This Week's Sneak Peek

If you were expecting me to jump on the bandwagon with a smart aleck cartoon about J.D. Vance waxing prosaic about Sofa King Unlimited in his memoir, Hillbilly Allergy, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed.

That was just someone else's joke.

Like Sarah Palin being able to see Russia from her house.

Or George W. Bush saying "strategery."

Or Al Gore claiming to have invented the internet.

Or Gerald Ford being a klutz.

Of course, Ford did actually stumble on the Air Force One stairs a few times. But so has Joe Biden.

You'd think someone would have fixed those stairs by now.

A Stroll Down Malarkey Lane

Today's Graphical History Tour was supposed to be about some century-old stuff, but it can wait. It waited this long, after all, so what's a couple more weeks?

In light of Joe Biden's withdrawal from the 2024 presidential contest, here's a look back at some of the cartoons I've drawn (and not drawn) of his political career.

He came to speak at my college while I was a freshman at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. I didn't happen to sit in on the first-term Senator's lecture, or, as the Manitou Messenger's editorial page cartoonist, to draw a cartoon about it. Since Biden's appearance came after the last Messenger before first-semester finals was published, it wasn't reported in the next issue, which didn't come out until February.

I didn't see him then, but I did get to see him in person in 2020, after the Kenosha rioting, when he came to the church where I work to hold an invitation-only conversation with local church and community leaders. While I did not get to meet him up close, I did deal with his campaign staff and gave his Secret Service detail a thorough tour of the building.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., September 24, 1987

The first cartoon of mine featuring Joe Biden came after his campaign for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination foundered on revelations that he had plagiarized the life story of British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock as his own in campaign speeches. Biden was justifiably raked over the coals for this rather stupid move.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Oct. 1, 1987

The gaffe, since it was the one thing most people knew about him, dogged his career well after the 1988 campaign was over and done with. He next came into the national spotlight as the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee during Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991. I thought I might have included him in one of my cartoons about that, but it seems I didn't.

for Q Syndicate, October 2008

Other than including him as one of many congresspersons in a cartoon about a Ronald Reagan State of the Union speech, the next time I saw fit to draw Biden was after his vice presidential candidates debate with Sarah Palin in 2008.

By then, I was drawing primarily for LGBTQ+ publications, so my focus was on the candidates' response to a question about marriage equality. Moderator Gwen Ifill asked Biden (at minute 35 here), "Do you support, as they do in Alaska, granting same-sex benefits to couples?"

BIDEN: Absolutely. Do I support granting same-sex benefits? Absolutely positively. Look, in an Obama-Biden administration, there will be absolutely no distinction from a constitutional standpoint or a legal standpoint between a same-sex and a heterosexual couple.
The fact of the matter is that under the Constitution we should be granted — same-sex couples should be able to have visitation rights in the hospitals, joint ownership of property, life insurance policies, et cetera. That's only fair.
It's what the Constitution calls for. And so we do support it. We do support making sure that committed couples in a same-sex marriage are guaranteed the same constitutional benefits as it relates to their property rights, their rights of visitation, their rights to insurance, their rights of ownership as heterosexual couples do.

Palin, in her rebuttal, reframed the question as an opportunity to voice her and John McCain's opposition to same-sex marriage, although "I am tolerant and I have a very diverse family and group of friends and even within that group you would see some who may not agree with me on this issue, some very dear friends who don't agree with me on this issue." The "some of my best friends are..." weasel.

Ifill then asked Biden for his ticket's stance on same-sex marriage, to which Biden demurred, "Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage. We do not support that."

for Q Syndicate, December, 2010

Vice Presidents, and candidates for that office, are expected to echo the position of the guy (or gal) at the top of the ticket. Candidate Obama was officially opposed to same-sex marriage, in spite of having told LGBTQ organizations in Illinois that he was open to marriage equality when he had run for the Senate in 2006.

So, many of us wondered whether Biden was floating a trial balloon or exercising his reputation for verbal gaffetude when, as Vice President in 2010, Joe Biden publicly averred that popular opinion in the United States was "evolving" toward acceptance of same-sex marriage.

At that time, marriage equality was the law in Massachusetts, California, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the District of Columbia. 41 other states had legislation or constitutional amendments forbidding same-sex couples from marrying.

for Q Syndicate, May, 2012

In 2012, President Obama's position "evolved"; he stated that he was "absolutely comfortable" with same-sex marital rights. The Democratic Party included an endorsement of marriage equality in the party platform for the first time. The Republican platform, of course, was officially opposed to it, calling instead for an opposite-sex marriage exclusivity amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Oct. 2012

There were no bombshell announcements in Biden's 2012 debate appearance with the Republican vice presidential nominee, Congressman Paul Ryan. Republicans groused afterward about the 69-year-old Biden supposedly smirking while the 42-year-old Ryan was speaking.

for Q Syndicate, August, 2020

Biden sat out the 2016 election, campaign season coming as it did just after the death of his son Beau. But he entered the ring again in 2020, the oldest presidential nominee in history up to that point. I suppose that historians will decide that in the midst of an epidemic the likes of which only centenarians had ever seen, and after four years of a chaotic, mercurial presidency, the United States was ready for a steady, experienced leader who promised stability and reason.

for Q Syndicate, August, 2020

The Democratic Party Convention, thanks to COVID-19, proved a disappointment to host city Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The city had tried to convince Republicans in Madison to allow bars to stay open past the legal 2:00 a.m. closing time, only to have the candidates and most delegates attending by Zoom rather than in person.

Republicans thought they could show up the Democrats this year by having their 2024 convention in the Brew City. Madison Republicans this time around happily extended Milwaukee bar time to 4:00 a.m. for the week. But with the security zones around the convention center practically forbidden to local residents, and the Republican Party largely made up of people who regard urban areas with fear and loathing, many of the restaurants and bars ended up with their extra staff scheduled to work the wee hours of convention mornings finding nothing to do but polish tables and sweep floors.

October, 2020

Over the years, my caricature of Joe Biden has been as elastic as his hairline. The one thing that came to the fore more and more was his 300-watt smile. How his choppers have remained so day-glo white is beyond me. Does he never drink coffee? Tea? I've heard that some Catholic priests refuse to offer him communion wine.

Maybe it's the ice cream.

for Q Syndicate, 2021

I may have drawn fewer cartoons about Biden as President than I drew about any other president during any given four years. That's largely because I draw for the LGBTQ press, and Biden has a great record on LGBTQ issues, in stark contrast to the leaders in the Republican Party.

The Dad Jokes thing didn't pan out as a running gag, whereas the Republicans' full-bore, sustained persecution of transgender persons has called for a lot of ink and colored pixels over the past four years.

But who knows? I have to come up with a couple cartoons for Q Syndicate to release during weeks when I'm away for the drawing board. If you see any more Dad Jokes here over the next six months, you'll know why.

Q Toon: We Could All Use One

You may have heard the news already, but just in case you've just awakened from a coma: President Joe Biden, sequestered by COVID and beleaguered by his party's call to quit running for reelection after his cringe-worthy debate performance on June 27, withdrew from the race and endorsed his Vice President, Kamala Harris, instead.

As unprecedented as his decision was, it was a long time coming. And probably inevitable.

Many who voted for him in 2020 expected him to be a one-term president, cleaning up the mess made by the tumultuous Trump administration. But then he declared his intention to run for reelection, to "finish the job."

Governance, however, is not a job that is there to be finished.

Unless you're planning to implement Project 2025 and finish the Trump job of dismantling democracy once and for all.

Biden's performance in his June debate with Trump obliterated the confidence of every supporter who had been encouraged by his State of the Union speech. It demonstrated why the people around him had scheduled so few press conferences for our octogenarian president during the past four years.

Incidentally, I have heard that people who heard that debate as live-translated into Spanish thought that Biden had won the messaging contest. The Spanish language translators had to make sense of what the candidates said, whether what they actually said made sense or not. Trump's lies, however, translated easily and transparently.

I was pianist last weekend at a wedding where they had two ASL signers up in front for deaf family members and guests. Got me wondering how deaf viewers of the debate thought it went. ASL interpreters don't just use their hands; they also use facial expression — which can be quite exaggerated — to convey more than just the literal spoken word.

Anyway, Democrats now have a lot of enthusiasm and hope invested in Kamala Harris, and will need to keep that intensity up for the next three months. 

Harris has a reputation for having a rough relationship with staff. It supposedly doomed her 2020 campaign aborning, and if there's anything like that during this one, we will hear about it. The media love to report on the nuts and bolts of campaigning, because the campaign staffers are the people the press on the campaign trail talk to all the time. And disgruntled staffers tend to be eager to vent.

So Harris came to Milwaukee this week for a previously scheduled campaign event, and the staff had to find a larger venue to accommodate the increased interest. The Harris for President organization raked in a record amount in donations in the first days of her candidacy. And I dug out the Kamala Harris button I'd picked up at a union picnic in 2019.

Meanwhile, let's see whether Harris can appeal to those doggedly undecided voters out there. 

Like the woman in the focus group on CBS Morning News yesterday who thought that the the first name of the incumbent Vice President of the United States is Camilla.

Yeah, let's not pop the victory champagne just yet, folks.

✍

Drawing this cartoon put me in mind of a cartoon that was showing up in my social media feed while back. (I'd credit the cartoonist, but now that I want to cite it, I can't find the cartoon.) A guy has brought his car into the shop, and the auto mechanic has the car's hood up. He turns to the vehicle owner and says, "Here's your problem. The cartoonist doesn't know how to draw an engine."

This Week's Sneak Peek

To say I had some issues with this week's cartoon risks understatement.

I was working on ideas for a cartoon about one topic when news broke that meant those ideas would have to wait.

I came up with something about the breaking news that I felt had relevance to the LGBTQ+ readership, drew it, let the ink dry, scanned it, and started making the Photoshop edits.

I had finished the grayscale version and sent it off to my editors, then started work on the color version. I was nearly finished when the power went out. 

The weather was nice — perfect Chamber of Commerce weather, in fact — so I hadn't been making saves along the way. The power failure, we're told, was due to a vehicle-vs.-power pole collision a couple miles away.

Weenergies restored power to my area a bit more than an hour later, and I had to start coloring the cartoon all over again. After dealing with an upset computer, of course. And all the digital clocks around the house.

But all's well that ends well, and everything's colored and sent off to Ann Arbor.

As for the Blogger issue that came up last week, I'm making this post on the same computer as last week, using the incognito mode of the Chrome browser. I couldn't upload files that way last week, but it's working today. Instead of the Sign In Again window, Blogger/Google put up a Please Allow Cookies Or Else window. 

Once I've posted this, I'll try using the regular browser and see how that works.

✍

Update: It doesn't.

Zurück zum Zeichenbrett

When our Graphical History Tour last visited July, 1924, the Democratic National Convention had just struggled for two weeks to settle on its presidential nominee, rejecting its leading suitor, William McAdoo, in favor of John W. Davis.

"Americanische Wahlqualen" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, July 27, 1924

The debacle made the front page of Berlin's satirical weekly Kladderadatsch, where cartoonist Arthur Johnson was happy to enjoy the schadenfreude of the misfortunes of politicians of any other country.

"Die Schnüffel-Kommission" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, July 13, 1924

Especially since the alternative was to cartoon about the humiliation of his own country. (Johnson's father was American; but Arthur was German-born and grew up there raised by his German mother.) 

The title of this cartoon derives from a word that can mean either "snoop" or "sniff"; I've chosen the former, since Marianne, John Bull, Uncle Sam, and the Italian (King Vittorio Emanuele III, probably), representing the Reparations Commission, are using a magnifying glass rather than their olfactory senses to examine Michel's gesäß.

"Morgens.. in der Berliner Kunstuastellung" by Arthur Johnson in Kladderadatsch, July 13, 1924

Johnson, renowned for his monstrously distorted caricatures of Germany's foes, was certainly capable of more flattering depictions of the human form, as shown in "Die Schnüffel-Kommission." I may not know much about modern art, but I know what Johnson liked.

"Der Dolchstoss von Hinten" by Oskar Theuer in Ulk, Berlin, July 18, 1924

Only months after the failed Beerhall Putsch, the Never Hitlerer cartoonists warned that the danger had not truly passed. Oskar Theuer's cartoon on the front page of Ulk depicted industrialists and royalists behind the bushes on the left and Nazis on the right, both waiting to ambush the young lad labeled Peace. Little Boy Peace's backpacks are labeled "reconstruction" and "reconciliation."

Theuer ironically took the blame-laying phrase used by those right-wingers, turning it back against them as the title of the cartoon.

"Der Fall Willstätter" by Thomas Theodor Heine in Simplicissimus, Munich, July 28, 1924

Publishing his magazine in the heart of Nazi country, Theodore Heine's play on words recalls the horrors of World War I's chemical warfare for his cartoon. Yellow Cross gas, or Gelbkreuzgas, was Germany's variant of mustard gas with an antifreeze agent for use in winter; Hakenkreuz is another word for "swastika."

Richard Willstätter was a Nobel Prize winning German chemist who determined the composition of chlorophyll in plants. Asked in 1915 to help develop poison weapons for the German government, he refused to work on anything beyond protective measures. He received the Iron Cross for his work on gas mask filtering systems.

In protest of increasing anti-Semitism, Willstätter, a Jew, announced his retirement as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in 1924, and subsequently refused all offers of employment. He eventually fled Munich for Switzerland in 1938, where he died four years later, ten days shy of his 70th birthday.

"Faschismus" by Arnold Lindloff in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, July 6, 1924

Looking beyond Germany's borders again, Arnold Lindloff has Italy's Benito Mussolini quoting The Sorcerer's Apprentice, although Il Duce (at right) appears to enjoy the work of the monsters he has set loose. 

Only the industrialist seems perturbed; wouldn't it have made more sense to have him the one who summoned the two spirits? Indeed, the fellow with a dagger appears to be a German brownshirt; and whereas Mussolini has a club, the industrialist is armed only with a baton. 

A magic wand, even.

"Die Ältesten und die Jüngsten von U.S.A." by Karl Arnold in Simplicissimus, Munich, July 7, 1924

Here's another cartoon in which the wrong person seems to be speaking. Karl Arnold's comment on the U.S.'s Japanese Exclusion Act is one of many cartoons through history that have proposed that Native Americans erred in ever allowing Europeans to settle the new continent.

It appears that the tribal elder in the foreground should be the one talking, but the caption makes more sense said by the Japanese gentleman. I wonder why the speaker wasn't identified as McAdoo and Mussolini were in the above cartoons, or if an editor changed the caption.

I don't always get German humor, largely because I don't speak the language. Relying on an on-line translation of "Die Yankees machen sich jetzt mausig" gave me "The Yankees are making a mess of things now." But from what I've been able to tell, the word "mausig" doesn't translate neatly into English. It combines senses of being unruly, obstinate, and deliberately combative. (One translator also gave me "mousy.")

"Ihr" can mean "you," "her," or "their." Only one of those pronouns makes any grammatical sense in the caption, so I stuck with "you."

✍

Well, that's our review for today of German cartoons from July of 1924. Hope you enjoyed the grammar lesson and the Jugenstil. Come back next week, and I promise to go back to having stuff in English.

Q Toon: Our Tone

There were a handful of celebrity deaths over the weekend, and I tried to come up with a cartoon about Richard Simmons's passing. But everything that came to mind was either trite or in poor taste — as most memorial cartoons are — and given that the assassination attempt against Donald Trump was dominating news coverage to the exclusion of almost everything else, I couldn't bring myself to ink Simmons doing calisthenics at the Pearly Gates.

Or whatever I might have had Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Shannon Daugherty, James Sikking, Shelley Duvall, or Jacoby Jones doing.

Because a bullied young white man with a gun climbed onto a roof and took shots at Mr. Trump, there have been calls to "tone down the rhetoric," especially regarding criticism of the Republican nominee for the presidency of the United States.

Republicans do not like Democrats calling their presidential nominee an American Hitler and a reprehensible, cynical asshole (whoops, those were from J.D. Vance) just because he wants to create a police state to round up all the Latinos, weaponize the Department of Justice and FBI, set up boncentration bamps, and persecute all his political enemies, and he never met a right-wing dictator he didn't like. I get it. Imagine being called a Communist for wanting affordable health care, or a Nazi for supporting women’s rights, or demonspawn for urging people not to gather in crowds during a global pandemic of a novel virus that was killing millions.

Toning down the rhetoric is not something we political cartoonists are particularly good at, but you will notice that I didn't draw Mr. Trump with a pig's snout, and I have (so far) refrained from giving him a middle name from dystopian fiction.

For my cartoon, I selected five examples of Republicans loose talk about guns and killing. The first (a paraphrase) dates back to 2016; the fifth (a direct quote) was earlier this month. I could have included many more — especially Republicans' virulent rash of gun fetish Christmas cards. 

(I didn't leave myself room to identify the fourth politician, and it occurs to me that readers may not know whether she is Lauren Boebert, Sarah Palin, or Kristi Noem. Is there any one of them that you think could not have said she was bringing a gun to settle political differences?)

Trump's responses to, not just hypothetical or rhetorical, but actual violence against Democrats is unforgettable:

When a madman hammered nearly to death the husband of then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump jeered and mocked. One of Trump’s sons and other close Trump supporters avidly promoted false claims that Paul Pelosi had somehow brought the onslaught upon himself through a sexual misadventure.

After authorities apprehended a right-wing-extremist plot to abduct Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Trump belittled the threat at a rally. He disparaged Whitmer as a political enemy. His supporters chanted “Lock her up.” Trump laughed and replied, “Lock them all up.”

We're also told that he found the violent attempt to overthrow the U.S. government on January 6, 2021, thoroughly entertaining. Most of the rest of us did not.

So forgive me if I'm not ready to sing For He's a Jolly Good Fellow with his MAGA mobsters.

✍

By the way, it was Rep. Lauren Boebert.

This Week's Sneak Peek

On a hunch, I took this week's cartoon to work on a USB drive and tried uploading it to Blogger from there. It worked.

This is a screenshot of my attempt to upload the sneak peek file from home, where I tried both drag-and-drop and browsing-and-clicking; I tried both the Chrome and Edge web browsers, and regular and incognito windows.

I suppose this means I have to spend money on replacing my Windows 10 computer with whatever the newest, most intrusive operating system is these days. Which will be rendered obsolete in a matter of months.

A similar problem keeps arising at work as various websites we rely upon for the church's website, congregational management software, electronic fund transfers, and the like become unworkable on the web browsers on their ancient Mac OS 10.12.6. (So far, they still work in incognito mode; my guess is that cookies from before the Web 3.999 updates interfere with whatever newfangled macarons come with the new shit.)

Well, anyway, here's the sneak peek. The weekly sneak peek will probably have to wait until Tuesdays for a while.

I May Have to Leave This Blog

Google has made some change to uploading images to this blog that make it impossible to do so.

Here's what happens: I click on the upload image icon. A pop-up window appears telling me that I have to sign in to Google to access the content. (I have already signed in to Google to work on the blog, but okay. Let's be safe and secure here.)

When I click on the sign-in button, instead of asking me for my ID and password, a new upload window opens. There is an icon of a cloud, and a choice to Browse or Drag-and-Drop.

Whichever of those two choices I make, a blue progress bar tells me it's uploading. But when it's done, where is my file? Lost in the clouds, apparently. It certainly hasn't appeared in my blog post. It hasn't shown up in the Blogger folders.

I'm not happy, Google. Not at all.

The Fours of July

We'll get back to 1924 soon; but first, I'm gonna rummage around in my dusty old cartoons bin to check what I drew in Julys (Julies?) of decades ago.

Since we're waiting on tenterhooks to find out what lickspittle Donald Berzilius Trump will name to replace The Late Great Mike Pence as his Vice President next week, here's the challengers' ticket announced forty years ago.

Unpublished. July, 1984

Walter Mondale's choice of Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate in 1984 was calculated to be a game-changing, historical gambit. No woman had ever been on a major party's top ticket before.

The move was somewhat blunted by the National Organization for Women and the National Women's Political Caucus — and House Speaker Tip O'Neil — having publicly pressured Mondale to name a woman to his ticket. When the announcement was made, the Mondale-Ferraro ticket couldn't escape muttered gripes that he was merely pandering to a Democratic interest group. The same thing, rightly or wrongly, nagged at Joe Biden's choice of Kamala Harris in 2020.

Contrast that to John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin in 2008. Governor Palin had her own minuses to be sure, and certainly there were more qualified Republican women for the vice presidency; but by not promising ahead of time to name a woman, McCain got credit for having made a bold move.

Of course, she turned out to be a goofball. Not that's in any way a detriment to a Republican Party career any more. But still.

At least Geraldine Ferraro wasn't the butt of jokes for the next three months as Brooklyn Barbie.

July, 1994? Sure.

The Post at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee didn't publish in July, 1994, and apparently I didn't draw anything for the Journal-Times, either. But this drawing sits in front of my August cartoons in the 1994 folder, so let's just say for the sake of having anything here that I drew it in July.

This was my one and only venture creating album art. (Is it album art if there isn't an LP?) Rev. Tim Hansen, a Lutheran pastor in Racine who had graduated a year behind me at St. Olaf College — we had an abundance in Racine pulpits that year of pastors who had been at Olaf during my four years there — asked me to create this drawing for the cover of his upcoming CD and cassette based on the title track, "Shoved by the Dove." 

That's a caricature of Pastor Tim, of course, and he had specifically asked that the dove be kicking him in the tuchus.

For those who are interested, "Shoved by the Dove" is available on Spotify.

for Q Syndicate, July, 2004

Hey, remember when Jeb Bush was the biggest threat to come out of Florida since Hurricane Andrew?

He's a kitten compared to the state's current crop of Republicans.

Anyway, this is one of several cartoons of mine poking holes in that "special rights for homosexuals" shibboleth.

The irony, jumping forward another ten years to discussion of the Employment Rights Protection Act, is that it's the bigots and 'phobes who keep insisting on having "special rights."

July 2014 for Q Syndicate

Come 2025, they might be the only ones with any rights in this country.

Q Toon: Couples Therapy

This week's cartoon was inspired by a pair of articles I had read recently. One, in Time magazine, claimed that Americans left and right aren't as diametrically opposed as your social media feed would have you believe. The other, in the New York Post, gave voice to complaints of "MAGA gays" who feel shunned and dissed by others in the LGBT movement — including their favorite bars and even their own spouses.

Mark Dorman, a retired teacher from Hell’s Kitchen, said he has been all but blacklisted from the Atlas Social Club, his local gay bar, since he spoke positively about the former president there last summer.
“I’m almost anti-gay,” a frustrated Dorman, 64, told The Post. “It’s an embarrassment to see this kind of behavior… I’d really invite them to go to Iran or Gaza. See what that does for you. See how fast they throw you in prison or kill you.”
“It feels like the Soviet Union, Marxist environment now,” he said. “With the gay community, they feel that Republicans on the far right have an anti-gay thing. ..."

The "Go To Iran or Gaza" is a common meme among Magazoids who deign to advise the LGBTQ+ community to ignore the chapters pertaining to us in Mein Trumpf: The 2025 Project. Yet somehow, I don't think that when Mark Dorman cites the Soviet Union, he has been following events in the Far Right Paradise that Russia has become under Trump's buddy Vlad the Defenestrator.

It's Dorman in the Post article whose marriage nearly ended over Trumpism (frankly, Dorman is their source for the whole article). Their marriage only survived because they agreed to stop discussing politics. So I hope for Dorman's sake that his husband never, ever, ever reads the New York Post.

I think we all have some family member/s with whom we have reached an agreement not to mention politics any more. Which is where the Time article comes in.

And divided we certainly think we are. The only thing Americans seem to agree on is that Americans cannot agree on anything. It’s hardly worth summarizing the headlines about doom and radicalization. In the prelude to a November ballot featuring the candidate synonymous with polarization, all the dapple and nuance of life is once again being reduced to a binary. Choose a side: red or blue.

Yet in the wintry interval between Jan. 6 and Inauguration Day 2021, that Populace survey, dubbed the American Aspirations Index, found “stunning agreement” on national goals across every segment of the U.S. population, including, to a significant extent, among those who voted for Donald Trump and those who voted for Joe Biden. On the few points where the survey registered disagreement (notably, on immigration and borders), the dissent was intense. But intense disagreement was the exception, not the rule. 

Oh, you could probably add abortion to the list of points where the dissent is "intense." But is not talking about divisive issues really what it takes to keep this country together?

Or is that just what they want us to think?

"We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be," [Heritage Foundationführer Kevin] Roberts told host of "Real America's Voice" Dave Brat, a former congressman who spent his brief time in government claiming the attendees of the Women's March are much more dangerous than white supremacists.

On the other hand, if Team Edward and Team Jacob can bury their differences now that nobody talks about the Twilight series any more, maybe there is yet hope that we will all meet again some sunny day.

Not the vampires, of course.

This Week's Sneak Peek

One side note that I hadn't been able to work into Saturday's round-up of cartoons about the second week of the Democrats' 1924 national convention was that President Coolidge's 16-year-old son, Calvin Jr., died that Monday. While playing tennis on the White House lawn, young Calvin contracted blood poisoning from a blister and succumbed to a staph infection.

I could have included any of the cartoons commiserating the president's sorrow, but the post already had more cartoons than usual. None of the sympathy cartoons really stood out from the others, anyway.

During a political convention, cartoonists' attention tends to focus on the party throwing the party. The death of Coolidge's son tended to dissuade cartoonists from drawing cartoons of the president either enjoying the Democrats' difficulties, or of Coolidge and Davis facing off immediately upon the nomination being finally settled.

✍

In the aftermath of last week's gawdawful presidential (for lack of a better word) debate (ditto), I'm somewhat in a bind. I draw my cartoons days before they get published, in newspapers and magazines that will be on their newsstands for a week or more after that. With the mainstream media drumbeat that Democrats may or may not pressure President Biden to drop out, I'm finding it hazardous to come up with any cartoon about the presidential race that might not have any shelf life to it.

We'll see how this week's cartoon holds up.

✍

By the way, the cartoon I posted on Friday seems to be unusually popular. Maybe. Blogger reports to me that it has about six times the number of hits of the average cartoon I post, although Blogger only tells me that those extra hits are coming from "Other."

Could just be those thousands of bots that used to be in Singapore but have lately moved to Hong Kong.

The Democrats' 103rd Choice

It’s time to check in on the 1924 Democratic National Convention and find out whether the party Will Rodgers belonged to had figured out who its candidate for president was.

"Sea Sick" by William Hanny in Philadelphia Inquirer, July 2, 1924

When we left the 1924 Democratic National Convention, the leading contenders were William McAdoo, lately of California, and Al Smith, Governor of New York; a host of other candidates hoped to capitalize when one of the leaders fell.

As the convention entered its second week, seven ballots were cast on July 1; but the Democrats were no closer to agreeing on their standard bearer than when they had begun.

"As Berryman Views the Convention" by Clifford Berryman in Washington (DC) Evening Star, July 2, 1924

A tradition we are sadly losing these days is newspapers sending their editorial cartoonists to political conventions to send back their sketches of the activity on the floor. Clifford Berryman's sketchbook entries included future president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, returning to politics after being sidelined by polio, and Woodrow Wilson's red-baiting Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer.

"Platform Carpenters Produce Plank Mentioning No Names" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 1, 1924

Meanwhile, as the balloting for the party's nominee dragged on, cartoonists' work on editorial pages took on the issues bedeviling the platform committee.

"Forgot to Look Under the Bed" by O.P. Williams for Star Company, ca. July 2, 1924

A proposed plank to condemn the Ku Klux Klan drew strong opposition from the populists, and many rural southern and western delegates.

"Pandora" by Bill Sykes in Philadelphia Public Record, ca. July 1, 1924

Nor could delegates agree on a party position on prohibition. Many of McAdoo’s delegates stood in defense of Prohibition and the Klan; Smith supporters were against both. 

"Where to Now, Sam" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, July 3, 1924

"Ding" Darling was another cartoonist attending the convention; and while several of his cohorts were sending rough sketches to their editors, Darling was sending home fully realized editorial cartoons. This is one of four Darling cartoons in the Register that day, and it highlights a significant issue overlooked by many other editorial cartoonists: Democrats' alienation of the labor vote in favor of Wall Street and the South.

"Why Not Something Permanent for the Future" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 8, 1924

One consequence of the convention dragging on and on was that delegates were overstaying their hotel reservations, and, presumably in some cases, their funds.  

William McAdoo maintained a lead through the 77th ballot, but never attained a majority of the votes, let alone the required two-thirds supermajority required by party rules.

"Aw, Give a Feller a Chance" by William A. Rogers in New York World, July, 1924

The Library of Congress dates this William Rogers cartoon August of 1925. I've checked, and the Democrats were not still trying to decide on their nominee ten months after the election. It's the date written in the lower left corner, but it must be the date when Rogers gave the original of the cartoon to F.R. Tyler (if I'm reading the script correctly).  

"Just Can't Understand It" by Albert T. Reid in Rutland Daily Herald, July 17, 1924

Seeing that the nomination would never be his, McAdoo withdrew from the race. Many of his supporters flocked to Indiana Senator Samuel Ralston. Ralston declined to disavow support of the Klan, and enjoyed what political writers of the day called a "boom"; but in the end, the 300-lb., 66-year-old Hoosier heeded his doctor's advice and dropped out of the race.

Alfred Smith led the pack in ballots 86 through 93, and again on ballots 99 and 100. But the candidate of the host of the convention couldn't win the support of one-third of the delegates, let alone two-thirds of them, and ultimately faced the music and pulled out of the race.

"Just as the Roof Fell In" by Edward Gale in Los Angeles Times, July 10, 1924

Finally, on the 103rd ballot, the nomination went to "dark horse" candidate John W. Davis, formerly a congressman from West Virginia and Ambassador to Great Britain, who had come in third on most of the earlier ballots.

"Started at Last" by Douglas Rodger in San Francisco Bulletin, July 11, 1924

To balance the ticket, the vice presidential nod went to Charles W. Bryan, the populist Governor of Nebraska and brother of perennial presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan.

"Those Cyclones Do Play the Queerest Tricks" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, July 11, 1924

I ran across quite a few tornado references in July, 1924 editorial cartoons. It's the season for such storms, after all.

"Trying to Take Out the Soreness" by J.N. Darling in Des Moines Register, July 14, 1924

The elder Bryan got over his earlier opposition to Davis and fell in with the new party line. 

These cartoons portraying a diminutive Charles Bryan remind me of R.C. Bowman's cartoons of William Bryan and his 1900 running mate, Adlai Stevenson.

"And Yet He Asks Your Votes" possibly by O.P. Williams for Star Company July 12, 1924

Not everyone was willing to become Davis fans. I'm guessing that the above cartoon was by O.P. Williams, even though I can't spot his typically tiny signature on it. The shading is in Williams's style, and he was a regular feature of the Washington Herald editorial page, which ran this cartoon.

"You Wait and See" by Rollin Kirby in New York World, July, 1924

One of the party defectors denouncing Davis was Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana, who may or may not be the object of Rollin Kirby's cartoon above. 

"Watch 'Battling Bob' Bust Up the Love Feast" by Harold Talburt for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. July 21, 1924

Wheeler would accept the second spot on Robert LaFollette's Progressive Party ticket — its third party convention being held in Cleveland, Ohio during the second week of the Democrats' convention.

"Real Cause for Alarm" by O.P. Williams for Star Company, ca. July 7, 1924