Ninety-seven days before what very well may be the last free election held in the United States of America, the public reaction to the departure of Joseph Biden from the presidential race highlights just how disenchanted the Democratic voter base was with him. When he announced his withdrawal and subsequently more or less anointed Kamala Harris as the alternative Democratic candidate, the only thing that kept Democrats from dancing in the streets was a widespread reluctance to hurt Grandpa Joe’s feelings. Otherwise, however, a wave of enthusiasm and revelry resembling a cross between New Years Eve and the Fourth of July ensued among their ranks. Record-breaking waves of money immediately washed over the Democratic Party in general and the Harris campaign in particular. As I write this, the frenzied hoopla among the Democrats continues unabated as the Republicans frantically attempt to reorganize their campaign to deal with the tsunami of insanely optimistic political action engendered by Biden’s decision to go gently into that good night of oblivion known as the realm of the senior statesman.
To be fair, of course, it has only been little more than a week, but still, all the Republicans have been able to come up with so far to deal with their new half-Indian half-Jamaican black woman opponent is a predictable and typically incomprehensible word salad of race-baiting dog whistles, male chauvinist insults and bald-faced lies. Meanwhile, Trump’s new vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, managed to set his own record times. In his case, he set them for becoming embroiled in ridiculous controversies by first having to defend remarks gratuitously denigrating childless people and cat owners, and then being required to deal with a rumor he engaged in coitus with furniture. No, that is not a misprint – the sexual assault victim was, allegedly, a couch, the accomplice a well-lubricated rubber glove.
Interestingly, Vance is such a weirdo, and his weirdness is so widely known, that despite its manifest absurdity the allegation was widely believed. It took the Associated Press, no less, to post the fact-checking results that debunked the story. Well, that was certainly a relief. While it is well known that American hillbillies have a penchant for their close relatives and barnyard animals, that they could also be aroused to heights of amorous ardor by a well-built chesterfield would have indeed been news to those of us here in the civilized parts of the country, and would definitely have given “love seat” an entirely new connotation. The business about cat owners and childless people, on the other hand, turned out to true.
Caught between being unable to think outside the box about their new presidential opponent and nearly instant buyer’s remorse about the JD Vance VP pick, the Republicans also continue to be confronted by the rising drumbeat of revelations about Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s policy framework document that says the quiet part out loud about nearly everything the MAGA crowd has in mind for Donald Trump’s second term. It’s exceedingly long-winded, even for a fascist manifesto, taking about nine hundred pages to say most of the things the NSDAP took only five pages to say in 1920 and Mussolini took only nine pages to say in 1932. It looks like everybody in the think tank had to get their licks in, and nobody was about to let any RINO editor cucks condense or revise even one single sentence of their individual, personal visions for a White, straight, Christian, trickle-down capitalist, xenophobic, climate-change denying, completely deregulated, mashup of The Handmaiden’s Tale, Brave New World, Hunger Games, Followers, Atlas Shrugged, Fahrenheit 451, The Turner Diaries, Mein Kampf and 1984.
It’s not hard to see that the Republicans heartily wish that the Heritage Foundation had kept Project 2025 under wraps until, well, 2025. Daily revelations of its content have amounted to a steady drip, drip, drip of disturbing, poisonous vitriol splashing all over the Republican Party and its sundry 2024 political efforts. But the rabidly frothing ideologues at 214 Massachusetts Avenue Northeast were so proud of their work, they just couldn’t keep their big, fat mouths shut until Trump finally got his chance to become Dictator On Day One. It has gotten to the point where both the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee are extremely concerned that the darn thing is frightening away the independent and undecided citizens in the key swing states whose votes they will need to hijack Congress and the White House in November. And so now that HF’s vision of a Shining City On A Hill from the Good Old Days That Never Were has turned into a bonafide albatross, I suspected it was time for someone representing the interests of Republican Party to pay me a visit – which is exactly what happened this morning.
The RNC sent Dr. Nat Varken, a political scientist who wrote his PhD thesis at Bob Jones University on minority voter suppression strategy. He was wearing a beard and a grubby, mismatched outfit, doing his best to look like Ted Cruz.
“We’ve got to do something about the Project 2025 backlash, Collins,” he proclaimed as he situated himself with exaggerated grandiosity in the chair directly in front of my desk. “The polls show it’s already eating into the marginal support in key states we’re going to need to win if we want to get to two-seventy.”
“Considering what it says,” I observed, “that’s hardly surprising. It’s one thing to screw the public after you get into office, and quite another to tell them in detail how you plan to do it before they get a chance to elect you.”
“None of that [expletive] the Heritage Foundation put in that [expletive] thing is official Republican policy, you know,” he shot back in an irritated tone.
“You mean you’re telling me,” I needled, “that Trump and Company aren’t hot to trot for everything in that document?”
“Of course we are,” he confirmed. “We just don’t go around shouting it on street corners!”
“Trump shouts a lot of it from the stage at his rallies,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, yeah,” Varken admitted with a dismissive wave of his hand, “because that’s exactly what those people want to hear! But not Joe and Jane Sixpack in [expletive] Milwaukee! We want them to hear about how bad everything is now – all the awful things the Democrats have done – the crime, the economy, the border crisis, the drug crisis, the world going up in smoke! They need to hear about how we’re going to fix all those things, not how we’re going to fire those traitors in the civil service and replace them with true patriots and a stuff like that!”
“Except,” I noted, “crime rates are way down since 2020, the stock market is booming even with high interest rates, and God knows how it’s going to take off when the fed eases up. Inflation is receding, unemployment is the lowest it has been since 1951, deportations are at their lowest in years because illegal immigration has been the lowest in years, opioid abuse is way down from the level it was during the Trump administration, and right now is the first time in decades the United States hasn’t been involved in any foreign wars.”
“Well, sure, you and I know that,” he conceded, “but nothing says the Republicans can’t say different if they want to, does it?”
“True,” I agreed, “the First Amendment allows politicians to lie like used car salesmen if it suits their purposes. It’s up to the voters to figure out that they’re talking horse-hockey before they hit the ballot box. That’s democracy in America.”
“Right!” Varken enthusiastically concurred. “But look at those [expletive] blabbermouths at the Heritage Foundation! Who told them to publish the truth? This is Washington DC, God damn it, and we have such high respect for the truth here, we only use it on special occasions! And no [expletive] way is a [expletive] presidential election the right occasion for anything remotely resembling the truth! You would think, wouldn’t you, that a building packed with people who are supposed to be intellectuals would be smart enough to figure that out! But no! Those [expletive] [expletive] at the Heritage Foundation just had to let the [expletive] cat out of the [expletive] bag, didn’t they?”
“Presumably,” I interjected, “not the same cat that belongs to some childless professional woman who didn’t stay home making babies like JD Vance thinks she should have?”
“That [expletive] idiot [expletive] Vance!” he howled. “First that stupid [expletive] [expletive] Kristi Noem [expletive] off every undecided voter who owns a dog, and now that dumb [expletive] sucker Vance does it for every registered independent childless woman with a [expletive] cat! The way we’re running this election is beginning to remind me of when the Redskins used to beat themselves in the playoffs!
“Which they did,” I recalled, “with aggravating regularity; not unlike the Republicans in 2020. Speaking of which, I’ve noticed that your quarterback, Donny ‘tiny hands’ Trump, is trying to make up for lost yardage by claiming he knows nothing about Project 2025 and has no idea who is behind it.”
“Better not let him hear you call him that,” Varken cautioned with a chuckle. “He’ll nail your [expletive] to a log, chain it to a pickup truck and drag you down ten miles of gravel road.”
“No,” I corrected, “he would constantly suggest that to his followers during his stump speeches until one of them did it.”
“True,” he granted with a shrug. “And yeah, he’s trying to distance himself, but there are all these guys who worked for him in his first administration.”
“Conservative estimates,” I clarified, “no pun intended – put the number at over one hundred and forty members of his former administration. People like Ben Carson, Trump’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; Ken Cuccinelli, his Secretary of Homeland Security; Christopher Miller, who was his Acting Secretary of Defense; Russ Vought, Director of his Office of Management and Budget; Perry Pendley, the head of the Bureau of Land Management; Bernard McNamee, the head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; Paul Dans, Chief of Staff at the Office of Personnel Management; Steven Groves, Trump’s special assistant during the Mueller investigation; Spencer Chretien, Trump’s special assistant for vetting political appointees; Rick Dearborn, Trump’s White House Deputy Chief of Staff; Peter Navarro, Director of Trump’s National Trade Council…”
“Yes, yes,” Varken interrupted, leaning across my desk to get right in my face, “your photographic memory and incredible attention to detail are legendary in this town! No need to list them all – I know Trump knows all of those people that you know Trump knows, and you and I both know Trump knows they worked on Project 2025! The question is, what the [expletive] can the Republican Party do to keep every undecided and independent voter out there beyond the Beltway from knowing that he knows that?”
I spent a moment contemplating Varken’s bloated face, now cherry red with urgent anxiety, veins bulging in his forehead, skin blotched everywhere with gin blossoms, the long, dirty hairs protruding from his nostrils, his breath reeking of stale cigarette smoke and halitosis. Then I spoke. “Did you know, there are three thousand four hundred and eleven men named ‘Ben Carson’ in the United States?”
At that, Varken slowly backed down, finally reclining in his chair with a protracted sigh. “No, I did not. So what?”
“So, if somebody says a person named ‘Ben Carson’ worked on Project 2025, there is a ninety-nine point nine-seven percent chance that person is somebody other than the Ben Carson who Donald Trump knows.”
Varken cocked his head to the side like a puzzled puppy. “Huh? What are you trying to say?”
“I’m saying,” I continued, “that the surname ‘Miller’ is the sixth most common last name in the United States, and that there are twenty-three thousand, nine hundred and seven men in America named ‘Christopher Miller,’ meaning that if somebody says a person named ‘Christopher Miller’ worked on Project 2025, there is a ninety-nine point nine-nine-six percent chance that person is somebody other than the Christopher Miller who Donald Trump knows. Now, suppose Donald Trump denies he knows any of the people whom the media have identified as working on Project 2025. Do you know how to calculate the probability that such a statement made by Donald Trump is true?”
“Uh… no, of course not,” he replied in a flustered tone. “That’s the kind of thing you get paid to know.”
“And I do,” I assured him. “You take all the probabilities like those two I just told you about, and you multiply them together. The result is the probability that Donald Trump knows absolutely nobody who worked on Project 2025.”
Varken leaned forward again, placing his elbows on my desk. “And what’s that?”
“Eighty-five point nine-three percent,” I declared.
Varken squinted at me, incredulous. “And how is that possible?”
“Because,” I explained, “no matter whose name you choose from the list of one hundred and forty-seven people who can be connected to the development of Project 2025, there are thousands and thousands of people in the US population of three-hundred and thirty million who have that exact combination of first and last name. So you end up multiplying one hundred and forty-seven probabilities of ninety-nine point nine-something-or-another together. And when you do that, you get an overall probability of between eight and nine out of ten that Donald Trump never met anybody who worked on Project 2025.”
“If,” Varken objected, “you we can prove that every Ben Carson, Christopher Miller, Ken Cuccinelli, Russ Vought, and so on, and so forth, never met Donald Trump or worked in his administration!”
“No,” I explained, “not you – the Republican Party doesn’t have to prove anything. The Republican Party just needs to issue a statement that there is a mathematically verifiable statistical probability of better than eight in ten that Donald Trump is telling the absolute truth when he says he never met and doesn’t know anybody who worked on Project 2025. And compared to his historical track record with the truth, odds like that are an ironclad guarantee where Donald Trump is concerned. It’s up to anybody who disagrees with that statement to prove it isn’t so. But they can’t do that, because, as every red-blooded American knows, numbers don’t lie.”
“Oh, yeah,” Varken leaned back and nodded, contemplating my remarks. “Now I get it. Right! We have statistical mathematics on our side! Hot damn! We’ve got plausible deniability!”
“Given what the average American voter knows about statistical mathematics, it’s precisely as plausible as it needs to be,” I assured him. “That’s ninety-nine point nine percent certain.”