If Chicago played better, I could change the card more substantially. In the meantime:

Merry Christmas and Happy First Night of Hanukkah! Here’s to peace on Earth, and good will toward men!

So the experiment I mused on here did not quite go as some folks might’ve hoped. “They” decided that Vice President Harris should inherit the nomination instead of having a contested convention. Since defeat is an orphan, we may never know if “They” were Democratic Party leaders and donors writ large or if “They” were Kamala and her team, maneuvering as quickly as possible to get Biden’s support and be handed the nomination. If I had to bet, I’d bet that it was both in real life, but we’ll all pretend it was the latter so that any machine bigwigs not named “Kamala” can save face.

Right now I think the best explanation for Trump’s victory is that over 60% of voters think we’re on the wrong track. When you’re on the wrong track, you change things up. Maybe further analysis, after more data’s been processed and the passions have cooled, will reveal otherwise.

The Democrats’ biggest mistake, both politically and in terms of governing the country (which is sort of the point of presidential elections), was not invoking the 25th Amendment ages ago. I’m not sure what their war-gaming said about leaving Biden in the White House while having Harris run. But absurdly pretending that the guy who obviously couldn’t handle a campaign was somehow still capable of running the federal government didn’t help. It made them look [Note: The editors and sponsors intervened and forced me to replace my original litany of invective with the following] bad. We’ll never know whether it was the least bad plan, but it just plain didn’t work.

Now, if they had 25th-Amendment-ed him, we would have been spared that particular absurdity. By the way, I’m still on board, like I was back in June, with Kamala replacing Joe right now. It might look gimmicky at this point, it might look like they’re doing it for the novelty, but I don’t care– it has the virtue of being the responsible and sane thing to do.

I am now done ranting about that, and I’ve run out of italics anyways. Back to the experiment part.

I still think taking longer to decide your nominee might work. Having later campaigns and caucuses and primaries might pay off. The relative lateness of Harris becoming the nominee was not the problem (but a lot more people should be a lot angrier about not yanking Joe a lot sooner). I don’t think the Harris campaign suffered from “not having enough time to introduce her to the voting public.” Money certainly wasn’t the problem, even if the campaign ended up in a little bit of debt.

Nothing in this election cycle convinced me that pushing campaigns, primaries, conventions, etc. closer to Election Day would hurt either side. So I dare the Ds and Rs to do so. No primaries until, say, May of 2028. Have the conventions back-to-back in the two weeks leading up to Labor Day. Two-month sprint, then election, then done.

Very tired. More later.

This afternoon it clicked that today was an anniversary, but I couldn’t remember of what. Eventually dug through the archives in hopes of jogging the memory. The memory was jogged.

Twenty-five years ago I was nearly skewered by some runaway industrial machinery. Because this was such a seminal moment in the history of the universe, and because I haven’t posted in three months, here’s “Ten Years On” rehashed, with some minor edits:

A long time ago I worked in a particular textile mill up in South Carolina. On occasion I would have to move gigantic rolls of cloth weighing half-a-ton or more. I’d do this using a tugger, which was essentially a several-hundred-pound motor in a metal box, with a hitch on the back (to which you’d attach what ever needed to be tugged) and a lever on the front for steering and propulsion. It was pretty simple: to move forward, you pull the lever forward and twist the handle, somewhat like revving a motorcycle. To put on the brake, simply release the lever and let it snap back into its upright resting position. Simple enough, right?

Have to interject here, because certain links in the original post are long dead. Here’s an image of [checks with lawyers and editors] a completely different manufacturer’s perfectly reliable tugger, hooked up to a cloth-laden “A-frame”:

Seriously, it’s not the same manufacturer at all. But the tuggers in my factory had a similar propulsion and steering stick. Also, the A-frames in my factory were bigger, I’m pretty certain they were green, and– most relevant to this story– the axles stuck out a few inches from the rest of the frame. Back to the original post:

So, [25] years ago today, I was maneuvering one of these A-frames, full of cloth, around with a tugger. I was backing up with it, pulling it towards me to get in into the correct position near an inspection station. I got it where I wanted it and let go of the lever–which, if you’ll recall from [three] paragraphs ago, was supposed to be the brake.

The lever snapped into its upright resting position, but the several-hundred-pound tugger, tugging with it the A-frame-full-of-at-least-half-a-ton-of-cloth, kept coming at me. Fast. Without screeching, meaning the brake had failed.

I backed up, hoping the whole contraption would come to a halt. It didn’t. The handle of the tugger slammed into my chest, which hurt badly enough by itself, and pinned me against another A-frame full of cloth behind me. Actually, to be more precise, it pinned me against the axle of another A-frame full of cloth.

So a metal axle was carving into my back, just inside my left shoulder-blade, while the handle of the tugger pressed against my chest with at least half-a-ton of help behind it. You know how people say they saw their lives flash before their eyes? I don’t specifically remember that happening, but I do remember wondering whether my obituary would mention getting impaled in a textile mill.

I managed to wiggle out, took a few steps, and collapsed to the ground. Stars came flooding in from the periphery of my vision, and that’s all I saw for about a minute.

I remember getting up a few minutes later and watching a few people rush around and change the “red tags” on every tugger. Each machine in the plant was supposed to be inspected three times a day, with the time and date noted on the red tags. When I inspected the rest of the machines two days later, I found several red tags that hadn’t been changed in over a year.

When I got home and inspected myself, I had bruises on my chest and for the next week, it hurt to inhale. I found a hand mirror to examine my back–it too was bruised, and the outline of the axle was tattooed just inside the left shoulder blade. It resembled the Red Hot Chili Peppers logo, a chaos symbol without the arrows–which would’ve been awesome if it were 1989 and the band hadn’t already sucked for the better part of a decade. The “tattoo” faded over the next couple of years.

That day, I decided to become a teacher. I was enrolled in secondary education courses by January 2000 and working in a classroom by August 2001.

…

So, but for the slip of the brake on a tugger, I might’ve gone on to a lucrative career in textiles, rather than teaching. I’m better off for it, though I’d have appreciated a sign from God that didn’t involve nearly getting shish-kabobed.

The red squiggly in the editing pane tells me I misspelled “kabobed,” but I’m leaving it be.

That was more’n half a lifetime ago. Unreal.

Happy 248th birthday to the United States, and happy 152nd birthday to Calvin Coolidge!

…

Here, presented without comment, is an except from President Reagan’s address on July 4th, 1986, delivered aboard USS John F. Kennedy:

All through our history, our Presidents and leaders have spoken of national unity and warned us that the real obstacle to moving forward the boundaries of freedom, the only permanent danger to the hope that is America, comes from within. It’s easy enough to dismiss this as a kind of familiar exhortation. Yet the truth is that even two of our greatest Founding Fathers, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, once learned this lesson late in life. They’d worked so closely together in Philadelphia for independence. But once that was gained and a government was formed, something called partisan politics began to get in the way. After a bitter and divisive campaign, Jefferson defeated Adams for the Presidency in 1800. And the night before Jefferson’s inauguration, Adams slipped away to Boston, disappointed, brokenhearted, and bitter.

For years their estrangement lasted. But then when both had retired, Jefferson at 68 to Monticello and Adams at 76 to Quincy, they began through their letters to speak again to each other. Letters that discussed almost every conceivable subject: gardening, horseback riding, even sneezing as a cure for hiccups; but other subjects as well: the loss of loved ones, the mystery of grief and sorrow, the importance of religion, and of course the last thoughts, the final hopes of two old men, two great patriarchs, for the country that they had helped to found and loved so deeply. “It carries me back,” Jefferson wrote about correspondence with his cosigner of the Declaration of Independence, “to the times when, beset with difficulties and dangers, we were fellow laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most valuable to man, his right to self-government. Laboring always at the same oar, with some wave ever ahead threatening to overwhelm us and yet passing harmless… we rowed through the storm with heart and hand…” It was their last gift to us, this lesson in brotherhood, in tolerance for each other, this insight into America’s strength as a nation. And when both died on the same day within hours of each other, that date was July 4th, 50 years exactly after that first gift to us, the Declaration of Independence.

My fellow Americans, it falls to us to keep faith with them and all the great Americans of our past. Believe me, if there’s one impression I carry with me after the privilege of holding for 5 1/2 years the office held by Adams and Jefferson and Lincoln, it is this: that the things that unite us—America’s past of which we’re so proud, our hopes and aspirations for the future of the world and this much-loved country—these things far outweigh what little divides us. And so tonight we reaffirm that Jew and gentile, we are one nation under God; that black and white, we are one nation indivisible; that Republican and Democrat, we are all Americans. Tonight, with heart and hand, through whatever trial and travail, we pledge ourselves to each other and to the cause of human freedom, the cause that has given light to this land and hope to the world.

My fellow Americans, we’re known around the world as a confident and a happy people. Tonight there’s much to celebrate and many blessings to be grateful for. So while it’s good to talk about serious things, it’s just as important and just as American to have some fun. Now, let’s have some fun—let the celebration begin!

God bless America!