The Wells Brothers' Election Commentary: 2024

by David R. Wells and Lawrence H. Wells
19 Oct 2024

“Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”

― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

It is time for another in our series of election year commentaries.

As usual, the political season (which seems to get longer every cycle) is rather depressing. The candidates rant and bluster, and pander to their favorite special interest groups. They tell lies, and expect us to believe them. We are not at all impressed.

2024 is a presidential election year. To our surprise, current Vice President Kamala Harris is now the Democratic Party candidate; and to our great dismay former President Donald Trump is the Republican Party candidate.

2024 is also a Congressional election year. These elections are also critical to the future direction of our nation, especially if we assume the next Congress will be as narrowly divided as the current one. We cannot offer detailed analysis on the elections for all 435 Congressional and 33 Senate seats, so we will only speak generally.

1 What is at stake

" … It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind."

" … a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants."

- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 1.

What is at stake in the 2024 election is representative democracy in the United States.

A democracy depends on one simple principle: All candidates for office must accept the results of an election. Any candidate who cannot accept the results of an election is almost by definition against democracy. Yet again in 2024 we see a major party fielding candidates who claim that elections have only one possible outcome: They win. If they don't win, they claim the election is somehow fraudulent. (And their inability to produce any evidence of fraud is somehow irrelevant.)

We will be governed by a few simple principles in this election:

• We will not support any candidate for any office who does not publicly say they will respect the results of the 2024 election.

• We will not support any candidate for any office who does not publicly acknowledge that the results of the 2020 election are legitimate. The 2020 election was not stolen.

• We will not support any candidate for any office who even tacitly condones political violence by anyone. Political violence by anyone, whether they are shouting shouting "Stop the Steal" or "No Justice, No Peace", has no place in a democratic election.

• We will not support any candidate for any office who supports Donald Trump. Indeed, we’re inclined to vote against any Republican who does not publicly repudiate Donald Trump. We believe that if given power, Donald Trump and his supporters, having commenced as demagogues, will end as tyrants.

Those who have read our previous election commentaries will know that we are not fans of "strategic voting", or voting for "the lesser of evils". While we still believe in voting your conscience, in this election those living in competitive districts do need to consider the implications of a victory by the "greater of evils".

1.1 Charles Koch Redux: Cancer vs. Heart Attack

Back in 2016, we agreed with Charles Koch’s analogy that choosing between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was like choosing between cancer and a heart attack. In the years since, we have extended the analogy slightly by specifying the Trump was the heart attack and Clinton (and other Democrats) were cancer. We do not want a recurrence of either. A second heart attack might mean the death of the republic. Untreated cancer will cause death more slowly. The question is whether we can survive long enough for sanity to prevail.

“The key word in your entire peroration, Mr. Spock, was... death.” Harcourt Fenton Mudd, "Star Trek: I, Mudd", Act 1

2 Donald Trump: Not Then, Not Now, Not Ever.

“I fail to comprehend your indignation, sir. I have simply made the logical deduction that you are a liar.” - Spock, “Star Trek: The Alternative Factor”, Act 1

Convicted felon Donald Trump is clearly unfit for any public office. We believe that he is not merely incompetent; we believe that he has become a clear and present danger to our republic and its Constitution. Trump has openly advocated suspending at least part of the U. S. Constitution - the very document that the President of the United States must swear to uphold and protect.

His unfitness is so obvious that it should not even be necessary to explain. And yet it is necessary.

On May 30 2024, Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records, a felony under New York State law. You can read them for yourself. Compared to other felonies these are relatively minor, but felonies nonetheless, and punishable by prison time under New York law.

Donald Trump is a habitual liar. His entire “campaign” since 2020 is based on the lie that he actually won the 2020 election, but his “victory” was “stolen” by “massive” election fraud. Of course he does not mention that neither he, his legal team, or any of his supporters have been able to produce any evidence of this supposed fraud. This is the main reason none of his court cases challenging the election results were successful. Trump and his supporters surely know this. We believe they are engaging in a “Big Lie” campaign like those tyrants and would-be tyrants have employed for at least a century.

We must note that to date there actually has been an indictment involving attempted fraud in the 2020 election:

THE STATE OF GEORGIA v. DONALD JOHN TRUMP (et al), 14 Aug 2023

Note that this is the actual indictment document, direct from the primary source and unfiltered by any news organization or political “influencer”. Read it for yourself.

There has also been an indictment that does not directly involve election fraud, but does involve an attempt to illegally change the outcome of the 2020 election:

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. DONALD J. TRUMP, Defendant., 01 Aug 2023

Once again this is an actual indictment document from the primary source. Read it for yourself. You may also wish to read the recently unsealed court filing that presents additional evidence.

Additional evidence of Trump’s unfitness for office can be found in his indictment for illegally possessing and mishandling classified government documents:

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. DONALD J. TRUMP, WALTINE NAUTA, and CARLOS DE OLIVEIRA, Defendants., 27 Jul 2023

Read it for yourself, then consider this quote:

“As the head of the executive branch and Commander in Chief, I have a unique, Constitutional responsibility to protect the Nation's classified information, including by controlling access to it. … More broadly, the issue of [a former executive branch official's] security clearance raises larger questions about the practice of former officials maintaining access to our Nation's most sensitive secrets long after their time in Government has ended. Such access is particularly inappropriate when former officials have transitioned into highly partisan positions and seek to use real or perceived access to sensitive information to validate their political attacks. Any access granted to our Nation's secrets should be in furtherance of national, not personal, interests.”

- President Donald Trump, July 26, 2018

Further, we must remind our readers of Trump’s numerous policy failures:

• His unconditional surrender to the Taliban in Afghanistan. In case you’ve forgotten, these are the Taliban who aided and abetted Osama bin Laden as he planned and carried out the September 11, 2001 terror attack on the United States. If the Taliban made any significant concessions in this agreement, we can’t find them.

• His trade war with China (which he told us would be easy to win), which made our trade deficit even worse.

• His border wall which can (and has) been breached with a Sawzall. (And Mexico didn’t pay a single peso for it.)

• His failed engagement with North Korea.

• His alienation of our NATO allies.

• His mismanagement of the Federal budget, which increased the gross national debt by $6.9 trillion in just four years. This is more than the free-spending Obama admininstration increased the nation debt in 8 years. Trump's current campaign proposals indicate that he would repeat this dismal performance if re-elected.

• His wildly inconsistent response to the COVID epidemic. His administration’s one major success was Operation Warp Speed, which led to effective vaccines in a remarkably short period of time; yet paradoxically he encouraged his supporters to avoid these vaccines. We suspect he did this simply because he was afraid to tell his supporters something they did not wish to hear. That is not leadership; it is cowardice. Over a million American died from COVID during the pandemic.

2.1 Trump mythologies

Much of Trump’s support seems to be based on beliefs that often have little to no basis in reality. Some examples:

The economy was better under Trump

This is mostly false. With the important exception of inflation, the economy is as good or better than it was under Trump. Consider:

• Real (above inflation) Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is generally considered the best single measure of the overall economy. It is currently growing 2.96% annually. This is the best growth rate since the Clinton Administration.

  It’s difficult to fairly compare this to GDP growth under Trump. The after-inflation annual GDP growth rate over his entire term in office was a lackluster 1.26%; but GDP in 2020 was severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and this shouldn’t be blamed on Trump. If we only consider GDP for 2017, 2018, and 2019, annual growth was 2.70% - about the same as the 2.69% long term average real GDP growth since 1949. It’s not bad, but it’s certainly unremarkable.

• The total number of people employed (rounded to the nearest 1,000) was 161,266,000 in July 2024, compared to 149,817,000 in January 2021 when Trump left office. This translates to about 266,000 new jobs per month.

  Comparisons Trump’s administration are again complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic; but during the pre-COVID years 2017 through January 2020, the average was about 175,000 new jobs per month.

  To put these numbers in perspective, about 152,500 jobs per month are needed just to keep up with the normal growth of the population.

• Domestic oil and natural gas production are both at record high levels. The United States is currently the world’s largest oil producer.

• The Standard and Poor’s 500 stock index is almost 50% higher than it was in January 2021.

• The average annual unadjusted trade deficit with China from 2021 through 2024 was $324 billion. This is better than the $361 billion average during Trump’s term in office, or the $346 billion average during Obama’s second term.

Inflation is the one economic factor that actually was better under Trump. It averaged 2.1% from January 2017 to January 2020; it averaged 5.1% from January 2021 to August 2024. (Note that we’re again discarding data from 2020, when COVID dramatically disrupted the economy.) But this doesn’t tell the whole story. Most of the inflation happened in 2021 and early 2022; since then it’s fallen to around 2.5%, and it continues to gradually fall.

The Biden Administration and Congress (which was narrowly controlled by the Democratic Party in 2021 and 2022) certainly deserve a share of the blame for inflation. The last deficit financed COVID economic stimulus package clearly over-stimulated the economy, which led to higher inflation. But the Trump Administration also deserves a large helping of blame for inflation. The Federal budget for the 2021 fiscal year was passed in 2020 while Trump was in office. The actual deficit in fiscal year 2021 was $2,775 billion. This is higher than any budget deficit during either the Obama administration or the Biden administration. The deficit for fiscal year 2020 (passed during 2019) was even higher at $3,132 billion. Over Trump’s four years in office the gross national debt rose by $6,923 billion to $28.4 trillion. This is more than the national debt increase over the 8 years of the Obama administration, including the massive government spending in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crash. And Trump claimed that the economy during his term was amazingly strong. If the economy really was strong, Trump’s high level of deficit spending was certain to trigger inflation sooner or later. In our opinion the only thing that delayed it was the COVID recession of 2020.

Trump’s overly broad tariffs also contributed to inflation. Despite what Trump says, those tariffs are paid by you. This might have been an acceptable trade-off if they had actually reduced the US trade deficit with China, but they did not. As we noted above the $361 billion average annual trade deficit with China during Trump’s term in office is worse than the averages for both Biden’s and Obama’s terms in office.

It’s also worth examining inflation from 2021 to 2024 in a few other countries for comparison:

European Union	6.4%
Hungary alone	12.6%
Turkey	48.1%

We highlighted Hungary and Turkey because Trump often praises their leaders, and their economic policies are similar to the ones Trump advocates.

Crime was lower under Trump.

This is completely false. The national violent crime actually rose slightly during Trump’s term, though it’s fair to say it hardly changed at all. The median violent crime rate during the Obama administration was actually slightly lower than it was under Trump; the violent crime rate during Biden’s first two years was lower still. (Crime data for 2023 won’t be available until mid October, unfortunately.)

In 2022 the property crime rate did increase slightly from 2021, but it is still lower than any year Trump was in office.

We should note that the national rate for all crimes has been falling fairly steadily since 1992. National political leadership has little if anything to do with this long term trend; it’s more about demographics.

Trump was better for US border security.

This is highly debatable at best. The effectiveness Trump’s much touted border wall (much of which already existed when he took office) is questionable. Trump’s wall remains in place, yet illegal immigration remains too high. If it was so effective prior to 2021, why isn’t it effective now?

Trump’s immigration policy was almost entirely based on border enforcement that was sometimes draconian. He did not even propose legislation to address any factors that might contribute to illegal immigration, for example the often extremely slow legal immigration process. Trump’s draconian border enforcement policies also might or might not have reduced illegal immigration. But even if they did, were they worth the moral cost?

While illegal immigration is a real problem, Trump and his Republican supporters in Congress now have absolutely no credibility on the issue. This year the Biden Administration (no doubt spurred by fear that high illegal immigration might cost him re-election) belatedly negotiated a bipartisan immigration and border enforcement bill that included many items favored by Republicans. It was in fact more a Republican bill than a Democrat bill, and it might have reduced illegal immigration. But when Donald Trump opposed the bill (openly stating that solving the illegal immigration problem might hurt his chances for re-election), Republican support immediately evaporated. That tells us they’re more concerned about getting Trump elected than about actually solving the illegal immigration problem.

Trump was better for national security/national defense.

No. Defense spending did rise from 3.09% of GDP to 3.40% of GDP during Trump’s administration, but there was little to show for it: While the Navy added 17 commissioned ships, 15 were Littoral Combat Ships which have proven to be of little value; and all of these ships were begun under the previous two administrations. Army “end strength” (including Army Reserve and National Guard) fell from 1,018,000 to 1,012,200. The 2017 edition of Heritage Foundation’s annual Index of U. S. Military Strength rated overall US military power as “marginal” in 2016; the 2021 edition still rated overall US military power as “marginal” in 2020. Official U. S. government policy states that the U. S. military should be capable of handling two major regional conflicts simultaneously. The Heritage Foundation’s “marginal” rating indicates that , in their opinion, the U. S. military would have great difficulty meeting this goal.

Oh yes, The Trump administration did “create” the Space Force. This was done by moving existing military assets into the new command, and creating another bureaucracy without adding any new military assets. We feel safer already.

Russia would never have invaded Ukraine had Trump been in office.

We don’t believe this for a second. Putin’s long term goal is clearly to geographically put the Soviet Union (or should we say Russian Empire?) back together again. He therefore either had to install a compliant government in Ukraine, or invade. When his attempts to install a compliant Ukrainian government failed, an invasion became inevitable. We believe Trump, who never misses an opportunity to praise Putin, would have let him do it with little if any protest. We also note that, referring to our NATO allies, Trump infamously said “No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay.” If Trump is openly unwilling to support our NATO allies – some of whom sent their own troops to support the U. S. in Afghanistan after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks – we are certain he wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help a non-NATO country like Ukraine. It’s more likely he would have told Putin and his minions “to do whatever the hell they want”.

Trump now claims to have a plan to quickly end the war in Ukraine. He has of course provided absolutely no details. Recent statements by both Trump and J. D. Vance hint that their “plan” might resemble the Munich Agreement of 1938. Those who were paying attention in history class will know how well that worked.

2.2 On Vice Presidential Nominee J. D. Vance

Senator J. D. Vance has proven to be a major disappointment. In years past, there was cause to hope that he might become a thoughtful and useful senator with a outsider’s perspective.

• He wrote his own bestselling book, “Hillbilly Elegy”, without assistance from ghost writers.

• He served as a Marine in Iraq, albeit as a journalist.

• He worked as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, which might have given him some realistic ideas about economics.

• He initially denounced Trump, and identified himself as a “Never Trumper”.

Sadly he seems to have sold his soul to get the vice presidential nomination. He should ask former Vice President Mike Pence how well that works out. At best he’s just another politician who stands for nothing, and will say literally anything (no matter how obviously false) to get elected.

2.3 On Assassination Attempts

There have now been two attempts to assassinate Donald Trump. While we are absolutely opposed to his candidacy, we are also opposed to political violence of any kind. We believe that Donald Trump must be defeated at the ballot box, not murdered.

2.4 Conclusion

Donald Trump is a convicted felon. He has lied so often that we’re not even sure that he knows what the truth is. He was a failure in office 2017-2021, and he attempted to overthrow the Constitutional order on January 6, 2021. We can only conclude that he is a danger to the Republic. Not only will we not support him under any circumstance, we will use all peaceful legal means at our disposal to oppose his reelection.

3. Why we’re not enthusiastic about Kamala Harris

Like almost everyone else, we expected the Democratic Party to nominate incumbent President Joe Biden as their 2024 candidate for President. Oops…

Instead, the Democratic Party has nominated Vice President Kamala Harris. Biden received little scrutiny in the primary process this year as he was virtually unopposed. As the presumptive Vice Presidential nominee, Harris received even less scrutiny. While we can presume that her views are largely in line with Biden administration policies, we have relatively little time to examine her history and views in detail. We’d normally evaluate an incumbent’s record in office, but that’s tricky for a Vice President; the Vice President’s official powers are quite limited. With that caveat, since she is a part of the Biden administration we think it’s reasonable to consider the Biden administration’s record. It is also reasonable to consider her own record as a senator, vice president, and presidential candidate.

Unlike Donald Trump, Kamala Harris is a conventional politician. In the immortal words of Dick Smothers, that was not a compliment. Like Trump, she has been on at least two sides of several major issues, including the death penalty, hydraulic fracturing, border enforcement, marijuana legalization, and Medicare for All. A charitable interpretation is she’s open to changing her position when she gets new information; but it also might mean she is a “finger in the wind” politician. But she is unlike Trump in another important way: She has shown that she will follow the law even when she doesn’t like it.

3.1 The Biden record

In 2020 President Biden campaigned on his ability to govern competently. While he has governed more competently than his immediate predecessor, he made some significant blunders. Perhaps the most glaring example was the disastrous 2020 evacuation of Kabul. While it is true that the Biden administration inherited a terrible deal with the Taliban from the Trump administration (indeed, Trump’s deal was little more than an unconditional surrender), the blame for its inept implementation must fall on the Biden administration. Perhaps his administration learned from this mistake though, because the Biden administration's handling of the more difficult crises in Ukraine and the Middle East have been reasonably good. We are however concerned that the incremental approach to the war in Ukraine does have some disturbing similarities to the unsuccessful strategy of gradual escalation that the Johnson Administration used during the Vietnam War.

The Biden administration was also slow to respond when inflation surged in 2022. Here too the Biden administration is not entirely to blame: The Federal Reserve, led by Trump appointee Jerome Powell, did not raise interest rates in a timely manner. Like Powell, Biden’s treasury secretary Janet Yellen believed that the inflation was “transitory”, despite clear evidence to the contrary. The Trump administration’s fiscal policies, which could hardly be described as frugal, set the stage for the high inflation of 2021-22, but Biden and his allies in Congress have done little to restrain deficit spending. The historical data tables in the Biden Administration’s 2024 Federal budget plan shows that the deficit in 2022 was a larger percentage of GDP than it was in 2009, when the Obama administration was countering the severe recession that began in 2008. The budget plan’s deficit forecasts through 2028 indicate that we can expect little to no improvement, even though the current robust GDP growth is projected to continue.

“How can you have money,” demanded Ford, “if none of you actually produces anything? It doesn’t grow on trees you know.” […]

“Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich. […]
"But we have also," continued the management consultant, "run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship's peanut."

Douglas Adams, “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”, Chapter 32

One example of the Biden-Harris administration’s questionable spending is the student debt cancellation program. Let us state for the record that there really is a problem with student debt. College and University education is vastly more expensive than it was when we were students. College costs have been increasing at roughly double the overall inflation rate since the late 1970s, and students are unreasonably expected to finance the titanic cost of tuition by borrowing. Unless a young student can be certain of a high paying job upon graduation, this debt is nearly impossible to repay. While the Biden-Harris debt cancellation program provides relief to some students, it does so at Federal expense, adding to the deficit. Further, it does not address the “root cause” of the problem, that is excessive tuition. A one time cancellation does not fix the problem, and it will need to be addressed again in a very few years. Some lawyers have Constitutional problems with this program as well. We will not address those here, but the program has gotten tangled up in numerous lawsuits.

The Biden administration’s record on border enforcement was quite bad for most of his administration. It seemed to be the “de facto open border” policy of previous administrations. It got so bad that Democratic-party leaders of major cities were complaining about the costs of housing and educating all of the new immigrants. Immigration has decreased this year, just in time for the election. The Administration’s inaction has made Trump into a viable candidate in 2024.

3.2 Harris’ own record

In 2020 we took some solace from the fact that Biden himself is a “traditional” center-left Democrat, not a far left “progressive”. Kamala Harris seems to be farther to the left than Biden. Biden’s “old school” approach to politics meant he was at least willing to negotiate in good faith with his political opponents, and he tried to find common ground where possible. Kamala Harris has much less of a track record on this front, but she has expressed some willingness to at least listen to opposing points of view. During her brief time as a Senator she occasionally worked on bipartisan bills that were sponsored by Republicans, including a bail reform bill with Rand Paul; an election security bill with James Lankford; and a workplace harassment bill with Lisa Murkowski. We also take some encouragement from the fact that she withstood political pressure from “progressives” during her term as California’s Attorney General, and enforced laws that were not popular with the Left. When pressed she remarked that an Attorney General must uphold the law as it is, not as they wish it to be.

We’re less encouraged by her choice of liberal Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate. We’d have preferred a more centrist Democrat. But Walz was able to win elections in a state that has many rural, Republican leaning areas, so we can’t dismiss him as an extreme liberal. (We also liked his “Mind your own damn business” remark.)

While it is true that Vice President Harris was never appointed “Border Czar”, she was charged with investigating the “root causes” of the large scale immigration of recent years. To the best of our knowledge, she never issued a report on this, not did she make any policy recommendations. Certainly there were no major policy changes as a result of her efforts.

3.3 Harris’ Policy Proposals (such as they are)

• $25,000 for first time home buyers. This sounds great at first, but there are some unanswered questions:

  • Where will the money going to come from? Higher taxes? Spending cuts elsewhere? Or will the government just borrow more money? (We’re betting on option 3.)

  • What will stop sellers from raising prices by $25,000?

• 3 million new homes. Again, where will the money come from?

• Price controls on groceries. We’re old enough to remember President Nixon’s price controls in the early 1970s. It didn’t work then; there is no reason to believe it will work any better now. In fairness Harris isn’t proposing 1970s style price controls, but rather a ban on “ price gouging”. The problems with this are price gouging doesn’t seem to be contributing significantly to inflation; and price gouging is difficult to define. As usual the devil is in the details, and at the moment Harris hasn’t provided many details.

• A cap on prescription drug prices. While ever escalating prescription drug costs are unquestionably a significant problem, a simplistic price cap is unlikely to solve it. We would again point to the failure of the Nixon era price controls as a cautionary example. And again Harris has not provided much detail on this proposal. If it’s not a literal price cap, would costs above the “cap” be shifted to the Federal government? And if the government picks up the tab, we’re back to “Where does the money come from?”

• Exempting tips from Federal income tax. This idea (which was first proposed by Trump) sounds good at first, but it actually has some serious problems:

  • Making tips tax exempt would create a strong perverse incentive to “game the system” by shifting salary to “tips”; we predict it wouldn't take long for lawyers, corporate executives, and the like to become “tipped workers”. Harris does say her proposal will include strict income limits, but a key word is “will”. We have not seen a detailed proposal yet.

  • It will create an unfair situation where higher income tipped workers can have a lower tax rate than lower income non-tipped workers. Why for example should someone who works in a restaurant get taxed at a lower rate than someone doing comparable work in a cafeteria?

  • The number of people who would actually be helped is questionable. Economist Ernie Tedeschi of Yale’s Budget Lab recently noted that tipped workers are only about 2.5% of the labor force; and over a third of them already pay no Federal income tax.

3.4 What we think the Democratic Party should do if they want to defeat Trump

Since no viable third party candidate has emerged, Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party are the only plausible alternative to Donald Trump and what now passes for the Republican Party.

The Democratic Party cannot win in 2024 with only the support of its base. If it wants to win, it needs to earn the support of centrist voters who are highly skeptical of the far left policies favored by its base. It needs to earn the support of people like us.

The first step the Democratic Part must take: Stop creating Trump voters.

The Democratic Party must recognize that the issues that Donald Trump exploits are real, and in the past the Democratic Party has failed to address them. It must not simply write off voters who care about these issues, as it has done in the past. It also must at least recognize the problems with the Democratic Party that we discussed in our 2020 election commentary.

If the Democratic Party wishes to earn the votes of centrist voters and principled conservatives - voters like us - it must run with platform that we can support, or at least accept.

A lurch to the far left might appeal to the “progressive” wing of the party, but it is not likely to go over well with the broader electorate. The under-performance of the Democratic Party in the 2020 elections should provide a cautionary tale. Despite the unpopularity of the incumbent Republican president and the Republican Party generally, the Democratic Party failed to gain a majority in the U. S. Senate, and lost seats in the House of Representatives. We believe this lackluster performance is largely attributable to a phrase that was popular among the Democratic Party's left wing: "De-fund the police." Apparently the voters didn't think this was a good idea. In 2022 the Democratic Party lost more seats (and its majority) in the House of Representatives, which suggests support for the party’s left wing has not increased.

Unfortunately there is still evidence that a significant portion of the Democratic Party is still reluctant to work with people who disagree with some of their policies, even if the people who disagree are within the Democratic Party. Consider how during 2021 and 2022 (when the Democratic Party had a majority in the House) President Biden's legislative agenda was held up for months not by the Republican Party, but by the left wing of the Democratic Party which was unwilling to compromise with more centrist Democrats. This uncompromising approach likely to be as counterproductive in the upcoming election as it was in 2020 and 2016. Intransigent “progressives” succeeded in pushing Senators Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia out of the Democratic Party. Neither is running for re-election. The centrist Manchin is very likely to be replaced by a Trumpist Republican, and this is likely to cost the Democrats control of the Senate. Sinema’s replacement is less certain, but it’s possible that she too will be replaced by a Trumpist Republican. Our message to the “progressives”: Let us know how that works for you.

Further, the Democratic Party must “clean house”. Corruption is still rampant within the party. The recent conviction of Senator Menendez is only the most obvious case.

Also, the Democratic party must end its obsession with identity politics. This fatally flawed concept is a major cause of polarization in our country, and it has probably created more Trump voters than any of the Republicans’ efforts. As with corruption, this bad idea is deeply embedded in the party. Getting rid of it would necessarily shake the party to its core, but it would be in the long term interest of both the Democratic Party and the nation as a whole. We can think of only one nation which has based its political system on the sort of identity politics that the Democrats seem to advocate: Lebanon. We don’t want that sort of government.

3.5 Conclusion

Kamala Harris is a conventional politician. We profoundly disagree with most of the positions of her party. We have little faith that she will change any of her policies to those we would prefer. We think that she will do little if anything to clean up the corruption in her own party. If she is elected, we will be obliged to oppose most of her program. Under a Harris administration, the slow rot of our economy and principles is likely to continue. We can only hope that we will survive long enough for reason to prevail. We are not optimistic.

The best that we can say for her is that she is not a convicted felon, and she seems to have some respect for the law.

Harris may just be the lesser of two evils, but the greater of evils is very great indeed.

4 Problems for Both Parties

There are a great many problems that the major parties are not even discussing. Here are three big ones:

4.1 Social Security

A major problem that both parties are ignoring is the fact that the Social Security Trust Fund is expected to go bankrupt within the next eight years or so. This is not a new problem. It has been well documented for at least 30 years, and the trust fund is going broke almost exactly on schedule. Neither party has even remotely addressed the issue, except to say that they will not cut benefits.

4.2 The shrinking US Navy

The 4.3 National Debt

$35 trillion and counting. That’s around 123% of GDP. This is unsustainable.

We should also note that in these times of higher interest rates, the annual interest payment on the National Debt now exceeds the defense budget.

Unfortunately both parties are proposing policies that will at best not solve the problem, and could make it even worse. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates Kamala Harris' proposals would increase the national debt by around $3.5 trillion over 10 years. Donald Trump's proposals scored even worse, increasing the national debt by an estimated $7.5 trillion.

5 Where are the “Third Parties”?

When the two major parties fail us, we do have the option of voting for alternate parties. Sadly, in 2024, they have proven to be even more disappointing than usual. We are only aware of a few other parties that could have candidates on the ballot.

We will not discuss the candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as he has dropped out of the race.

5.1 Libertarian

We have long considered the Libertarian Party to be our favorite protest vote. We had a certain respect for their ideas on limited government, even when they carried the concept too far. At the moment the Libertarian party is the only 3rd party that is reliably on the ballot in most if not all states.

In 2024, there has been a schism in the party, making this relatively small party even smaller. Candidates Chase Oliver and Mike ter Maat couldn’t even hold their own party together, and would have little chance of getting elected, much less solving the nation’s problems.

5.2 Green

The Green Party has once again nominated Jill Stein as they did in 2012, 2016 and 2020. Her policies do not seem to have changed.

5.3 Forward

While we're encouraged by the new Forward Party's stated goal of building a new centrist party, it isn't even on the ballot in this year's presidential election; it can only endorse candidates from other parties that are on the ballot. They do have candidates on the ballot in some congressional, state, and local elections. They have the advantage of not being a party built on the candidacy of a single presidential candidate, unlike Ross Perot’s Reform Party or Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party. We’re willing to listen to what they have to say, but it is incumbent upon them to say something meaningful. So far, they have not.

5.4 Alliance

The slightly older Alliance Party only has candidates for two U. S. House of Representatives seats for South Carolina, and also for some state and local offices in South Carolina.

5.5 Unity

The Unity Party has nominated liberal activist and former Green Party candidate Dr. Cornel West as its candidate for President and Claudia De la Cruz for Vice President. They only seem to be on the ballot in a few states. Indeed, they were recently removed from the Georgia ballot because the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that they failed to qualify.

6. The two-party "system" is broken, and probably irreparably.

Once political parties represented particular ideas about policy and political principles. For the two dominant parties, this is no longer the case. While both parties pay lip service to principles, in practice both are primarily concerned with maintaining their power, and helping their friends.

Both parties rely on fear mongering to motivate their voters instead of offering actual policy choices. In an election the positions of both come down to "If the other party wins, disaster will surely follow! They will [insert something you think will frighten your party's base here. If you're a Democrat, something like "destroy the environment" or "take away a woman's right to control her own body"; if you're a Republican, something like "take away your 2^nd Amendment rights", or "restrict your right to practice your religion"] ! Another common election argument used by candidates from both parties is "I might be a bum, but the other candidate is even worse!"

And once in power, both parties all too often govern as if opposing viewpoints did not exist. Both will claim to have a mandate from the voters no matter how slim their margin of victory actually was, and then try to use that "mandate" to ram their party's favored legislation through, whether the wider public wants it or not. Perhaps the most extreme examples are the Clinton Administration, which claimed a "mandate" after winning the 1992 election with just a 43% plurality of the popular vote; and the Trump Administration which claimed a "mandate" after narrowly winning the 2016 election in the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. This inevitably leads to a backlash, and usually quickly. We saw this in 1994, 2010, and 2018.

We cannot say that we were not warned:

"I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it."

- George Washington, Farewell Address (1796)

Our previous 2022 election commentary discussed what we think is wrong with the Democratic and Republican Parties in more detail. There seems little point in discussing it again it here, because depressingly little has changed. It can be summarized as: The Democratic Party has lost touch with most of the electorate; the Republican Party has lost its mind and sold its soul.

In both cases we think the root cause is essentially the same: The mixed caucus/primary election systems both parties currently use to select candidates tend to favor candidates on the parties’ extremes. This was not the intended result; indeed the move towards primary elections that began in the 1950s was meant to make the candidate selection process more democratic. But the unintended consequence is that in a typical primary with many candidates, an extreme candidate with a small group of ardent supporters can often prevail with a plurality of the vote. In the general election voters are then faced with a “lesser of evils” choice of two extreme candidates - one far left, the other far right. And which ever one is eventually elected, increasingly their main goal seems to be opposing anything their opponents might be willing to accept; actually accomplishing something is not important. It doesn’t even matter if their opponents are in the same political party. We note that during 2021-2022 several of President Biden’s legislative proposals were blocked by left wing Democrats; and the quite conservative former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy’s ouster was engineered by a handful of far right Republicans.

We fear that both major parties may be beyond saving. They need to be replaced. Unfortunately this will not be easy. The one thing the Democratic and Republican Parties agree on is that any alternative parties must be kept off the ballot whenever possible.

A way to repair the broken parties?

Several polls have indicated that about 70% of Americans didn’t want to see a Trump/Biden rematch, yet this is what we almost got. It is the race that the primary system produced, and the one we would have gotten if extraordinary circumstances had not intervened.

One of the reasons candidate selection in Democratic and Republican parties is broken is the primary election system. While there is considerable variation in primary election systems from state to state, in the past they have generally used voting systems similar to the general election: Voters cast a vote for one candidate, and the candidate with the most votes is the winner. An increasing number of states also use a “winner takes all” system, where the winning candidates gets all of the state’s nominating convention delegates. This works reasonably well when there are only two or three candidates for each office; but primary elections often have larger numbers of candidates for an office. This can lead to situations where the winning candidate is supported by only a small portion of the electorate. Consider a primary with five candidates where the four losing candidates each receive 19.5% of the vote, and the winning candidate receives 22%. In this case 78% of the voters voted against the "winner". Some states try to correct this by holding a runoff primary when no candidate wins an majority of the vote. But in our hypothetical primary, this would mean a runoff between two candidates who were initially not supported by 58.5% of the voters. This might be acceptable if all of the primary candidates reasonably reflected the views of most voters. But in practice candidates with more extreme positions are more likely to win in a crowded primary. The reasons are simple: Those who disagree with the "extreme" candidate have many other candidates to choose from, while those who support the "extreme" candidate have only one option; and those who strongly favor a particular position or candidate are more likely to vote in primaries than voters who don't. Over time this has driven both parties to opposite extremes that most voters don't actually support.

In many states, including our home states of New York and New Jersey, independent voters (those not who are not registered members of any party) cannot vote in the primary elections. While there is a certain logic in allowing political parties to choose their own candidates, this system prevents independents from having any voice on which candidates appear on the ballot. A recent Gallup poll indicates that 43% of voters are independents, and the “major” parties have about 27% each. It makes no sense to eliminate 43% of voters from the primary process. A few states, notably New Hampshire, allow independents to vote in either party’s primary (but not both). We think this is a reasonable approach.

In 2022 Alaska tried a different primary voting system: Top Four voting. All primary candidates from all parties are on one ballot. The four candidates who get the most primary votes regardless of party advance to the general election. The results seemed to favor less extreme candidates, which is encouraging.

Alaska also used a different voting system for its last special Congressional election: Ranked Choice voting. In this system voters cast 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choice votes instead of a single vote. If no candidate gets a majority of the 1st choice votes, the 2nd choice votes are counted; if there is still no candidate with a majority, 3rd choice votes are counted. The results of this election were also encouraging.

Some local primary elections have also used Ranked Choice voting with similarly encouraging results. New York City used Ranked Choice voting in its last Democratic Party primary for mayor, and the winner was a former police officer who ran on a centrist "law and order" platform. We must note that New York City Mayor Eric Adams was recently indicted on corruption charges, but this doesn’t really affect the case for Rank Choice voting. Rank Choice voting can, and in the NYC case did, produce general election candidates with less extreme positions; it can’t guarantee that a candidate isn’t corrupt.

7 What's wrong with the News Media

8 So who should you vote for?