The Daily Parker

Polls are open, votes are being tabulated, misguided youth are casting ballots for 3rd-party candidates to "send a message," and I'm just doing my thing at work.

I've got NBC's hour-by-hour guide bookmarked, though. And you should bookmark The Daily Parker; I will very likely live-blog again tonight, though I have promised myself to go to bed before 11 CST (unlike in 2016).

And here's my starting point, which is basically the consensus map minus Iowa and Arizona:

I'm not worried. Look, the Roman Republic fell in 49 BCE, and it only took Italy about 1,995 years to return to democracy. So why fret?

(Oh, dear. Re-reading my 2016 live blog, I see I ended with this: "Millions of people who voted for Donald Trump tonight will expect their lives to improve, with America returning to the imagined past of 'Leave It to Beaver.' What happens when they're disappointed? Which Visigoths do they invite to sack Washington?" Well, now we know.)

If you read nothing else before tomorrow night, read Tim Alberta's epic reporting on the XPOTUS's colossally dysfunctional campaign and the infants who run it. My favorite bit comes right at the end, with a quote from Joseph Goebbels Stephen Miller:

Backstage at the Garden, in the blur of debate and indecision over damage control, it was Stephen Miller who pondered the bigger picture. (Miller did not respond to a request for comment.) According to two people who were present, Miller, the Trump policy adviser whose own nativist impulses are well documented, was not offended by Hinchcliffe’s racist jokes. Yet he was angered by them all the same: He knew the campaign had just committed a huge unforced error. He believed that Bruesewitz had done profound damage to Trump’s electoral prospects. And, in that moment, he seethed at what this lack of discipline portended for Trump should he return to power.

The irony, apparently, was lost on Miller. He and his colleagues would spend the coming days savaging Bruesewitz for his recklessness when really—as ever—the culprit was a man whose addiction to mayhem creates the conditions in which a comedian who was once dropped by his talent agency for using racial slurs onstage could be invited to kick off the closing event of the election without a single objection being raised.

“If we can’t trust this kid with a campaign,” Miller said to the group, according to one of the people present, “how can we trust him in the White House?”

How indeed.

Only 27 hours remain until polls close in parts of Indiana and Kentucky. Which means we're less than 27 hours away from the XPOTUS claiming he won, because that's how he operates. Even if he loses by 10 million votes, he'll still claim he won all the way until January 20th, and possibly even longer.

Of course, no one will know anything interesting until at least 7pm Eastern when polls close in Georgia and 7:30pm Eastern when they close in North Carolina. Arizona's polls close at 7pm Mountain, which is 8pm here in Chicago. And even though we know who will win California's 54 electoral votes—a fifth of the required 270 to win—no one can call the state officially until 8pm Pacific (10pm here in Chicago).

Other things to keep in mind:

• If the election is close, it will take longer to know the results than if it's a blowout for either candidate.
• Rural areas, which tend to vote Republican, have orders of magnitude fewer voters than urban areas, which tend to vote Democratic. This means that early returns always look better for Republicans than later returns. Expect the XPOTUS to harp on early returns and discount later ones for this reason.
• Pennsylvania can't even begin tabulating absentee ballots until tomorrow, and it will take them days to get through all of them.
• Arizona has super-long ballots this year, especially in Maricopa County (Phoenix), so counting will take a lot longer than usual.
• Georgia plans to release official numbers as early as 8pm Eastern tomorrow night, but Fulton County, which contains Atlanta, will take a lot longer.
• Milwaukee hopes to have provisional results around midnight, but again, counting could take days. And absentee ballots can continue arriving for a week.

Bottom line: until Wednesday lunchtime at the earliest, no one will really know anything if the election is close. So let's hope for a repeat (and a reversal) of 1980 and get a huge Harris victory tomorrow.

You've heard the expression "crossing the Rubicon," but you may not know the history.

In the Roman Republic, the Rubicon marked the border of Italy (read: the Home Counties/Eastern Seaboard), where it was illegal to garrison troops. In 49 BCE, Julius Caesar ran out of lawful ways to—wait for it—avoid prosecution for corruption stemming from his first term as Consul, and the Senate denied him the governorship of Cisalpine Gallus (read: the Midlands/the Midwest) which would have also granted him immunity. So he and his XIII Legion crossed the Rubicon and marched on Rome to force the Senate to make him Dictator of Rome. It worked out for Caesar, but not for the Republic.

The ensuing civil war killed a good fraction of the Roman population and conclusively ended the Republic. Then just days before the end of that conflagration, Caesar had his unfortunate accident in the Senate. This led to Caesar's great-nephew Octavian becoming Emperor shortly thereafter, starting a 400-year slow-motion disintegration of Roman civilization. And the distraction of all this prepared the ground in Judea for a fundamentalist sect to break off from Judaism and go on to bury the 1500-year-old Greco-Roman religion in the archaeological dust.

The relevance of this history to current events is left as an exercise for the reader.

Revolution Brewpub, which opened its Logan Square brewpub in 2010 and featured in the (really bad) film Drinking Buddies, announced it will close on December 14th:

Almost 15 years ago, we threw open the doors of our Milwaukee Avenue brewpub and launched Revolution Brewing to the world. The brewpub is where the first Revolution beers were served and where we first brewed beers like Anti-Hero IPA which would change the shape of craft beer in Chicagoland. Today that chapter of our story starts to wind down as we announce that we are permanently closing the doors of the Logan Square brewpub, with our last day of service on December 14th.

You could count the number of other breweries in the city on one hand back in the day. Our experience definitely inspired others to take their shot and now there are close to a hundred different places brewing beer in the city.⁠

Our Kedzie Avenue production brewery and tap room opened just two years after the pub and that’s where our business thrives now and where we will remain fully operational and open to the public.

Sad news, but totally understandable. Since I started the Brews & Choos Project in February 2020, fully 24 breweries have closed, most of them because of the after-effects of the pandemic. I'm sad to lose Revolution on Milwaukee, but glad they'll stay open on Kedzie.

The sky above Chicago has nothing but sun this morning. It won't last—the forecast for tomorrow night points to July-like atmospheric moisture and epic rainfall—but Cassie and I will enjoy it as much as we can.

Maybe I should stay away from these news stories until the rain starts for real:

• Michelle Goldberg reminds all you Hannah Arendt fans that fascism takes time to establish itself, so we have perhaps a couple of years to emigrate if the XPOTUS takes power in January: "The transition from democracy to autocracy is a process, not an on-off switch."
• Jay Willis shakes his head that "Jeff Bezos doesn't understand that he is the problem:" "[T]he possibility that Americans might also not care for a rich guy leveraging his power to compromise political coverage in the middle of an up-or-down vote on fascism seems not to have occurred to him."
• Dylan Byers takes to Puck to muse about Bezos's side of the argument: "Ultimately, Bezos wants to own, and Lewis wants to manage, a paper staffed by a team that supports their vision for semi-nonpartisan, future-proofed profitability."
• Jeff Jarvis explains in the Columbia Journalism Review why liberals are infuriated with the media: "Journalists like to say they write the first draft of history. Too often that means they ignore history. Today I urge journalists to reread Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism so as to understand her historical antecedents."
• Inae Oh expands on why people not already in the bag for the XPOTUS might hate election coverage right now: "Trump’s menacing language—a constant for almost a decade—rarely draws the notice that Garbage-gate has received. To call this imbalance typical both-sidesism fails to adequately convey the failures of the media in 2024."
• Robert Wright congratulates Elon Musk on becoming America's first true oligarch: "Musk is far and away the most dramatic example of concentrated power. By virtue of his undeniable intelligence, creativity, and drive, he has wound up with an impressively diverse portfolio of influence."
• Micky Horstman, writing an op-ed in Crain's, wants public transit in Chicago that people actually want to use: "Other cities have figured out how to run a transit agency post-pandemic. Chicago can, too."

But after all of this, yesterday Jennifer Rubin made "the case for election optimism." So I'll end this post with her argument:

Americans need to retain perspective, muster up patience, let the vote counting proceed, avoid bestowing MAGA legal challenges credibility they do not deserve and insist on bipartisan recognition of the winner. We can do this, America.

Yes, we can.

When voting, consider that under a dictatorship, courts have no independence and have to issue nonsensical rulings like the one a Russian court just issued in order to remain in favor of the dictator:

U.S. tech giant Google has closed up shop in Russia, but that hasn’t stopped a court there from leveling it with a fine greater than all the wealth in the world — a figure that is growing every day.

The fine, imposed after certain channels were blocked on YouTube, which Google owns, has reached more than 2 undecillion rubles, Russian business newspaper RBC reported this week. That’s about $20 decillion — a two followed by 34 zeros.

Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary for Russian President Vladimir Putin, told reporters Thursday that the figure was symbolic and should be a reason for Google to pay attention to the Moscow Arbitration Court’s order to restore access to the YouTube channels.

The sum grew so large because the fine increases with time in noncompliance, with no upper limit. The order was made after 17 blocked channels joined a lawsuit against Google’s American, Irish and Russia-based companies, according to RBC. The lawsuit predates Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and was initiated in 2020 by a channel that YouTube blocked to comply with U.S. sanctions.

The Post drolly notes in the article that "Google did not respond to a request for comment."

In all seriousness, if the XPOTUS returns to office, it's only a matter of weeks before Judges Aileen Cannon (R-FL) or Matthew Kacsmaryk (Bigly R-TX) come up with something similar.

Very busy day—I'll explain more tomorrow—so all I have to say right now is, I can't wait until Wednesday. I voted yesterday, so the 90% of my inbox taken up by the Democratic Party and various candidates all pleading for something represents a lot of wasted time and bytes.

Not to mention the dozens of spam texts I receive. Thank you, T-Mobile, for shunting those away from me.

Just stop, y'all. I live in Chicago, I've already voted, and I gave money where it mattered most this cycle. You're wasting my time. Just stop.

Mayor Johnson's newly-appointed Chicago Public Schools Board president The Rev Mitchell Ikenna Johnson has resigned:

Amid a wave of backlash over troubling social media posts that were criticized as antisemitic, misogynistic and conspiratorial, Chicago’s new Board of Education president is resigning at the request of Mayor Brandon Johnson just seven days after he was sworn into office. It’s the latest stunning development in the ongoing leadership struggle atop Chicago Public Schools.

His resignation came after Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Thursday called for him to step down, according to NBC5, following similar calls by 40 alderpersons and many Jewish leaders.

The mayor said he asked for the resignation.

There also have been questions about whether Johnson lives in Chicago and about his past. He was disbarred in Ohio nearly 30 years ago and at one point was so delinquent on his child support that he had a lien on his house.

Given all the problems, many have questioned the vetting process for the new school board members. On Wednesday, Rev. Johnson said he was “pretty confident that the things that are relevant to my experience were vetted.”

As one of my friends said, "Our mayor is an imbecile. That's not fair; I should give him the benefit of the doubt. It's entirely possibly he's not an imbecile, and he actually agrees with the positions of his former school board president."

I don't usually regret voting for someone this much so soon after they take office, but wow.

Recently-elected Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson has made a couple of moves this week all but guaranteed to make him a one-term mayor. First, despite "no property tax increases" being the cornerstone of his campaign, he proposed a budget today that—wait for it—would increase property taxes:

“I’m not going to raise property taxes. I’m the only person running in this race who made a commitment to that,” he said during a Block Club interview in March 2023. “For my first term, we’re not raising property taxes.”

But facing a series of tough decisions over how to close a nearly $1 billion spending gap in 2025, now-Mayor Brandon Johnson is going back on that promise.

In his budget address Wednesday, Johnson will propose increasing the city’s property tax levy to bring in an additional $300 million per year, according to the mayor’s office.

The proposal would increase most people's taxes by 4% a year. But that may not have been his worst sin this week, compared with his appointment of The Rev. Mitchell Ikenna Johnson (no relation) to head the Chicago Public Schools Board. The Rev. Johnson, it turns out, has quite the social media history:

A majority of the City Council is calling for the newly appointed president of the Chicago Board of Education to resign in the aftermath of “antisemitic and pro-Hamas” comments, calling his appointment a vetting failure by Mayor Brandon Johnson.

The Rev. Mitchell Ikenna Johnson made comments containing tropes of antisemitism following Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel last year, Jewish Insider reports. The publication cited screenshots from various accounts linked to Mitchell Johnson, which included posts comparing “Zionist Jews” to Nazi Germany.

“My Jewish colleagues appear drunk with the Israeli power and will live to see their payment. It will not be nice and I care not how and what you call me,” he wrote in December.

The council is urging Mitchell Johnson to apologize and resign immediately, according to a joint statement signed by 26 council members. They singled out Brandon Johnson's vetting process when appointing new board members.

“Calling Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack an ‘absolute right’ and justifying it as resistance against oppression, as Rev. Johnson did in March of this year and on other occasions, is abhorrent, inexcusable and disqualifying from public service,” the statement said. “His continued role on the school board is non-negotiable, both he and Mayor Johnson must act now to correct this terrible mistake.”

Mayor Johnson's first choice for the post, the Rev. Louis Farrakhan, was apparently unavailable.

"Vetting failure" my ass. Johnson has gone out of his way to piss off the moderates who decided to give him a chance over the right-of-center Paul Vallas, and boy has he succeeded. But we're stuck with him until 2027.