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Nikki Haley

South Carolina: Slavery Epicenter for the United States

December 29, 2023
by Peter Feinman
Nikki Haley and the college presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn, courtesy Creative Commons, Fabrice Florin

South Carolina and slavery have been in the news. The former because the former governor of the state and now presidential candidate muffed a softball question where the latter was the answer. She may have been thinking she was campaigning in the Confederacy and not in the Union. One can’t help but wonder how many people from those small New Hampshire villages and hamlets died in the very war that was the subject of the question.

So instead of easily answering the question about the causes of the Civil War, she instead babbled. She ended up sounding like a college president from Harvard, MIT, and Penn having to answer a question about the call for genocide against Jews being an anti-Semitic act.

One should keep in mind that the very state she governed was the epicenter for slavery in the United States. Unfortunately, The New York Times 1619 Project has transformed a onetime comparatively minor event in Virginia into the starting point of America’s original sin and thus deprived South Carolina of its rightful place where systematic chattel slavery and racism began.

The other mainland British colonies stumbled into slavery. They were not founded by people who had the goal of creating a slave colony. The Carolinas were different. They may be why they are glossed over in the colonial founding stories. All the great tourist sites and stories for British and Dutch colonization here belong elsewhere.

As a reminder of the importance of South Carolina in the development of slavery in the British mainland colonies, below is the blog I wrote on Barbados, American Slavery and Racism.  South Carolina was the colony of a colony and that colony was Barbados. We just celebrated the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. The tea came from China.No civilized person could drink tea or coffee without sugar. When the American Revolution began, the mainland British colonies were not joined by their British counterparts. One reason is that those colonies were not settled for freedom of religion or any other kind of freedom. They were settled to produce sugar (rum and molasses). That meant constantly renewed slave labor force. When the American Revolution did occur, that meant the British Caribbean colonies were more valuable to the Crown than the mainland colonies were.

While becoming President of the United States does not require any expertise in American history — obviously — perhaps the former governor of South Carolina will spend some time and effort learning about the history of her own state especially if she wants to be President during the 250th anniversary of the birth of the country in 2026.

Barbados, American Slavery and Racism

August 1, 2023

Barbados was the feature of a seven-page article in the July 24, 2023, issue of Time Magazine (print). That is a fairly substantial article for the mostly weekly magazine. The subject of the article as the subtitle stated was “How the tiny island of Barbados became a leader in the global push for reparations.” True to the subtitle, the article addressed precisely that issue. It traced the history of the island and the efforts of the people to obtain reparations. It was not about the United States slavery and racism.

That being said, there are several points of the article which nonetheless have direct bearing on the United States even without mentioning it.

1. British settlers first arrived in 1627.

To put that in American perspective, that is 20 years after the settlement at Jamestown, seven years after the arrival of the Pilgrims, three years after the Dutch settled New Amsterdam, three years before the Puritans arrived in Massachusetts Bay Colony, and 55 years before the Quakers arrived in Pennsylvania.

Barbados was then part of the British colonial settlement. In the 1600s. As Americans, we need to remove our geographical blinders and include the island in the study of early British colonialism here. It would be an island British Loyalists fled to at the end of the American Revolution because it was not one of the colonies which choose to rebel.

2. By the 1640s, Barbados was a sugar cane powerhouse.

Sugar production generated huge profits. The modern counterpart would not be oil in Saudi Arabia but cocaine. Barbados produced what Europeans had to have even though they had no biological need for it. Barbados was a drug powerhouse of the first order. And it was legal.

The economic dynamics of the island was vastly different from the mainland colonies mentioned above. None of them could match the economic importance of Barbados. One could try to cash in on it by supplying non-sugar products to the island since land was too precious to waste on them. Arguably, when Britain had to decide which was more important during the American Revolution the answer was Barbados.

3. The enormous profits inspired the world’s first slave codes, legislated in Barbados in 1661.

In 1619, there was no legally category of slaves in Virginia law or in British law. In 1626, the same was true in New Amsterdam under Dutch law. The Barbados slave code then became the model for slave codes throughout the British Atlantic colonies.

The demographic situation in Barbados was quite different from the mainland colonies. The trickle of Africans arriving in the latter paled in significance before the numerical need for workers in Barbados. Not only did this one small island dwarf the need for workers in the mainland colonies at any one time, due to disease and short-life spans, the need to steadily replenish the worker stock ensured a constant contact with Africa.

The numbers also told a different racial story. Yes, it was true that all the mainland colonies had African slaves but the differential in numbers was vast. In the northern colonies in particular, white people (somewhat of a historically inaccurate term in the 1600s) knew they were in the majority. In Barbados, the opposite was true. It was bluntly obvious to everyone that the number of people from African exceeded the number of people from Europe.

One may begin to glimpse here the racial divide that continues to this very day. The Africans, fresh off the boat, were black. They were not the wide range of hues encompassed by the term “Black” in the United States today. Today one may play guessing games with famous figures as to their racial background. There was no room for doubt in Barbados back in the 1600s. Everyone knew which side of the color line one was on, which color meant “slave,” and which person was bound by the slave codes.

SOUTH CAROLINA

At this point, one may be wondering what Barbados has to do with the United States. If you look again at the mainland colonies from the 1600s, you will notice one gaping absence – the Carolinas. The colony was founded in 1663 (not settled) under the direction of Charles II in the Restoration in Britain. It then became known as “the colony of a colony.” Barbados has been called “Little England” because it was so thoroughly English. That was true for white people. Those traditions carried over into South Carolina

While the other mainland colonies consisted of people who sailed here directly from Europe, many of the early settlers in South Carolina arrived via Barbados. People settling in the other mainland colonies did not arrive with the intention to create plantations of slaves producing sugar. … or any part of that description.

By contrast, people arriving in South Carolina were fully conversant with the plantation system where Africans were slaves, Europeans were free, and harsh slave codes were necessary to keep the peace. South Carolina, like Barbados, was an African-majority population.

One should keep in mind that it was not only White people who migrated to South Carolina. Some brought their African slaves with them. The latter too knew the plantation system.

Slavery was a significant part of the South Carolina economy right from the start. It was part of the colony’s DNA. The same cannot be said for the Chesapeake colonies or the north. Slavery took time to grow in numbers and never attained the percent of the population in South Carolina. Truly it may be said that Puritan New England and Little England Barbados belonged to two different cultural worlds, a difference that continues to divide the United States to this very day.

So whereas the settlers in Virginia 1619 or New Amsterdam in 1626 had to go through the process of deciding what exactly constituted a “slave,” the South Carolina settlers in the 1670s had no such issues. Everything had been worked out already in Barbados. It was simply a question of migrating the Barbadian way of life to the new colony.

CONCLUSION

In a blog, one cannot tell the full history of either Barbados or South Carolina or their connection in the 1600s. Yet it is enough to see that South Carolina was distinctly different than the other mainland British colonies in it its culture, demographics, racial values, and economy. With the other colonies, one traces their roots back to England of Holland. With South Carolina, one traces its roots to Barbados.

Even though in many ways, Barbados resembled Mother England, that was a Mother England without the vast drug profits from sugar and the constantly replenished African worker to harvest and process it and who were in the majority of the population. It is in Barbados that we find the development of race dividing people into Africans who were black and English who therefore must be white. It is in Barbados that we find the equation of black Africans with slavery. It is in Barbados that we find harsh slave codes to control the Africans and maintain the boundaries between the English and the African. And it is from Barbados that these values passed into the British mainland colonies to create the racial system that defined the Confederacy and the country to this very day.

SOURCES (Articles only)

Bull, Kinloch, “Barbadian Settlers in Early Carolina: Historiographical Notes” in South Carolina Historical Magazine 96/4 1995:329-339.

Burnard, Trevor, Games, Alison, ed., “Sugar and Slaves after Fifty Years,” in Early American Studies 20:4 2022:549-773 (multiple articles).

Dunn, Richard S., “The English Sugar Islands and the Founding of South Carolina,” in South Carolina Historical Magazine 72 1971:81-93.

Greene, Jack P., “Colonial South Carolina and the Caribbean Connection,” in South Carolina Historical Magazine 88/4 1987:192-210.

Greene, Jack P., “Changing Identity in the British Caribbean: Barbados as a Case  Study,” in Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, 1500-1800, Nicholas Canny and Anthony Pagden (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 213-266.

Harlow, Vincent T, A History of Barbados, 1625-1685, book review by Robert E. Park, The American Journal of Sociology 33 1928:669-670.

Harlow, Vincent T, A History of Barbados, 1625-1685, book review, unnamed, The Journal of Negro History 13 1928:102-103.

Harlow, Vincent T., A History of Barbados, 1625-1685, book review by Frank Pitman, The American Historical Review 33 1927:165-167.

Menard, Russell, “Slave Demography in the Lowcountry, 1670-1740: From Frontier Society to Plantation Regime in South Carolina Historical Magazine 96/4 1995:280-303.

O’Malley, George E., “Beyond the Middle Passage: Slave Migration from the Caribbean to North America, 1619-1807,” in William and Mary Quarterly 3rd Series 66/1 2009:125-172.

Roberts, Justin, “Surrendering Surinam: The Barbadian Diaspora and the Expansion of the English Sugar Frontier, 1670-75,” in William and Mary Quarterly 3rd Series 73/2 2016:225-256.

Roberts, Justin, and Beamish, Ian, “Venturing Out: The Barbadian Diaspora and the Carolina Colony, 1650-1685 in Creating and Contesting Carolina: proprietary era histories, Michelle LeMaster and Bradford J. Wood, ed. (Columbia: South Carolina: The University of South Carolina Press, 2013), 49-72.

Thomas, Jno. P. Jr., “The Barbadians in Early South Carolina,” in The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 31/2 1930 75-92.

Thompson, Peter, “Henry Drax’s Instruction on the Management of a Seventeenth-Century Barbadian Sugar Plantation,” in William and Mary Quarterly 3rd Series 66/3 2009:566-604.

Waterhouse, Richard, “England, the Caribbean and the Settlement of Carolina,” in Journal of American Studies 9/3 1975:259-281.

MAGA’s Have “A Beautiful Mind:” There Is No Cure

February 20, 2023
by Peter Feinman
MAGAs have problems connecting the dots

“A Beautiful Mind” is a movie about Nobel-Prize winner John Nash. He had delusions and was placed in a mental hospital by his wife. The movie plays somewhat loose with the facts as should be expected. Nash’s schizophrenia didn’t truly develop until the 1960s, after he had graduated from Princeton and married Alicia Nash. Apparently the visual delusions were made up for the film in order to capture the spirit of his real psychosis. The real Nash heard voices that mocked and argued with him constantly.

At times, Nash thought the voices were coming from aliens or angels. At the height of his madness, Nash believed that aliens were sending him encrypted messages through the New York Times and that any man wearing a red necktie was a member of a secret international communist organization. He feared that the government was working with extraterrestrials to destroy his reputation.

While there is not an exact one-to-one correspondence between Nash and MAGAs (or QAnons, there are lessons to be learned. Specifically there are three mental necessities that seem to lacking or in short supply in the thinking of MAGAs. They complicate the chances of the MAGAs ever abandoning their alternate reality for the real world no matter what “evidence” is presented. These are:

1. the ability to connect the dots
2. the ability to think things through
3. the ability to cope when confronted with the real world.

Actually they are very good with the last one – they simply shut it out.

CONNECTING THE DOTS

In the movie, Nash is superb as connecting the dots. The image shown here is from a scene where Nash is not operating in a state-of-art spy center as he hallucinates. Instead he is in a dilapidated run-down shack or barn. He is diligently clipping newspaper articles and photographs and connecting them with string. Periodically he “mails” proofs of the conspiracies he has uncovered to his recruiter. These real mailings are intercepted by his friends who save them until a climactic moment in the movie.

Previously I have written about the limitations of the mental necessities of our immature child loser President. He can only connect two dots. For him that is the ultimate achievement. That’s the way he was born. No surgery, no drug treatment, no analysis can remedy that shortcoming. For anything beyond two dots, he has to outsource that level of thinking.

Sean Hannity was a key person in that process. He has a superb ability to connect the dots even when there was no connection. Think of Seth Rich. It’s not easy to construct an alternate reality but, Hannity did it. Night after he proclaimed that he had unraveled the mystery and connected the dots of the Fake News Russia hoax. He did so until the lawsuit of the Rich family shut him up.

Even so, the technique survived. A critical component of the true MAGA mind is the belief that someone has connected the dots and made sense of the world. They gravitate towards the QAnons, the Steve Bannons, and, of course, Foxhub itself. They know that they can rely on these dot-connectors to present to them an explanation for what is going on. Disconnecting them from those dots is not going to be easy (see below).

THINK THINGS THROUGH

We have had numerous examples on the failure of MAGAs to think things through.

Think of the MAGA denunciations of gas prices over $5/gallon as if they never would come down. Think it through.

Think of the urgent need to shoot down all the Chinese balloons over the United States even if they turned out to be high school science projects. This “shoot first” policy is a perfect test case of the dangers of having a fully armed population where everyone can take the law into their own hands by shooting first and asking questions later. Think it through.

Think of the not-yet-indicted loser president exclaiming after the redacted portion of the Fulton County special grand jury report was released:

Thank you to the Special Grand Jury in the Great State of Georgia for your Patriotism & Courage. Total exoneration. The USA is very proud of you!!!

He must think Bill Barr is still the Attorney General and he had just squashed the Mueller Report. And with his “perfect phone call” we witness a replay of his first impeachment.

Here we have a redacted report that eliminates the names of the targets who will be indicted and he is claiming total exoneration! What will he say when the full report is released. Think it through.

In addition, he demonstrates no awareness, interest, or concern for the people who have been identified as targets, who now may be accused of perjury besides the election issues, and who may be indicted… and then transform into Michael Cohen! Think it through.

Finally, think of the MAGA House committees chomping at the bit to launch a series of investigations.

Think of the House committee investigating the politicization of the Department of Justice. Now it turns out the DOJ was politicized but it was by Donald Trump.

Think of the House committee investigating corruption due to foreign money. Now it turns out that Saudi Arabia is the key to the corruption and Trump and his son-in-law are the ones who need to be investigated.

One presumes that House Democrats will hold MAGA feet to the fire on these items.

One hopes that the appropriate Senate committees will launch their own investigations into the real politicization and corruption which had occurred.

THE REAL WORLD

MAGAs have had to cope with disappointments in the real world before.

1. Seth Rich did not turn out to be the key to the Russia hoax.
2. The August 14, 2021, date for the restoration of the rightful President to the White House as predicted by Pillow Head and Séance Sydney has come and gone.
3. The Inspector General report that was going to expose the Russia hoax turned out to be a nothingburger that confirmed the investigation was legitimate.

MAGA thinking has not changed.

1. The House Select Committee report with the testimony from all those Republicans did not move the needle.
2. COVID is still a hoax and the vaccines should be investigated and/or banned presumably for polio, measles, and other diseases.
3. The election still was stolen.

In January, a recount was held in Lycoming, PA. MAGAs pressured the hand re-recount of 60,000 votes. The results were a net change for the incumbent who had won the county with 69.97% of the vote. He gained 8 votes bring the total to 69.98%. It had no effect. Instead he reaction was “We’re not done” (NYT 1/16/23). The County Director of Elections Forrest Lehmann despaired that an encounter with facts would not change their minds.  Since the recount, the department has received “a series of crazy requests. They are insane,” Lehmann said sounding a lot like a Foxhub broadcaster.

Speaking of Foxhub, the emails and texts of the Foxhub personalities on what they wee actually saying when the camera was not on have just been released. Or at least some of them have. Do you think MAGAs will finally see the light and say “Gosh. I have been wrong this whole time. Joe Biden really won the election.”

Cope by denial. At one point the idea of having the three night Foxhub performers jointly say that Joe Biden really won might have made a difference. It’s too late now.

Recently, a reporter interviewed some people at a MAGA event. The two people claimed that Donald Trump was still the President in 2023. The interviewer was somewhat surprised by that answer but continued in true reporter stance maintaining his cool. The two people insisted Donald Trump was the President. In response to a question about the military, they paused because they had not thought things through. Then they rationalized that there had to be two militaries, a good military which reported to Trump and a bad military which reported to Biden. This question was asked prior to Biden’s trip to Ukraine.

Questions not asked (or asked and not shown) were:

1. If Donald Trump is the President now, then why does he claim the election was stolen?
2. If Donald Trump is the President now, then how can he run for a third term under the constitution?

We have just had proof that that stolen election will be on the ballot in 2024. In Michigan, the Democrats swept all the statewide elections in 2022 and even flipped the state legislature. This means Michigan will be a battleground state in 2024 strictly based on the actual vote. So how did the Republicans respond to this defeat in the real world? Two election-deniers battled each other for the leadership position in the Republican Party. The vote-counting was delayed due to the use of paper ballots and hand-counting! What have they learned from 2022? Nothing except to urge the Party of Republicans.

In an interview with Sean Hannity, the now announced candidate Nikki Haley said:

We have lost the seven out of eight popular votes for president. It is time that we get a Republican in there that can lead and that can win a general election.

At that point Hannity should have taken her to task. Republicans lost five of six elections from 1992 to 2008 but MAGAs won the popular vote in 2016 and 2020.

One may anticipate that 2020 will be on the ballot again, that candidates will be asked if the election was stolen, and if Biden is the legitimate president. They will be put on the spot in the primaries and the winner will be put on the spot in the general election. I have not seen polls yet for 2024 comparing a candidate who thinks the election was stolen with one who does not. Republican candidates will be obligated to claim the election was stolen. Eventually someone will ask Nikki Haley about her “oversight.”  The minds of MAGA will not be changed not even by the disclosed Foxhub emails. But they will become more a more a laughingstock to Team Normal as they stick with the insane craziness and the candidates who support it.

Why Would Nikki Haley Want the Nomination? Which Nomination Anyway?

June 29, 2020
by Peter Feinman
And the Nominee Is... (Photo: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images)

Note: I decided last week to write this blog this week. In so doing I gambled that there would be more of the same in the news but nothing drastic like the revelation of the Russian bounty on American soldiers and no American response. You never really know what to expect except that it will be something you never imagined.

As the days wind down to the Convention, once again the name of Nikki Haley is bandied about for a national nomination. That attention has followed her since July, 2015:

Haley’s decisive action to drive the final removal of the banner from statehouse grounds quickly and relatively cleanly in the glare of the national spotlight proved a well-timed audition for higher office ahead of the 2016 Republican veepstakes. Nikki Haley’s star rises as rebel flag comes down

Now here we are nearly five years later and her name is mentioned once again. But for which position on the national ticket? Haley is an ambitious adult who lives in the real world. Why would she want a position on the national ticket in 2020 anyway?

Let’s consider three scenarios.

PENCE IS DUMPED

The most common position discussed is the vice-presidential nomination as a replacement for the incumbent Vice President. For this to occur, there are several decisions which need to be made.

First is that the reelection prospects are so dire that a Hail Mary is needed. This means that the person who thinks of himself as a winner who never loses has to admit to himself that as things stand he is a loser. Remember, in his mind, he won the popular vote in 2016, too. It is in that mind that the decision will be made. Can he admit for the record that he is headed for a defeat and needs the help of someone else to rescue him?

As of now, it would seem that he is not at the point. His first reaction upon learning of a poll showing Biden with a 14% lead was to sue. By now with virtually every poll showing Biden with a 50% or more support and/or a double-digit lead, he would have to sue almost all the pollsters in America including Fox. That doesn’t appear to have happened.

He knows the polls are against him now.

He knows there was no overflow attendance and a blue sea of empty seats inside at his rally in Tulsa.

He knows that Bolton’s book portrays him as begging for it from the Chinese.

He knows that the newest scandal shows him approving of Putin putting a target on the backs of American soldiers. MORE FAKE NEWS.

There is still is no sign that he has reached a point where he will admit he is a loser and ready to throw the Hail Mary. That could change at any moment.

Second, what are the ramifications of dumping his loyal Vice President? Mike Pence has sold his soul to be the successor, not the dumped one. While there is insufficient time to write a book between the time dumped and the election, there certainly is plenty of opportunity for him to go “Bolton” and do the talk shows. True after all his “happy talk” about the coronavirus, he has limited credibility. Anything he said could be considered sour grapes because he was dumped. Is dumping him a risk worth taking?

Third, even if the decision is made to dump the loyal Vice President and take your chances on what he might say, the question still remains why would Haley take the position? She would know it is being offered to her only as an act of desperation. Who knows what else will be revealed in the weeks and months to come. After all, who anticipated his latest example of submissiveness to Putin? To expect her to accept the Vice Presidency is like asking her to charter a plane to fly over the Atlantic Ocean so she can parachute onto the Titanic AFTER it hit the iceberg. For an ambitious person living in the real world joining the ticket as a replacement easily could be an act of political suicide.

Based on the above, my impression, for whatever it is worth, of Haley being the Vice President nominee has more to do with writers having too much spare time to spin scenarios than a likely event.

THE LBJ PRESIDENT

What about the position of President? Would Haley accept that nomination? Lately there has been talk [Morning Joe] about a supposed candidate with no vision or agenda for the second term, who seems to be going through the motions of running. Could he just to an LBJ and announce that he is not a candidate for the 2020 election?

For this scenario to happen, the same considerations as noted above would have to occur with one addition. The addition would be the realization that even the Hail Mary with Nikki Haley wouldn’t work. When the 2020 year began, there was a reasonable expectation of reelection. Sure the Democratic Party would win the popular vote as it always does with one exception during the era of Baby-boomer Presidents. But it was still possible to win the Electoral College despite being a popular-vote loser. Lately those prospects have changed. Instead of fighting over battle ground states, the newest trend is that the battle ground states could be swept by Biden. Then the fight will be over possible purple states like Texas. Given the rapid increase of coronavirus cases in Texas (along with Arizona and Florida), the election could be shaping up to be comparable to Obama in 2008 or Bush in 1988. Those results would have been considered impossible at the beginning of this year but now seem quite reasonable. And this is before the polls digest the latest scandal with Putin. It now has reached a point where even Trumpican Senators are getting nervous about the fate of the Republican Party.

The longtime pretend Democrat and Clinton supporter couldn’t care less about the fate of the Republican Party. It’s all about him. It always is. He could decide that he wants to go out as a winner with the greatest three years of any American President ever. Why risk defeat yet alone a humiliating defeat in November? He would have no problem leaving the Party in the lurch at the last minute and walking away.

But there would be consequences to such actions. The Trumpican Senate which prevented him from being removed from office would no longer protect him. I am not saying he would be impeached and convicted in his last few months. But all protections would be lost if he announced he wasn’t running again. He would be at risk for investigations by people out for blood.

And who would be the nominee then? Anyone with the Trump taint would be doomed in November. If the party wanted to save itself, prepare for 2024, and hope for the best, it would need a presidential candidate who could insult, mock, and demean Putin’s Pence as the Democrats will. Even then the likelihood of success would be minimal. So if the LBJ withdrawal occurs, why would Haley even try to pick up the pieces to salvage the election? In some vain hope that she will be remembered for her sacrifice and be nominated again? In 2024, it will have been76 years since Stevenson was nominated in consecutive campaigns and lost both. Even if the Party is abandoned at the last minute in July or August, I don’t see how it is in Haley’s interest to fill the void.

THE NIXON PRESIDENT

The Howard Baker moment has passed. Suppose the current Russian scandal proves the worst nightmares about an American President selling out his country [and for what in return?]. It is hard to imagine given the time constraints the Trumpican Senators supporting any drastic action against him. And leaving office early means loss of immunity at both the New York State and federal level.  Even Barr might grow concerned if the LBJ or Nixon precedents were followed. In fact, he may grow concerned anyway.

In conclusion, as of 6:45 PM June 29, 2020, when this blog was posted to the IHARE website, I do not expect to see Nikki Haley as a candidate for Vice President or President in 2020 with the caveat that at any given moment anything could happen which would cause me to change my mind.

Wishful Thinking and the Tulsa Truth

June 22, 2020
by Peter Feinman
A Blue Wave Coming (Matt Barnard/Tulsa World via AP)

We all engage in wishful thinking. It is one way to remain optimistic, to keep up one’s spirits, to have hope. It is also the proverbial Wiley Coyote running off the cliff – it works until you look down. Then SPLAT!

25th Amendment

Mike Pence has been a source of wishful thinking. When this administration began there were a series of blogs in History News Network (HNN) about him. They had to do with his activation of the 25th Amendment to end the current administration almost immediately. In a series of posts to  HNN, this contributor carefully explained how the 25th Amendment worked. But the analysis did not stop there. It was followed by a meticulously detailed description of every individual who would be involved in the implementation of the 25th Amendment to discharge the President and have the Vice President becoming the Acting President. The analysis demonstrated that the votes were there to make it happen. The writer confidently predicted that it would happen. If the current administration wouldn’t be the shortest on record it would be close to it. Obviously the 25th Amendment maneuver didn’t work or even happen unlike the Impeachment ploy. It should be noted that this writer also had confidently predicted that the 2016 elections would result in a Democratic victory with over 330 Electoral College votes and possibly over 350. All of this was pure wishful thinking. It gave the appearance of sound research while being based on absolutely nothing substantive. As you might expect, I don’t read this blogger anymore. The again that writer has refrained from making predictions and sticks to anodyne summaries of the past.

Michael D’Antonio

Recently Michael D’Antonio decided to engage in some wishful thinking. His article “Time for Pence to jump ship?” was posted on not HNN but CNN (June 11, 2020). D’Antonio wrote:

With a schism forming [in the Republican Party], the time is ripe for a high-level official to make the dramatic break that would signal that someone is ready to stand as the leader of the post-Trump Republican Party. I would nominate for this job, Vice President Mike Pence. Unprecedented? Pretty much. But the Trump era is unprecedented too, and Pence signaled, when he agreed that he would be Trump’s running mate, that he’s willing to do the unexpected.

Here we can observe three examples of wishful thinking:

1. That there still is a Republican Party – the Republican Party no longer exists except in name. Actual Republicans like Romney in the Senate and some governors are few and far between.

2. That there will be a post-Trump Party after 2020 – unless his health really takes a turn for the worse he will not leave the stage especially after defeat. And if Eugene Debs ran for President from jail, so can a convicted person today.

3. That Vice President Brown Nose is willing to do the unexpected.

D’Antonio compounds his wishful thinking with the following:

Pence should weigh the merits of declaring he won’t be vice president for a possible second term….Behind that mild-mannered persona lurks a savvy and opportunistic politician…. Conditions are perfect, in other words, for Mike Pence to observe that either he needs to spend more time with his family or believes the President would benefit from the excitement that would come were he to run with a fresh face — perhaps former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley — beside him. Pence could resign, saying Trump is just too loyal to fire him, and graciously make a path for himself to become the new leader of the GOP come the defeat of the Trump-Haley ticket in November.

It’s hard not to laugh when reading this. After all, D’Antonio is the author of Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success and co-author with Peter Eisner of The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence. He is a serious, reputable person. His opinions are sought on talk shows. Technically, he has made a case on paper of the merits of Vice President Brown Nose taking a bold dramatic action that would thrust him into a leadership position post-2020 elections. But in fact, what D’Antonio wrote is pure unadulterated wishful thinking.

The proof was shown a few days later on June 15, 2020. The headline for The New York Times tells the tale:

As Cases Rise, Pence Promotes a Misleading Claim About Testing.

The article recounts how Pence “encouraged governors on Monday to adopt the administration’s claim that increased testing helps account for the new coronavirus outbreak reports, even though evidence has shown that the explanation is misleading.”  Not surprisingly, the false claim was the same on previously made by the President and which would be repeated in Tulsa. Stop the testing means stopping the number of cases of new infections means the deaths decrease.

There is no sign of bold dramatic action. There are two ways the D’Antonio scenario could work. One is if he became convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was no way the ticket was going to win, he could abandon ship for his own survival. Second, if he got wind that he was going to be dumped for Haley, he might bow out first. But either way, he still would be Vice President until January and still perform as a Brown Nose. The result will be he sold his soul for nothing.

Trumpicans and the Coronavirus

Tulsa exposed the wishful thinking of Trumpicans. Consider these examples:

1. “This coronavirus is a little bit hyped. The media hypes things,” Anonymous.

If only FAKE NEWS knocked off their hyped reporting, there would be no talk of 120,000 dead and they would not be dead either…or the deaths aren’t really from the coronavirus anyway. Who knows how this unidentified electrician from Seattle is able to live in an alternate reality. The whole thing must be a hoax.

This second example lends credence to Trumpicans thinking it is a hoax.

2. “It’s all fake. They’re just making the numbers up. I haven’t seen anybody die, not from coronavirus. I don’t know anybody who’s got it,” said Mike Alcorn, Wichita, Kansas.

3. “I’ve been watching this closely over the last four months or so, and the numbers just don’t add up,” said Jeff Eskew, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

4. “[The virus] is a scare tactic more than anything. And I just don’t believe all those deaths are coronavirus,” said Donald Fanning, Wichita Kansas.

Do you see any global warming in your backyard? I don’t see any global warming in your backyard. It’s all fake, it’s all made up.

How can you even blame China for a hoax? How can China be at fault if it’s all fake? That’s like saying the Bolton book is a complete lie but the lies are classified so it shouldn’t be published.

Remember, Trumpicans like mainland Chinese only get their news from the government propaganda machine. What are the odds on Fox showing how much better Europe has done then the United States in reducing the number of coronavirus deaths? What are the odds of Fox showing how much better countries from around the world have done in stopping the coronavirus? What are the odds on Fox showing the rise in coronavirus deaths in Trumpican states because it is not a New York problem anymore?  The Trumpican wishful thinking on the coronavirus will continue until Trumpicans start dying in droves and they all do know someone who died from it. I suspect, that little by little more and more Trumpicans will learn to live in the real world because it will become more and more difficult to live a lie.

THE TULSA TURNING POINT

I am going to go out on a limb with my wishful thinking. Tulsa was nothing like it was hyped to be or I expected it to be based on the hype. Tulsa may signal the turning point. For weeks now, Little Donnee Wanney has been the equivalent of a caged animal who hasn’t been feed. He was starved for the energy of a raucous crowd that would ignite his election campaign and power him to victory in November. Without the energy of Trumpicans he is just a tired irritable old man who has trouble walking down a ramp or raising a glass of water with one hand. With their energy he becomes the Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name. There is no Plan B. He has no vision except that he be the center of attention and be re-elected so he can stay out of jail. If the defining characteristic of his campaign in 2016 is removed from him, he has nothing left but hissy fit tweets from his White House bunker. A crowd of over 6000 when 19,000 indoor and 40,000 outdoor were expected doesn’t cut it. Where were all the people! Have they seen the light?

Tulsa is more than just a campaign event. True he can use it to take credit for making the country aware of a holiday that has been celebrated for 155 years. That is no small achievement. But Tulsa may be more remembered as a Toto moment. The curtain has been pulled backed. He looks not just like a loser to Biden but weak and wrong on everything: coronavirus, the economy, China, race, the courts, his niece, and his finances. Right now it seems as if the refs will have to throw a red flag for piling on just to save him. The military is not going to support him if he loses the election and claims “foul.” Even Barr seems to have his limits. President One-Term won’t want to leave the White House, but who will be left to help him remain there? All the adults are gone, the only ones left are loyalists and the son in-law. It will be easier to get him to leave the White House following an election defeat than I previously had thought. Perhaps Brian Williams is right to have started a countdown.