Well, this is it. After four years of feeling abused and powerless, we are voting, and signs are that America’s Coalition of the Decent may actually be mobilizing in a unified front to evict Donald J. Trump from an office he never should have occupied and which he’s disgraced in more ways than I even thought possible. Through the imperfect windows of Twitter and the news media, I see a cathartic surge of righteous anger and as of today, with one week to go before the Nov. 3 climax, things look auspicious for a Democratic wave. I’m very much hoping that that old Cajun maniac James Carville is right that we’ll know it’s a Biden landslide on Election Night. Taking the Senate is a heavier lift, but even Mitch McConnell put the chances at 50/50. I think it’s slightly better than that. My fervent prayers are with Jaime Harrison in South Carolina and Cal Cunningham in North Carolina, because I really want my South to be part of the repudiation of the insanity and lawbreaking that the GOP has endorsed and enabled.
Below, you’ll find my thoughts on why Joe Biden has emerged through this campaign as somebody who’s earned my enthusiastic support. He and Kamala Harris make a rather inspiring pair, bringing experience and youth, centrism and progressivism and a multi-racial outlook that is galvanizing the Obama coalition and younger Americans, including first time voters. But let’s also take some moments for some top-shelf schadenfreude at the utter collapse of President Trump’s campaign. The Hunter Biden “emails” story proved to be almost entirely without substance, and its implosion made fools of Rudy Giuliani and his Ukrainian handlers. One DOJ investigation into Obama Administration officials “unmasking” names in intelligence reports was closed, finding no wrongdoing. Another one that seems particularly important to Attorney General Bill Barr looking into the origins of the Russian counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign in 2016 didn’t wrap up in time for the election as Trump so fervently hoped. The GOP spent immense time and effort trying to paint Biden as senile with deceptive video clips, leaving Biden free to fly over the bar of low expectations at both debates. And don’t forget yet another Trump campaign manager being taken in by law enforcement!
I’m supposed to append all this with caveats and warnings. Don’t spike the ball on the one yard line. It’s not over til it’s over. Don’t get complacent. And all that’s true. But I truly am not worried about Biden losing a free and fair election. I’m worried about some of the maneuvers Team Trump appears to be planning to contest the results in key states with the help of Republican insiders. But to make all those moves work, they’d have to exhibit a degree of legal competence and coordinated effort that would be, shall we say, novel for them. And I worry about violence from MAGA militia types for sure, but they’ve shown so far little but bluster, ineptitude and disarray. If they attack anybody or anything, it’ll be obvious and they’ll pay. But this getting is grim. A strong majority of the country is prepared to accept the outcome of the election and most of the states are eager to be seen as having delivered legitimate results. I wish us all well.
Photo: A random piece of folk art I saw nailed to a stump along Craighead St. next to the State Fairgrounds.
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Joe Biden For President: He’s Earned It
This post, published today, is presented in full here…
Some time in the second half of my undergraduate years at Northwestern University in Chicago, I went out of my way to hear a U.S. Senator speak on campus. He was either declared or about to declare his candidacy for president in the 1988 race. He was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a new-era Democrat with prospects. He addressed an all-university audience in a large lecture hall, and I can’t remember the particulars beyond a broad defense of democracy and civic engagement, but I came away really uplifted and inspired. It was my first impression of a national politician in person, and I liked him. I liked Joe Biden.
How different the times are now. Our national political life is a train wreck, with mass distrust of critical institutions and a right wing that’s larger and more stoked with fury than anything I ever imagined could rise up in America. The country is enduring multiple crises, including the worst pandemic in a century and a climate spiraling out of control. We need an exceptional leader more than at any time since at least (checks notes) the last time a Republican wrapped up a presidential term with the wheels coming off the country. That doesn’t mean a superhero, just some level-headed wisdom, managerial competence and respect for expertise. It means empathy and a moral compass. With that in mind, I cast my vote yesterday for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris with higher hopes than I expected when Biden emerged as the party front runner. He may be the man history called for this moment.
Joe wasn’t the first choice for a lot of Democrats, myself including. He’s an elderly guy with some hard-wired dispositions and beliefs that aren’t in synch with the realities of 2020. But in these difficult months, running against a mendacious bully, Biden hasn’t tried to feign anything. Instead he’s steadily emphasized his best qualities - the ones America is craving: experience and decency. Biden has been running for president on and off since 1988, always with a bright outlook and a pragmatic attitude. His time seemed at hand in 2016, when he was the incumbent vice president and a potentially less divisive alternative to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. But the untimely death of his son Beau, came at just the moment he needed to be entirely focused and energized, and I feel like part of our national tragedy today stems from that cruel coincidence. I think he’d have won in 2016, and I think he’ll win this election, because as stubborn as Trump’s support base has been, it was already eroding under his withering parade of lies, and it has finally cracked in the face of his catastrophic mismanagement of a foreseen public health crisis.
Yet decency and integrity are vehicles and values, not end goals. Massive policy and political struggles await the new administration, and it’s worth noticing the highs and lows of Biden’s career to get a sense on how we, as citizens with a deep stake in the months to come, can support and shape the Biden/Harris presidency. He’s taken heat for his central role in writing and enacting the 1994 omnibus crime bill that ushered in an age of prison-packing mandatory sentencing and other mistakes. But there are some mitigating factors here. I was in Washington when it was debated and passed, and you have to put yourself in the position of Democrats who were getting creamed for seeming to not have solutions for a surge in drug dealing and violent crime. The problem was real. The party, led by a centrist Bill Clinton, wrote a bi-partisan plan for better or worse. It was a creature of the compromises necessary to make a functioning democracy work. And in that law, for its unintended consequences, we got a federal assault weapons ban, which should never have been allowed to expire, and the Violence Against Women Act, which Biden sponsored and championed. Also inspiring is Biden’s rather maverick move to support same-sex marriage in May of 2012, while President Obama was still waffling. His surprise coming-out, as it were, is said to have forced Obama’s hand and it marked the moment that the Democratic Party officially got behind the long-fought cause. Biden’s been unfortunately wrong in opposing cannabis legalization, but Harris put a marker down on its behalf in her debate, so there will be voices in his ear backing it as part of a new slate of criminal justice reforms.
If you want to get actually excited about Biden’s prospects, look at his climate/energy plan. Wired magazine recently praised it: “In August, Biden announced a $2 trillion, four-year climate plan designed to steer energy policy away from coddling Big Oil and toward bolstering green energy. He’s outlined...reducing carbon emissions and creating 10 million jobs by building out a green energy infrastructure. The financing would come from a combination of corporate income taxes and government stimulus funds.” Biden was bold in the debates about transitioning away from fossil fuels. He’s proposed a new era Civilian Conservation Corps to do the badly needed forest management that isn’t getting done because we’re so strained fighting fires. He wants to do major grid infrastructure investment, which tops the country’s hit parade of Utterly Obvious Must Do Policies. I’m not that impressed with the Green New Deal, which is a sprawling wish list of progressive dreams, some of which distract from the goal of ending the Carbon Era of energy.
I sometimes cringe at Biden’s faith in bipartisan compromise, because we’ve seen so much single-minded partisan warfare from the 21st century GOP. But I can’t deny a president the chance to show America he is trying to unite and find common ground. And who knows? Biden’s got old friendships on the Hill, and he did some behind the scenes dealing on certain lower profile but important issues during the Obama years where Republicans did come along. I just appreciate his happy warrior vibe and the way he communicates confidence in the American people and institutions. I’m impressed that the full spectrum of the Democratic party appears to be rallying unapologetically behind him, which was never the case with Hillary and wouldn’t have been the case this year with Bernie Sanders. I’m also excited that it’s a ticket with a powerful, exceptional woman who I’m betting will herself be president next. Biden is a bridge figure, a final hurrah of the post WWII American middle class compact, and I think he’ll set progressives and liberals up to succeed in the decade to come.
Discovery: Nahre Sol
I’ve been a fan of Nahre Sol for a while now, and I wrote about her a couple of years ago as part of a roundup of YouTubers dedicated to explaining music in a substantial but accessible way. My take then:
The way classical musicians think and hear the world is not unfathomable to the uninitiated, but since Bernstein, few have even tried to bridge the gap. Juilliard-trained pianist and composer Nahre Sol steps in with “creative videos on music performance, practicing, and composition.” But they’re so much more. What makes Bach sound like Bach, or Debussy sound like Debussy? She helps us hear it, using low-jargon English, demonstrations and whimsical on-screen annotations. She takes her electric keyboard to unexpected locales and composes miniatures that are informed by her explorations of genres that she didn’t grow up with, such as funk, the blues, and bossa nova. At home she has a camera above her piano so we can watch her get things right and wrong, with explanations. Random appearances by her terrier Bobby add to the overall charm.
Nahre comes across as the coolest kind of curious outsider and she helps us forget the classical musicians who’ve looked down at popular genres. And in the years since, she’s added the PBS series Sound Field to her accomplishments. That said, she’s a rising star with all the classical bona fides. Watching her improvise in various modes and genres and hearing the way she approaches music has made me and I’m sure her 388,000 subscribers excited as can be to hear her original music formally recorded. Now that’s arrived with what appears to be her debut album Alice In Wonderland, a set of 10 solo works for piano. Actually the opening title track brings a second keyboard into the mix, a lovely bell-like electric sound that Nahre plays along with her concert grand, making contrasting timbres and a spectral loveliness that I would have to think sounds inviting to anybody. She’s released this one on video.
READ MORE ABOUT NAHRE AT THE FULL POST…
Dirk Powell: ‘My Terms With The Fiddle’
My guest on the next episode of The String is an artist who’s been on my dream list for a long time, the Louisiana-based multi-instrumentalist, producer and songwriter Dirk Powell. I first became aware of him I’m sure at Merlefest, where I saw him play with Balfa Toujours, the Cajun revival band he had with his wife through the 1990s and 2000s. He’s been part of many of my favorite projects over the years with artists including Tim O’Brien, Jerry Douglas, Darrell Scott and more recently Rhiannon Giddens. The show will have the full backstory, but in working up the interview, I found that at his website, Dirk has written a memoir of his formative years in music that really deserves your time. It delves into familiar terrain for roots music writers and readers but with language so fresh and a take so personal and wise that it stands out as one of the finest pieces of music writing I’ve read in recent years. Powell grew up in Kent, Ohio, where there wasn’t much going on in the way of traditional culture. Instead, he got connected to old-time music on trips to his grandfather’s place in rural Kentucky, where he saw Papaw and his Uncle Clyde play and exchange tunes and ideas. Powell reflects on developing his own style under their mentorship:
Uncle Clyde knew what a gifted musician Papaw was. Later, when I was playing the fiddle myself, he slid me one of those back-handed compliments that older generations always seem to deliver to younger ones right on cue. Speaking about the way Papaw fiddled, he told me, “Well, you might match him on the notin’, but you’ll never beat him on the bowin’.”
I knew then, and know now, that he was right. It’s not that I don’t like what I can do with the bow. I can make it snarl when I want to – which is more often than most fiddlers probably would; I can drive tunes in a certain edgy way. I established my terms with the fiddle long ago: I want the music to have blues and I want it to have balls. I want it full of sweat and grease. Occasionally, I want to be granted the power to break a heart. However, I’m not going for the level above those things, the one that transcends them and then unites them with others on a spiritual plane. My terms involve late nights and running around, too much rosin and just enough bourbon. My fiddle seems happy with the deal. It’s not a Stradivarius and I’m not Paganini – we’re a good match. FULL ESSAY HERE>>>
My show with Dirk, who recently released a fantastic new album of searching songwriting called When I Wait For You, will air Sunday (8am) and Monday (9pm) with the podcast coming a day later.
New at WMOT:
A feature story with interview about the wonderful East Nashville duo The Danberrys.
I reviewed the new surge in Americana protest music on the eve of the election.