11.30 Christine McVie dies at 79.
11.29 A federal jury in Washington found Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes guilty of seditious conspiracy in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. A second defendant was also convicted of seditious conspiracy. Rhodes and four other defendants were found guilty of obstruction of an official proceeding and aiding and abetting.
11.29 US defeats Iran 1-0, to advance to the knockout round in the World Cup.
11.24 Giants-Cowboys drew 42 million viewers for Fox, making it the most-watched regular-season game in NFL history. Cowboys win, btw, 28-20.
11.19 Buffalo receives more than six feet of snow; Orchard Park gets 77 inches.
11.18 Michael Gerson dies at 59. A few years ago, when his son went off to college, Gerson wrote about his feelings. After acknowledging that his son was apt to be homesick, Gerson wrote, “ But with due respect to my son’s feelings, I have the worse of it. I know something he doesn’t — not quite a secret, but incomprehensible to the young. He is experiencing the adjustments that come with beginnings. His life is starting for real. I have begun the long letting go. Put another way: He has a wonderful future in which my part naturally diminishes. I have no possible future that is better without him close. There is no use brooding about it. I’m sure my father realized it at a similar moment. And I certainly didn’t notice or empathize. At first, he was a giant who held my hand and filled my sky. Then a middle-aged man who paid my bills. Now, decades after his passing, a much-loved shadow. But I can remember the last time I hugged him in the front hallway of his home, where I always had a room. It is a memory of warmth. I can only hope to leave my son the same. Parenthood offers many lessons in patience and sacrifice. But ultimately, it is a lesson in humility. The very best thing about your life is a short stage in someone else’s story. And it is enough.“
11.18 Elizabeth Holmes was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
11.17 Aaron Judge win MVP.
11.17 Nancy Pelosi announces that she will not seek a leadership role, ending a twenty year period in which she was the singlemost effective political leader in Washington. Biden: “History will note she is the most consequential Speaker of the House of Representatives in our history.” Rep. John Burton: “We wouldn’t have survived Trump except for the fact that Nancy was the bulwark. She’s the savior of the goddamn country.” Sen. Chris Murphy, in a tweet, remembering Pelosi at a caucus meeting in 2010, when panicked Democrats “lined up at the microphone to tell Pelosi that it was time for us to give up on the Affordable Care Act. I watched her single handedly WILL the caucus to act. I watched her mettle change the entire mood of the room. Two months later, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act. And today, it’s so popular the new Republican Congress won’t dare touch it. I had never seen any person do what Pelosi did that night. I’ve never seen it since. There hasn’t been, and will not be, anyone like her.”
11.15 Trump announces another bid for the presidency.
11.12 Visit
11.9 Axios: “Trump is facing waves of blame after key Republican candidates lost. There was no red wave. . . .Republican elites — and other anti-Trump Republicans — sense blood in the water. There’s an increased likelihood of a larger, more boisterous primary field competing against Trump in 2024. . . .What happened: Many of former President Trump’s handpicked candidates were defeated or struggled in otherwise winnable races — a lineup of underachievers. In Pennsylvania, Dr. Mehmet Oz lost his Senate race to Democrat John Fetterman by 2+ points. In Michigan, Tudor Dixon lost her challenge to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer by 8 points. . . .On top of all that, he stoked a massive distraction by promoting speculation about his own 2024 campaign in the midterms’ final hours. . . .Trump constrained his party’s coalition in states where he showed up. In Pennsylvania, Senate victor John Fetterman won independents with 57% of the vote, Hispanics with 67% of the vote and women with 57% of the vote, according to exit polling. In Georgia, where the Senate race is too close to call, Trump-championed Herschel Walker won only 8% of the Black vote, 42% of independents and 39% of Hispanics, exit polls show. His numbers in all three categories lagged Gov. Brian Kemp, who won re-election.”
11.9 Ruy Teixeira in The Atlantic: “This year, Democrats have chosen to run a campaign focused on three things: abortion rights, gun control, and safeguarding democracy—issues with strong appeal to socially liberal, college-educated voters. But these issues have much less appeal to working-class voters. They are instead focused on the economy, inflation, and crime, and they are skeptical of the Democratic Party’s performance in all three realms. This inattentiveness to working-class concerns is not peculiar to the present election. The roots of the Democrats’ struggles go back at least as far as Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016, and, as important, to the way in which many Democrats chose to interpret her defeat. Those mistakes, compounded over subsequent election cycles and amplified by vocal activists, now threaten to deliver another stinging disappointment for the Democratic Party. But until Democrats are prepared to grapple honestly with the sources of their electoral struggles, that streak is unlikely to end.’’
11.9 Ross Douthat: “[T]here’s a decisive right-of-center majority there for the taking in American politics, an opportunity magnified by the Biden administration’s unpopularity. It’s a majority that Donald Trump pushed the party toward, by picking up working-class white voters in 2016 and then Hispanic voters in 2020 — proving that the G.O.P. coalition could be more blue collar and multiracial than its Romney-Ryan iteration …But Trump himself is just too much, too erratic and polarizing and plainly dangerous, to complete the realignment on his own. And his influence on the party as a whole, manifest in the underperforming candidates he elevated in this cycle, is preventing the new G.O.P. majority from taking its natural shape. States like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and maybe even New Hampshire should have been easy Republican pickups; all they needed was a normal set of Senate nominees. Instead they got the kind of nominees Trump wanted, and the result is difficulty, defeat, disappointment and votes being counted late into the night.’’
11.8 Fred Kayne dumps me.
11.6 Spending the day in Paterson with Ivy.
11.6 Breakfast at the Lindstroms
11.6 New York Times: “[Dusty] Baker once smoked a joint with Jimi Hendrix. He and a Dodgers teammate, Glenn Burke, invented the high-five. He wears wristbands with his own likeness. He has a vineyard at his home in Sacramento. Before the World Series, he got a good-luck message from Snoop Dogg. In his coaching staffs, Baker said, he values diversity, so each player has a coach with a similar background: “I always had an African-American dude, I always had a couple Latin dudes, I always had a sophisticated college dude, I always had some country white dudes that they can go talk to,” he said.
11.5 Astros top the Phillies, win the World Series 4 games to 2.
11.5 Margaret Schmidt’s baby shower in Croton.
11.3 Douglas McGrath dies at 64.
11.2 Four Astros pitchers combine to no-hit the Phillies, tie World Series 2-2.
11.2 George Will in The Washington Post: “Regarding Biden and Harris, the national Democratic Party faces two tests of stewardship: Its imprimatur cannot again be bestowed on either of them. Biden is not just past his prime; even adequacy is in his past. And this is Harris’s prime. In 2024, the Republican Party might present the nation with a presidential nominee whose unfitness has been demonstrated. After next Tuesday’s sobering election results, Democrats should resolve not to insult and imperil the nation by doing likewise.’’
11.2 Biden: “In our bones, we know democracy is at risk.”
11.2 Visit Regina Lombardo in NYC