Semantics for the masses: "Grifter" for college educated; "pocket padder" for everyone else

 Sometimes the left uses words that are not in common usage and then wonders why it is hard to communicate with those not as well educated. "Grifting" is one of those terms.  I really never heard it often, and I wonder if it meant a person who takes bribes or is just greedy for wealth, a con  artist, unethical, or anything in between.  It does...but I would nominate another term that is in common language. " Pocket padding" or "pocket padder. "

 So much is being made of Trump and family enriching themselves, yet nothing so far has been proved that bribery influencing public policy has happened.  It may well be, but so far it seems that the worst accusation is the violations of gift acceptance forbidden in the Constitution.The Foreign Emoluments Clause (Article I, Section 9, Clause 8) of the U.S. Constitution prohibits any person holding a federal office—including the President—from accepting any present, emolument, office, or title from a foreign state, king, or prince without the consent of Congress. The GOP had persecuted Hunter Biden for trading on his family name and being the son of the president in his business deals in Ukraine. What is happening with the Trump family, and Trump himself, makes Hunter's sin look petty next to theirs. https://www.newyorker.com/news/a-reporter-at-large/trumps-profiteering-hits-four-billion-dollars

If so far there is no evidence of a quid pro quo (bribery), giving gifts is one sure way for foreign powers to win friends and influence people in the Oval Office. Keeping the gifts without Congressional approval is forbidden by the Constitution, but Trump has a habit of ignoring the parts of that document he does not like.  One thing is certain: it is potentially corrupting. 

 MAGA couldn't care less, but I think deep in their hearts they really could become resentful of the wealth accumulation of the Trump family, who are taking advantage of Trump's presidency to accumulate more wealth for themselves and their father.  Class sensitivity is not dead. The ultra-wealthy who are dishonest and greedy are still an object of disdain. MAGA once got riled up about Hunter's mideeds, and the "Biden Crime Family" they never proved. Resentment of a president's son trading on his father's name resonated with them then, but not now. Funny, isn't it. What came to mind was the Mar-a-Lago documents dump. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-showed-off-a-classified-map-during-a-2022-plane-trip-raskin-alleges-in-letter from  Jack Smith's suppressed report.  Allegations and observations have been made that the documents Trump illegally kept were for "business" purposes.  That puts the "Art of the Deal" on a whole new level. 

I found this courtesy of AI, which best describes a pocket padder in the context I am using. https://ludwig.guru/s/pad+their+pockets.   It is an idiomatic expression that means to take advantage of someone or something for personal gain. 

Incompetence: another descriptive word for the Trump administration

 The plummeting polls showing that in every public policy issue category, the Trump administration is facing 40% approval to 60% disapproval is not just a partisan divide, but one that cuts into his own ideologically compatible base. If a voter approved Trump's announced agenda at the beginning of this term, they are seeing that promises are broken. It is not just policies, but bungled execution. They are seeing incompetent leadership, particularly among cabinet members. The buck stops at Trump's desk, and the pile is growing. Trump appointed people he called "the best people" who met the media criteria of a TV face and were slavishly loyal to him. But many were mostly amateurs with no experience in their appointed positions as cabinet heads. The result: incompetent execution of whatever they thought the boss wanted."Affordability" as a promise has been is trashed, but " incompetence" is also rampant, disdained across the partisan divide..https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-approval-hits-new-36-low-fuel-prices-surge-amid-iran-war-reutersipsos-2026-03-24/

 Case in point is the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, a former FOX host, who thinks war is like a video game, and he is carrying out his personal religious crusade. Any military background he had did not prepare him for the position. He claims the military does not need to abide by the Geneva Convention, the avoidance of intentional damage to civilians, and the destruction of their infrastructure. He seems ignorant of the history of this, from Nuremberg to the Balkan wars of the 1990s. If his intent is acted out, he would be committing war crimes we used to condemn other dictators for committing and sent them to The Hague.  His lack of high-level military experience in planning for an attack is glaring, given the anticipated closure of the Straits of Hormuz, yet there was no plan or force ready to deal with it. The military brass and the military forces themselves are doing their job in assigned targeting successes with professionalism and skill that deserve our praise and respect.  That there was no strategy tied to military targeting that would lead to an outcome that met an ever-changing goal was not  Hegseth's fault, except that what he did was, without question, and what he thinks  Trump wanted.  That one lands right on DJT's desk. 

 DHS (Department of Homeland Security) is the most obvious case of incompetence, with one former head, Kristi Noem, who had her personal priorities and wanted to look her best on TV and sound like a tough lady. She had a history of cruelty to animals that apparently carried over to the cruel treatment of immigrants of color and even to US citizens.  Noem managed to turn lemonade into lemons, as public opinion turned from approval of immigration policy to disapproval. She had absolutely no experience in law enforcement. Her priorities were to fund ICE like a militia, a private army, recruiting with messages to appeal to those who were violent thugs. Then she failed to train them or make them abide by the standards of other law enforcement entities. At the end of March, she left DHS with the homeland unprotected from international bad actors by reducing funding for cybersecurity and the TSA, and disaster relief, as we are approaching tornado, wildfires, and hurricane season, and the fallout from the Iran war.  

Noem's replacement is yet to be tested, but he is a former mixed-martial artist who has even made physical threats against fellow members of Congress with whom he disagreed as a way to settle disagreements. President Donald Trump appointed Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin to replace Kristi Noem. Mullin has no direct experience in law enforcement, the military, or federal disaster response. FEMA and TSA have been decimated. Whatever could go wrong? It is amateur hour again.

There is no change in priorities or the unstated racist goals of the Trump administration. His only deviation from prior marching orders to Sen. Mullin was to stay out of the headlines. No wonder public opinion shifted from approving Trump's closing of the border and arresting gang members to disapproval of ICE's violent and cruel treatment of migrants to disapproval of ICE's violent and cruel treatment of migrants, as shown in polling.   

With the new head of DHS, there has been no change in an unstated mission and priorities: to kick out as many brown people or put them into gulags as possible, and hunt them down.  Noem's policies are continuing. This mass deportation policy is still executed to the nth degree, regardless of whether the migrant had a criminal record or not. Most deportees had only committed a misdemeanor by not having legal documents, yet they were snatched and put into the black hole of a former warehouse gulag, or put secretly on a charter plane or even on a commercial flight to a country of origin, or to a converted warehouse with no access to lawyers, men, women, and children.  As politicians like to say, "this is not a good look".

Gov. Polis: Do not commute Tina Peters sentence for the sake of the integrity of future elections

Gov. Polis: Do not fall for Trump's pressure tactics. Do not commute Tina Peters' sentence or reduce it. It would harm the integrity of future elections. The process by which the state convicted her is not in question, nor is that the biggest issue. Trump et al. think the sentence was too harsh, given that Peters was a sworn supporter of him and obeyed what he had asked clerks to do nationwide instead of their oath to uphold election laws. Election integrity rules must be taken seriously. When clerks break rules and allow an outside partisan to have the code to the electronic system, as Peters did, that is not a trivial matter.  It is a serious one and deserves upholding the laws and rules for the purpose of preventing future partisan-tempted election officials from doing likewise.

To review what Peters did that got her 9 years, go to https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/tina-peters-lawyers-try-to-convince-colorado-court-to-overturn-conviction-for-voting-system-breach

President Trump has repeatedly threatened Colorado with "harsh measures"  demanding the immediate release of Tina Peters. Trump claims Peters is a "political prisoner," prompting actions like targeting state funding, affecting NCAR in Boulder,  SNAP benefits, and relocating Space Command. He keeps opposing mail in ballots, targeting Colorado as one of his threats concerning Peters.

All ballots cast in Colorado are manually voted on paper, whether by mail or in person at a polling place.

https://www.cpr.org/2024/10/08/vg-2024-how-your-vote-gets-counted-in-colorado/

Trump is trying to suppress the vote by his self-serving campaign against mail-in ballots, a system Colorado uses that is one of the most secure in the world, so long as those administering it are kept in line by laws we observe and respect.  Mail-in and poll cast ballots filled out manually by the voter and cast on paper are the backup system if a partisan county clerk like Tina Peters succeeds in damaging the integrity of the vote and the vote count.   Votes that are cast on paper ballots, whether by mail or in person, are easily audited, verified, and easily recounted.. The problem is in securing them. 

President Trump has repeatedly threatened Colorado with "harsh measures"  demanding the immediate release of Tina Peters, Trump claims Peters is a "political prisoner," prompting actions like targeting state funding, affecting NCAR in Boulder,  SNAP benefits,and relocating Space Command. 

. Paper ballots if kept secure per law and regs, are the way to find whether tinkering has taken place and a double check in a recount. When that system is in the hands of election-denying officials or loyal partisans or owned by them, do not trust AND verify.

Our prior tabulation of mail-in ballots and those cast on election day used by our county was Dominion, and MAGA lost in their attempt to claim they were one of the reasons Trump lost in 2020. MAGA solved that issue by having a Trump partisan buy out Dominion. Our county has now contracted with another system.

We are no longer a nation that is a political 50-50 split; it is now 60-40 to 58-42 split: advantage Democrats

Common wisdom used to be this was a 50 /50 split in the American voters' opinion polls:..half for the GOP and half for Democrats.  That has shifted to about  58 percent to 60% for Democrats and 42 to 40 percent split in approval for the GOP. This is evident even in the 2025 data,study and it does not reflect the recent shift in Hispanic, independent, and young people's votes away from the GOP and MAGA. Today's polls may reflect the shift.  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/03/19/donald-trump-approval-rating/89177997007/

https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/54341-worsening-economic-outlook-donald-trump-iran-voting-march-13-16-2026-economist-yougov-poll

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZTtTtR21YM   recent ABC/Washington Post poll

This is a macro view, but it does not apply to every voting district..

 As the GOP loses ground. how much does the loyalty to the MAGA viewpoint play in the GOP. I would have thought it would have been higher than 50%, but that was the finding in a study. https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2025/02/24/majority-of-republicans-nationally-identify-as-maga-for-first-time-in-unity-poll.   The allegiance to MAGA is growing.  Nonetheless, the swing vote within the GOP is still large enough to make any rift significant.,  That does not mean it automatically translates into political power loss.  

 Support for one or the other side of this voter poll split is also specific to location and the number of Congressional districts, states, or electoral college votes, voting districts that have a record, demographic, and dominance of one side of the divide or another. What it does show is that whatever is considered a swing or near swing district will still determine outcome in both November 2026 midterms and in the 2028 presidential race..  The rest of the voting districts are set in concrete. The electoral college laws are also responsible for this imbalance, which has resulted in nearly every presidential election showing a larger popular vote for Democrats than the winning GOP candidate. The advantage favors the GOP, and Democrats must outperform them with the popular vote. Not every voter who contributed to the 60% non Trump vote wlll vote for Democrats. They could opt to stay at home on election day.

Three factors may influence the remainder of the year. GOP/Trump policies that threaten previous Hispanic voters with ICE cruelty, the struggles of young people saddled with student debt, and AI as an entry-level job opportunity killer. The other is voter suppression of perceived opponent groups:, ICE agents at polling places, and making it difficult for those who are large numbers unfriendly to the GOP, particularly women, such as the SAVE act attempts to do.  Disillusionment by independents and non-MAGA with Trump's promises and failures to make good on them is a third.  This one may be growing thanks to his damage to affordability and entanglement in foreign wars, such as Iran.

The SAVE Act is now being debated in the Senate and is predicted to go down in defeat, even if Trump vetoes the version that survives and needs a 60-vote count to override his veto. Senators, even in some safe states, are not sure who will be hurt more: women or their own, poorer, undereducated rural  White voter base.

The current version of the SAVE proposal makes it hard for those they see as their opponents to vote, but it has a serious backfire in it that makes even GOP Senators uneasy unless they come from ruby red states. The SAVE Act places a burden on women that most men do not have. It requires many women to jump through additional hoops in order to be able to vote. Married or divorced women have to tie their accepted picture ID to their birth certificate to make name changes via marriage or other situations. This will certainly hurt Democrats, but that also will hurt the MAGA base, which is mostly rural, poor, White,  working class, and with low education levels, because they too have to cough up money to get the right photo ID and the accepted documentation of their birth and make it through those administrative hurdles. Elderly in both parties will be hurt, but less in blue higher-income states because they are more likely to have a US passport, which is accepted proof of citizenship/and name conformity. Elderly voters usually trend heavily toward the GOP.  Because of the cost involved in getting a certified birth certificate, passports, or a conforming ID, this can be seen as an unconstitutional poll tax, but that will have to play out in the courts.

Why pick on the women voters anyway?

Today, a 56% majority of women identify as Democrats or lean Democratic, while 37% affiliate with or lean toward the GOP. up 4 percentage points since 2015 and is at one of its highest points since 1992. Among men, there has been less recent change: 48% of men identify with the GOP, and 44% are Democrats or lean Democratic, a long-standing divide. Both gender and educational gaps are expanding.  https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/03/20/wide-gender-gap-growing-educational-divide-in-voters-party-identification/