All the Way with LBJ Redux or: Joe Biden's age problem isn't his age, but the age of his voters.

I'll start this off by coming clean and saying that I'm 68-years-old and I'll be voting for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in less than eleven months (or for whichever Democrat is running against Donald Trump or another Republican next November), but if I were 18 years old, I might not be.

We look back at Lyndon Baines Johnson now and many of us see the lasting legacy of his presidency in the triumph of Great Society programs, when Medicare was passed and when the Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally codified many of the demands of the Civil Rights movement. In 1968, however, there was nothing on many young people's minds but his role as the face of the Vietnam War. I was a young teen and the voting age was still 21 at the time, but I would have voted for anyone other than the president presiding over that war. I've been thinking about this a lot lately as I walk through neighborhoods where the stickers on lampposts are about the killing that is currently happening in Gaza -- killing that is being fueled by U.S. weapons that are being tied to possible war crimes. There are a lot of young voters who aren't as concerned as older voters with Biden victories like the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package, the $1.9 trillion in Covid relief, the confirmation of a large and very diverse crop new Federal judges, or falling unemployment, or a falling rate of inflation, or even avoiding the recession that was being almost uniformly predicted for the last three years. I can say that, for me, none of those domestic issues would have mattered until I was married with a child in the depths of the Reagan/Bush era.

In today's New York Times, the headline "In Campus Protests Over Gaza, Echoes of Outcry Over Vietnam" appeared and it only confirms what I've been seeing and fearing about young voters. Gaza will be an overriding issue for some of them, and I don't blame them; if I were fifty years younger, I would be them. Will college protesters and others who are horrified by what they see from Gaza on television and social media shift their votes from Biden to Trump in large numbers? Of course not. But they might stay home or vote for Cornell West or RFK, Jr., or Jill Stein. And us old folks can't tell them they're throwing away their votes. Don't we remember that young people are smarter than their elders? I certainly couldn't have been told that I was throwing away my support when -- as a 16-year-old non-voting anti-war protester -- I was 100% behind Bejamin Spock of the People's Party over the too-moderate-for-me George McGovern.

In these days when pundits like to act as if the major party nominees have already been confirmed nine months before the party conventions, it's hard to remember how late in the process LBJ bowed out of the 1968 contest. 1968 was a year of shocks, from the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy [Sr.], through Russian tanks in Prague, general strikes in France, and violent cops on the streets of Chicago, but before all those events came a routine presidential address about the Vietnam War on March 31, 1968, in which Johnson talked in some detail about his plans for peace in Vietnam for forty minutes and then ended by saying, "With America's sons in the fields far away, with America's future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world's hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office — the presidency of this country. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president." This was on a Sunday night in prime time during a time when presidential addresses pre-empted all broadcast networks and when all we had were broadcast networks; tens of millions of Americans got this same surprise announcement at the same time from a president who had won in a record landslide in 1964.

So, it's not a sure thing that we are predestined to a Biden v. Trump rematch in 2024, but if we are, the oldest major-party candidate of all time* can't take the support of young voters for granted. 

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*Speaking of candidates' ages and in trying to put myself into the shoes of young anti-war activists, I do remember myself as a watcher of politics thinking that Lyndon Johnson was ancient; he was only 59 in the video above.

Kidnapped?

This is a question about language and how it frames our debates. If Israeli defense forces and Hamas are at war in Gaza, how can the action of taking a prisoner of war by either side be described as a "kidnapping"?

And when will the United States return all those kidnap victims we've been holding in Guantanamo for over a decade?

#MittsMissingReturns (Part Eight) -- Another Lesson in Mitt's Lying Laugh

David Muir of ABC News had a chance to ask Mitt Romney about his tax returns in Jerusalem, and he phrased his question in a way that left Mitt Romney unable to answer with one of his stock phrases. Mitt's first response to the question --"Was there ever any year when you paid lower than the 13.9% [paid in 2010]" -- is what I've taken to calling "Mitt's Lying Smile" at the 0'27" mark before he lies about not knowing if he ever paid lower than that rate (or nothing).


Look at the lying smirk and chuckle again at the 0'46" mark when he explains that he wouldn't be qualified to be President if he weren't doing everything he could to take advantage of every loophole available only to the ultra-rich.
Again at 1'49" we see a more subtle version of Mitt's Lying Smile when he tells David Muir that he hasn't looked at his tax rates in previous years.
Finally, look at the commentary at the 3'40" mark.  I'm not the only person who would convict Mitt Romney if he were on a witness stand and I were in the jury box.
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The Press needs to learn from this example that an original question can reveal the real Willard 'Mitt' Romney.
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Viewers can learn how to spot Romney's lies (beyond the simple "his lips are moving") as we move into the season of debates and more non-Fox interviews.
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His debate coaches will need to find a way to cut down on his natural dishonest smiling 'tell', maybe by asking him to imagine Seamus flying off the roof of his car whenever he's tempted to laugh.
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Those of us who have been flogging the #MittsMissingReturns hashtag on Twitter over the past month need to continue pushing hard, and pushing every day.

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Catch up with previous installments in the #MittsMissingReturns saga by clicking below:

• #MittsMissingReturns [part one], July 3 
• #MittsMissingReturns (Part Two), July 6 
• #MittsMissingReturns (Part Three),  July 10
• #MittsMissingReturns (Part Four) -- In a Nutshell, July 14 
• #MittsMissingReturns (Part Five) -- In Which Mitt Romney Gives a Typically Squirrelly Response, July 16
• #MittsMissingReturns (Part Six) -- Herman Cain Weighs In, July 25
• #MittsMissingReturns (Part Seven) -- Romney Finds One Issue on Which He's 100% Consistent, July 26

Happy Chanukah my true blue liberalites!

If I ever were to throw off my atheism for a set of beliefs in the irrational, I might very well choose to be led by Matisyahu.
If you don't know these two live versions of  "King Without a Crown," you're in for a treat (and I hope they lead you to look for others on YouTube).  These sure beat one more repetition of Adam Sandler's "Hanukkah Song".
Enjoy!

Like a King without his Crown 
You keep fallin' down 
You really want to live but can't get rid of your frown 
You're tryin' to reach unto the heights and wind up down on the ground 
Givin' up your pride - then ya heard a sound 
Out of night comes day, out of day comes light 
Nullified to the One like sunlight in a ray, 
Makin' room for his love for a fire gonna blaze,
Make room for his love and a fire gonna blaze. 

Happy Chanukah!
And to all my Christian brethren out there? Season's Greetings!