Myrtle Beach, SC Correspondent — Hospitality already ran the experiment. When the rooms filled and the kitchens couldn't hire, the wage moved and the attitude moved with it. That's tightness rather than a constitution. A durable shift would look like contracts that still bite after the occupancy chart cools. I think we have more of … Continue reading Is the labor wave in autos, ports, and hospitality producing a durable shift in private-sector bargaining power, or a one-cycle tightness that will fade with slower demand?
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Has the combination of lawfare, two attempts on Trump’s life, and a late nominee swap produced a 2024 race the pre-2021 system was not designed to run, or are these simply the ugly features of a polarized republic?
Gastonia, NC Before anybody calls this unprecedented, somebody in this Forum should say the word 1968 out loud. On the thirty-first of March that year a sitting president announced he would not seek re-election, after the primaries had already begun. On the fifth of June the leading candidate for that nomination was shot dead in … Continue reading Has the combination of lawfare, two attempts on Trump’s life, and a late nominee swap produced a 2024 race the pre-2021 system was not designed to run, or are these simply the ugly features of a polarized republic?
When a second apparent attempt occurred in September 2024 at the Trump International Golf Club, did that confirm a pattern of inadequate protective posture, or two disconnected events that should not be stacked into a single theory?
Myrtle Beach, SC Both halves of this question assume the fifteenth was a second failure. It was not. It was the system working, and that is the single most important fact about it. Here is what happened. Trump was playing the fifth hole. An agent moved ahead to sweep the sixth, which is standard practice … Continue reading When a second apparent attempt occurred in September 2024 at the Trump International Golf Club, did that confirm a pattern of inadequate protective posture, or two disconnected events that should not be stacked into a single theory?
If a major party can replace a sitting president on the ticket in midsummer without a popular vote on the replacement, what is left of the claim that presidential nominations are democratic events rather than managed outcomes?
Myrtle Beach, SC What is left is a claim that is fifty-two years old and has never been as strong as its advertising. Before 1972, presidential nominations in this country were made by party leaders. Primaries existed and they were beauty contests — advisory, partial, and routinely ignored. Hubert Humphrey was nominated in 1968 having … Continue reading If a major party can replace a sitting president on the ticket in midsummer without a popular vote on the replacement, what is left of the claim that presidential nominations are democratic events rather than managed outcomes?
Did the May 2024 New York conviction settle anything about guilt that a reasonable voter still needed, or has it mainly frozen a label — “felon” — onto the ballot while the case itself is still unfinished?
Gastonia, NC A reasonable voter already knew most of the underlying story before the Manhattan jury returned its verdict. The payment was not new. The reimbursement was not new. The 2016 context was not new. What May supplied was a short, durable noun that travels farther than the legal theory that produced it. I want … Continue reading Did the May 2024 New York conviction settle anything about guilt that a reasonable voter still needed, or has it mainly frozen a label — “felon” — onto the ballot while the case itself is still unfinished?
Did the Butler attempt change the 2024 race by making political violence the central fact, or did both coalitions absorb it as a one-week shock and return to the prior script?
Myrtle Beach, SC Both halves of this question assume the shock faded because the coalitions decided to let it fade. That is not what happened, and the actual explanation is sitting in plain view on the calendar. Butler was July thirteenth. Biden withdrew on July twenty-first. Eight days. A sitting president abandoned a re-election campaign … Continue reading Did the Butler attempt change the 2024 race by making political violence the central fact, or did both coalitions absorb it as a one-week shock and return to the prior script?
Is the speed with which the party, donors, and major media aligned behind Harris evidence of impressive coalition discipline, or of a nomination that was assigned rather than won?
Myrtle Beach, SC Discipline is what you call it when a contest never starts and the line still forms. That was my instinct and I want to test it against the one thing that would settle it, which is whether anybody was actually prevented from running. The answer is no. The party set a qualifying … Continue reading Is the speed with which the party, donors, and major media aligned behind Harris evidence of impressive coalition discipline, or of a nomination that was assigned rather than won?
Did Harris’s assignment on migration belong at the center of the 2024 race once she became the nominee, or was that role always a title without operational control?
Gastonia, NC I have to start with the title, because the question uses it and it belongs to a different person. The Coordinator for the Southwest Border was Roberta Jacobson. She was appointed to the National Security Council in January of 2021 with that exact job description and she left at the end of April … Continue reading Did Harris’s assignment on migration belong at the center of the 2024 race once she became the nominee, or was that role always a title without operational control?
Should donors and elected officials who spent 2019–20 calling Harris a historically weak primary candidate have been required to explain the 2024 conversion, or is elite preference allowed to change without a public accounting?
Myrtle Beach, SC Preference may change. Memory should not be optional. But before demanding an accounting, somebody should state the 2019 record accurately, because it is stranger than the shorthand. She did not lose a primary. She dropped out on the third of December 2019 — two months before Iowa, before a single vote was … Continue reading Should donors and elected officials who spent 2019–20 calling Harris a historically weak primary candidate have been required to explain the 2024 conversion, or is elite preference allowed to change without a public accounting?
When Kamala Harris inherited the nomination without facing a single primary voter as the presidential candidate, did that settle the succession question the Constitution left to parties, or did it confirm that the primary calendar had become a formality?
Gastonia, NC One correction before the argument, because the roll call is running as I write this and it matters. Votes are being cast. Not by the public, but by roughly four thousand delegates, and those delegates were themselves elected in primaries this spring. The party set a qualifying threshold — three hundred delegate signatures, … Continue reading When Kamala Harris inherited the nomination without facing a single primary voter as the presidential candidate, did that settle the succession question the Constitution left to parties, or did it confirm that the primary calendar had become a formality?
