The View from Right Field

People Thought Trump Couldn’t Win in 2016. I’m Afraid They Are Thinking It Again.

In May of 2016, I wrote a post I titled “One Reason It Would Almost Be Fun If Donald Trump Won in November”.  I wrote about a conversation I had with a Democrat who wasn’t concerned about then-candidate Trump becoming the Republican nominee:

“[Trump] might win the Republican nomination, they thought, but he wouldn’t win in November because then Democrats would be voting, too.  People who vote in Republican primaries might be vote for Donald Trump, but Democrats would never do that.” 

Whither the 2023 Cubs?

So, what is going to happen with the 2023 Cubs?  Where are they going to wind up?  In the postseason or just done with the season?  At the time of posting this, they are ½ game ahead of Miami for the third – and final – wild card spot.  But will we keep it? 

When I am feeling negative, 2023 makes me think of 2004.  We collapsed the last week of the season, losing the wild card spot we had in our control at the beginning of the week.  Sammy opted out of the lineup and left Wrigley Field before the last game was over.  He hasn’t been back since.¹  Things went so bad our announcers even quit after the season.  The only good thing that happened was that, on Sunday, after we were eliminated, Greg Maddux, who didn’t leave early, won his 15th game of the season, extending his streak of consecutive15-win seasons to seventeen, though I am not sure he cared at the time. 

Lessons for the Next Pandemic from this Pandemic

The Financial Times reported on Monday¹ that Tedros Adhanon Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, is calling on China to “give full access” to a team from WHO to investigate how the pandemic emerged.  Yeah, right.  Like China is going to do that.  They haven’t done it so far; they’re not going to do it now.  It’s sort of silly to keep calling for it.

But what I found more interesting about the article was this paragraph:

“The two most prominent theories [as to the virus’s origin] envisage either a zoonotic jump from animal to humans via Wuhan’s wet food markets or contagion stemming from an accidental leak from the city’s virology laboratory.  But no scientific consensus has emerged from the debate, and Tedros reiterated that all options remained “‘on the table’.”

Visiting the Baltics After “Voting for Estonia” in 2016

Just before the 2016 election, I wrote a post entitled “On Election Day, I’ll Be Voting for Estonia”.  The post continued – and explained: “and Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and many more.”¹  At the time, I was worried about then-candidate Donald Trump’s foreign policy: “He has threatened to abandon most of our NATO allies.  He has implied to Japan and South Korea that they are on their own.”  While I disagreed with some parts of Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy, and even more of her domestic policy, I voted for her because I felt she would maintain our NATO commitments and would continue to support our other allies and friends.  I felt such a foreign policy was the best way to protect the security and well-being of the United States. 

In saying I was “voting for Estonia”, I was really saying I was voting against what I feared would be President Trump’s foreign policy.  And I still think that was the right vote.  If President Trump’s foreign policy in his first term wasn’t as bad as I feared, that may have been because, for the first couple of years, he didn’t know how to do what he wanted (and, at times, didn’t even know what he wanted).  Inexperience slowed him down – and made his first term foreign policy not as bad as it might otherwise have been.