Birthdays and Doomsdays

[captainsblog]

We're doing the best we can to keep things close to normal. Not that we were ever that normal to begin with.

One of the first-out-of-the-gate ironies from Wednesday's fallout? Strictly professionally speaking, it was one of my best days ever. I finally got clearance to release a fee to my Rochester office that had been earned over the past 12 months, approved back in September but held in legal limbo while two government officials tried to figure out what to do with other funds in the case. As if that wasn't enough, I got word that one of my collection cases, which I had done nothing to advance a final payment deadline of the following week, was actually coming in early, deposited to my trust account in certified funds without me having to lift a finger.

The workweek ended somewhat quieter than that, when I was stood up by two different clients, either or both of whom I was ready to stay late and see in Rochester at the end of that day. Instead, I got to leave and get home at normal hours, making it easier to keep plans for music each of the next two nights.  First was to end my birthday celebration  last night:  a local performance by a husband-wife folk music duo called the Kennedys. (No relation to the Brainworm Dude that they'll admit to;) Pete and Maura have a long history of performing and touring, including many years in Nanci Griffith's backing band. Nanci asked (or, as Maura clarified, TOLD) them to open for her on her Ireland tour many years ago. they recorded a CD of covers of her songs back in 2014, long before Nancis's passing three years ago. They've since done a tribute song to her titled "Late September Breeze" on their newest album  from about a year ago. I picked up both that CD and the Nanci cover album at the event, only to discover a friend had gifted me the latter CD some time ago. To complete the circle, I am going to regift it to our friend Maria, who just traveled to Rochester last weekend to open for The Kennedys.  She is planning on attending our mutual friend Annie's weekly Sunday night piano gig at Nietzsche's, which I'm sure is going to serve as a mutual mourning ground for a lot of us in the local music community.

Music also came to the doorstep earlier this week. My sister sent a box full of assorted memorabilia, including a box set of Springsteen live recordings from between 1975 and 1985. The box originally held four cassette tapes, one of which was missing, but no matter; we have nothing to play those on anymore anyway, but I found the same set available from our library on CD and will get it ripped into our collection when it gets here.  The Boss is still going strong; several friends crossed over to Toronto to see him the night after the election, one of the shows rescheduled from 2023 after health problems hit his band.  I worked today on the applications for getting our passports renewed before they expire later this month, just in case we ever have any similar plans or, worse, need "papers, please" while we can still get them.

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As is the case with many people, I'm still too numb and overwhelmed to offer any insight into WHY what the fuck happened?!?, happened.  Some early data does offer clues, and the two that seem to keep coming up are apathy and stupidity.

Some of both is a logical consequence of the way these elections now play out, with seven states essentially deciding the whole goddam thing. This analysis looks at the big difference between how Kamala did where it mattered and where it didn't:

It’s not entirely clear her campaign was bad, or was merely doing its best in a terrible national environment she inherited at the last minute from her predecessor. In the battleground states where the campaign devoted its time, resources, and ground game the race was mostly close and turnout was stronger — while votes are still being counted, it looks like a 2-point swing would have won her the Rust Belt and the presidency, and just a little more would have added Georgia. Meanwhile, states with little attention from the campaign, like New York or Texas, swung hard to the right by much wider margins, while only a single state (Washington) appears to have moved left at all.

It strongly suggests that, like so many other incumbent parties worldwide after the pandemic, the campaign faced strong headwinds that it was unable to overcome. There was polling evidence (and yes, the polls were more accurate this time) ahead of the election that Harris campaign’s economy-focused ads at least helped mitigate her weakness on inflation, for example. Her favorables also shot up during the race, so there’s some evidence her biographical ads really did help her image. It didn’t add up to a victory, but figuring out the delta between the battlegrounds and the rest of the country, and which attacks on her stung and could sting again, is going to be a long process for Democrats.

We didn't see any of it in New York, other than Trump's Nazi rallies at the Garden and Nassau Coliseum in the waning weeks. Voter turnout here was lower- not enough to give him the state or even our county, but the margins were lower.

There was, and likely will continue to be, a serious disconnect between spin and reality, with voters either not taking the opportunity to be educated about the real issues or not believing what they hear about it. Within a day of the election being called, a longtime local automotive factory, once American Dunlop but now Japanese Sumitomo, announced its closing and the loss of 1,500 local jobs. There's been unconfirmed anectodal evidence of employers cutting back on holiday bonuses so they can purchase as much as they can before the tariffs kick in- tariffs that swing-state voters actually believed wouldn't be passed on to them. Sports franchise owner and Trump adversary Mark Cuban is confirmed as believing this is exactly what to expect:





Will voter's remorse come in once the nonvoters and dumb voters figure this out? Don't ask me; I clearly didn't get anything else right here.

Comments

[warriorsavant]

The whole world is in an anti-incumbent mood. I can, and have posted elsewhere, what progressives have been doing wrong for decades, but basic short-sightedness/stupidity is a big factor. "Yeah, we're gonna raise tariffs and manufacturing will all move back here next Thursday."

Still, life goes on (until it doesn't, a matter of no more than a few decades for you and I), the sun will rise (at least for another 8 billion years), and we have to keep muddling through.