Tropical Soulvanglical isn't accepting any kind of rhetoric claiming he's just Monday Morning Quarterbacking. On the contrary, he's telling it like it is. For example, it's only in the modern age that elections have to be some kind of spectator sport, and TSV distinctly remembers a country that actually went out of its way not to make its elections into spectator sports. That was before most sports were invented, and elections were actually gentleman's agreement type exercises. What TSV remembers, however rightly or wrongly, is that the concept of "running mates" wasn't a thing. Whenever two people ran for President, the person who lost was presumed to become the winner's Vice President, so that way it's a balanced ticket perceived to be as fair as possible to the people. Whether that worked in practice is another matter entirely, but suffice it to say it was a time when we tried our darndest to make it work. TSV's estimation as to when that changed was about the time of Lincoln, and that it was just before or just after that that we introduced the concept of "running mates." Fast forward several decades and we started inventing sports. Baseball, then basketball, then football. Some time after that, maybe the 60s TSV's wondering, is when we referred to elections as "horse races." The notion that elections are any kind of sport or race TSV's wondering must have been totally alien to the country's founders. It was over five years ago TSV remembers when Ari Melber asked Elizabeth Warren if she had to pick -any- running mate from the past or present, she named Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican, and that pretty much stunned Melber. Maybe now that TSV sees people like Schumer and company to be increasingly toxic as time goes on for being so anti-Biden as they still are, he doesn't see it as a "circular firing squad" like he criticized the phrasing thereof in a past base share, but more of an effort to put country over party. Hence, the more anti-Biden the rest of the country gets, the more pro-Biden TSV gets. He's digging his heels in, and he doesn't think the rest of the country gets it or appreciates what was done or trying to be done for them, particularly the young people who want to hate him (both TSV and Biden) over Israel. TSV wants to ask the country in two years time whether they still regard Biden as the bogeyman, and he thinks he's going to get an opposite answer from what he's getting now in the form of this year's election results. There could very well have been an opposite answer even in -this- election in the form of what TSV calls the Closet Kamalas. These are people TSV observes as going out of their way to go -trumptrumptrump- with all the hats and merch and truck flags, and then they get in that voting booth, and when they think no-one's looking from outside the booth curtain, they push "Kamala." When you have a district that goes 80% for -trump- and -everyone- has -trump- signs on their lawn in that district, about 20% qualifies as Closet Kamalas. So TSV warns -trumpshanders- not to party so hard right now, because TSV's Biden his time.

Some more criticisms and stalwart determination and possible to-dos coming -from- Tropical Soulvangelical -for- Tropical Soulvangelical. So first of all, why the radio silence for the past two weeks or so? At least when he's not going after Mark Cuban and George Clooney. Well, as fatalistic as most of the activists were, TSV wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt just in case they were right and he was wrong. In any case, they still had important work to do. But that phase of things being over, he sees that they failed -precisely because- of their fatalism, which is TSV's criticism here. There were also too many texts being sent, and TSV thanks his lucky stars that he still has minutes on his flip, because he doesn't go with the bourgesie-ish smartphone ideal from a big provider offering "unlimited." TSV can go into detail about phone differences being cultural differences, maybe in a yet -another- base share, but let's go after fatalism. TSV talked about in the last base share about the folly of fatalism, but he wants to drive home the point that fatalism only results in a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's happened in 2004 and it happened 20 years later, so by that standard alone nothing has changed. That thing about "don't regret not doing more" TSV sees as causing people to end up doing less because guilt is such a poor motivator to get people to do anything. On those rare occasions people are guilted into "doing more" it's only with going through the motions. Of those 90,000 volunteers Kamala had on her staff, TSV can't point to even one who only acted out of guilt. As far as he can see, they all believed in what they did and nobody had to tell them to do things. But the biggest driver of fatalism in our overly westernized culture were the texts. Those texts that said "say goodbye to Kamala emergency in Pennsylvania" were just counterproductive. TSV's sick and tired of hearing style-over-substance type phrases such as "circular firing squad" or "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory," but look at that last one. It's the texts and their fatalism and the more fatalistic activism that snatched fatalistic defeat from the jaws of sincerely stalwart victory, not those actors borne of stalwart determination and pragmatism. As far as a circular firing squad is concerned, TSV saw the first shots in that squad coming from Bob DeNiro standing outside the -trumptrial- back in the spring, and more from the antibidens in that time. Those TSV observed were -unprovoked-. Nobody made Bob DeNiro kill the -trumptrial- in its last 48 hours when they already had it in the bag, and the reasons why TSV saw DeNiro doing so were westernized-cultural. We're just too westernized to make things work in as simple a manner as possible. That's why you need to embrace Tropical Soul as your ultimate best destiny. Those who stood by Biden and still do so now like TSV were pushing back against the fatalists and antibidens because it was doing so that was for democracy, and that's hardly a "circular firing squad." Fatalism and antibiden TSV observes this year as inviting undemocracy. The other thing you need to do besides following the righteous path of tropical soul is -not invite undemocracy-. TSV's also not using Rachel Maddow's todo list, because he already has his own, tentatively. It includes protecting affordable care, reproductive choice, alliances around the world and free and fair elections in defiance of the progressive prediction of no-more-elections, and doing all of this in the most stalwart pragmatic manner possible conserving Tropical Soul and the righteous path therein.

Here comes Tropical Soulvangelical getting me the Happy Bachelor to split our base share into two separate shares with the election. Here's the first one with Allan Lichtman's Keys To The White House, and seeing how Mr. Lichtman does his YouTube live update on Thursdays, TSV's hoping he isn't trashing his own Keys and their predictability, because TSV believes that the Keys being worked properly actually -did- predict a -trump- win, but that there was wrong information and assumptions being used. TSV believes that the two keys that gave -trump- a win was social unrest and challenger charisma, and here's how. With social unrest, TSV begs with differ with Mr. Lichtman in that the anti-Israel protests weren't limited to just a few college campuses as per TSV's understanding of those protests. In fact, there's nary a college TSV knows about that -didn't- have protests, and that the protest groups did everything they could to carry their anti-Israel hatred of Biden onto Harris. Again it's about young people and Biden, whereby TSV thinks young people are mistaken about how terrible Biden is as a public figure. Mr. Lichtman didn't believe that the protests compared with the antiwar protests of the 60s, but TSV observes that they didn't have Facebook or Twitter, etc., back in the 60s, so the protests were more out and obvious then. The other key was about challenger charisma, which Mr. Lichtman also dismisses on -trump- but TSV thinks -trump- was still charimatic enough with those young swing voters that TSV believes put -trump- over the finish line, because, again, it's this thing with If Not One Then The Other that TSV thinks young voters were thinking about Biden and generalizing to Harris. They truly seemed to believe that they should go with -trump- because they hate Biden and generalizing to Harris over Israel and perceptions of the economy. The economic bit with short-term TSV wonders could be a third key in -trump's- column, because contrary to what TSV heard Mr. Lichtman say, you probably do have to factor in economic perceptions. TSV does agree with Mr. Lichtman that most of these perceptions are highly incorrect and anti-Biden biased, but TSV also believes they need to be factored in with the Keys and they weren't. More about the election in our other base share.

Tropical Soulvangelical already talked about the Keys To The White House in the other base share, but he now wants to let out on how terrible Presidential elections really are, even when his candidate wins, and how he doesn't believe they were ever truly democratic, even when his candidate wins, and it's actually not about the Electoral College. It's partly about the involvement of self important consultants such as George Clooney and Mark Cuban and Bob DeNiro whom TSV doesn't believe have any business putting their thumb on the scale in terms of them telling people what to do in activist matters, particularly with respect to that hostility towards Biden that TSV sticks it to them with, and will do so in years and decades to come. The other problem is with election year anxiety and how TSV believes that interferes with people making sound activist decisions based on sincere stalwart defiance rather than as desperate and futile attempts at things as is what TSV has observed since 2004 at least as progressive traits. He's never seen any actual -stalwart- progressive efforts in election matters, because otherwise we would be hoisting Kamala Harris on our proverbial shoulders with victory chants to boot. It confirmed TSV's donkeyish conservatism for him, and how you need to conserve stalwart defiance over letting them see you sweat, not to mention conserving National Principle that TSV also observes as progressive forces not making a priority. After all, the situation with -trump- TSV parks at the feet of the progressives from Ed Snowden onwards when they still inexplicably back in 2013 emphasized second- and third- and fourth- guessing one's national confidence just because Ed Snowden said so. Ed Snowden was the Clooney/DeNiro of his time, and TSV sees progressives as not taking Putin as seriously then as TSV did. They actually believed that Putin's Russia was part of New Europe that needed to be placed above Old Europe which they faulted as colluding with Obama on surveillance issues. In that way they were for Putin before they were against him just two and a half years ago, which TSV sees as too little too late. But TSV wants to contact the Harris Team about retaining the Great Coalition that involves those who wish to conserve things of value from across the political spectrum, because he sees the election as a mere snapshot rather than as a setting in stone of how things "have" to be for the next four years, supposedly unchangingly, and that's another cultural assumption TSV sees as erroneous with elections. We had elections in the UK, Mexico, the Philippines, Mozambique among other countries, and he's never heard of election anxiety at the same level as in the U.S., not even in Mozambique. TSV has never heard of those countries' Cloonies/DeNiros/Cubans as ever putting their thumbs on the scale like they do here. When Kier Starmer rose to prominence in the UK, TSV never heard of Brits biting their nails over whether Rishi Sunak would be overcome, or whether a British DeNiro type would ruin it for the Labour Party like ours did outside of the -trump- courthouse back in the spring. So this base share along with the Keys share is TSV outlining everything that's wrong with American Democracy, how the country's Founders should have and never prevented such and issues such as the electoral college tend to distract from real democratic problems. The electoral college TSV thinks deserves its own base share, but suffice it to say that if you -could- solve the electoral college problem, TSV doesn't see it as -truly- doing anything signficant enough to solve the other problems with, which are cultural. Stay tuned as TSV continues to dress down the country for its democratic problems for the rest of the year.