Oct
27
2024

I Would Have Made Them Yankee Bullpen Pitchers

But Mr. Ramirez went a different direction:

And our weekly look at how the punters are punting:

EBO Win Probabilities as of 2024-10-27 4:34 AM EDT
Candidate EBO Win
Probability		 Change
Since
10/20
Donald Trump 61.5% +4.6%
Kamala Harris 38.0% -4.6%
Other 0.5% unch

So another good week for Bone Spurs. Just as an interesting sidelight, perhaps meaning nothing: Trump's betting-odds lead over Kamala is roughly similar to Biden's lead over Trump at this point in 2020.

And the usual brief reminders of how screwed we are:

  • Hope you're wearing your waders. Veronique de Rugy asks the musical question: Will Trump or Harris Drain the Swamp, or Invite You In?

    When Donald Trump campaigned for president in 2016, one of his most memorable and oft-repeated promises was to "drain the swamp" in Washington, D.C. This catchy phrase resonated with millions of Americans who felt alienated from their government and frustrated with political favors. However, eight years later, both the Harris and Trump campaigns are making it clear that their candidate doesn't want to drain the swamp. They'd like more of us to jump in.

    Examples, unfortunately, abound.

  • They couldn't be clearer. Christian Britschgi notes the obvious: Trump, Harris Ads Make Clear They Won't Be Cutting Government.

    The 2024 presidential election campaign is mercifully in its final weeks, and the two major party candidates are busy making their closing arguments to voters. Judging by the messaging that their aligned PACs are prioritizing, neither former President Donald Trump nor Vice President Kamala Harris has any interest in winning over small government supporters.

    Britschgi notes that both candidates "are still explicitly presenting an every day 'us' versus an evil 'them.'" Which is pretty tiresome at this point.

  • Oh, yeah, there's one more problem. And Dan McLaughlin points it out: Trump and Harris Both Threaten the Constitution. (This month's final "gifted" NR link to you, dear reader.)

    The Constitution is on the ballot November 5, but with more enemies than friends. Worse, as happened dramatically after 2020 and less vividly after 2016, it may be menaced not only by the winners of the election, but by the losers.

    The 235-year rule of the written Constitution is unprecedented in world history. Our constitutional order has bequeathed us the freest and most prosperous society mankind has ever known. It has surmounted every open challenge. Yet many of its great features have been eviscerated — not by bouts of insurrection or spasms of tyranny, but by erosion, innovation, and institutional decay.

    Living constitutionalism, the administrative state, governance by executive order, federal subsidies that control the states, the effective death of impeachment as a remedy for executive-branch wrongdoing, and crisis budgeting that defangs the congressional power of the purse: Each of these has undermined the original design of distinct federal and state power bases, effective checks and balances, popular accountability, and written law.

    And just as a reminder, if you need one:

    That's back when Biden was pretending to hew to Constitutional limits. Good times, now long gone.

  • Both sides are also increasingly creepy. Liz Wolfe looks at recent remarks from Tucker Carlson: U.S. Is a ‘Bad Little Girl’ and Trump Is Our Daddy Disciplinarian.

    "If you allow people to get away with things that are completely over the top and outrageous…and you do nothing about it…you're going to get more of it," he began, analogizing the Trump-America relationship to that of a father and his misbehaving children.

    "There has to be a point at which Dad comes home," he continued. "Yeah, that's right. Dad comes home, and he's pissed. Dad is pissed. He's not vengeful. He loves his children, disobedient as they may be. He loves them because they're his children."

    "Get to your room right now, and think about what you did! And when Dad gets home, you know what he says? 'You've been a bad girl. You've been a bad little girl, and you're getting a vigorous spanking right now. And no, it's not gonna hurt me more than it hurts you. No, it's not. I'm not gonna lie. It's gonna hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this. You're getting a vigorous spanking because you've been a bad girl. And it has to be this way.'"

    And Wolfe is a both-sides lady, observing how cringe-inducing this is:

    It needs to be said, and she says it:

    America's not some naughty little girl, J.D. Vance isn't a creepy uncle, Tim Walz isn't a lovable Carhartt dad, Kamala's not mother (or a "baddie"), and Donald Trump isn't daddy, the disciplinarian. America's still the freest, richest, most prosperous place on Earth, not because of politicians who try to convince us they're parental figures but despite them.

  • She may have burned a blunt beforehand. Jeffrey Blehar observes the wreckage: Harris Finally Crashes and Burns on CNN.

    The engines have flared out right at the end of the flight. The tank is out of gas. The weather is choppy, the navigation system completely unreliable, and the best guess is that you’re still short of the runway. (Oh, and the captain had a stroke while in the cockpit a few hours ago, leaving only a flight attendant as the pilot. She refuses to read the instruction manual or listen to the passengers.) Yes, it’s easy enough to spin up lovingly bespoke metaphors for how the Harris campaign is handling the late stages of the 2024 race — a race they very much could still win, I must always emphasize — but I’ll conclude this one by saying that if last night’s Kamala Harris CNN town hall (with Anderson Cooper hosting in the Philadelphia suburbs) is any indication, the plane may already be disintegrating in midair, before it even hits the ground.

    You may have noticed that I’ve had a decidedly muted reaction to Harris’s other recent “serious” media interviews, whether Bret Baier at Fox News or Bill Whitaker on 60 Minutes, in the sense that while Harris was predictably awful in both sit-downs (almost relentlessly so), she was boring and unrevelatory in her awfulness. In other words, we learned nothing new about the depths to which she is capable of sinking performatively that we didn’t already know. They were water-treading exercises for the most part.

    Last night’s CNN town hall, on the other hand, was memorably bad. This is the moment her campaign dreaded, the moment when the fundamental emptiness and inadequacy of their candidate was revealed for all the world to see without helpful edits or someone to bail her out. There Harris stood exposed — with an unpersuaded audience and a moderator in Cooper who handled his task without showing any particular solicitude for her electoral fortunes — and she withered in the spotlight. (As Dylan might have said, “Even the vice president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.”) There are moments from this event — many moments, oh so terribly many of them — that will haunt Harris in retirement forever should she lose, the sorts of ghastly stammering failures destined to go into YouTube clip reels ten years later explaining “How We Got Here.” (And if she wins? All is not forgiven, merely set aside — until the reality of her as president for four years takes its toll on Democratic fortunes, which will be quickly.)

    That's not a gifted link, so … subscribe, peasant!

  • But can she really be… Hayden Daniel answers my question before I finish asking: Yes, Kamala Harris Really Is That Stupid. It is a rebuttal, of sorts, to Jim Geraghty's claim that Kamala's intellect is being misunderestimated.

    She might actually be one of the most intellectually feeble people to seek the presidency. When she tried to claim the nomination on her own, in 2020, she ran one of the most amateurish campaigns in a primary already chocked full of imbeciles. She was so hopelessly inept as the “border czar” that the propaganda press tried to memory-hole the fact that she held the position.

    On the campaign trail in 2024, she has become the queen of word salads and non-answers, only capable of parroting the most vapid talking points. None of her nonsensical words of “wisdom” ring more hollow than the oft-repeated “What can be, unburdened by what has been.” Truly the mantra of mental midgets everywhere.

    Most recently, she’s now accused of multiple instances of plagiarism, including in congressional testimony — truly a signifier of a sharp and adept mind.

    I'm on Team Nitwit myself.

  • I believe it's somewhere the sun don't shine. Eric Boehm wonders, idly and fruitlessly: Where Is Trump's Plan To Cut Spending?

    During a town hall event at a barbershop in the Bronx—yes, really—this week, former President Donald Trump was asked about the possibility of eliminating the federal income tax.

    How he answered revealed something about how Trump understands fiscal policy—and something important about what he doesn't, despite having spent nine years either campaigning for the president or sitting in the White House.

    The question is a bit of a random one for a presidential candidate to field, but it's a sensible thing to ask since Trump has spent months promising to exempt various types of income—including tips and Social Security payments—from federal income tax. So why not just eliminate the federal income tax altogether?

    The question is a bit of a random one for a presidential candidate to field, but it's a sensible thing to ask since Trump has spent months promising to exempt various types of income—including tips and Social Security payments—from federal income tax. So why not just eliminate the federal income tax altogether?

    Boehm notes "federal spending in the 1890s averaged around 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)."

    And in the recently-completed FY2024, spending was 24.9% of GDP.

    So, yeah, Donald: how you gonna do that?