October Surprise

Many Democrats feared that an October surprise would be coming this month (well, what other month would it be) to disrupt the Kamala Harris campaign.  Maybe it would be Jill Stein surging among Arab-American voters in Michigan and costing Harris the state and the White House.  Maybe it would be the longshoreman's strike that would threaten the economy. Maybe it would be the fact that she hasn't visited western North Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, even though President Biden did visit the area.  These are all important topics, and I hope to return to them later - maybe even in one blog entry to play catch-up.   But the new October surprise this week concerns not Harris but Donald Trump.  

Special prosecutor Jack Smith unsealed documents in his new indictment of Trump regarding the January 6 insurrection, superseding the old one.  The documents show that, by the standards of the Supreme Court's ruling granting Presidents immunity from being prosecuted for "official acts," Smith has been able to indict Trump for acts that our clearly non-official - acts that Trump and his supporters committed as part of the Trump presidential campaign, not the executive branch.  The charges show Trump threatening Vice President Mike Pence with mob-rule retribution if he didn't send the electoral votes for Joe Biden back to the states (and sure enough, he sent out messages to the January 6 demonstrators to ensure that), and he expressed fear that Pence was "too honest" to to send them back.  (Upon hearing that the Vice President had to be escorted to a safe location to precent him from being attacked, Trump said, "So what? 😲).  Also, Trump campaign operatives spent much of November 2020 attempting to disrupt vote tabulations in swing states and one unnamed co-conspirator exhorted another to incite a riot at one tabulation center in Detroit.  (As serious as this sounds, it is sort of humorous to imagine white people working for a "law and order" candidate inciting a riot in, of all places, Detroit.) 

Trump, of course, will inevitably appeal on the grounds that he was officiating as President, even though it's obvious to anyone who can breathe - with or without a ventilator - that he was acting as a candidate and not as the President of the United States.  But the mere appearance of efforts to overturn a free and fair election should give pause to enough voters in swing states - particularly extremely close states like North Carolina and Arizona - who were ready or on the verge of being ready to vote for Trump because they were unsure of Harris . . . before they end up voting for Harris.