Author: Stephanie Jones

Basking in the afterglow of President Joe Biden’s stellar press conference last night, I clicked on Morning Joe at dawn to check out what they were saying about President Biden’s press conference.

It seemed to start off ok.

In the lead-in, co-host Willie Geist noted that “He did have some gaffes, but he also showed a command of key issues, particularly on foreign policy.”

Kind of a half-assed, obviously begrudging admission that Biden did well – even though we could have done without it being couched in a gratuitous observation that, like every other human being on earth, Biden isn’t perfect. But alright.

Then, in the next breath, Geist said:

“But behind the scenes, though, advisors and close allies are said to be making the case for why he should step aside”

As he spoke, a graphic of a New York Times headline blaring “Biden advisors weigh how to convince him to end his campaign” floated on the screen.

Click.

“Behind the scenes advisors are said to be” is Mean Girl Telephone Game speak for “We heard that someone who isn’t behind the scenes told somebody what they claim is happening in rooms they aren’t in, but we’re not telling you who said it or who they said it about.”

In other words, once again, we’re being played.

Remember when the press defended their non-stop Biden Doom Loop as completely beyond their control, because it was all Biden’s fault, generated solely by a bad debate performance, but all the president needed to do was to show them he’s up to the job and they’d back off?

Remember “He needs to give a speech”?

He gave a speech. Meh

Then, “He needs to speak off the cuff without a teleprompter.”

He spoke off the cuff without a teleprompter, repeatedly, nearly every day, including a beautiful, heartfelt remarks at a meeting of national union leaders that you probably never even saw if you even heard about it. Because it earned nothing but crickets from the chattering class, who simply ignored it.

And then: “He needs to give a press conference.”

And boy, did he give a press conference, delivering a performance that even his most fervent media detractors had to reluctantly admit was a master class in “showing a command of key issues.”

But, of course, that wasn’t good enough for the “just prove to us you’re up to the job and we’ll leave you alone” crowd, either.

Because they were lying. Again.

Let’s be real. The media are NEVER going to let up on President Biden, no matter what he says or what does.

Biden could have recited Shakespeare’s sonnets from memory while doing one-handed push-ups last night, and the media would have disqualified him for using the wrong arm.

And even if Biden were to step down today, as the media elite are not just demanding, but irrresponsibly trying to force him to do (not your job, guys), they would simply shift their focus to his replacement, expertly sniff out the softest spot on their underbelly, and plunge their fangs into it …

And without even coming up for air, they would breathlessly proclaim:

DEMOCRATS IN DISARRAY!

BUYER’S REGRET IN THE DEMOCRATIC CAMP!

INSIDERS TURN ON MAGICAL SPARKLE PONY: SOURCES LAMENT THAT MSP “IS NO JOE BIDEN!”

I am so proud of President Biden and Vice President Harris and the Democrats who will actually decide who are nominees are, for refusing to play Charlie Brown to the political Lucys trying to lure us to the party’s and country’s demise with promises to play fair this time.

Nope. We’re not going to try to kick that football only to have it snatched away and find ourselves flat on our backs while the Republicans climb over us and stumble through the goalposts their media blockers and tacklers are dragging around the field.

Because this isn’t a cartoon and it isn’t a game. This is a battle for our country’s life and soul. And we’re not going to let up just because certain shameless “journalists” tell us some nameless, spineless “advisors” want us to.

Keep fighting, y’all. Joe and Kamala have got this … and we’ve got them.

I’m going to speak honestly to my white Democratic sisters, even though I know it may ruffle some feathers:

An awful lot of white women have lately been demanding that our party erase the votes of tens of millions of people and kick President Biden to the curb. These erased votes include the votes of millions of Black Americans who are solidly behind Joe Biden and will not allow our voices to be silenced to satisfy the wishes of a small, overwhelmingly white sliver of unreliable Independents and shaky Democrats not guaranteed to vote Democratic, regardless what we do.

And many of the women making this demand also claim they want Biden to be replaced by Kamala Harris and promise they will wholeheartedly support her if this happens. But while Vice President Harris is the ONLY rational and acceptable choice to step in for Biden should he decide not to run, I am not swayed by this promise at all.

To paraphrase James Baldwin, We don’t believe what you say because we see what you do.

White women voters have proven time and again to be undependable allies and the weakest link in the electoral chain. As a result, I don’t trust many of them any further than I can throw them.

Not only have they been the biggest drag on Democrats, a whole lot of white women have spent a whole lot of time and effort in the last 3 and 1/2 years telling us how much they don’t like Kamala Harris. And their disdain is usually based on the same types of illusory criticisms always lobbed at Black women who enter spaces previously owned exclusively by white people – Not based on our performance, but on abstractions like “She doesn’t exude leadership,” “Her voice is annoying,” “She just rubs me the wrong way” and, of course “People don’t like her.”

And based on their past and current behavior, I don’t trust a critical mass of white women to stand behind Kamala Harris as our nominee any more than they have stood behind her as vice president, no matter what they’re saying now.

Let’s be real. A majority of white women couldn’t even vote for a white woman in 2016. And a majority of white women voted against the Black woman who ran for Georgia governor in 2018. And let’s not forget that a majority of white women have continued to vote for extremist Republican candidates even after the Dobbs decision.

But now we’re supposed to believe that white women will suddenly wake up, wise up, and then lift up and carry Kamala Harris into the White House this time around?

We can’t believe what you say because we see what you do

Black voters have absolutely no good reason to trust white women Democrats to vote en masse for, much less fight for, Kamala Harris should the Democratic Party lose its collective mind and force Joe Biden off the ticket.

So, you’ll have to understand why I and many other Black women are giving the side-eye to white women who demand that Biden be jettisoned and Kamala Harris take his place. Because, we don’t trust them to stand with us and with her any more than they have done up until now – and for good reason.

But this need not be a permanent problem. Trust can be earned.

So I say to my white Democratic sisters, if you want to start earning our trust, we’re gonna need you to do a few things:

First, we need you to stop talking at us and start listening to us.

And we need you to stop trying to eradicate our vote. We voted – along with tens of millions of other Democrats – for Joe Biden to be the Democratic presidential nominee and for Kamala Harris to be his running made. They are our standard bearers. That’s not going to change. So let it go.

Then we’ll need you to work with us – and work at least half as hard as we will – to ensure Joe Biden and Kamala Harris get the 270 electoral votes they need to win reelection.

And after Biden and Harris win and enter their second term, we’re going to need you to stop undermining and dismissing the Vice President, and instead, support her, lift her up, and treat her with the respect she has earned and deserves.

Once you do all those things, we can talk about how we can work together in 2028 to continue the progress we have made together.

But, in the meantime, please don’t be surprised or resentful that we don’t believe your promises – because up until now, you have given us no reason to.

But you have plenty of opportunity to change that.

And I believe you can.

Let’s go!

My name is Stephanie Jones and I am a Democratic insider. Not the kind who plays one on teevee, but a real honest-to-goodness one.

As true as it is, it feels strange to say because actual insiders don’t go around calling ourselves insiders. Kind of like how fighter pilots with the right stuff never uttered the words “right stuff, ” we are what we are and there’s no need to talk about it.

But I’m going to make an exception just this time. Because some folks are out here claiming to be insiders and causing a whole lot of trouble.

Some background:

I’m an insider who has sat with presidents and senators and members of Congress and cabinet secretaries in quiet rooms where difficult decisions are made. Sometimes I’ve been there to participate in the decision-making, other times my role was to support the deliberations.

I have been the first person a president has looked for when he walked into a room because he knew I knew exactly where he needed to go and what he was supposed to do.

I’ve been one of the first calls more than one candidate has made when they decided to run for president and needed to be sure they reached out to the right key people before going public.

I’ve participated in several debate preps with a presidential candidate and ridden with them to the debate, so I could give a last-minute brief on how to handle prickly questions, and then climbed back into the car with them afterward so we could discuss how they did.

I have watched a candidate’s victory speech on television, only to notice the tight shot wasn’t reflective of the campaign’s diversity, so I picked up the phone and made a call, and within seconds watched the human backdrop rearrange itself according to my instructions.

I have sat in the Speaker’s box in the House Gallery, at her invitation, to watch her preside over a historic vote.

I’m the Stephanie in the sentence uttered on several occasions: “I know you all think I need to do thus-and-so, but I need to know what Stephanie thinks before I make a decision.”

I’m telling you this, not to boast or show off, but to illustrate my bona fides support what I’m about to tell you.

I’ve done all of these things and more.

But you know what I have NEVER done?  I have never, not once, not ever, told a reporter that I thought someone I worked for or advised had performed poorly in a debate, speech or interview, or was likely to lose an election or needed to change course.  

And I definitely never called or took a call from a reporter during or after a debate, speech, or interview to tell them that I was “jittery” about anything.

Because true insiders don’t do that.

Actual insiders don’t talk to the media about what’s happening on the inside, and they certainly don’t try to send messages to principal through journalists. A hallmark of being an “insider” is that we can communicate directly with the principal or we are well-connected and respected enough by the people in the inner circle that we can tell them and know that our thoughts and advice will make it all the way in.

We don’t go around talking off the record to reporters who are looking for dirt and we definitely don’t provide it to them.

That said, there is a cadre of people in Washington I refer to as “Inside Adjacent”: folks who perhaps worked on the Hill or in a department years ago and have stayed connected enough with certain players to get invited to an occasional DNC briefing or the White House Easter Egg Roll or annual holiday party and have lots of pictures with powerful people they took at fundraisers they paid good money to go to so they could get their pictures taken with powerful people.

I suspect that when we hear pundits talking about how their phones are “blowing up” with calls from “nervous Democratic insiders” and then presenting this as proof that President Biden is “in trouble,” or that “Democrats are wavering,” what you’re really hearing are opinions from the Insider Adjacent crowd.  And I strongly suggest that you take what they’re supposedly saying with a huge dollop of salt.

Of course, it’s always possible, even if it’s not likely, that an actual insider has spoken with a reporter. But, unless and until breathless journalists who claim they are talking with anonymous “insiders familiar with Biden’s thinking” reveal who these so-called “insiders” are, THIS genuine insider suggests that you give their reporting the consideration it merits – in other words, just ignore it.

I remember attending John Roberts’ confirmation hearings in 2005 (including the one in which my father, Judge Nathaniel R. Jones, testified), and noticing a cabal of young lawyers – all of them white Ivy League men – there to support him.

I was struck at the time by their smugness, their confidence in their assured future success, and their generally privileged and rather off-putting and often rude and condescending conduct and demeanor.

Several of my colleagues noted it too, with one saying to me, “They look like the young Aryan Nation. If we don’t stop them, this is our future.”

I have no doubt that those young men we saw then have been, over the last 20 years helping to build the foundation for the MAGA movement and have been instrumental in Project 2025 and its related agendas.

And they are the middle-aged men who are now putting the finishing touches on their wholesale takeover of our democracy. Foremost among their cohort is Brett Kavanaugh, who now sits on the U.S. Supreme Court, but was a high-level White House official when Roberts was appointed and confirmed. The following year, he was appointed to the federal appellate court, which launched his elevation to the Supreme Court where he now is fervently carrying out the MAGA agenda.

It’s important to understand that this didn’t just spring up with the rise of Trump. It has been in the works for decades, even before Roberts’ ascension to the Court. In fact, Roberts was one of the young lawyers in the Reagan and Bush I White Houses that my father described in his testimony as stoking the fires for what is happening today.

“At the time I left my job as General Counsel of the NAACP, a position that I had occupied which Thurgood Marshall also occupied, I had been involved in litigating major civil rights cases all across the country. I joined the court upon appointment by President Carter in 1979.

“At that time, we thought generally that certain civil rights principles were settled. We thought that the issue of school desegregation was settled in light of Chief Justice Burger’s decision in Swann in which he said that busing transportation was an appropriate remedy when you had a finding of constitutional violations that rigged a school district.

“We thought the issue of affirmative action was settled with the Bakke case and Justice Powell’s plurality opinion in which he said you may take race into account.

“But we find that following that case, or those cases which I thought were settled, I was then sitting as a judge on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and I was engaged in dealing with the first wave of attacks against school desegregation and against affirmative action. The challenges claiming preferential treatment, claiming “forced busing,” all of these buzzwords were coming at the court and we were then faced with the decision, are these principles settled?

“I have now learned that in the boiler room of the Reagan administration, stoking out and crafting out a lot of the theories that were being used in the courts to attack these settled principles, was the nominee [John Roberts]. *

This is a long plan coming to fruition. Many of us have tried to warn of this happening, but were ignored or accused of overreacting.

But now that the danger is clear, we all must do everything in our power to stop it.

VOTE BIDEN-HARRIS and VOTE BLUE up and down the ticket.

*You can watch my father’s full testimony here: https://www.c-span.org/video/?188799-3/roberts-confirmation-hearing-day-4-part-3

I can’t help but notice that most of the calls for President Biden to be tossed out of the presidential race and replaced by a shiny new and younger but usually unnamed candidate have two weirdly connected features: 1) they also include jettisoning his Vice President Kamala Harris, his hand-picked successor: and 2) the cabal of commentators calling for this move is almost all white.

Hardly a coincidence. The white media elite has long treated America’s first Black vice president as invisible.

And, true to form, they have also thrown the invisibility cloak over tens of millions of Black voters who wholeheartedly support President Biden and Vice President Harris, pretending we don’t exist or just don’t matter.

It’s easy to float ideas when you’re not responsible for gaming them out, much less, making them work, and to assume that the outcome you want is the only outcome that will ensue. But that’s a child’s way of thinking, like a 5-year-old assumes the only possible consequence of dashing into traffic to retrieve her errant ball is that she will simply retrieve her errant ball.

The folks floating the cockamaimie Biden Replacement Theory that has no possible path to success (see my analysis here), seem not to have considered the political ramifications of banishing the sitting vice president into political exile.

The cavalier dismissal of Kamala Harris as Joe Biden’s replacement is particularly interesting given that she is one of fewer than a dozen people alive today who have actual hands-on experience as president or vice president. And three of those people are term limited, one is in hospice, and other than the previous vice president whom Biden’s opponent sent a mob to kill, the others have shown no interest in returning to the White House in any capacity.

So, if Joe Biden needs to be replaced, his hand-picked vice president is not only the most logical choice, she is literally THE most qualified person on earth available to step into his shoes should the need arise.

And yet, these pundits barely mention her in this regard and when they do utter her name, it’s simply to bat it away so the they can float the names of various white people who don’t come close to having her bona fides, name recognition, political support, or confidence of the president they want replaced.

The purported goal of the Biden Replacement Theory is to ensure a victory in November by switching him out with someone who supposedly will attract more votes than the incumbent president will. And yet the Kamala-free solution would hemorrhage tens of millions of votes of people – particularly African-American voters – who would not docilely go along with the first Black female vice president being supplanted by a largely unknown and untested candidate plucked from the Great White Hope short list, whom most people outside of their home state and a small circle of political junkies have never even heard of.

And yet, the pundits haven’t considered, much less managed to come up with a plan for making up for the innumerable critical votes that will be lost in this gambit and pulling together the fragile coalition of voters needed to win in November without Joe Biden on the ticket with Kamala Harris by his side.

Black voters, the loyal base of the party, who year after year put in the hard work and drag us over the finish line to victories made more difficult by reticent white Democrats, are only so tolerant and will only take so much before we say “Enough!” We are not going to accept being spit in the face as our votes and candidates are snatched away from us in order to appease a handful of unreliable Independents and shaky, fair-weather Democrats.

Many of the people who demand that Democrats upend our entire campaign to appease a few people they think might not vote for Biden because he’s not a spring chicken assume that Black voters don’t deserve the same (or any) deference because we’ll put up with anything – after all, “where else are they going to go,” right?

Well, invoke the ultimate act of white supremacy-steeped political betrayal against us and you’ll see where a critical mass of Black voters go. Or more accurately, where they DON’T go: to the polls.

And the few independents picked up with this scheme won’t come close to making up for the loss of Black support or the irreparable long-term damage done to the party and to the country as a result of such a monumental double-cross.

The chattering class of pundits and self-proclaimed but unidentified Democratic “insiders” have made it clear that Kamala Harris and millions of Black voters are irrelevant and invisible to them. But if the Democratic Party were to lose its collective mind and follow their advice, they will realize, too late, that they’ve made a tragic mistake.

Because while Black voters may be invisible to the media elite, the last thing the party or country needs is for Black voters to make ourselves invisible in November.

If you’re going to engage in any discussions about replacing Joe Biden on the ticket, you should know a few unassailable facts that the media have left out of their hysterical drumbeat “coverage” of what “Democratic insiders” are saying:

1. Democratic “insiders” don’t give the President advice through the media. They speak directly to him or to the people in his immediate circle. Anyone you see publicly calling on the President to step down is not close to him and does not have his ear. Yes, they may attend occasional briefings at the DNC or get invited to the White House holiday parties and annual Easter Egg Roll, and have their picture taken with him at fundraisers they pay good money to attend so they can get their picture taken. But they don’t have real access to him and they can’t be assumed to have his best interests in mind. Because the people who are actually close to him don’t call him out on CNN and Twitter.
2. For some reason, the folks pushing and buying the Biden Replacement Theory seem to think (or want you to think) that picking a replacement would be smooth sailing and that we would end up with a consensus candidate that everyone is happy with. But anyone with even a cursory knowledge of politics, in general, and Democratic politics, in particular, should know that that’s not what would happen. Instead, it would be a bloody battle with knock down drag out fights and lots of angry people in the end. And whoever emerged from that would be bruised, battered, weakened, and forced to spend a good deal of the time and energy that should be focused on Trump, instead on trying to heal the deep inter-party rifts the choiced opened and convince people in our own party to vote for them – people whose vote Joe Biden already had locked up.
3. And let’s not even talk about what they would run on. No, let’s talk about it.What exactly shiny new candidate run on? That they’re younger than Trump? Because they certainly couldn’t run on Biden’s record. And there isn’t a single person whose name has been floated who could run on a record that comes even close to his. Being governor of the most liberal state in the country, but no national experience? Being governor of a purple state, with no national experience? Being mayor of a small mid-western city whose only national experience has been as a Cabinet secretary?Trump and his team would have a field day with this untested, unvetted new face whom most voters have never even heard of, much less know anything about.
4. The pundits keep conveniently failing to mention another critical sticking point, either because they don’t understand how politics and elections actually work or they know but assume you don’t. But I’m going to tell you, so now you’ll know something they’re not telling you:In fact, it is objectively impossible to replace Biden at this point and have any hope of winning the general election, regardless how young and sparkly and exciting his replacement is for at least one simple reason: Ballot Access. A new candidate can only get on state ballots after they are nominated. And by the time the new magical unicorn to be named later is nominated, the deadlines for getting on many state ballots will have passed, meaning it’s unlikely they’ll be on the ballots in enough states to win the Electoral College.Perhaps a massive write-in campaign can be launched, but therein lies another problem. See #5
5. The new Great White Hope candidate can’t run a successful campaign on fumes and fairy dust. It will take money. Lots and lots of money. Biden has lots and lots of money, more than enough to fund a kickass campaign. But that’s HIS campaign’s money and it can’t be transferred to another candidate or campaign.Which means the new guy or gal will have to start raising money from scratch. But they can only start after they’ve been officially nominated. Until then, they can’t ask for or spend a cent.They’ll need to raise about a billion dollars to catch up. And they’d have to raise it immediately – like in a few days. It took Biden, the sitting President of the United States, leader of the party, several years to raise that much money. His replacement would have to do that in a few days – while desperately trying to heal wounds and introduce themselves to the rest of the country.In fact, they’d have to raise MORE money than Biden because they’d have a much tougher campaign than he had – for example, trying to mount an all-out write-in effort after they missed the Ballot Access deadlines in most of the states.

So, as you can see, the Biden Replacement Theory is smoke and mirrors, a joke that’s not funny, that can’t happen and, even if it could, would only result in a massive and devastating loss for the Democrats, a loss from which the party, and more importantly, the country, would never recover.

So please stop listening to the bloviating pundits telling you that the so-called “insiders” are secretly telling them Biden must go, and use your own common sense to assess how this would all play out. You will then see that this notion is half-baked, at best, and cynical, manipulative, and hellbent for disaster at its worst.

At the end of the day, President Biden and Vice President Harris are not going to be replaced. But the negative chatter, speculation, and hand-wringing about it can drag them down and make it harder for them to win in November.

Stop feeding the madness and focus on doing everything you can to ensure that President Biden and Vice President Harris win the 270 electoral votes they need for reelection. They are our ONLY hope of turning this country away from Trump and his Republican extremists and keeping us on the right road. Pining for a perfect candidate – who does not, never did, and never will exist – is a dangerous distraction.

Keep your eyes on the prize.

The box is shaped like a treasure chest, about 18 inches long, 10 inches wide, 10 inches tall, dark distressed wood, wrapped in a copper ribbon and topped with a perfect, stiff copper bow. It once contained a Christmas present several years ago from a dear friend who, over many years, has given me lovely gifts – candles, a silver picture frame, a pink pashmina, crystal starfish, etc. – in containers so unique and interesting that I keep the boxes long after the gift has been used.

This particular box sits on a high shelf in my bedroom, serving as a decorative element that I could look at from time to time and think of my friend, our long friendship, and what he and that friendship mean to me.

But I wasn’t thinking about my friend or the box that morning when, while looking for something in a dresser drawer, I came across the plain, burgundy plastic container that had held the ashes of my dear Aunt Ginny for the past 25 years. As I often did, I told myself that I really should get her a proper urn because Aunt Ginny deserved more than to be tucked away in a drawer.

Aunt Ginny wasn’t really my aunt. She was more like a grandmother, but not quite that either. The wife of my father’s mentor, Virginia Dickerson was known by many, including Daddy and her husband, J. Maynard Dickerson, as “L’il Chief.” I’m not sure if that’s because she was the boss behind the scenes (although it’s hard to imagine anyone bossing Uncle Dick) or if there was some other origin of the moniker. But I always called her Aunt Ginny, probably the only person who did, just as no one else dared called J. Maynard “Uncle Dick” except the little girl who adored them.

Aunt Ginny and Uncle Dick didn’t have any children, so. Daddy was the closest thing they had to a son and that made me their only granddaughter. They were always wonderful to me, although Uncle Dick teased me mercilessly, calling me “FlipLip” because I talked so much.

When Daddy was a child, Uncle Dick, a prominent lawyer and publisher of the local Black newspaper, had taken Daddy under his wing and, in an uneasy collaboration with my grandmother, taught him much of what he needed to know to be the man he became. I later learned that he and Grammy butted heads a lot, with Grammy resenting the hold and influence Uncle Dick and Aunt Ginny had on her son. But Daddy was devoted to them and so was I.

In the summer of 1971, as we often did, my sister Pam and I spent a week with Aunt Ginny and Uncle Dick at their home in Columbus, sleeping in the big antique bed that once belonged to Aunt Ginny’s grandmother and seemed so huge and high and magnificent to me as a child. And, as she always did when we visited in the summer, Aunt Ginny took us to the Ohio State Fair.

But THIS time … The JACKSON 5 were playing!!!

Pam and I were beside ourselves at the thought of seeing our idols for the first time. We spent a lot of time preparing, carefully selecting our outfits: matching jumpsuits, hers was white with brown stripes, mine white with blue stripes. We knew we looked cute. And were sure that when we walked around the fair, we would run into the Jackson 5 and they would want to spend the day with us riding the rides and eating cotton candy and they would win us prizes and and try to sneak kisses and then ask us to be their girlfriends.

But first things first. The CONCERT. It was kind of a free-for-all – open seating, first-come-first served on the track, but Aunt Ginny got us there early and we managed to find a spot about halfway back. We stacked two wooden chairs on top of each other so we could get a better view and waited for Michael and Marlon and Jermaine and Tito and Jackie.

But we had to first endure the opening act. A woman named Yvonne Fair. OK. We’ll wait. 

Next up … The Jackson 5!!!

But no. There was ANOTHER opening act. A group named The Commodores. They had big afros and wore lime green uniforms. They were kind of cute, and the tall guy in the middle had a nice, easy style that caught our eye. But they were also pretty old. They looked to be in their 20s. Who are these guys? And why are they here? And why are they singing for so long? We didn’t come to see them.

If only I could step back in time and have a word with 12-year-old Steffie in that moment …

This is what I’d tell her:

See those guys up there? They are going to play a big role in your life.

Ten years from now, you’re going to be working for them. Not for long – about a year during college, before you go to law school and become a lawyer and do lots of other interesting things.

But what a year! You will be their secretary and work in their studio and answer their fan mail and babysit their dogs and keep them on schedule. You’ll go to lots of their concerts – and some of those concerts will be at state fairs just like this one.

And they’ll even introduce you to Michael Jackson.

And that tall guy in the middle?

His name is Lionel. And he’ll be your lifelong friend.

You will share old private jokes only the two of you think are funny and laugh together until you can’t breathe, and talk and talk for hours. You will climb up the side of his house to slide into an open window when you lock yourself out (in your swimsuit, no less) after an early morning swim in his pool. You’ll fly with him in a helicopter over Buckingham Palace. You’ll ride together to the cemetery to bury the first Commodore to die.

You will come to know his family and he will become part of yours. He will love and revere Daddy and he will grieve with and comfort you when Daddy dies (don’t worry – that will be many many years from now).

You will confide in each other, fight with each other, sometimes stop speaking to each other, but always come back together because you’re the kind of friends who never stop loving each other and who will always be attached by the invisible string.

And over the years, he will remember your birthday and Christmas with lovely presents. Presents that come in very special boxes that, even empty, are gifts themselves …

Including a beautiful treasure chest-shaped box wrapped in a copper ribbon and stiff copper bow that you suddenly realized one morning is absolutely the perfect size for Aunt Ginny’s ashes.

And whenever you look at the box that now nestles Aunt Ginny as if specially made just for her, you will think of how deeply you cherish your precious friend, whom you first saw when you were 12 years old that time Aunt Ginny took you to see the Jackson 5 at the Ohio State Fair.

And you will be reminded, once again, how the invisible strings of friendship, family, love, and fate have woven a perfect vessel that carries and protects you through this improbable, but inevitable, life …

But does Steffie really need to know any of that now?

Nah …

Just enjoy the concert, little girl.

“They could have just declined the case” is the overly simplistic but misleading version of Supreme Court law and practice being fed to laypersons by many celebrity television commentators who were rushed on air to breathlessly critique the Court’s grant of certiorari to Donald Trump’s presidential immunity petition.

But they’re not telling you the whole story.

Yes, the Court COULD have declined to take the case. But that’s only part of the story. Among the things the talking heads aren’t telling you is what would happen if the Court DIDN’T take the case.

Had the Supreme Court declned to hear the case, that would not have made Trump’s immunity claim go away or clear the way for him to be held accountable. It would have just settled the issue only for one case, the January 6th prosecution in the DC Federal District Court.

But it would not have been settled anywhere else outside of the DC Circuit, including in Florida where Trump has also raised the same immunity claim in his documents case.

It is possible that, unless the Supreme Court issues a ruling, Judge Aileen Cannon will accept Trump’s immunity argument, which would dismiss the case outright. But, regardless how she rules, the losing side would then appeal the dismissal to the 11th Circuit, which would take several weeks, if not months, to rule. Once they rule, the losing party would appeal and the same issue would be right back before the Supreme Court to be dealt with since it had not ruled on it previously – while the documents case sits on hold.

Same thing in Georgia. If the Court declined the DC appeal, the issue of immunity would remain unsettled everywhere else in the US and Trump would still have an opportunity to raise it anywhere else, including in his Georgia RICO case. If so, he would surely file a motion to dismiss on immunity grounds, just as he did in Florida. Again, whoever is on the losing ends would appeal to the state appellate court. Whoever lost there, would then appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court. And then – you guessed it – the immunity claim would eventually go back up to the US Supreme Court, while the Georgia case remains on hold.

In other words, if the Supreme Court had declined to hear this case, they may have sped up the Jnauary 6 trial, but would have allowed Trump to indefinitely delay just about any other criminal proceeding against him anywhere else in the country for much longer than it will take for the Court to permanently resolve the immunity issue raised in this case.

However, by taking this appeal now on a very expedited basis, the Court is going to settle this question once and for all. Their ruling will apply not just to the DC case, but to every criminal case involving Trump or any subsequent president in any court anywhere in the country. While it may delay this one trial for a few weeks or a couple of months, hearing this appeal will prevent huge delays down the road.

The television commentators aren’t telling you any of this. Instead, they are treating this case as a one-off and ignoring the many reasons that the Supreme Court decides to hear appeals and issue rulings in important cases. They are spinning only one scenario – that the Court “could have declined the case” as if, in refusing to take this case, they would have forced Trump to immediately face justice and there would have been no other negative consequences outside of this particular case.

These commentators have no idea why the Court took this case, which justices votes to accept cert, or how they’re going to eventually rule.

But rather than simply explain the legal issues, or, if they feel compelled to speculate, lay out the different reasons the Court could have taken up the case, they are speculating and second-guessing about motives and thought processes and evil intentions and getting laypersons who don’t understand federal appellate practice and procedure all worked up and anxious and suspicious.

Much of this is the result of them trying to cover their own butts after predicting for weeks that the Court wouldn’t take the case. Now that the Court proved their predictions wrong, rather than just admit they were mistaken, they are claiming the Court is doing something outrageous when they know nothing of the kind.

Yes, it is possible that the Court (or even just a couple of the justices) decided to take the case to delay or to get Trump off the hook. But it is just as likely – in fact, more likely – that the Court took the case for the reasons I described: to settle the matter firmly and finally so that Trump’s immunity claim is shut down everywhere for all time.

I don’t know the reason the Court granted cert. Neither do any of the legal “experts.” But, unlike them, I have taken the time to think this through and to try to provide a fuller understanding of how all of this works and am not just throwing out red meat to keep you angry and fearful.

Their approach to “legal analysis” is lazy, incomplete and irresponsible. Please don’t accept everything they’re telling you at face value. Their aim is not to educate or enlighten, but to entertain and agitate so the audience will keep coming back for more.

Let’s wait to see what the Supreme Court does. We may find that all the drama and angst provoked by th teevee talkers was a waste of time and energy.

Whenever I push back on political negativity of the “Biden’s too old and can’t win!” and “I’m so scared Trump is going to win!”, I’m asked “But what can we do?”

Here are a few suggestions:

1. Follow the White House, President Biden and Vice President Harris, among others, on social media to stay on top of what they are doing, the issues and policies they explain, and the accomplishments they regularly tout;
2. Share information with your friends, family, co-workers and acquaintances about the positive things the Biden-Harris administration is doing;
3. Contact your local Democratic Party headquarters, NAACP, Urban League, League of Women Voters or other progressive political organization or non-profit civil rights rights organization to volunteer to help get out the vote;
4. Stop talking up Nikki Haley and don’t even consider voting for her in the primary;
5. If anyone tells you they are thinking of voting for Nikki Haley in the primary or, God forbid, the general, because she’s supposedly “more moderate” than Trump and they can “live with her,” explain to them that she is NOT more moderate the Trump and, in fact is probably MORE dangerous because her policies are indistinguishable from his, but she dresses them up in pretty colors and a soft voice, which will fool a lot of people who finally got around to seeing through Trump;
6. Remember that the only difference between a Nikki Haley presidency and a Trump presidency will be fewer mean tweets. Everything else – Court appointments, racist policies (slavery? racism? What’s that?) anti-woman agenda (she’s promised to sign a nationwide ban on abortion), the implementation of Project 2025, draconian economic policies that favor the wealthy and stomp all over the middle class, working class, and poor, etc. – will be indistinguishable from Trump;
7. Stop the handwringing and doomsaying. There is a time for venting and catharsis and a time for squaring our shoulders and getting to work. We are past the time for fretting. It’s time to get to work;
8. Stop publicly criticizing Biden and Harris, online and elsewhere. We know they’re not perfect and don’t need to be told that over and over, especially when that gets in the way of the work that must be done. Keep in mind that there are plenty of people reading what you write and hearing what you say who are absorbing, internalizing and repeating the negative and often false information being disseminated about Biden and Harris. There are also, no doubt, some infiltrators who are gathering such comments to weaponize against Biden and his campaign. Please don’t contribute to that;
9. When someone you know criticizes Biden or Harris, tells you Biden’s too old or Harris doesn’t smile enough (or smiles too much) or somesuch, wishes someone else will run, or threatens not to vote or vote third party, instead of rushing to social media to tell the rest of us what they said and why that’s a problem (we already know), take the time to share with them facts about the Biden/Harris record, explain the stakes we are facing, and help them understand that this election is a binary choice and how important their vote is.

Those are just a few of the ways you can help.

But complaining and worrying are toxic, spread poison into the political waters, and doesn’t do any good for anyone. Venting this way in these spaces simply spreads doubt and undermines the work that needs to be done.

We know you’re scared. We’re all scared (or should be). But the only way to fight this fear in politics is to get out here and do the work. Giving in to it (and, after a point, venting without work IS giving in to it) will only make it more likely those fears will become a reality.

Please be a part of the solution.

We got this!