Last night’s VP debate confirmed the end of the 2024 campaign. With barely a month to go and early voting already underway, there’s not enough time to meaningfully alter the outcome. The good news is that regardless of who wins, the Electoral College results will be determinative for the American experiment. In asking the direct question of Vance about whether Trump had won or lost the last election, the electorate must confront the hard choice of supporting Trump’s lie. Let’s say Trump wins. We’ve already seen this in 2016. Trump is inaugurated as president and fully half the country goes into CostCO hibernation waiting for some pulse to appear in the Congress. The Republican Party is. tasked with selecting a Cabinet, managing a hearing process where direct questions are asked about how military officials will respond to direct illegal orders. Walz’s direct question in the debate becomes the template for forcing the question in Congress and pushing the confrontation to the Supreme Court.
How to make a difference
On Sunday October 13, I become 76 years old. My 3 grandchildren will be 3, somewhere around a year and a half, and 4 months old. My former business, the media technology business, is circling the drain of layoffs, commoditization, and a general lack of inspiration that defined the period after the music business imploded. The two eras overlapped to some extent, as mobile home recording and iphone apps collapsed the traditional business models of rock stars and social platforms into separate elements that did not produce catalogue power or defensible moats.
The 60’s generation arrived in a position of power with little ability to consolidate its natural advantages. Apple extended the Visual Basic opportunity into the iPhone platform —merging the software eating the world moment with the app store autonomy of niche development and distribution power. This emulated the record business singer/songwriter model in turn consolidated by superagents like Asylum Records’ David Geffen and manager Elliott Roberts. Fringe players in the tech business spun into opensource plays, while apps were quickly carved up into the mobile platforms.
Conventional thinking held that the media lost the rudders of power, carrying the tech companies to a pathetic copycat relationship based on fast following. The political narrative that Trump was destroying democracy did not track with an audience used to good and bad guys, not just deplorable dummies. The left curled up next to the Democrats, who were content to watch helplessly as McConnell tipped over the Court in plain sight. Progressives produced an ineffective product that undermined the center without creating any voter base worth negotiating with. Meanwhile, the Beatles alternated between dope drama and funky rhythm and blues, maintaining market power almost as an afterthought that still rules the roost 50 years on. Yet no-one seems up to the task of adding 2 and 2 together.
Substack has exposed the thin underbelly of the death of media, where those who have faked their way into excuse-ridden obfuscation of the answers to direct questions live. Vance is reduced (if that is possible) to a lying sack of shit, the anti-Mitt Romney in every way we deserve. If we could somehow identify the hidden Trump voters as the criminals they are, perhaps we could make a Democrat version of it as an app. Then we could develop a map of talking points for interviews:
Question: did Joe Biden win the 2020 election yes or no?
If yes, continue
If no, contnue
If any other answer, say Thank you and goodbye. Leave stage. Test pattern.
But this won’t happen. Trump has already cowed the base into submission. When Chuck Todd is our last chance to resist, we are done. In Watergate, the courts held and forced Nixon to respect the system. Now the courts have overturned that precedent. It’s time to resist. How do we do that? Depends on the meaning of “we.” In Watergate, our last hope was the media. They were shamed into doing the right thing. This time, they just want enough money to hide until the smoke clears. There isn’t enough money to do that. If you don’t answer the question, you’re one of them. What to do about that? None of your business.
Michael Moore seems like a nice enough guy. But I’ve taken to leaving his sound off. If he’s saying this election is Kamala’s to win, I don’t believe him. The tell is that he punctuates his opinion with a sense of finality, a sharp nod toward the ground that suggests he’s confident of something. Whatever that is, I don’t believe him. I don’t believe he believes him. He wants to be right, is all. Carville, I believe. He can’t help himself.
Where are the superlawyers? Their absence suggests they’ve moved on to what happens next. I’ve been there for a while, but who’s kidding who? The best way is the trick my dad taught me: pick the way the coin should land. Then flip the coin. If it’s heads, is it what you hope for? If not you lose. If Trump wins, we lose. Now what? Flip again. Eventually we win. The thing I like about Kamala is that she’ll keep flipping. Our grandchildren will win that game. If Trump keeps lying, believe him. When the coin says no, keep flipping.
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