How a good Republican lost my vote

Posted on 2024-08-14 by David

{Spencer} Cox recently endorsed Donald Trump in the 2024 election, …

Cox said he changed his position in the wake of the July 13 assassination attempt against Trump.

Newsweek Aug 14, 2024

Over the years that Trump had been turning the GOP into an ideological dumpster fire Spencer Cox has consistently been one of the shrinking cohort of Republicans that managed to keep acting like the pre-Trump GOP—advocating for social conservatism, limited government, and a strong economy.

Apparently having a very concerning version of Joe Biden on the ballot meant that a failed assassination attempt was all the excuse he needed to endorse Trump. With that, he lost my vote.

If Cox had simply encouraged Trump publicly to try unifying the nation I could accept that but getting shot at isn’t any qualification to hold office. Anyone who can’t recognize that Trump is uniquely and permanently unqualified to ever again hold office will find it extremely difficult to get my vote.

I don’t expect a large number of voters would be like me and abandon Cox over this but if they did (and if Phil Lyman could miraculously duplicate his primary results by collecting 45% of the GOP vote) we could end up with a democratic Governor in Utah and serve as an example to the national GOP of just how toxic Trump should have been politically ever since January 6th (the day he lost any remaining shred of qualification to hold office).

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The right tone for Harris Supporters

Posted on 2024-08-12 by David

I’ve been thinking about different ways of campaigning.  I’ve watched 8 presidential campaigns as an eligible voter and until 2016 none of them were dominated by fear and anger. We have learned in the last 8 years that fear, anger, and division are Trump’s natural comfort zones.

With that in mind it has become clear to me that the best path forward for those who don’t want to see another Trump term is to make sure to spend a lot more time sharing a positive vision of the future under a Harris administration than they do spending time sharing a gloomy vision of what the future would look like under a 2nd Trump administration.

Harris and Walz are showing the way in that regard responding to chants of “lock him up” with admonitions to go win at the ballot box in November and just let the courts do their own jobs. They are leading the way as they campaign with joy and enthusiasm with a message of ensuring that everyone has an opportunity to get ahead rather than just scraping by.

The candidates are doing their job in this race. It’s up to those who support them to follow that lead and not get mired in gloomy prognostication about the alternative.

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A solid, down to earth running mate

Posted on 2024-08-09 by David

Just like I didn’t start out hoping for Kamala Harris as the candidate I wasn’t rooting for Tim Walz as the running mate—I hadn’t even heard of him until late in the veepstakes. Before the selection I had concluded that Josh Shapiro would be the best choice.

I’ve always considered that the most important thing about the selection of a running mate is what it signals about how the candidate makes decisions and what they value. In picking Walz, Harris has shown that she recognizes and values someone who’s not busy trying to make a name for themselves. (A sharp contrast to both Trump and Vance.)

Like Harris, I quickly discovered that I really appreciate where Walz is coming from and the more I hear Republican attacks on Walz the more I think, “in his 60 years—including 20 in public office—that’s how you have to stretch to attack him? Sounds pretty good to me!”

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A very fast shift

Posted on 2024-08-08 by David

I was shocked with how quickly my perspective on Kamala Harris began to shift after Joe Biden dropped out. In the first day I forgave Biden for endorsing Harris as I recognized and began to appreciate the magnitude of the compressed timeline remaining in the election. (First I grieved that he had waited so long to drop out.) Shortly after that as I began to listen to Harris articulate for herself instead of trying to promote Biden and as I started hearing more about her background I started to get excited that she was well suited to make the case against Trump and remind viewers what it was like to have a decent candidate who didn’t already belong in a senior center.

I was startled to realize that not only was willing to vote for Harris but I liked her and would be seriously considering her even if her opponent weren’t the least qualified person to ever receive a major party nomination.

What shocked me even more was when, not even 100 hours after Biden stepped out, a voter of my acquaintance proactively brought up how much Harris changed the race for the better. This was the exact kind of voter this race will hinge on—educated, suburban, Republican who votes consistently. She was not a fan of Trump but was concerned enough about Biden to be seriously considering RFK until after Harris became the presumptive nominee. What she said to me that day was, “I certainly don’t agree with her on many issues but it is SO NICE to have a fundamentally decent candidate that I don’t worry if they will be able to fulfill the duties of the office.”

When I heard that I realized that there was a real opening for this race to not only be won by Harris but potentially for Harris to make it a convincing win. I would LOVE to see that.

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Where I’m coming from to support Harris

Posted on 2024-08-07 by David

I’ve already been clear that I am supporting Harris in 2024 but before I explain the why and how of my support I thought it would be helpful to provide some context. In short, my support is not coming from being a longtime fan of Harris.

I have never been a fan of Donald Trump but when he got elected I gave him every chance to prove me wrong. The only way he ever proved me wrong is that I somewhat underestimated exactly how terrible he would be for the country.

In 2020 Joe Biden was not my first choice to run against Trump but I voted for him without hesitation when he was the nominee (first time I’ve voted for a Democratic candidate for president). Before Joe even got elected I argued that he should be a one-term president based on his age. When he decided to run again I was disappointed that nobody seriously challenged him for the nomination. When the possibility of him exiting the race began to gain steam the last thing I wanted was for the party to simply fall back to Kamala Harris.

I would have voted for a comatose Joe Biden rather than vote for Trump and I knew I would vote for Harris over Trump but that was because there were no other reasonable options. When Harris began her campaign I was happy that Biden had stepped aside but sad that he had endorsed her as his replacement in the same breath. Suffice it to say, on July 21st I was expecting to resignedly vote for Harris in November.

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Conservative for Harris

Posted on 2024-08-05 by David

With only 13 weeks to go before the election much of what I say as I start sharing my thoughts online again will be to make the case for why Kamala Harris can win this election and why, from the perspective of a lifelong conservative, the nation would be best served if she did win.

Conveniently I discovered today that a group called Republicans for Harris (@RepsForHarris) launched yesterday. I feel confident that they will be making some of the same arguments I expect to articulate. I had been thinking recently that certain formerly influential Republicans really should publicly endorse Harris and make the case for why Republican voters should support her. I was happy to see that many of the names I had thought of were included on the list of Republicans in this new group

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My new visionary site

Posted on 2024-08-03 by David

I ran into problems with ActivityPub that seem to be due to the hyphens in the site URL. Because of that I decided to transition to a subdomain without hyphenation. I’m leaving Pursuit of Liberty so that I don’t need to update any old links but I brought the history from that site over here so that anyone who comes here will have everything available.

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Pre-Super Tuesday Revisions

Posted on 2020-03-03 by David

Who knew that after posting on Friday I would need to update all three of my recent posts before we arrived at Super Tuesday.

On my candidate ranking my top two candidates have dropped out. Additionally, while I had Michael Bloomberg ahead of Joe Biden I am considering that I might prefer Biden over Bloomberg because while I might come a little closer to Bloomberg’s political leanings, I worry about him having unexpected liabilities since he hasn’t been through the degree of vetting that the other candidates have already.

On my thoughts on who can win: the paths to victory for Buttigieg and Klobuchar are obviously closed. Warren doesn’t have a path after the results of South Carolina. Biden got exactly the kind of South Carolina win that he needed and the only way his path narrows is if he gets trounced tomorrow.

And thanks to the last 24 hours, our youngest presidential candidate is now 70 years old. I’m not thrilled about that.

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An Age Problem

Posted on 2020-03-01 by David

I’ve mentioned that I have a problem with the ages of most of the presidential candidates. Today a thought struck me that I think would put that problem in perspective. I realized that Elizabeth Warren – the third youngest legitimate candidate still in the race is only three years younger than Bill Clinton – who was our president 28 years ago. If I were to rank the candidates in age order relative to Bill Clinton it would look roughly like this:

  • Bernie Sanders (5 years older than Clinton)
  • Michael Bloomberg
  • Joe Biden
  • Donald Trump (3 years older than Clinton)
  • Bill Clinton (for reference)
  • Elizabeth Warren (3 years younger than Clinton)
  • Amy Klobuchar (14 years younger than Clinton)
  • Pete Buttigieg (35 years younger than Clinton)

Why is it that we are stuck choosing mainly between candidates who are older than a president we had almost 3 decades ago?

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Who can win?

Posted on 2020-02-28 by David

For the second time today I need to get something published before an approaching deadline. This time it is my take on the chances that the various Democratic candidates have of getting the nomination. I want to make sure that I publish this before we get more data from voters voting.

If I had written this earlier there would have been a couple more candidates considered – even with my restriction that I am only covering candidates who have any potential path to the nomination. Many but not all of those who have already dropped out never had any path. Even today there is Tom Steyer who has not dropped out but who, despite his wealth, has no path to the nomination.

For the sake of fairness I will cover the candidates in alphabetical order by last name. I will offer my take on what they would need to win the nomination and my opinion on what they should do based on what happens on Super Tuesday.

Continue reading →
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