On July 17th, I wrote you all about the surge Trump was having in polling and how it looked like reliably blue states like Virginia, Minnesota and New Hampshire were in play. Today, less than a month later, I have to tell you that if the election were held today, I think Harris/Walz would win. How did this happen and what’s ahead? Let’s take a look.

I will use a bunch of sports analogies today. Elections, after all, are like sports in that they are a competition where somebody wins and somebody loses.

I’m a baseball fan. During this election, I feel like I am watching two teams that are now tied in the 7th inning. Each team has committed four errors, like they are trying to lose. I’m just watching the last three innings hoping my team doesn’t throw a wild pitch or drop a pop fly to lose a game they could clearly win. And by the way, there are dark clouds on the horizon that might bring rain and change everything. It’s hard to score when it’s raining.

I intentionally did not capitalize the word “democracy” in the title of this missive in order to distinguish the true meaning of the word from the many capitalized uses it has including it’s use on the name of one of the two major political parties in the United States.

According to a 1975 printing of Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (contemporary dictionaries are almost all woke and worthless), democracy is derived from the greek word demokratia which literally means “rule by the people”. It goes on to say “a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation involving periodic free elections.”

I’m sure you already knew that.

I have been wanting to write about AI and some policy issues and interest rates and such. But the gods of politics will not let me do so. The Trump/Biden debate was less than a month ago as I write this. Since that time, President Trump was nearly assassinated, a GOP convention and VP pick was made, a sitting president withdrew from a presidential race for the first time since 1968, and the sitting Vice President sewed up the Democratic Party nomination in less than 48 hours.

Wow. May you live in interesting times.

So, now it is Kamala Harris. I have never met her. But, I was in elected office in California during the time of her rise to power in that state. So, I have followed her closely. Let’s look at the pros and cons of the new Democratic nominee and her prospects to become the 47th president.

The debate between Trump and Biden was less than three weeks ago as I write this missive. In that short time, everything in politics has changed. Since that debate, Biden’s cognitive deficiencies have gone from being “deep fakes” according to the regime media, to being undeniable. What was a unified Democratic Party has splintered over whether Biden should run again or even resign as president and, if he did one or the other, over who would replace him. On the other hand, a deeply divided Republican Party has totally unified behind the Trump/Vance ticket. Speaker Mike Johnson no longer faces any credible threats to throw him out, and he is able to pass almost any legislation he wants with only a two seat majority.

That said, if Trump wins (increasingly a likely probability) , the Republican Party will cement its transformation from the NeoCon, business conservative party of Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan into a new America First Populist party. On the other side, the Democrats will do some soul searching to see if they need reinvention as well.

Let’s look a bit deeper into all of this.

You have not heard from me in two weeks. A lot happened in those two weeks. The Captivating Mrs. Campbell is very adept at pointing out when I am wrong, which does occasionally happen. Some of you readers are nearly as adept in highlighting my errors.

I said I thought the debate between Trump and Biden would not be a “pivotal point” and that no one would land a “knockout punch.” Boy, I could not have been more wrong. Although I can’t imagine that anyone thought one candidate (Biden) would deliver a knockout punch to himself!

The last two of our five areas of chaos are culture and society. What is the difference between the two? Society is how we interact with each other. Culture is the atmosphere in which we interact. I once heard culture described as similar for we humans, as the water in which fish swim. Put fish is bad water and you will have bad fish. But them in fresh, sparkling water and the fish will prosper. Let’s take the culture first:

So, the economy and the world are pretty big topics. But hey, we are not shrinking violets here and we take on the hard stuff. Here goes the status of two more of our five areas of chaos.

International: We are all very much aware of the wars in Ukraine and the middle east and how those have the potential to spread beyond their current boundaries. We also know the tension between Taiwan and China and how that could erupt. Or how the “cold war” between China and the U.S. could move into a “hot” war. These are all significant risks on the world stage. But those are not the only places where chaos could deepen.

Yes, I am back with the blog after a brief respite. No more podcasts for reasons I articulated previously. But there is still a lot to do and a lot to analyze and a lot to say as the chaos around us ramps up. This week and next, I think it is time to take a look again at our five dimensions of chaos (political, international, economic, societal and cultural) and assess where we stand currently.

First, because it affects many of the others, let’s take a look at the political landscape in the United States.