Harris Threatens the Filibuster

Plus, Zelensky blunders, the doctors got weird, and Nebraska makes the news.

This is why Kamala Harris doesn’t do interviews–she stumbles and says what she really means. 

I suspect her comment last week to Wisconsin Public Radio that she still favors ending the filibuster to codify Roe was not planned in advance, but slipped out in the moment. If she could have said one line to signal radical progressivism, this was it. Ending the filibuster for the purposes of reinstating an abortion regime considered barbaric by Europeans. Swing centrists and anti-Trump conservatives were talking themselves into voting for her. In one swoop, she lost some of them and ensured that more than a few pro-lifers who were considering staying home will now vote for Trump. If she loses, we will point to this moment as one of her fatal mistakes. 

I am still not convinced that she will be worse than Donald Trump, who tried to stage a coup the last time around and was only saved from succeeding by his own incompetence. But I am more pessimistic about a Harris administration than I was already inclined to be. And I am more convinced that it is imperative that Republicans retake the Senate in November.

For their part, Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema sounded disgusted with Harris. Manchin is one of the last true senators, one who believes in the institution of the Senate and respects its traditions. He’s also one of the last great centrists in American politics. With him gone, we will be a more divided and less sensible nation. I disagree with Joe Manchin on any number of issues. But he stood athwart his own party in ways few other senators are willing to do. May there be more of his like again. 

Zelensky Comes to America and Trump Turns on Ukraine

President Zelensky made a very foolish decision to appear with Democratic candidates for office in Pennsylvania and then criticize J.D. Vance in an interview. He is not an American and he does not have a say in American elections. His comments hurt the Ukrainian cause in the eyes of many loyal Republicans. It appears to me that Zelensky didn’t mean to pick sides in an American election. He didn’t understand how his words and actions would be perceived. But the same cannot be said of the Democrats who brought him to Pennsylvania. They knew what they were doing and they took advantage of his naïveté. 

I will point out that I agree with what Zelensky said about Vance, that anyone who ignores Ukraine’s plight is willing to make the invasion of Taiwan more likely and is willfully accepting a more dangerous world. I would go further, and say that J.D. Vance is a weasel who will say whatever he thinks advances his career, no matter how vile or untrue he privately believes it to be. I would add that the “restraint” foreign policy camp doesn’t deserve to be called “realist,” and that America should keep feeding Ukraine ammunition until Russia is kneecapped and hamstrung. 

But I’m not the president of a country, and the lives of millions of people don’t depend on my skill at politicking. Zelensky made a mistake. 

But then Donald Trump had to respond, and his response reminded me why there is no acceptable candidate in this race. In a few days, each candidate managed to offer a compelling case for why he or she should not be president. Trump said that he would get out of Ukraine, that Russia was going to win because “that’s what they do,” and that Ukraine was gone – forced to use children and seniors to fight its losing battles. 

Days later, Zelensky met with Trump, and this time Trump emerged from the meeting saying that he learned a lot, that he will visit Ukraine, and that he has a good relationship with Zelensky. He also said that he is going to end the war, no doubt by orchestrating the biggest, most beautiful deal since the Treaty of Versailles. (We all know what happened next.) Admittedly, he also posted on Truth Social that the war “will phase into WORLD WAR III” if Kamala Harris becomes president. 

People tell me different stories on Trump and Ukraine. Some are sure he’ll cut aid to zero as soon as he enters office, or at some point within the four years. Others think he’ll keep it going. He threatened to leave NATO and close our bases in South Korea and never did. I haven’t made up my mind, and am inclined to think that nobody knows what Trump will do about Ukraine, including him, because Trump makes decisions based on how well he slept the night before and on whether he’s having indigestion, not on any serious considerations. 

Still, I remember the peace deal he signed with the Taliban all too well, and I remember his betrayal of our Kurdish allies in 2019. I wouldn’t put it past him to keep Ukraine funding going for a while, but then to cut it off in a fit of rage if the war doesn’t end quickly. 

The right is in a state of contrarianism regarding foreign policy these days, preferring to root against the United States whenever the Democrats hold the White House and willing to entertain all sorts of revisionist cranks, from Glenn Greenwald to Seymour Hersh. We hear a great deal about endless wars (even wars we aren’t fighting).

I come from an old-fashioned school of thought on this subject, which holds that the way to end wars is to win them. Victory is achieved when the enemy’s means to continue fighting is utterly destroyed and when the enemy’s will is broken. While there is a certain amount of black and white simplicity to that view which causes many today to view it as the product of simple minds, a cursory look at history would show you that the wars which ended decisively were the ones which tended to stay ended, and the wars which were terminated prematurely were fought again and again, resulting in greater loss of life than would have been the case had the war been finished the first time around. Seeking a premature settlement because we lack the stomach to carry a war through to the end does not lead to lasting peace. 

Ukraine did not choose this war. America did not choose the War on Terror. Israel did not choose the war in Gaza, or the war in Lebanon (both of which have been ongoing for some time, despite what you might hear in the media about “escalation” or “acts of war” on the part of Israel). War was the only option. Ukraine and Israel cannot walk away from their fights. 

And neither can the United States. Many in America would like us to turn our backs on our commitments. They would prefer that we end the War on Terror, even if our only means to do so is to surrender. Our enemies around the globe would prefer that, too. 

Donald Trump appears sympathetic to these Americans, and Kamala Harris is not much better. We may not see anything better from either party until the American electorate is dissuaded of its nascent isolationism. 

Finally, to those who are skeptical of America’s presence around the globe: choose the side you’re on. The countries most excited to see American retrenchment are our enemies. They are nations marked by dictatorship, genocide, torture, mass murder, rape as a weapon of war, terrorism, corruption, and other crimes against humanity. The free nations of the world, the good countries, like having us around. Some of them gripe about us and our uncouth, unsophisticated, cowboy ways, but they prefer our leadership to Russia’s or China’s or Iran’s.

And those people in Iran and Gaza shouting “Death to America?” They mean you and me, too. 

Pandemic Sex Parties

Last week Jay Varna, a public health official, admitted in an interview that during the height of the pandemic – while the rest of us were holed up in apartments social distancing, or being arrested by policemen on a power trip for attending parking-lot church services with our windows rolled up – he was organizing orgies. Let’s be clear; in the middle of a pandemic we were being told was going to permanently alter life on Earth, a public health official was organizing parties seemingly designed to transmit diseases (and I don’t just mean respiratory ones), and his explanation is that he needed to blow off steam. 

That’s rich. He needed to blow off steam during a stressful pandemic? I wonder if family members who weren’t allowed to visit their dying loved ones in the hospital needed to blow off steam? I wonder if the parents of children who lost over a year of school need to blow off steam? I wonder if the seven-year-olds forced to wear masks “the science” assured us were absolutely required to prevent them from killing grandma (even though the science was seemingly sending the opposite message to every European country) needed to blow off steam? Varna should lose his job. He should lose his medical license. How many more examples do we need of prominent elites abusing their positions during the pandemic while forcing the rest of us to comply with rules which in the final accounting did not save lives before we start requiring resignations and firings? Gretchen Whitmer. Gavin Newsom. Andrew Cuomo. At least Boris Johnson lost his job. 

I wrote in an earlier newsletter that anyone wondering why we’re living in a populist moment should look at the never-ending stream of utter failures at the highest levels of American society over the past thirty years, many of which never result in any consequences for the people at the top. Meanwhile, the little guy takes it in the neck. And people seriously wonder why anyone votes for Trump. 

I’m with Nassim Taleb. We should require those in positions of power to go down with their ships. Because they are in such positions, they should be held to a higher standard than the average person. Consequences for high-profile failures should be harsh and punitive, both in order to deter future abuses, and because skin in the game is required as a matter of morality. We expect more from those in whom we put our trust. 

Varna is yet another example of someone who believed the trust placed on him by the public was placed on him rather than on the position in which he happened to be serving. Anthony Fauci, while not guilty (that we know of) of organizing sex parties, also confused his personal interest with his role, saying, “attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.” While I do not buy the more extreme theories about Fauci, his delusions of grandeur were gross and should be held against him, too. 

Many people would like to turn their backs on COVID. But the toddlers who still struggle to speak after their speech therapist spent a year in a mask can’t turn their backs. The lower-income students who lost a year of learning they will never regain can’t turn their backs. The individuals who missed their cancer screenings during the lockdowns and were subsequently diagnosed with stage three or four cancer can’t turn their backs. 

That’s why Jay Varna should lose his job. 

Nebraska, for Some Reason

Worried about losing a close election, the Trump team tried a last-minute effort to get Nebraska to change its election laws to award all of its electoral votes to the overall winner of the state, instead of splitting the votes proportionally the way Maine does. 

This effort failed. Notably, the same folks who were up in arms (often rightly) about Democratic efforts to change election laws right before votes were cast in 2020 did not have the same outrage when the Trump team tried to do it. 

I’m old-fashioned on this, too. Play by the rules of the game. If they need to be changed, change them after the game is over.

Ben Connelly is a writer, long-distance runner, former engineer, and author of “Grit: A Practical Guide to Developing Physical and Mental Toughness.” He publishes short stories and essays at Hardihood Books. @benconnelly6712