A Post-Election Thought

And one more:

Can I get a big "Amen?"

On This Election Night

 What made me think of this?

UPDATED: "Anticipatory Obedience"

Anticipatory obedience is a term I was unfamiliar with until reading an article in The Guardian.

[I]n On Tyranny, Tim Snyder’s bestselling guide to authoritarianism. Snyder defines the term as “giving over your power to the aspiring authoritarian” before the authoritarian is in position to compel that handover.

It appears that is precisely what has happened at The Washington Post. The newspaper's editorial board had drafted its endorsement of Kamala Harris for U.S. president, but then its owner, Jeff Bezos, intervened and forbade it. It appears that Bezos, who also owns Amazon and Blue Origin, wants to make sure that if Don Trump wins the race, his businesseses, which compete for government contracts, will thrive.

Within hours of making that decision, 

high-ranking officials of [Blue Origin] briefly met with Trump after a campaign speech in Austin, Texas, as the Republican nominee seeks a second presidency.

Trump met with Blue Origin chief executive officer David Limp and vice-president of government relations Megan Mitchell, the Associated Press reported.

Meanwhile, CNN reported that the Amazon CEO, Andy Jassy, had also recently reached out to speak with the former president by phone. 

Those reported overtures were eviscerated by Washington Post editor-at-large and longtime columnist Robert Kagan, who resigned on Friday. On Saturday, he argued that the meeting Blue Origin executives had with Trump would not have taken place if the Post had endorsed the Democratic vice-president as it planned.

The was additional fallout.

 In their criticism of the Post’s decision on Friday, former and current employees cite the dangers to democracy posed by Trump, who has openly expressed his admiration for authoritarian rule amid his appeals for voters to return him to office.

The former Washington Post journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, who broke the Watergate story, called the decision “disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process”.

The former Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron said in a post on X, “This is cowardice with democracy as its casualty”.

The cartoon team at the paper published a dark formless image protesting against the non-endorsement decision, playing on the “democracy dies in darkness” slogan that the Post adopted in 2017, five years after its purchase by Bezos. 

The Post was actually the second major paper to veto a presidential endorsement. 

The Post’s non-endorsement came shortly after the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, refused to allow the editorial board publish an endorsement of Harris.

Unfettered and fearless journalism has always been crucial to stable, well-functioning democracies. With the craven, self-serving sycophancy of people like Bezos and Soon-Shiong, it is clear that America's drift toward authoritarianism is no longer limited to the unhinged MAGA  crowd. As a consequence, all are diminished and endangered.

UPDATE: In today's (Oct.29) Star, Andrew Phillips writes:

The point is that by ordering their papers to stop short of endorsing Trump’s opponent the owners are showing weakness in the face of a candidate who has made clear he’s prepared to violate every norm of democracy. Make no mistake: Trump will take advantage. “If Trump sees a sign of weakness,” former Post editor Martin Baron told the New Yorker over the weekend, “he’s going to pounce even harder in the future.” 

Feels So Fine

H/t de Adder

The NYT correctly observes that Kamala Harris's rise in popularity is the honeymoon phase of her pending nomination as the Democratic candidate for president, The challenge will be to ensure the momentum continues, and I have a feeling that will not be hard to do.

First, thanks to a link sent to me by Trailblazer, there is this:

What is remarkable about this is that it is a poll of swing states conducted by Fox News, something sure to inflame the crazed right wing.

Fox released a swing state poll that showed Harris' favorability ratings ahead of Trump's in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Michigan.

The poll states that it included registered voters, and took place July 22-24.

Trump critics were quick to react online.

@acnewsitics simply said, "Uh oh."

@kinsellawarren said, "Better than the numbers is the fact that this is a Fox News poll."

Trump supporter @GioBruno1600 asked, "Do you believe this FOX NEWS poll?"

@joled16 said, "Without having had a convention yet! OMG! I just realized this is a FOX NEWS poll! Trump must be furious with FOX."

@TheNewsTrending wrote, "A new Fox News poll shows that Trump's significant lead over Biden in battleground states has disappeared when compared with Vice President Harris."

Former White House aide Keith Boykin had this to say:

"The ketchup is going to hit the wall in Mar-a-Lago after this new Fox News poll."

While favourability and voting intentions are not necessarily synonymous, this is encouraging news. And the fact is, what do the Republicans have to counter other than the same bile that they always spew? There really is nothing else in their political toolbox.

Reflecting upon how events in the political world can quickly change, Jamie Watts writes:

Clearly, the tide was coming in and the Republicans only needed to ride it.

And then, the axiom “whoever speaks first loses” reared its ugly head and “events” quickly illustrated Vance’s selection was a grave, potentially fatal, mistake.

I’ll leave it to other pundits to divine his eclectic, ideologically elastic biography. My point is much more straightforward. Simply put, he is the wrong tool for the job, the proverbial knife for what is now a gunfight.

This rather feeble performance illustrates Watts' point. 

Vance, suffice it to say, might well run-up the score in red states, but he will do next to nothing to turn the Trump-curious into Trump voters. People who support Vance already support Trump. His candidacy is not a growth proposition, it is a consolidation effort. Moreover, it’s worth noting that two white males at the top of the GOP ticket are woefully unsuited to take on a woman of colour.

Of course, anything can happen between now and election day. However, given the early signs, I think people on both sides of the border have reason for hope.