check mark that counts.

The same doubts and questions persist today.

The media is all in on Kamala. Hollywood is in. The big money is in. The California liberals are all in.

They have the candidate they always wanted.

However, do the voters want her?

That remains to be seen.

Checking All The Boxes (originally published July 2, 2018)

There are 25 candidates now seeking the Democrat nomination for President.

Former Representative Joe Sestak (D-PA) is the latest to announce.

If this was major league baseball the Democrats would have reached the roster limit. If someone else announces does that mean that someone has to be sent down to the minors or be released?

I don't know who is going to win the Democrat nomination for President but I believe I know who the Establishment Democrats and Mainstream Media are backing.

You can expect that candidate to receive the most glowing reviews and the candidate who will get the most protection from the media.

Her name is Kamala Harris.

Credit: Politico.com

Why do I say that?

For Democrats, she is the candidate that checks the most boxes. When I refer to Democrats in this instance I am talking about the Democrat establishment and the media that amplifies their message. I am not talking about voters.

✓ Not too old or too young.
Harris is 52. It is hard to imagine that the Democrats want to nominate someone like Biden, Sanders or Warren who are all over age 70. The Democrats have traditionally fielded the younger candidates for President. It is also hard to believe that the Democrats would be comfortable nominating one of the under-40 group of Buttigieg, Gabbard or Swalwell. Harris is right in the sweet spot on age.

✓ She is a woman.
Democrats are heavily dependent on the women's vote. They particularly need to turn out the vote for young women and single women. The defeat of Hillary Clinton and the opportunity to have the first woman President was a tremendous disappointment for many women. The Democrats clearly want to have a woman leading the ticket in 2020. Harris checks that box.

 ✓ She is a minority.
Harris is the daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father. Harris identifies as an African-American which has caused some to question how valid that characterization is. Her background gets more complicated when it is considered that her father's grandmother was reportedly the product of a man who was a slave owner in Jamaica and Harris spent a great deal of her childhood in Canada. In a Democrat primary race against two old white guys, and a white woman who for 35 years claimed she was an Indian-America, you can't underestimate how attractive that makes Harris as a candidate. She may be hard to classify but she clearly is a minority candidate.

✓ She is the child of two immigrants
As I mentioned above, Harris the child of a mother who immigrated from India who was a research scientist and a father who immigrated from Jamaica who was an economist. Her parents were both pursuing graduate degrees at UC-Berkeley and met while participating in protests and demonstrations on campus during the 1960's. A child of two immigrants and liberal activists to boot? It does not get any better than that for a Democrat primary candidate in 2019/2020. It also makes for a compelling counter-narrative to President Trump's immigration views.

✓ She is a California liberal.
In the primary it helps to be from California because that state will have the most delegate votes at the Democrat convention. California has 495 delegate votes. That is nearly twice as many as the next state. California has also moved its primary date up to March 3 which is much earlier in the process than it has been in the past. Harris should be at an advantage if she can survive the early primaries. She also probably has the best chance to benefit from the large amount of California donors that make up the core of Democrat fundraising.

Harris is not just a liberal, she is a California liberal. That means she is generally much further left than most other Democrats. In a year in which it seems that being far left is important, Harris is unquestionably much further left than most other candidates . For example, the left wing website ProgressivePunch.org ranks Harris as the third most liberal U.S. Senator, trailing only Ed Markey (D-MA) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).

Credit: ProgressivePunch.org

 


GovTrack.US ranked Harris as the fourth most liberal U.S. Senator in 2018. This chart graphically shows just how far left Harris is compared to her Senate colleagues.

Credit: www.govtrack.us

 

Kamala Harris checks all the boxes the Democrat operatives and the media want.

She is sure to get a lot of favorable press and favorable endorsements as we move forward. 

However, will Democrat primary voters buy what she is selling?

More importantly, does Kamala Harris have the ability to get blue collar Democrats and Independents to support her progressive, far left agenda against Donald Trump in the general election?

Kamala Harris checks a lot of the boxes that we hear are important for Democrats.

There is only one box that matters in the end.

Can she get voters to check the most important box?

It does not matter what the consultants, power brokers, office holders, donors, pundits and mainstream media want. Donald Trump proved that. 

The voters control the only check mark that counts.

Kamala Harris---"What Can Be...Unburdened By What Has Been"?

What do you know about Kamala Harris?

She has been Vice President of the United States for over three years but I doubt very many people know much about her.

It may be time to take a closer look at her in light of the love fest that we can expect Democrats and the mainstream media to have with Kamala over the next several weeks in order to polish her image.

It is already in full force on MSNBC.

Link to Video:  https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1815728666287960333

The early polling suggests that Trump has a national lead over Harris similar to what he had with Biden..

I would expect that all of this positive coverage should result in poll results that show the wisdom of replacing Biden with Kamala Harris. Harris should get a bump in the polls. She may even be shown taking a lead in a number of polls over the next month due to the PR onslaught.

However, what are the numbers going to look like when things settle down and people get a better look at what Kamala Harris is really all about?

I wrote a blog post about Kamala Harris in October, 2020 right before she debated Mike Pence.

Everything in that blog post about her background is still relevant.

When she was in the Senate in 2019 she was the most liberal Senator in the chamber---further left than Bernie Sanders.

What is ironic is in 2024 she is the choice of the Democrat establishment to replace Biden. However, Joe only got the nomination in 2020 because the establishment closed ranks around Biden to keep Bernie Sanders from winning the nomination because they feared he was too liberal to win the general election.

The signature achievement of Kamala Harris as VP seems to have been being named by Joe Biden in May, 2021 to be "the point person on immigration" to deal with the migrant chaos.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/24/kamala-harris-immigration-border-surge-477810

This is the chart showing the surge in illegal immigration during the Biden-Harris administration that Donald Trump was referring to at the Butler. PA rally when he was shot.

Trump claims that turning to speak to this chart saved his life.

If Kamala Harris was the "point person" on getting illegal immigration under control, I think it is fair to say she utterly failed in every respect of that job.

It is an open question on whether Kamala or Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle  presided over a bigger mess under Biden for which they had responsibility. 

Biden has now been pushed out, Cheatle has resigned but Democrats want to promote Kamala Harris to be President of the United States?

Kamala seems to be best known the last three years for her vacuous speeches that sound like a high schooler who has to write a 500 word essay but only has 100 words of content.

This is one example of MANY such utterances by Kamala Harris.

"We invested an additional $12 billion into community banks, because we know community banks are in the community, and understand the needs and desires of that community as well as the talent and capacity of community," 

Her favorite catch phrase in speeches is this one.

"What can be... unburdened by what has been."

She uses this line over and over in her speeches.

I hope the speechwriter that first wrote that line for Harris is getting a royalty for each time she uses it.

If so, they would be very rich today.

Here is 4 minutes of Kamala Harris repeating that line over and over again in various speeches.

Link to video

If you can watch all 4 minutes of this without banging your head against your monitor or throwing your phone away you have remarkable self restraint.

"What can be... unburdened by what has been" ???

The biggest problem for Kamala Harris is at some point in this election she is going to have to defend her record and her extreme liberal views.

Kamala wants to be President. However, she does not want to be burdened by her past record and left wing ideology.

My view is that if people know the real Kamala Harris she will not be unburdened by what has been.

She will be burdened forever because that is the essence of who she has alway been and still is today.

The Democrats are in the midst of the biggest bait and switch ever perpetrated in United States electoral history.

Do not be fooled.

Do not let your friends and relatives be fooled either.

How Much Do You Know About Kamala Harris? (originally published October 6, 2020)

How much do you know about Kamala Harris?

It is an important question as there has never been an election in which there was a higher likelihood that the Vice Presidential candidate would eventually become President.

You merely have to look at Joe Biden's age, his past medical history and his diminished mental abilities to understand the probabilities.

Most people had limited exposure to Harris during the Democrat nomination process since she dropped out of the race over a month before the first primary votes were taken due to poor polling numbers and weak financial support.

Kamala Harris at one of the Democrat debates in 2019 before she dropped out of the Presidential race

The Vice Presidential debate Wednesday night will undoubtedly provide many voters with the closest look at Harris they have had.

However, we are only talking about 90 minutes of air time in what will be a carefully staged performance.

What do we really know about Kamala Harris?

The most important thing to know about Harris is that she is undoubtedly the most far-left candidate to ever appear on the national ticket of a major political party.

For example, here are the 2019 ideology scores for Senators done by govtrack.us. A score of 1.00 would be a pure conservative on every issue. A score of 0.00 is a pure liberal. She was a perfect 0.00.

Kamala Harris was judged to be the most liberal member of the United States Senate in 2019 in this ranking. 

Harris was further left than Bernie Sanders, Kirsten Gillibrand or Cory Booker who also ran for President. She was much further left than Elizabeth Warren or Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Here are the scores for those ranked furthest to the left in the Senate in 2019. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee had the highest conservative score. She was a 1.00 on the scale to Harris' 0.00.

The platform that Harris ran on for President reflects these far-left views.

• She was in favor of the Green New Deal.
• She was strongly in favor of gun control and wanted to see mandatory gun buy backs for "assault weapons".
• She wanted to substantially reduce the defense budget.
• She was in favor of some form of reparations for African Americans.
• She was in favor of free college at public institutions.
• She was in favor of abolishing the death penalty.
• She was in favor of re-examining ICE and was opposed to building the border wall. She wants to allow more refugees and immigrants into the United States and is against sending illegal aliens home. In fact, she compared ICE to the KKK.
• She was in favor of decriminalizing illegal border crossings.
• She was in favor of providing free health care coverage to illegal immigrants.
• She was in favor of a $15 national minimum wage
• She was in favor of abortion up to the time of birth.
• She was in favor of repealing most of the Trump tax cuts and would like new taxes on banks and financial institutions.
• She was is favor of reinstating the Iran nuclear deal.
• She was against the China tariffs and also opposed the new USMCA trade agreement that replaced NAFTA.
• She was a co-sponsor of Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All bill that would have eliminated private health insurance and required a new payroll tax on employers and employees to fund the cost on top of the current FICA taxes. When criticized about eliminating the option for private insurance during the campaign she changed her position and stated she was open to merely creating a "public option".

During her ill-fated Presidential quest she did not have a specific position on the Black Lives Matter movement or calls to defund the police.

Harris has tried to avoid speaking to the issue since she became a VP candidate. However, in June she applauded the LA mayor on on his decision to slash that city's police budget by $150 million.

Harris has also praised the "brilliance" and "impact" of the Black Lives Matter protests deeming them "necessary".

Harris, like Joe Biden, has said almost nothing to condemn the rioting, looting and violence that have plagued large Democrat-run cities such as Seattle, LA, Portland and Chicago over the last several months.

How many of these positions will Harris admit to during the debate? Watch closely.

A big difference between Biden and Harris is that the actions of Biden in this campaign can generally be described as an act. On most issues today, you can find Biden on the opposite side at some point in the past in his 47 years in Washington. Biden was once against gay marriage, he was very pro-police, he was against school busing to achieve integration and he was for building a border wall. Biden even voted for the Iraq war during the Bush administration.

Biden is a pure politician who adjusts his views and values as he thinks he needs to in order get the votes of Democrats and the necessary independents in a general election.

Harris is more of a true believer.

Her father was an economics professor who was known as someone from the "Marxist school of economics."

Here is an article from the Stanford Daily announcing his hiring.

Source:https://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2020/08/what-father-of-kamala-harris-thinks.html

 

This is a direct excerpt from the newspaper article.

Don Harris, a prominent Marxist Professor, has been offered a full professorship in the Economics Department here, Department Chairman James Rosse confirmed yesterday. Rosse said Harris has not yet accepted the offer, but he "expects to hear from him this week."

Harris who still holds a tenured position at the University of Wisconsin, has served as a visiting Professor here, and is currently teaching at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica.

The appointment is the direct result of student pressure in recent years to hire more faculty who favor an "alternative approach" to economics, said Economics Prof. John Gurley, who now teaches the only undergraduate course in Marxist economics. 

Gurley said the appointment of Harris was the culmination of the six-month "round-the-world" search for the most qualified Marxist professor available.

I have found that most of those with far-left views can be traced to something in their upbringing.

However, Harris is also a politician and very much a political opportunist who is very much driven by ambition.

As the campaign and Democrat debates progressed it was clear that not many people were buying what Harris was selling.

I saw early on that the biggest problem that Harris had in the debates was that she just seemed very unlikeable.

At one point in the debates she tried to resurrect her fortunes by essentially calling Joe Biden a racist.

In a later debate Tulsi Gabbard effectively ended any hopes that Harris had by pointing out some of the questionable things she did as Attorney General of California.

In addition to calling Biden a racist, Kamala Harris was one of the few Democrats to come out and say that she believed the women who have accused Joe Biden of inappropriate conduct.

It makes you wonder why Kamala Harris would want to have anything to do with a man she has essentially called a racist and a pervert, doesn't it?

This is at the core of probably the most common criticism that I have heard about Harris.

She is said to be an opportunist that will do most anything to further her ambitions. Those allegations date back to the 1990's when the 30-year Harris was the girlfriend of the 60-year old Speaker of the California House, Willie Brown. Brown appointed Harris to two high-paying patronage positions while they were dating. 

The relationship with Brown and the the appointments helped to launch the political career of Harris in which she was elected District Attorney for San Francisco in 2003 and later California's Attorney General before running for the U.S. Senate in 2016.

The "opportunist" label was also fed by how Harris seemed to shift positions on a number of issues while she was running.

This is what Politico says about Harris and her shifting positions.

Harris’ shifting positions on key policy matters undermined her short-lived run for the presidency. A former California attorney general and district attorney, Harris faced criticism over a prosecutorial record that doesn’t always match with the progressive positions she espouses today. On health care, her waffling on “Medicare for All” during the presidential primary revealed a candidate torn between appealing to progressives demanding structural change and moderates favoring incrementalism — and satisfying none in the process.

Kamala Harris did not marry until 2014 when she was 50 years of age. She has no children of her own but her husband, Douglas Emhoff, has two children from a previous marriage. The children were late in their high school and college years when they married.

I find it interesting that suburban soccer moms are supposedly so taken with Democrats like Kamala Harris and Supreme Court justices like Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotamayor. These suburban women seem to trust these liberal women about the policy choices for their country, for them individually and for their children.

However, none of these three liberal icons has ever had their own children. There is nothing wrong with that choice, and for some that choice is denied them, but as anyone who has ever had children understands, the experience changes you. It forces you to be more humble. It forces you to look at things differently. It forces you to look beyond yourself. It forces you to look at the world and the future differently.

I was struck during the Amy Coney Barrett announcement that Barrett, if confirmed, would be the only mother of school-age children to ever serve on the Supreme Court. Barrett is the mother of seven children which includes one special needs child and two children adopted from Haiti.

President and Mrs. Trump in the Oval Office with Amy Coney Barrett and family

If anyone has a good perspective of the challenges of motherhood and raising children in today's world it would seem to be Amy Coney Barrett.

I urge you to watch the Vice Presidential debate but put the things that Kamala Harris says in context at that debate and compare them with her past record.

Do the same when Amy Coney Barrett begins her confirmation hearings. Kamala Harris is on the Senate Judiciary Committee and will be questioning her. Judge both women against what you know about their backgrounds.

How much do you know about Kamala Harris?

You should know more after reading this blog post.

You should know even more after Wednesday's debate.

Carefully consider all of it as one of the biggest decisions you will ever have to make looms large four weeks away.

Even the Biden campaign's recent advertising is signaling who the real candidate is.

When have you ever seen this?

Think about it.  

Bye Bye Biden. Was It Bucks, Blackmail or Bad Polling?

Joe Biden announced yesterday that he would not accept the nomination he earned in the Democrat primaries to be the party's nominee for President in November.

Interestingly, he mailed it in rather than get in front of the cameras and tell the American people face to face he was stepping aside.

One report I saw suggested that he was so angry over being forced out that he did not believe he could control his anger in front of the cameras.

The decision did not surprise me. I had expected it for a long time.

In January, 2023 I stated that I saw almost no chance that both Trump and Biden would be on the November ballot in 2024.

I clarified the odds at 1% in April, 2023.

I wrote the following in June, 2023 in a blog post titled, "Gradually And Then Suddenly".

The principal reason I placed those odds as low as 1% was not because I believed that Donald Trump would not be on the ticket (although Trump has his own issues to overcome to make it to the 2024 ballot), it was because of a number of risks that could derail Biden.

His age. His physical and mental health. His ineptness. The economy. Any one of these could do him in where the Democrat establishment and /or the mainstream media might turn on him.

Joe Biden did not step aside voluntarily. It did happen gradually and then suddenly.

He was forced out by members of the Democrat establishment and the mainstream media just as I foresaw over a year ago.

Ten days ago I suggested the end was near. A Democrat without the media on their side and no money is not going to survive for long in any campaign. 

How does Joe Biden run a campaign with the media no longer on his side, big donors jumping ship and with increasing risks of more and more Democrats abandoning him each day?

How long before he is forced to say...?

No más.

The question is was Biden forced into doing it because of bucks, blackmail or bad polling numbers?

Or a combination of all three?

As late as yesterday morning his campaign co-chairman stated he had no intention to get out.

Last week a fundraiser hosted by David Letterman to support Biden was put on the calendar for July 29 in Martha's Vineyard.

Did they find out that even in that liberal enclave in Massachusetts  they could not raise money?

We know large Democrat donors were putting the squeeze on Biden. Reports were circulating that new dollars into the campaign had slowed to a trickle after Biden's disastrous debate with Trump.

It was also my guess that Biden had held out as long as he did to get assurances that he would be compensated in some way if he stepped aside. Joe was not going to give up his candidacy out of the goodness of his heart.

Let's face it, I doubt that Biden will be much in demand for those $500,000 speeches that Clinton, Obama and the Bush family were able to get once they left office.

Biden may have made his decision due to the fact he saw that he would have little in money to run the campaign. He may have also gotten those assurances that he would be taken care of financially if he stepped away.

Joe Biden may have also been effectively blackmailed to leave.

Was there a threat to release the Hur tapes?

What other things might be hidden away in. D.C. about Biden after 50 years in Washington?

Of course, as I mentioned several weeks ago in these pages, there might have also been a threat to invoke the 25th amendment and remove Biden from office constitutionally so he could not even serve out the remainder of his term.

Perhaps Biden just came to realize that the polls showed there was no realistic path to win in November.

Biden was simply too far down in the polls and there was little likelihood that he could ever recover from questions about his cognitive abilities.

In the The RealClearPolitics. com poll average you can see that Trump really started to separate from Biden in the last month.

Source: https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-biden

These poll averages also do not yet reflect the full effect Trump might have gotten after the assassination attempt on his life and the successful RNC convention.

The last three national polls conducted after the assassination attempt showed Trump up by 4 and 5 points.

A Detroit Free Press poll in the critical battleground state of Michigan released yesterday had Trump +7 over Biden in that state.

I also find it beyond ironic that heavily Biden, who famously told everyone that they would not get Covid if they were vaccinated, sent the letter out announcing his exit as he was in isolation and unable to campaign or defend himself against his fellow Democrats, with a case of Covid. 

Biden endorsed Kamala Harris shortly after publishing his exit letter but there is still a month to the DNC convention.

Of particular interest is that Barack Obama did not endorse Harris in a statement thanking Biden for exiting the race.

We will probably see most Democrats unite behind Kamala in the coming days in the hope that she can improve on Biden's poll numbers vs. Trump.

However, if the polls over the next several weeks do not show her closing the margin on Trump, we might even see a move to bypass her for someone else at the convention.

It is important to remember that whatever transpires going forward is not a democratic election. It is a Democrat establishment SELECTION. The will of the voters has been totally disregarded.

I also predicted that it would come to this back in February in another blog post, "Wine and Vinegar",  just as the Democrat primaries were beginning. 

Given Biden's declining mental capabilities and poll numbers over the last two years, it is beyond me why the Democrat establishment has not already moved Biden to the sidelines.

The only explantation is that they do not want the rank and file of the Democrat party to decide.

They must prefer to let a couple thousand (Democrat delegates at the DNC convention) or a couple hundred (the Democrat National Committee) decide rather than the voters.

It says a lot about what is supposed to be a "Democrat" party which is arguing that this election is about "protecting democracy". How is that going to play for a party whose main campaign theme is that Donald Trump and his supporters are a "threat to democracy"?

Keep in mind that there is probably no way that Kamala Harris would have won the Democrat nomination if Biden has dropped out before the primaries and she would have had to run vs. other candidates.

My guess is that Trump will start referring to Harris as an "illegitimate candidate" due to the process by which she was nominated. He also will likely not agree to debate her on that basis as long as he remains ahead of her in the polls.

The Democrats are clearly hoping that a reset of the race with Harris gives them the opportunity to retain the White House.

Harris does give the Democrats hope in gaining more traction with younger voters, minorities and women. They need large margins with all these groups to beat Trump.

However, Kamala Harris has a very low favorability rating. Her net favorability score is -18 over the last 102 polls that surveyed this question with voters.

Source: https://elections2024.thehill.com/national/harris-favorability-rating/

By comparison, Biden is currently at -10 on the same net favorability score despite his recent troubles and higher visibility to voters.

Trump is -11 on the same measure.

The Democrats get a reset with Harris but there are other weaknesses behind the low favorability rating she starts with.

Harris will be inextricably linked to failures of the Biden administration on foreign policy, the economy, inflation and the border that other Democrat candidates would not necessarily have to defend.

Harris is particularly vulnerable on immigration as she was supposed to be the "border czar" for Biden but never saw fit to even visit the border.

She is also going to have to explain why she was defending Biden as sharp, engaged and totally in command as recently as days ago.

I would expect that if Harris is the nominee she will look to a VP nominee from Pennsylvania, Arizona Michigan or Wisconsin in that these swing states will be critical if the Democrats are to beat Trump.

Look for Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania or Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona to be names that are frequently mentioned as possibilities. They also would be considered more conservative than Harris.

We might also see the name of Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan or Senator Tammy Baldwin in the conversation. Whitmer previously said that she was not interested in the VP spot if Harris replaced Biden. However, the Democrats may believe they need to resort to a "Hail Mary" play with two female candidates from swing states to try and stop Trump. 

Biden may believe taking himself out of the race will save his legacy and let him finish out his term as President peacefully. He probably has a pardon or two that he wants to hand out before he leaves.

However, I suspect that questions about Biden's cognitive ability and fitness for office are going to linger.

Biden may still not make it through the end of his term.

You can be sure that if the Democrats believe that it will help their cause to be able to refer to Kamala as "President Harris" to prevent Trump from getting back in power, Biden may get the bum's rush out the door before the election.

I can confidently say that there has never been a lamer duck than Joe Biden in the history of the United States.

It is important to consider that the Democrats that tell us that all Trump does is lie are also the same people who have said and done all of this over the last month.

Biden a hero? It is clear that the Democrats saw him as nothing more than a useful idiot.

It is both sickening and sad that the American people have been played the way they have.

The Fourth Turning Is Here---Part Two

If you have not read "The Fourth Turning Is Here---Part One" click here.

Since The Fourth Turning was published in 1997 by Neil Howe and William Strauss a lot has changed.

First and foremost, William Strauss passed away in 2007 at the age of 60.

Ironically, he did not live to see the beginning of The Fourth Turning (generally set in 2008) that he and Howe predicted.

Neil Howe carried on the generational theory work that they collaborated on of which The Fourth Turning book was a part of.

I went to several lectures that Neil Howe did over the years to see if I could gain further insights on any current thinking that he might have on The Fourth Turning theory once it was obvious that is where we were.

I never got as much out of those talks as I hoped.

At one point Howe pegged the beginning of the Fourth Turning to coincide with Hurricane Katrina in 2005 as it seemed to represent a critical turning point in the public's loss of trust in government institutions.

Howe later determined that the financial meltdown and Great Recession beginning in 2008 were the catalyst that signaled the beginning of what he refers to as the Millennial Crisis period.  That made more sense as the beginning of The Fourth Turning as it affected everyone.

I have gotten the sense that Howe leans more to the Democrat side and the events of the last 15 years have unsettled him a bit. 

For example, when Barack Obama and the Democrats took almost total control of government in 2009 in the wake of the financial crisis, I believe that the fact that they squandered that crisis with an agenda that focused more on dividing than uniting the country was very troubling to Howe.

The disappointment of the Obama years led to the rise of Donald Trump whose brand of populism  is clearly not Howe's cup of tea. I find this a little perplexing in that Trump's agenda and messaging aligns in most respects with the major themes that Howe and Strauss suggested a Fourth Turning leader would likely need to lead the country.

The quotes on the left are taken directly from the book of the important themes that might be expected from a Fourth Turning leader. My comments on the right are from a blog post in May, 2016 at the time that Trump was just wrapping up the GOP nomination that year entitled "Has The Fourth Turning Brought Us Trump?".

Eight years later that blog post remains one of the five most popular posts I have written over the years based on the number of views.

"Decisive action".  There is very little gray in Trump's outlook.

"Assert public authority."  Think about Trump's views on eminent domain.

"Aggravate rather than alleviate societal pressures." Trump's views and statements on immigration.

"Reverse the decline of the middle class."  His major voting target is forgotten working class voters.

"De-fund time-encrusted bureaucracies."  His call to consider the de-funding of NATO.

"Promote traditional values."  "Make America Great Again." 

"More isolationist."  Very consistent with his views on the Middle East.

"Less globally dependent".  His views on NAFTA, China, Japan on trade.

"Defense and Infrastructure."  Two of Trump's favorite topics in every speech. However, late last year, 

I guess that this just confirms that personal biases inevitably filter into almost anything anyone does.

Howe is no exception.

In any event, 26 years after publishing The Fourth Turning, Neil Howe recently released a sequel to the original book titled, The Fourth Turning Is Here.

I recently read the book to find out where Howe believes we are headed next based on the seasons of history.

At the outset, it is important to remember that by any measure we are fairly deep into the Fourth Turning.

In the original book Howe and Strauss predicted that the Fourth Turning would begin sometime around the year 2005, perhaps a few years before or after. Howe now puts that date at 2008.

Howe and Strauss predicted that the Fourth Turning would last 20 years or so putting the end of the crisis period around the end of this decade.

Why is that important?

The history of past Fourth Turnings has found that the time of maximum crisis is about 3/4 of the way through the Fourth Turning. Howe refers to this as the Climax or Ekpyrosis.

Source: https://www.sokratiko.com/words/ekpyrosis/

This is the period of highest risk and the years in which civic action will reach the point of maximum power. It is the point at which society must come together to either overcome an external foe, internal political division or civil war.

Based on the timetable of the original book that would put us right in that timeframe currently (2024-2026).

In the new book, Howe has pushed out the timetable. He suggests it is most likely that the current Fourth Turning crisis period will probably end between 2032 and 2034. Howe projects the likely year for the Climax to be the last couple of years leading up to the the end of this decade.

One of the reasons for this is that people are generally living longer. 

An important part of the theory is that history is made not be events but by the reaction of people to the events. This means that the same reactions and mistakes are made over the centuries as people do not have the ability to learn from their mistakes. In effect, the last time we were in this position, most of the people alive are now gone.

Howe sees three social stressors that may prove important enough to influence the outcome of the Fourth Turning leading to the Climax or Ekpyrosis.

1. A financial crash

2. Internal conflict

3. External conflict

Howe sees a financial crash as being a distinct possibility in the coming years as the inevitable result of chronic stimulus from the federal government, debt pyramids built on near zero interest rates and promises of Treasury bailouts and Fed backstops in case there's trouble.

More troubling to Howe is the fact that the next crash, when it comes, would be one in which additional stimulus would likely not be available. The reason--the federal government has overextended itself and will simply not be able to afford what is necessary. This will mean that any recovery from a post-pandemic crash will be slow and halting.

Howe sees all of this further feeding tensions between the red and blue tribal factions in the country with each group gravitating to more radical goals and confrontational tactics.

The blue faction will push for higher taxes and more redistribution. The red faction will become more authoritarian on immigration and trade,

Howe suggests that a financial crash will not be the Climax by itself but will be a stressor that leads us there.

That additional stressor will create an even more divided country that may lead to outright civil war.

Howe suggests that "threats of violence may encourage the growth of uniformed "street corps" on both sides."

The end result could actually be another civil war. 

Howe suggests that it is not as far-fetched as it sounds.

The United States fits many of the checklist profiles of a country at risk of civil war.

Trust in government is eroding.

Respect for democratic institutions is weakening.

There are two deeply divided political factions and a population that is heavily armed.

The country has deep divisions on a number of ethnic, cultural and urban vs. rural dimensions.

Each faction wants its country to become something the other detests and each fears the other taking power.

Put all of this together and consider how close to outright civil war we may have come as a result of the assassination attempt on President Trump last Saturday.

A few centimeters combined with the glaringly obvious missteps of the Secret Service would have been all it would have taken to see things quickly spin out of control.

As it is, large numbers of Trump supporters believe that the federal government may have somehow been involved either directly or indirectly in the attempted assassination of Trump.

On the other hand, a recent Morning Consult poll revealed that one-third of Democrat voters believe that Trump staged the assassination attempt.

There seems little doubt that we are living on a precipice of history in which one misstep could put us in a  situation in which there is no return.

Howe postulates that a civil war might result in both sides claiming to legitimately be the United States government. Every federal institution---from Congress to the federal courts to various executive departments might abruptly and awkwardly rupture to two sides based on personal loyalties. The populace could very well be forced to take sides splitting families and communities much like the Civil War of the 1860's. There might be a geographic divide involved (urban vs. rural) as in the Civil War but the division would be much more ideological than geographic.

How does it resolve itself?

Howe only sees two paths to move beyond the deep divisions we have today to the unity we need to move forward as a society.

The first path is that one side wins. The other side loses. There is no middle ground or compromises that typically end conflicts in Fourth Turning crisis periods. 

One side wins and the other side capitulates. There are no peace deals or negotiated settlements in Fourth Turnings. It is winner take all.

The losing side may not be totally wiped away but it reaches a point that it has no choice but to go along with the agenda of the winner. The era of divided government and attitudes ends and the society moves forward united.

This happened during the Revolutionary War when the patriots won and the loyalists to England lost. It happened a second time in the 1780's after Great Britain was defeated. Those who wanted a strong U.S. Constitution prevailed and those who were content with a looser confederation of states lost the argument on how the new U.S. government would operate.

It was also the case in the Civil War when the Republicans from the north who wanted to end slavery won and the Democrats from the southern states who resisted in the name of states' rights lost.

We saw it again during the Depression and World War II where the Republicans who opposed the New Deal and had isolationist views in the 1930's eventually had to capitulate to FDR and the Democrats as we were drawn into World War II. Internal political squabbles ended and all focus went to the war effort.

The second path is that both sides get scared straight by an existential external threat.  It then results in everyone in the society having to united and work together for a common cause in order to survive.

The range of possibilities and outcomes on this second path are daunting as well as sobering.

In this era of AI, drones and weapons of mass destruction the idea of a war that rises to the level of what we have seen in previous Fourth Turnings should give everyone pause

Howe also points out that even in the case of civil war that it is not unlikely that the side that is losing during the conflict is often motivated to solicit external players or nations to their cause.

The patriots did this in the Revolutionary War with French assistance which was as much a civil conflict between patriots and loyalists as it was a war against the British.

We also saw this in the Civil War in which the Confederate States worked very hard to enlist the British or other European powers for their aid against the Union.

However, Howe suggest that nothing is inevitable.

"We The People" control our destiny.

As stated before, history is not made by events but the reaction of people to those events.

It is also true that people can change the course of history.

We can get through the Fourth Turning and to a First Turning that is dominated not by division, crisis and chaos but by unity, confidence and optimism without mayhem and violence.

However, it is going to take the American people acting together to accomplish that.

That is why I see the election this year as so consequential.

There has probably not been another one that rises to this level since the election of 1860.

Our trajectory in the Fourth Turning will not change with another close, divided election result.

To have any chance of navigating from where we seem to be headed it is going to take a decisive victory for one side or the other at the ballot box.

It is obviously much better to get to where we need to be through the democratic process in which the people convincingly decide what type of government they want and need without having to go through the darkest depths of a Fourth Turning.

It is here that my bias shows as I see there is only one direction and party that can feasibly get us to that point at the present time---Donald Trump and the Republicans.

I just don't see that the Democrats have the breadth of support and the commitment of its voters to be a dominant party that is capable of appealing to mainstream voters with the current agenda they have.

It is easy to understand what the Republican Party stands for right now.

The same is not true for the Democrats. The only thing that is clear with Democrats in 2024 is they do not like Donald Trump.

That is not a platform that seems capable of leading to sustained political dominance.

As I have observed the events of the last 15 years or so, and the positions of the political parties have evolved, I often think about this passage on page 312 from the original book, The Fourth Turning, written in 1997.

"History warns that when a Crisis catalyzes, a previously dominant political party (or regime) can find itself directly blamed for perceived 'mistakes' that led to the national emergency.

"That party could find itself out of power for a generation. Key persons associated with it could find themselves defamed, stigmatized, harassed, economically ruined, personally punished---or worse."

Based on where we are right now. does this sound more like the Democrat or Republican Party?

Is it any wonder the Democrats are in full fledged panic mode right now and are on the verge of pushing their duly elected candidate nominee out of the 2024 race despite telling everyone a month ago he was "sharp as a tack"?  

The Fourth Turning is undoubtedly here.

The question remains as to what we are going to do about it? 

J.D. Vance VP Nominee

Donald Trump has selected Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his Vice Presidential running mate.

It is a solid choice that checks a lot of boxes for Trump.

Vance is young. Hs is actually the first national candidate who is from the Millennial generation. He has been very loyal to the Trump agenda. He has not been captured by the establishment in his two years in D.C. He is a Marine veteran. His life story of growing up in the Rust Belt with a blue collar background and roots in Appalachia is very compelling. He can relate very well to the crucial votes that Trump needs with working class people in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin as well as Ohio.

Some say Vance is too young. However, he is actually the same age right now (39) that Richard Nixon was when Dwight Eisenhower picked Nixon as his VP in 1952. Nixon, like Vance, was also less than two years into his first Senate term.

I have followed the career of J.D. Vance relatively closely as he grew up in Middletown, Ohio where I lived and worked for 13 years in the 1980's and early 1990's. Vance was born in Middletown in 1984.

His grandfather and I worked for the same company in Middletown--Armco Steel.

My three children were all born in the same hospital several years apart from where Vance was.

In 2016 I wrote about J.D. Vance's best selling book, Hillbilly Elegy, in BeeLine.

I thought this would be a good time to republish that blog post for those who may not be familiar with the book or the inspiring life story of J.D. Vance.

We hear a lot that the deck is stacked against many people in this country.

There is absolutely no doubt that some people have head starts in life and others have to overcome some significant disadvantages. That has been true for time immemorial.

J.D. Vance was not someone who had a head start in life. His family situation placed him at a significant disadvantage to many others.

However, his life story shows that the American Dream is still alive for those who are not willing to accept their situation and are able to receive a helping hand from others along the way.

Vance was fortunate to have a grandmother who stepped into his life when his mother was dealing with relationship and addiction issues. He had several caring teachers long the way. His service in the Marine Corps provided innumerable life lessons beyond the battlefield.

However, the fact is that none of it would have made much difference unless Vance had not taken responsibility for his own life. He went to school and applied himself. He was astute enough to realize that he was neither mature enough nor had the money to attend college right after high school even though he had the smarts. He enlisted in the Marine Corps instead and came out as a different person. He went on to Ohio State University for an undergraduate degree and a law degree at Yale. In the jobs he had in high school and college he showed up for work on time and committed to do the best he could. 

The lesson here is that closing the gap between the "haves" and "have nots" requires both personal responsibility and social responsibility. You can have all the good intentions and money in the world but it takes a human who wants to better themselves and it takes the heart and the touch of others who are willing to invest in a person who is willing to learn and grow. That lesson comes through loud and clear in the life of J.D. Vance.

The life of Vance continues to advance even further with the investment that Donald Trump is making in him. Let us hope that investment will pay large returns for all of us over time.

For those who do not know anything about Vance or his book, Hillbilly Elegy, my blog post from eight years ago is republished below.

Hillbilly Heaven and Hell (originally published December 29, 2016)

Hillbilly Elegy has been riding near the top of the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list for 21 weeks.

It is the true life story of a young Yale law school graduate who grew up in a poor, white family with Appalachian roots in a Rust Belt town in southwestern Ohio. It is a story that is both sobering and inspiring at the same time.

The book was a thoughtful Christmas gift from close friends and it had special significance to me as I lived and worked in the same town that author J.D.Vance grew up in----Middletown, Ohio--- for 13 years.

When I picked up the book I must admit I did not know what an elegy was. For those who are similarly unaware of the difference between an elegy and a eulogy here is how it is explained at Writingexplained.org.

It is common to see both of these words used during a funeral, but eulogy vs. elegy have different meanings. An Elegy is a mournful poem or song written about someone who has recently died. A Eulogy is a laudatory speech or written tribute praising someone who has recently died.

As I read the book I kept coming back to why Vance had chosen that title. An elegy is clearly considered to be more a work of art than a eulogy and therefore would seem to be more appropriate in the title of a book. The more important difference, however, is that Vance is mournful in the book. First of all, to his late grandmother who was the one steadying influence on his life. However, throughout the book you also see him mourning what has happened to the Rust Belt but also the fatal flaws in the Appalachian culture and lifestyle that has exacerbated their economic plight in America.

At the center of all of this is the Appalachian "culture of honor" that Malcolm Gladwell wrote about in his book, "Outliers". People from the Appalachian region have a reputation as hard workers who don't readily take hand-outs and are fiercely loyal to the people they are close to. However, it also means that they are also all too "willing to fight in response to even the slightest challenge to their reputation"  and "a world where a man's reputation is at the center of his livelihood and self-worth." This can and does often manifest itself with disastrous consequences in personal and work relationships. 

Vance's life story began when his newly married teenage grandparents left the hollers of Jackson, Kentucky in search of a better life. His grandfather found work in Middletown, Ohio at the Armco Steel plant right after the war. Armco was the same company that I spent over 20 years of my life working for. His "Papaw" worked in the steel mill. I worked in the Corporate Tax department.

Middletown Works
Owned by AK Steel (formerly Armco Inc.) in 2016
Now owned by Cleveland Cliffs in 2024
Credit: Memim.com

As Vance points out in the book, there was a class divide in Middletown between white and blue collar workers. However, that divide was in no way as large as what he later found when he went to law school at Yale in New Haven or lived in Washington, DC or San Francisco. Middletown was a city of about 50,000 people and we all shopped in the same stores, we ate in the same restaurants and our kids played together in the same Little League and youth soccer leagues. You find far less class interaction in most coastal cities.

The big difference in the life of J.D. Vance and my kids (who were just slightly older) was what happened in the home. Vance was constantly uprooted as his mother went through a series of bad relationships. During his school years he had as many as eight "stepdads" of one form or another. He was shuttled from one home to another. His mother struggled with drug addiction and anger issues. The only steady influence was his "Mamaw" who was a consistent source of love and support to J.D. although she was not anything like the grandmothers that my children knew. Unlike Mamaw they did not carry a gun and say to their grandchildren, "You know I love you but I'm just a crazy bitch" or "I'm sorry I'm so damned mean."

All of this is summed up by the many contradictions that Vance lists in the Hillbilly culture. The family loyalty, the glorification of self reliance and the respect for their roots all make their world a little slice of heaven in some respects. However, the walk does not often match the talk according to Vance.

They know they should not spend to improve their status, but they do it anyway. They end up mired in debt and in bankruptcies.

They choose not to work when they should be looking for a job.

Sometimes they get a job but it will not last because of tardiness or laziness. When they lose their job they convince themselves it is due to some perceived unfairness.

They did not study in school and know that it is one of the reasons they cannot get ahead but they don't make their children study when they are parents.

They may have had to suffer abuse as a child with a parent who had an addiction problem but they also succumb to addictions as parents themselves. The cycle continues from generation to generation.

Of course, Vance says "we" rather than "they" when he writes about these problems. He is the first to admit that the demons of his life continue to chase him despite his new station.

Even after you read the story of J.D. Vance you have to marvel at how he succeeded where so many others failed.

You see the small signs here and there in the book of things that made a difference along the way as he was growing up. The consistent support from his grandmother. A protective older sister. Religion. An interest in reading. A curiosity about exploring new things. Several supportive teachers. A job as a cashier in a local supermarket. Work at a country club.

A huge factor was his decision to forego college right after high school to enlist with the United States Marine Corps for a four-year hitch. He realized that he was not ready for the challenge of college at that time nor to take on the necessary student debt. Therefore, he gained added maturity, discipline and perspectives before he entered college at Ohio State University in addition to GI Bill benefits.

Choices do make a difference in people's lives. Vance made good choices.

From there it was on to Yale Law School and a world far, far removed from anything he ever thought possible. It truly was the difference between heaven and hell for the self-described Hillbilly.

When reading Hillbilly Elegy I could not keep from thinking about the similarities in this book to those of Barack Obama when he wrote Dreams from My Father shortly after he graduated from Harvard Law School.

In both cases you have young men in their early 30's writing memoirs. Both graduated from elite law schools. Both were products of broken homes. Both had no father and a largely absent mother in their lives. Both had grandmothers who stepped in to provide needed stability and support in their lives.

Who knows whether J.D.Vance will accomplish anything as extraordinary as Barack Obama did in being elected President of the United States.

However, he has already accomplished far, far more than most would ever dream of. In that respect, this is a great story that demonstrates that the American Dream is still alive. Unfortunately, this story also shows that too many are also living an American Nightmare.

Vance struggles to provide the answers to solving the problems that he identifies. I can't fault him for that. Millions of people with good intentions and billions of dollars have also failed.

In the end, Vance suggests it is probably not the big government programs that matter the most but the small interactions from people that care that can make a difference. He quotes a friend who worked in the White House for a time and cares deeply for the plight of the working class.

The best way to look at this might be to recognize that you probably can't fix these things. They'll always be around. But maybe you can put your thumb on the scale a little for the people at the margins.

Vance admits that there were many thumbs on his scale from a range of people.

Think about that in 2017. Lend a hand (or thumb) when you can for someone who could use some help. It might make all the difference in the world for someone.

"The Toughest Man I've Ever Seen"

I have predicted several times in these pages that there would be many twists and turns in this Presidential race.

The last three weeks proves that.

Biden has a disastrous debate performance raising serious questions about his fitness to be President.

The mainstream media turns on Biden.

Large Democrat donors are refusing to donate to his campaign.

The Democrat party is in chaos trying to figure out what to do about Biden.

Donald Trump is the victim of an attempted assassination.

If you wrote a political thriller with these story lines it would undoubtedly be rejected for being too far-fetched.

Unfortunately, it is all too real...for all of us.

There has been almost nonstop news coverage of the events surrounding the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania over the last 36 hours.

Out of everything I have seen and heard relating to the attack on Trump, I have to say that the words of South Dakota Governor Krisit Noem responding to the attack resonated above everything else I have heard.

"He is the toughest man I've ever met."

Noem posted this about 20 minutes after the assassination attempt and not long after we saw this iconic image that will undoubtedly be remembered many, many years after we are all gone.

There will never be an image that so completely captures the essence of Donald Trump.

What makes it even more impactful is that it revealed the authenticity of Trump in the most trying of times.

Credit: Evan Vucci / AP

Donald Trump was not my first choice for the GOP nomination in 2016.

I was not confident that his brash style and his sparse record as a Republican would give the GOP the best chance to beat Hillary Clinton. 

When Trump won the nomination I could not help but be amazed at what he had done. I had never seen anything like it in a life that has seen a lot of politicians.

The turnout and enthusiasm Trump  brought out in voters was impossible to dismiss. It was clear he had tapped into something that no Republican candidate in my lifetime had done.

When he was elected I was prepared to be disappointed. However, no President in my lifetime was as consistent between what he said he would do and what he actually  did as President. There was no bait and switch with Trump.

This made the Democats even angrier. They told us his term would be a disaster. The economy would crater. Trump would start a World War. The United States would be a laughingstock around the world. Nothing remotely close to what they predicted came true. 

In fact, I stated at that time that Democrats (and even establishment Republicans) said what they did about Trump not because they feared he would be a failure. Their biggest fear was that he would be a success.

In 2024, I supported Ron DeSantis in the primaries because I believed that it was time to turn the page. Trump was carrying a lot of unnecessary baggage and the record of DeSantis in Florida and his younger age argued that he was a better candidate to take on Joe Biden.

Trump defied his critics and proved me wrong once again.

Quite frankly, I have never seen anything like it.

This man has endured an unbelievable barrage of attacks and vitriol the likes of which no one in American history has had to endure.

It started shortly after he came down that escalator to announce his candidacy for President and it has never stopped.

In fact, the intensity has increased.

It was claimed he was a Russian agent when he was running for President.

Hillary Clinton claimed that he stole the 2016 election with Russian interference.

He was spied and wiretapped on by the FBI.

The media attacked him endlessly for four years as President.

He was impeached twice on bogus charges.

He had to endure a pandemic that appears to have resulted from a virus that was funded by bureaucrats within the federal government that undoubtedly caused his defeat in the 2020 election.

Democrats and the media said he was only in office to enrich himself but he ended up losing half his fortune while he was in office due to boycotts and attacks on the Trump brand.

Despite this, he was winning the 2020 election until 3 am the night of the election when all of the vote counts in the swing states miraculously swung toward Biden.

After he announced he was running for President in 2024, he was indicted and charged in criminal trials in New York, Georgia and Florida.

He was also tried in two sham civil trials in New York that were both meant to bankrupt him (one involving a bank loan fully repaid and another involving a woman who claimed Trump sexually assaulted her 30+ years ago who could not even remember the year it allegedly occurred. 

The total judgments levied against Trump were over $350 million in the loan case and $83 million in the E. Jean Carroll case.

What other person in the world has had to endure this much?

Now he comes within a few centimeters of his life?

I have never met Trump but I might have to go further than Krisit Noem and say,

"He is the toughest man I have ever seen."

Who else could endure what Trump has and still be standing let alone running for President?

Like him or not, this is a man who is tough and strong.

However, even those words do not begin to describe Donald J. Trump.

I wrote a blog post in 2019 when he was President in which I referred to Trump as INDEFATIGABLE.

There is no word that better describes the man.

There is no quit in him. He will work tirelessly until his goals are achieved.

This is what I wrote in 2019 in that blog post, "The Indefatigable Donald Trump".

Say what you want about Donald Trump but the thing that sets him apart is that he is not afraid to take action. He is not afraid to face criticism. He is unrelenting. He persistently works to achieve his objectives. There is no quit in him.

There has been no politician like him in my lifetime. Perhaps that is because he did not spend a lifetime as a politician. Perhaps that is because he doesn't really need the job. Perhaps that is because he is an arrogant egomaniac. I don't know why he does what he does.

What I do know it that he is indefatigable. He relentlessly pushes his agenda forward. That, more than anything, defines who he is and why he should never be underestimated. That is also why the Democrats and liberal media despise and fear him so much.

We have now seen Trump in the most trying and terrifying of situations.

He did not freeze. He did not cower. He got up and said "Fight, fight, fight" to the crowd not completely knowing whether he would be speaking to them again. Showing that kind of courage under literal fire is not something many are capable of.

Although his Secret Service body detail has received a lot of praise for their quick reaction in getting to Trump in order to cover him, the fact is that Trump's reflexes are what saved him. It was not the Secret Service. Trump reacted faster than they did and they might have had some notice in their earpieces that a threat had been identified on the rooftop.

Trump showed remarkable situational awareness and understood rapidly that he had been fired on and quickly ducked under the podium before the Secret Service got to him.

I shudder to think what the result would have been if Joe Biden had been behind that podium. Trump was no deer in the headlights. The reaction time he showed for a 78 year old man was remarkable.

What do I see going forward?

A few observations.

1.  Winston Churchill once said 'Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result." My hope is that Trump becomes more humble and God-centered as a result of this narrow miss, It is hard to not believe that Providence is involved and Trump has a much larger agenda ahead than he ever imagined.  Going forward with a new humility and servant's heart could be transformative to the nation in these trying times.

2. The Secret Service is going to be put under an enormous amount of well deserved scrutiny for how a sniper on a building could get within 500 feet of Trump. Were the Secret Service snipers told to stand down when apparently they had the assailant in their sights before he fired? Did the Biden administration deny additional resources to the Trump security detail that were requested? It should also go without saying that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. should immediately be given Secret Service protection which heretofore has been denied by the Biden administration.

3. This event puts even more importance on the VP selection by Trump. He needs to select someone who is unquestionably prepared to be President and he needs someone who the Establishment fears as much as Trump. In my mind, there is only one person who unquestionably meets both of those requirements---Ron DeSantis. I laid out the case for DeSantis in an earlier blog post. J.D. Vance, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tucker Carlson would all be considered to meet the later standard but all are short on experience. 

It will be interesting to see who Trump chooses. I believe that Glenn Youngkin might make the most sense right now in that he is not a career D.C. politician, he has executive experience and it appears that Virginia might be a swing state that is now in play.

4. The effort to replace Biden is likely to stall due to the events of the last few days. Every day that Biden remains as the candidate the odds get longer that he can be replaced. There is also a question now as to whether any possible replacement would want to step in against Trump. Are we at a place that the Democrats decide to just go with Joe and see what happens and put more emphasis and money into House and Senate races?

5.A further problem the Democrats now have is what major theme do they run on? Before Saturday they were all in on "Trump is a threat to democracy" and an "existential threat " to everything else that is important to you. 

 

Trump also could be a dictator, take out his opponents and lead a coup.

In sum, he was portrayed by the Democrats as pure evil.

Democrats have said that if Trump was elected it could be the last election to ever be held in the United States.

This is the messaging that Biden was primarily running on until Saturday evening.

Now that there are calls to lower the temperature and reduce the political vitriol what do Biden and the Democrats run on? Do they actually have to run on their record and the issues?

6. Throughout most of the last nine years there was a social taboo among many people of expressing outward support for Trump. I have found it interesting how that has dissipated this year despite all of Trump's legal problems and everything else. It may be totally gone right now if this report from San Francisco is accurate.. 

People had been told that Trump was only in it for himself. He was a coward. He didn't care about anyone but himself. Seeing Trump on that stage Saturday night and Biden on the debate stage a couple weeks ago let a lot of people see with their own eyers that what they have been told about the two men was completely false. And as I have stated before, what is seen cannot be unseen.

Continued prayers of protection for Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

In addition, let us remember Corey Comperatore who lost his life by merely attending a political rally for his favored Presidential candidate. 

Thoughts and prayers also go out to David Dutch and James Copenhaver who were critically wounded while attending the rally.

Trump is a threat to democracy but it is Trump and these three men who are victims while they are participating in a fundamental part of democracy?

How does any of this make sense?

May God Bless America!