If Strategy is the grand plan and tactics are the steps you actually take to execute that grand plan, then what is the strategy to beat Mr. Trump and his MAGA hordes? And what does that imply for tactics?
Mad Dog believes the strategy is to take the offense and that means committing to humiliating the Donald and his masses of Orcs. Only by calling them out for what they are, shattering the fantasies they peddle, push past the amnesia of what he did and how that played out last time.
The alternative is singing kumbaya and sitting quietly with our hands folded, as if politics were a tea party which requires not raisings one's voice.
As today's NYT editorial noted Donald Trump and his minions spin their own version of memory and history: Senator Katie Britt of Alabama exhorted the Republican National Convention with the stirring words that Donald Trump gave us the "greatest economy in history."
Of course, inflation was low during part of his tenure, when gas prices dipped below $3 a gallon--but selective amnesia, when gas prices were that low, there was no place to drive to--stores, restaurants were closed and the economy careened toward a second Great Depression because President Trump refused to believe we had a pandemic, despite the box cars outside hospitals being used as temporary morgues to store the bodies, and when he finally came around, he had his own creative ideas about finding a cure for COVID--intravenous injections of bleach.
We would be well served if Governor Walz and Vice President reminded everyone face to face with Trump, Vance and the other Magats out there.
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| Don't Eat Me, Donald! |
But we cannot depend on that happening. We have to act ourselves, in our own small towns, along the highways and byways, to express our opinions, which is our most fundamental right, upon which all other rights depend.
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| One Weird, Creepy, Senile |
One thing Mad Dog would like to see is the placement in public places of signs expressing unhappiness with Trump and his MAGA cause.
Objections have been raised this may violate some local laws, signs needing names and addresses of sponsors.
But there are two things to note:
1. The other side already does this: Examples from my bike ride around Hampton below.
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| No Attribution |
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| Political Statement |
2. Local towns and states cannot defy the United States Constitution in violating the First Amendment which protects freedom of expression, particularly of political thought.
That is found in McIntyre v Ohio Board of elections:
Held: Section 3599.09(A)'s prohibition of the distribution of anonymous campaign literature abridges the freedom of speech in violation of the First Amendment. Pp.341-357.
(a) The freedom to publish anonymously is protected by the First Amendment, and, as Talley indicates, extends beyond the literary realm to the advocacy of political causes. Pp.341-343.
(b) This Court's precedents make abundantly clear that the Ohio Supreme Court's reasonableness standard is significantly more lenient than is appropriate in a case of this kind. Although Talley concerned a different limitation than § 3599.09(A) and thus does not necessarily control here, the First Amendment's protection of anonymity nevertheless applies. Section 3599.09(A) is not simply an election code provision subject to the "ordinary litigation" test set forth in Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U. S. 780, and similar cases. Rather, it is a regulation of core political speech. Moreover, the category of documents it covers is defined by their content-only those publications containing speech designed to influence the voters in an election need bear the required information. See, e. g., First Nat. Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U. S. 765,776-777. When a law burdens such speech, the Court applies "exacting scrutiny,"
upholding the restriction only if it is narrowly tailored to serve an overriding state interest. See, e. g., id., at 786. Pp.343-347.
(c) Section 3599.09(A)'s anonymous speech ban is not justified by Ohio's asserted interests in preventing fraudulent and libelous statements and in providing the electorate with relevant information. The claimed informational interest is plainly insufficient to support the statute's disclosure requirement, since the speaker's identity is no different from other components of a document's contents that the author is free to include or exclude, and the author's name and address add little to the reader's ability to evaluate the document in the case of a handbill written by a private citizen unknown to the reader. Moreover, the state interest in preventing fraud and libel (which Ohio vindicates by means of other, more direct prohibitions) does not justify § 3599.09(A)'s extremely broad prohibition of anonymous leaflets. The statute encompasses all documents, regardless of whether they are arguably false or misleading. Although a State might somehow demonstrate that its enforcement interests justify a more limited identification requirement, Ohio has not met that burden here. Pp. 348-353.
It is weird to claim immigrants are eating pets; weird to say police could bring law and order if only they were allowed to get violent enough just briefly; weird to call Hannibal Lecter "the late great," weird to ponder, at a rally which is worse electrocution or being eaten by a shark; weird to claim the cure for COVID could be intravenous bleach; Weird to say Kim Jung Un of North Korea writes such beautiful letters Trump is now best buddies with him; creepy/weird to speculate about dating your daughter because she is just so hot.
So, we ought to get out there and say our piece and not allow the other side to intimidate or dominate us.
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