Would it be possible to replace Trump as GOP nominee?

The New Neo Posted on by

And what would be the result?

Yes, I know (as I wrote in this post) that it’s wishful thinking to even consider it, and highly highly unlikely to ever happen. But is it possible? And if it could be done, would it even be desirable to do it?

The commenter known as “The Other Chuck” writes:

It’s much too late to force Trump out. With the election less than a month away, ballots printed and voting started, nothing can be done even if he withdrew. Face it, even if someone like Pence were put in place the die hard Trump supporters would walk ensuring defeat. Why bother?

I think Other Chuck is correct that it won’t happen.

But I think he is most likely wrong that it absolutely couldn’t happen, and may also be wrong about who would win if it did happen.

Are parties really tied to their nominees with no recourse, whatever the subsequent revelations? Let’s say that a party nominated a person about whom it was revealed, about a month before the election, that he/she was probably an ax murderer. Not a metaphorical one, a literal one. I bet a way would be found to drop that person from the ticket and put in a replacement, whether the person wanted to be dropped or not.

What if a nominee became incapacitated? What if a person is revealed to be of terrible moral character, so much so that party leaders reject him or her as the leader of the party and as their nominee for the highest and most powerful office in the land? Is the party tied firmly to the railroad tracks with no escape as the locomotive of Election Day bears down?

Here is the proper procedure. Read it. It’s far from easy, but it can be done, and it could be done. I’m not sure whether Trump would have to consent in order for this to happen, and I very very much doubt he ever would consent, although I wonder if his arm could be sufficiently twisted.

At any rate, I don’t think the GOP has the cojones for this, so it’s almost certainly moot. But I actually think it could and should be done, because the current situation is a disaster in every way. Not just a disaster for the GOP; a disaster for the country. I see a Hillary Clinton victory as inevitable at this point, but I’ve pretty much seen that right along. And yes, yes; I realize I could be wrong, especially in this very strange election cycle.

As for the Trump voters defecting as a result, so what? I’ve heard that threat over and over for much of the last six months or so—if you don’t nominate Trump, you’ll lose his voters! But at this point, Hillary is so tainted herself that many people (including quite a few Democrats) are hungry for the opportunity to vote for someone sane and decent. Mike Pence could be that person; there are others. And I think whoever it is would attract a lot of Democrats as well as many of the now-disaffected Republicans who don’t want to vote for Trump. That could mean that the Trump diehards wouldn’t be needed for a victory.

There’s no way to know, of course. But that’s my gut feeling, right or wrong. Sure, plenty of people on the right were (and still are) willing to vote for Trump. But how many would refuse, at this point, to vote for another less controversial GOP nominee?

[NOTE: This news, if true, is certainly interesting.]

The joys of aging: eye doctor interlude

The New Neo Posted on by

What have I been doing lately besides contemplating Robert Frost and deploring Donald Trump?

Well, yesterday I had a previously-unscheduled sojourn at the eye doctor’s. First, I’ll tell you the ending: I’m okay. But what preceded it was no small amount of anxiety.

It began Thursday evening when I was at Macy’s trying on some clothes and attempting to unwind from the day. I’d been in the dressing room for about twenty minutes when suddenly, with no warning, I found that when I turned my head to the right something resembling a lightning bolt flashed in the far right side of my vision.

This is the sort of thing that gets a person’s attention, especially when there aren’t any external flashes going off anywhere around. Whenever I tested the phenomenon by turning my head, I’d see that bolt. So it became apparent that this lightning was completely internal—my own private lightning storm.

That’s when the anxiety began (otherwise known as “fear”). Now, I sometimes get the light-show of visual migraine auras, but this seemed very very different. If it was a migraine, it was the strangest one I’d ever had, so that wasn’t my lead theory. Was the problem in my brain or my eye? Because of the consistency of the symptom’s appearance when turning my head, and the fact that it was much diminished with my right eye closed, I became convinced it was in my eye. And I knew that the symptom might be consistent with a detached retina, which sometimes happens rather suddenly (mostly in people over 60) and must be surgically repaired within a timely fashion to avoid dire outcomes.

What did I do? I left the store and went home and Googled it, that’s what I did. I discovered that although my symptoms could be those of a retinal detachment they also fit very well with something else far more innocuous and far more comm,on, a posterior vitreous detachment.

I would much prefer that, of course (not that I get a choice). But there was one little hitch: twenty years ago, I’d been told by a retinal specialist that I had had a PVD in both eyes, and I know that once it’s occurred in an eye it doesn’t happen again. So although I thought PVD fit my current symptoms better than a retinal detachment, and wanted it to be a PVD rather than a retinal detachment, I didn’t see how it could be.

I couldn’t tell if I had an increase in floaters, another symptom of both conditions, because I already have quite a few floaters in each eye—that’s what initially drove me to that retinal specialist twenty years ago, and to that initial diagnosis of bilateral PVD.

On Friday morning I woke up early and called the eye doctor to tell my tale of woe and ask to be seen that day (at least it was Friday and not Saturday). I had read that PVDs can lead to retinal detachments, and although PVDs are far far more common and need no treatment, it’s strongly suggested that a person with such symptoms should go quickly to the eye doctor to make sure. So that’s what I did, and when the doctor looked into my dilated eyes, she said what I had was a right eye PVD but that the left eye was okay.

What a relief.

She was so brusque (although not unkind) and in such a hurry that I forgot to ask what on earth that first doctor had seen, the one who had said it had already happened in both eyes. Not that she could have answered anyway; is she her brother doctor’s keeper, or explainer, or apologist?

As of now, the lighting bolt symptom seems to be happening with less frequency, and it’s not quite as bright. I suppose this means my PVD has progressed. The scoop is that a PVD can take days, weeks, or months to fully detach, and then things should calm down. I feel much calmer already.

[NOTE: I’ve long known the symptoms of a retinal detachment, perhaps because a friend of mine’s husband had one years ago. But I’ve got a bone to pick with the descriptions of symptoms I read at most of the websites. Most of them say you get “flashes of light.” To me that always sounded as though they meant a sort of flashbulb-type illumination, much like when you’re having your picture taken, where things light up in general. Apparently not. Apparently my symptoms were exactly what they mean by “flashes of light”: something in the outer periphery of your vision in the affected eye that looks like a bolt or arc of lightning but is not a general illumination. So, please take note.]

Trump’s bragging locker-room talk: the October surprise?

The New Neo Posted on by

I bet it’s not the only surprise they have up their sleeves.

Nor is it a surprise. Why on earth would it be? We already knew there was plenty of dirt floating around on Trump, and some of it was bound to be sexual. We already knew he was a gross narcissist. So dirt that combines coarse terms (“pussy”) and braggadocio about how his celebrity status entitles him to grab it—why would this be a surprise?

Is it a surprise that he said it? A surprise that it was recorded? A surprise that the recording surfaced? Or just a surprise that it hadn’t surfaced earlier?

To me, it’s a surprise that anyone considers it a surprise.

Trump has already established himself quite fully as the person who could easily say those words. His many appearances on the Howard Stern show solidified (if that’s the right word) his image, and to my way of thinking his comments about avoiding venereal disease being his “own personal Vietnam” are arguably worse, in that they combine the political with the raunchy with the narcissistic, and were said with full knowledge that they’d be broadcast, as opposed to the sort of clandestine machismo-to-machismo type bragging he did with Billy Bush. That “personal Vietnam” statement (which occurred in 1997) came out as a story in February of 2016, so people who voted for Trump in the primaries should have had full knowledge of exactly who and what they were voting for, back when there were still many fine alternatives.

In the more recent hot mic matter, Trump’s comeback about Bill Clinton talking worse to him on the golf course makes a good point, a believable but irrelevant one. Bill isn’t running for president, Hillary is.

Will any of this make a difference? I actually don’t think a whole lot, because Trump had already been sinking for a while anyway. And people are voting or not voting for Trump for other reasons. But I could be wrong there; this one touched a nerve. It certainly cannot possibly help him, and he needs all the help he can get.

Those of us who have been saying from the start that Trump is a uniquely vulnerable candidate because in the fall months just prior to the election a whole bunch of dirt would be flung at him (because there was so very much dirt to be had) can now say a heartfelt “I told you so.” But “I told you so” isn’t at all satisfying when the situation is so dire and the stakes so high.

[NOTE: Senator Mike Lee calls for Trump to step down. Wishful thinking, I’m afraid, although I fervently share the wish.

But let’s indulge in a thought experiment: what would happen if Trump did drop out? Is there any protocol for that sort of event?:

In addition to Lee, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) also called on Trump to step aside, and for the party to institute “emergency rules” to replace him roughly a month before the election.

So, would we end up with one of those smoke-filled rooms after all? At this point it would be just fine with me. Pence would do, for example.]

[NOTE II: Trump’s apology.]

[ADDENDUM: It occurs to me that one way this news could influence the election is to motivate more millennials who don’t like Hillary to come out and vote for her anyway.]

[ADDENDUM II: For those who think this was just the usual locker-room banter on Trump’spart, I beg to differ. Actually, it was a very special type of locker-room talk.

I don’t know whether you read the details at the link, but I’ll provide the meat of it (as it were):

Trump tells Bush about a failed attempt to have sex with a woman, whom he claimed was married at the time. The Post said Trump had been married to Melania for “several months” during the time of the conversation.

In the video, Trump tells Bush the story, saying, “I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look.”…

“You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful”¦ I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet,” Trump says while Bush is heard laughing. “Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”

“Whatever you want,” Bush responds.

“Grab them by the p””y. You can do anything,” Trump said. Bush keeps laughing.

He is saying two main things there that are especially disturbing in a presidential nominee, and are not really comparable to ordinary locker-room banter. One is the bragging about the woman being married. That’s the lesser offense of the two, though. The greater offense is the idea that because he’s rich and famous and powerful he can do anything he wants. Without the person’s consent. And he brags about it.

And he’s asking to be given more power now.]

Reluctant to let go of “Reluctance”

The New Neo Posted on by

I find I have still more to say about Frost’s poem “Reluctance.”

The theme of the poem is the difficulty of letting go, so I guess it’s fitting and proper that I’m loathe to leave it alone after posting the text of it yesterday. Those of you who read this blog regularly already know that I’m a Frost lover. And I don’t even have a lover’s quarrel with him; I just love him.

First, in case your memory needs refreshing, let’s have that poem again:

RELUCTANCE

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ”˜Whither?’

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

Many people who read the poem (and that included me when I first read it) assume, because of the subject matter, that it’s the work of the older Frost—you know, the guy with the craggy lined face and white hair. But if you thought that, you were wrong. The poem was first published in 1913, when Frost was nearly forty, and it had to have been written when he was a much younger man, because it dates from before his marriage in 1895:

This poem also has an additional meaning that stems directly from an autobiographical event in Frost’s life. He wrote this poem while he was living with his mother and sister in Lawrence, Massachusetts, before he had convinced his future wife, Elinor, to marry him. After he was firmly rejected by her during a visit to her school in New York, Frost contemplated committing suicide and becoming a part of the “last lone aster” and “dead leaves.”

The poem is quite conventional in its construction. It rhymes, like many of Frost’s poems, and there is nothing revolutionary about it. Its appeal lies in a number of things that are characteristic of much of Frost, both early and late, including the fact that it appears instantly accessible and understandable to most people. It’s not the least bit obscure, and yet it is fresh, direct, and original in its tone, although not quite as fresh and original as some poems by Frost.

The first stanza is a simple description of the speaker’s wanderings and return. Nature appears only as a place in which the person makes his moves. But that second stanza (one of my favorites) contains Frost’s characteristic close observation of nature, and is minus the human element except for a bit of personification of nature (“sleeping”; “creeping”):

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

Frost makes an observation of something seemingly small—the fact that not every single leaf on an oak falls in the fall, and that some last till winter and appear on the snow. The oak seems to have some sort of agency—it is keeping those last leaves, and then raveling (loosing) them carefully, one by one. Then the released leaves “go scraping and creeping.” But still, we are in the natural world here; there is no human agency. The theme of the oak’s doings with those leaves is also in keeping with the title “Reluctance,” although we probably haven’t put two and two together yet when we read that second stanza. But with the slight personification of the oak, Frost seems to be saying that the oak is reluctant to let go, too.

In the third stanza Frost unites the two worlds more explicitly—the world of nature and the world of man, or more accurately, of the heart of man. Its first four lines are devoted to nature, and then there’s an abrupt turn to human nature and its longings, and we recognize the speaker as the same person from that first stanza:

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ”˜Whither?’

In the very last stanza, the fourth, Frost leaves the natural world almost entirely and talks only about people. By this time it seems quite natural for him to do so, and we don’t notice the change as anything jarring. It seems like the culmination of the thoughts and images of the rest of the poem, uniting the natural world and mankind in their mutual aching reluctance. And yet we also know—even though Frost doesn’t say it explicitly—that we must let go despite that reluctance.

Frost is sometimes thought of as a nature poet. He’s not, although he is an especially keen observer of nature and often uses it in his poetry. But he always (at least, I think it’s always) does so in the service of an observation about human beings.

Here’s a photo I took from the porch of one of Frost’s homes, a small cabin-like place in northern New Hampshire:

135

Nice “hills of view,” eh? This was Frost’s home long, long after the poem was written.

Another plane part has been authenticated as being from Malaysian Airlines Flight 370

The New Neo Posted on by

Another plane part from MH370 has been found:

A piece of an aircraft wing found on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius has been identified as belonging to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Malaysian and Australian officials said Friday.

The piece of wing flap was found in May and subsequently analyzed by experts at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is heading up the search for the plane in a remote stretch of ocean off Australia’s west coast. Investigators used a part number found on the debris to link it to the missing Boeing 777, the agency said in a statement. Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai also confirmed the identification.

But it has brought us no closer to solving the mystery or to locating the main site of the aircraft and its all-important flight recorders.

It was over two years ago that the flight vanished with 239 souls on board (that’s an aviation term, by the way). At first it dominated the news, and people were aghast that an airplane could disappear in this day and age, and could remain disappeared for that long. Conspiracy theories abounded, often involving an intact plane hijacked somewhere and lying in wait for some future mission. Although there are probably some people who cling to that notion, the finding of several pieces from the plane would probably put it to rest with most. But the mystery remains: was it mechanical failure? Pilot error? Sabotage? If the latter, an inside or outside job?

The plane’s disappearance has now gone off the radar screens (yes, a pun) of most people, and the event has been assimilated into their mental map of possible things that can go wrong in this world. For the families of the victims, the nightmare goes on.

Richard Landes’ definitions: own-goal journalism

The New Neo Posted on by

Richard Landes is a brilliant writer (and a friend of mine), and I urge you to look at this post of his offering some definitions in the cognitive war fought by the press and the left in convincing the West to use its own strengths against itself.

It’s fairly short, but Landes packs a tremendous amount of thought and information into it.

Fall is just about here

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m looking forward to it.

The leaves are starting to turn. There’s a nip in the air, especially at night. And it’s time to reprise a few of the photos I took last year, on a memorable trip north to a place where the reflections of the leaves in the water were unusually spectacular:

fallnorth-camera-2015-076

fallnorthnh2015-050

fallnorth-camera-2015-095

fall15-024

Reluctance

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been touched by how many people seem to have empathized with the difficulty of letting go and the sadness over the passing of time that I expressed in the post “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”

The title is taken from T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and in the post I provided the relevant excerpt from that lengthy but wonderful poem. I want also to call your attention to two other literary offerings on the subject. The first one is from Samuel Johnson and was presented in the comments section by “FunkyPhd”:

There are few things not purely evil of which we can say, without some emotion of uneasiness, “this is the last.” Those who never could agree together shed tears when mutual discontent has determined them to a final separation; of a place which has been frequently visited, though without pleasure, the last look is taken with heaviness of heart”¦ This secret horror of the last is inseparable from a thinking being whose life is limited, and to whom death is dreadful. We always make a secret comparison between a part and the whole; the termination of any period of life reminds us that life itself has likewise its termination; when we have done anything for the last time, we involuntarily reflect that a part of the days allotted to us is past, and that as more is past there is less remaining.

Plus é§a change, plus c’est la méªme chose.

But insightful though that Johnson quote is, I’ll leave the last word to a poet. From Robert Frost (you guessed it), the poem is “Reluctance”:

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ”˜Whither?’

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

Obama looks great in comparison

The New Neo Posted on by

To a lot of Americans, that is:

President Barack Obama’s approval rating stands at 55% in a new CNN/ORC poll, the highest mark of his second term, and matching his best at any time since his first year in office.
The new rating outpaces his previous second-term high — reached just after a Democratic convention that extolled the successes of his presidency — by one point, and hits a level he’s reached just twice since the end of his first year in office: In January 2013 just before his second inauguration and in January 2011.

The new poll continues a streak in which Obama’s approval rating has been at 50% or higher in CNN/ORC polls since February, a seven month run that is his longest since 2009. And taken together, Obama’s approval ratings in 2016 average 51% so far in CNN/ORC polls, his best mark since that first year in office.

It’s mind-boggling to those of us who see it very differently. But it’s hard to deny that the candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump make the presidency of Obama seem better to an awful lot of people. Especially if those people are forgetful, or haven’t been paying close attention in the first place, or are predisposed to forgive Obama anything anyway.

Trump makes Obama look and sound like a kindly, thoughtful, measured, even-handed statesman. And Hillary Clinton makes Obama look and sound very “likable”—famously more likable than the “likable enough” Hillary who’s grown even more unlikable since 2008 when Obama originally said that.

Another reason Obama’s ratings have gone up is that there haven’t been any big big crises or revelations lately about him. You may think I’m wrong to say that; just as one example, wasn’t it revealed that he lied about not knowing about Hillary’s private email/server? Well, yes, but if you quizzed 100 people in the street I would guess that at least 99 would have never heard about it.

The fallout from Obama’s climbing approval is probably that it enhances Clinton’s chances of being elected president. Despite her personality differences from Obama, many see her election as his third term. And if you liked the first two, well then…

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons

The New Neo Posted on by

The other day I went to the drugstore and indulged in one of my favorite pastimes, buying makeup.

Hey, we all have our small vices.

I bought a new tube of undereye circle concealer of my favorite kind (see this post for the reason why I need it). I now possess three of these tubes of the same type and color: here it is, inexpensive and highly recommended for the woman in your life who might be a bit undereye-challenged.

These tubes also tend to last a long long time, even with heavy users such as myself, and that’s another one of their most fabulous traits. I bought a third one because I’ve become afraid that the manufacturer will stop making it. I’ve tried about a hundred other types, and this is the best one for me. It has managed to replace my previously favored concealer another manufacturer (Clinique) had precipitously stopped making, leaving me high and dry (and very dark-circled) till I finally found this one.

But after I had bought the tube, taken it home, and placed it in a little drawer with its fellows-in-waiting, I began to wonder how long these three will last. In other words, will they take me to the end of my life?

I’ve had that kind of thought before when purchasing products, in particular with a brand of walking shoes I liked so much that I bought about four pairs in case they stopped making that particular model. And of course there’s the line from the T. S. Eliot poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” which I quoted in the title of this post. Even as a young person—which is when I first read the poem—it gave me a little creepy chill:

…Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all””…

T. S. Eliot must have been born old, because he was very very young (an undergraduate) when he wrote that poem. But I’m considerably older than that, and certainly old enough to wonder what might constitute “a lifetime supply” of something.

But it’s always been hard for me to finish things, to put them away, to throw them out, although I do it. When I was pregnant, I didn’t buy a whole lot of baby clothes prior to my son’s birth. I didn’t know the sex of the child (in those days amniocentesis was not standard), although I suspected a boy. But I was content to wait to find out. However, I did buy two little terrycloth onesies in the smallest size for the newborn, and of course some diapers.

When my son was born he weighed seven pounds. But within about two weeks he’d gained so much weight that he’d grown out of the smallest of the outfits. I remember the outfit well; it was turquoise and had a tiny little rainbow on the upper left hand part, and the usual snaps to fasten it. Cute.

As I folded it and put it away, I cried. I had just bought it! He had just been born! And here I was retiring his first garment.

When one is a parent, one has to learn to say goodbye to every stage of a child’s life and to welcome the new stages with joy. I learned to do it, but it didn’t come easy to me.

The Clinton emails: that’s quite an immunity deal you’ve got there

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s hard to know what to say about this, except that apparently one cannot get cynical enough to keep up with reality:

Immunity deals for two top Hillary Clinton aides included a side arrangement obliging the FBI to destroy their laptops after reviewing the devices, House Judiciary Committee sources told Fox News on Monday.

Sources said the arrangement with former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills and ex-campaign staffer Heather Samuelson also limited the search to no later than Jan. 31, 2015. This meant investigators could not review documents for the period after the email server became public — in turn preventing the bureau from discovering if there was any evidence of obstruction of justice, sources said.

It’s worth reading the whole thing. It’s not long. And it’s very much worth reading Andrew C. McCarthy on the subject:

Why did the Justice Department make side deals in this case (which we’ve been told was treated like any other case . . . except, alas, when it wasn’t)? More fundamentally, as I’ve been arguing since we learned of the immunity agreements, why did the government grant immunity in the first place? Unfortunately, the question, at this point, is rhetorical. Immunity was granted because the Justice Department would not use the grand jury against Mrs. Clinton.

Patently, the highly politicized Obama Justice Department did this because commencing a grand-jury investigation suggests that a matter is very serious and an indictment (which only the grand jury can issue) is likely. In this case, the Justice Department was determined to maintain the illusion that Clinton and her underlings hadn’t committed crimes, so the grand jury was avoided.

The stakes were too high, the fish were too big—and most importantly, they were fish from the wrong party.

Pining for Pence

The New Neo Posted on by

I didn’t listen to the debate, although I did turn it on thinking I’d catch the end. But when I turned on the TV, I saw the two candidates get up and shake hands, and I figured: hey, what perfect timing!

But I did read about it, of course, and the consensus was the Kaine may have won the prize for unpleasant personalities in a campaign year that has featured the most obnoxious and off-putting characters ever; and that Pence appealed much more, not just to partisans but to those who were previously undecided (such as the Luntz focus groups).

So I was curious to see how the media would spin it. Here’s today’s page at Memeorandum, which compiles a sampler of media and blog reaction. Just glancing at the headlines, they don’t look too terribly biased compared to most media coverage of the election lately, although of course there is bias. Perhaps the relative lack is because the vice presidential debates ordinarily don’t matter much, if at all. Will this one? I doubt it. Despite the somewhat advanced age of both presidential contenders, and the possible ill health of one, Trump and Hillary are still the main attractions (?) by far.

If you study that Memeorandum list, you’ll see that one of the spins is that Pence did so well that he outclassed Trump. That’s not really spin, though, is it? It’s the truth.

The bar is very low for outclassing Trump, but Pence cleared it very easily, and what’s more he outclassed Kaine by a mile as well. And yes, a headline like “Republicans pine for Pence at the top of the ticket” doesn’t sound like spin either. I pine for almost anyone but Trump at the top of the ticket, although I realize that pining is not an especially productive activity.

Come to think of it, though, “I Pine for Pence” might make a nice bumper sticker.