A week from today, we are planning on embarking on a road trip that will take us through Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois to St. Louis, and then down to Bentonville, Arkansas, and back through Tennessee and Virginia. Except for Illinois and Virginia, and other than in large urban areas, we will be passing through states and areas that voted in the last election for Donald Trump. We have plans to see friends and families in much of the areas we will passing through or stopping at (I have been in contact so far with 20 or so family members and friends) and, to my knowledge, only one of them supports Trump and all the others abhor him. If you asked these 20 or so people about their friends where they live, again with one exception, they will tell you that virtually all of them abhor Trump as well. Clearly, in politics, opposites do not attract.

Of course, in Washington, where we live, we don’t have to worry about running into a Trump supporter. In DC itself, only 6% of voters selected Trump, in Montgomery County MD only 20%, Prince George’s County 11%, Arlington and Alexandria about 20% and Fairfax County about 30%. How lucky we are to live in a large metropolitan area where the vast majority of voters recognize what is in the best interest of the country, and do not fall for the distortions put out by Republican office holders and the main stream, right wing media.

We had lunch yesterday with an old friend who is in town from southern California, another location with a strong anti-Trump majority, and we talked about these things, among others. Of course, we agree on most things, and one of those things is that it is very difficult to listen to right-wing media for any length of time. This includes Fox News, which is the most watched cable news channel of them all. The majority of what you see on Fox, to someone who looks at the world as it is, is unwatchable. When I say this, by the way, I don’t think I am expressing bias. I think I am stating fact. Am I wrong? Should I be able to watch Fox or Newsmax and say, “How refreshing to watch different opinions, to broaden my mind, to learn something new.” I don’t think that is possible.

This goes to the question of media bias. Listening to conversations this morning on C-Span about the defunding of PBS and NPR, I heard a lot about media bias. And I agree that it is difficult to find MAGA presentations on public radio or TV, that it isn’t (as they used to say falsely about Fox) “fair and balanced”. But when one side is basically correct and other pretty much 100% wrong, why is “balanced” a virtue? How is it even possible?

One other phrase: It’s the economy, stupid.

This one is probably correct. If the economy does well under Donald, we will probably continue with a Republican Congress after 2026 and have another MAGA Republican elected president in 2028. If not, we will have Democratic control and enter our second period of Reconstruction.

I don’t expect the economy to do well under Trump, but as we know, he is a sneaky devil. And if it does do well, but at the expense of cruelty, one party rule, a wider gap between haves and have-nots, a decimated legal system, and semi-autocracy, is it even worth it?