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Perfect end to campaign might produce chaotic transition of power

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My version of a perfect world includes Donald Trump losing the presidency of the United States to Joseph R. Biden in about, oh, 62 days.

It includes a significant Biden victory in both the actual ballots cast and in the Electoral College. Trump, though, is sending plenty of signals that he well might not go silently into the night, concede the contest, offer his full cooperation and then let the new team take over.

I have retired my trick knee, the one that betrayed me badly by allowing me to predict a Hillary Clinton victory in 2016.

So I want to offer this observation of what might occur if my perfect world plays out in November and we elect Joe Biden the next president.

The transition is going to be a cluster fu** of the first magnitude.

Does anyone really expect Trump to provide a smooth transition from one administration to the next one?

I am trying to imagine Joe and Jill Biden arriving at the White House to be greeted by Donald and Melania Trump. Do you see the couples smiling at each other, posing for the cameras?

Moreover, something tells me that no one should be surprised if Donald and Melania Trump don’t even attend the inaugural of the next president. Yes, I believe that Donald Trump is that much of a sore loser, that he would decide to forgo the boos that would rein down on him as he watches Biden take the oath of office.

Donald Trump’s entire presidency has been a case study in chaos and confusion. Why would anyone expect a transition to the next president to be anything other than what we have witnessed.

It won’t be pretty. However, political perfection need not always be a thing of beauty.

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Going to vote early … on the first day

(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

I cannot even believe I am saying this, but I must blurt it out.

Texas opens its polling places for early voting on Oct. 13. I intend to be among the first in line to cast my ballot for president of the United States of America.

I will be wearing my mask. I’ll have my spray-on hand sanitizer in my pocket. I will keep a socially distant space between myself and the total strangers with whom I intend to be standing.

You see, this represents a monumental sea change for yours truly. I am one who is wedded to the pageantry of voting on Election Day. I have enjoyed Election Day voting since I cast my first ballot in the spring of 1972 when I voted in Oregon’s Democratic primary.

Every presidential election year since has seen my wife and me troop to the polls on Election Day.

Not this year.

The coronavirus pandemic has me worried about getting infected. My wife is even more militant about the measures we need to take than I am. Texas isn’t likely to join several other states in requiring mail-in voting, given our state’s political leadership and its fealty to Donald Trump, who suggests — wrongly, I have to say — that mail-in voting is fraught with corruption. He’s lying.

So my wife and I will troop to the polls on Oct. 13. We will cast our votes as early as possible. We want them logged into the high-powered electronic system they use in Collin County. I heard this week that the Allen Event Center will open as a voting center for county residents. It is a spacious venue that will enable voters to practice social distancing while casting their ballots. I will be there among those early voters.

You know who will get my presidential vote. It won’t be the incumbent. Joe Biden wasn’t my first choice among the huge field of Democrats running initially. Indeed, I really never found anyone among the field who stood out.

Biden is the last man standing. He endured the grueling process. He won a key endorsement on the eve of the South Carolina primary, which he then won handily … and he never looked back.

So now I’m all in for Joe.

The process through which he gets my support, though, is the element I want to underscore. We live in perilous times as the nation battles a pandemic that continues to kill Americans at a heartbreaking rate. I do not want to risk becoming infected.

So, if voting early enables me to do my civic duty proudly while staying safe from a killer virus, that’s the way it’s going to be.

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COVID deaths overcounted? Really?

Can it be that Joni Ernst is really and truly that much of a nitwit?

The Iowa Republican U.S. senator has said that the nation’s death count from the coronavirus pandemic might be exaggerated because doctors and other medical workers get greater reimbursements related to COVID deaths.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the death count at 184,000 … and rising.

Sen. Ernst is offering yet another GOP-hatched conspiracy theory that flies in the face in the counter evidence that suggests that the death count might be even greater than what the CDC is reporting.

Why is that? Because there might be a hidden number of deaths that weren’t diagnosed as being related to the virus. That number could be thousands more than what CDC is telling us.

Is this a function of a lack of tests to determine infection rates? Might it be that poor Americans who don’t have access to proper medical treatment are succumbing to the disease without ever knowing they were infected in the first place?

I happen to one American who is more inclined to believe in the undercounted notion than the one that Ernst is pushing.

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Mini-strokes? Huh? What?

Let’s try to unpack this bit of prose.

New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt has just published a book, “Donald Trump v. The United States.” He writes in the book that on Nov. 16, 2019, Trump was taken to Walter Reed Military Hospital for an unscheduled visit. The White House informed Vice President Pence to stand by in case the president would be incapacitated by heavy sedation.

Schmidt writes that Pence never assumed the presidency in a temporary fashion. He writes only that Trump was treated for a “mystery” ailment.

What, then, is up with this Twitter message from Trump. He denied in a tweet that he suffered any “mini-strokes” or a “stroke.”

Hey, wait a second! No one reported a thing about mini-strokes! Donald Trump today broke that bit of news all by himself, without prompting, without any reason on Earth to issue a denial!

Has the president just opened the door to open speculation about his physical health?

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Is the POTUS going bonkers?

We hear this nonsense about Joe Biden’s mental acuity coming from political allies of Donald Trump.

It makes me laugh out loud. Why?

Well, Donald Trump — to my eyes and ears — is exhibiting some signs his own self of going slightly nuts. I do not mean to suggest he is certifiably nutty, or even that he has lost a step or three in the mental acuity department.

I do mean to ask out loud why Trump is fomenting conspiracy theories about “rigged” elections. Have you watched Trump speak at those rallies of late? The guy cannot craft a cogent message. He has yet to tell us what he intends to do in a (God forbid!) second term as president.

There have been some tell-all tales published of late that disclose reports of shady business dealings, of how the first lady and the first daughter cannot stand the sight of each other.

My goodness, I cannot keep up with the madness I am witnessing in the White House.

Trump is out of control. Just think that this is the guy in control of the nuclear launch codes.

But … his fans think he’s the bee’s knees. Go figure.

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Character should matter

It was several lifetimes ago when Republicans would declare that “character matters” when electing a president of the United States.

Do you remember those days? Bill Clinton was campaigning for president. He got elected in 1992. He ran for re-election in 1996. In both campaigns, GOP officials said Clinton’s checkered personal history should disqualify him for election and re-election.

GOP presidential nominee Bob Dole in 1996 once shouted indignantly, “Where is the outrage?” 

That was then. These days a Republican president is running for re-election. Donald Trump’s character doesn’t appear to be an issue with Republicans. They ignore the jaw-dropping deficiencies in this incumbent’s character. They remain deafeningly silent when issues arise about Trump’s lying, his treatment of allies, his mistreatment of women, his astounding boorishness.

None of it matters to many among this generation of Republicans.

Now, I say that knowing full well that a number of prominent GOP public figures have signed on with Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s campaign. They are the likes of former GOP presidential candidates Carly Fiorina and John Kasich, former congresswoman Susan Molinari and a host of longstanding Republican political operatives, such as Mitt Romney ally Stuart Stevens, Weekly Standard founder William Kristol and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George Will.

So many rank-and-file Republicans, though, remain hitched to the wagon being pulled by Donald Trump.

Trump’s lying continues to rankle me beyond my ability to express my outrage. It is the incessant lying that has drawn the attention of Joe Biden, who vows to restore “the soul” of the nation.

We need a president who can tell us the truth even when the truth hurts. Trump lies about the pandemic, he ignores the immense cost it has levied against us in terms of illness and death. Trump cannot tell us the truth about the misery that so many Americans are enduring.

Trump cannot speak the truth about suffering. His character, or lack of character, won’t allow him to even acknowledge out loud that “Black Lives Matter.” And do not misconstrue what I am saying here. I am not suggesting that “black lives matter” more than anyone else’s lives. Nor does the movement suggest as much, either.

Trump won’t go there. Why? His version of character doesn’t allow it. Meanwhile, the Republican Party faithful are OK with that.

Doesn’t character matter any longer?

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Trump equates shooting with … golf?

Really and truly, nothing that flies out of Donald Trump’s mouth surprises me.

Still, when he sought to compare the shooting of a black man seven times in the back to “choking” the way a golfer does while standing over a three-foot putt, well …

Donald Trump’s skill at saying the most inappropriate things, using the most ghastly metaphors is simply jaw-dropping.

Trump went to Kenosha, Wis., today to stand with police officers. Some of the Kenosha cops got involved in a shooting that left Jacob Blake paralyzed. One of them shot the young man in the back seven times. The shooting has caused considerable unrest in Kenosha and helped reignite Black Lives Matter demonstrations in other U.S. cities.

I must add that Trump did not plan to meet with Blake’s family during his visit to Kenosha. Are you surprised to hear that? Of course you’re not. It’s Trump’s modus operandi to demonize protesters who march against police brutality against minorities.

Make no mistake as well that Trump is not at all equipped to express any sort of empathy or compassion for these shooting victims.

Instead, he talks about how a cop must have “choked” the way a golfer does while missing a short putt. “It’s called choking,” Trump told Fox News interviewer Laura Ingraham, who in the moment sought to tell Trump that the comparison was, shall we say, not appropriate. Trump wasn’t hearing it.

I am left to ask: Do we really want four more years of this kind of boorishness from the man who masquerades as the leader of world’s greatest nation?

God help us.

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No signs or bumper stickers

I had hoped since I became a “civilian” who had retired from daily print journalism that I could place a bumper sticker on my vehicle and a sign in my front yard proclaiming my support for a presidential candidate.

Then I took on a freelance gig writing for a weekly newspaper company. So … my “civilian” days are over for the time being.

There’s another concern that I am a bit reluctant to divulge, but I will anyhow. It’s a concern over whether my stated preference for the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris ticket for president/vice president would attract vandals.

We happen to live in Trump Country, which is home to some extremely zealous admirers of the current president of the United States. I don’t begrudge them their zeal on behalf of their guy. I do begrudge how some of them might react to the other part of the country that favors the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

The last bumper sticker I put on my vehicle was in 1968, when Robert F. Kennedy ran for president. I wasn’t old enough to vote then, but I wanted my friends and neighbors in Oregon to know I wanted RFK to be elected president that year.

Fate, tragically, intervened.

I went into the Army that year. I came out in 1970. I enrolled in college and became involved in the 1972 campaign of George McGovern. I didn’t display a bumper sticker.

Then I went to work for newspapers. I stayed the course for nearly 37 years. During that time I adhered to the mostly unwritten rule that I shouldn’t reveal my political bias with a bumper sticker or a yard sign. Reporters are supposed to present the image of political neutrality.

So here we are, much farther down a long and winding road. I will honor the unwritten neutrality rule that reporters should follow for as long as I am reporting on the community to which I am assigned.

These are extremely contentious times, too. So I will protect my motor vehicle or my home from being damaged by those who disagree with my choice for president and vice president.

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Biden hits back … hard!

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Joseph R. Biden Jr. today emerged from his Wilmington, Del., basement and delivered what I believe could become a theme in his attempt to unseat Donald Trump from the presidency of the United States.

His message, in summary, is that the violence we are witnessing in some communities are not the product of a future Biden administration; it happening now, in real time, during the Trump administration.

And yet Trump and his fellow Republicans are seeking to portray Democratic presidential nominee Biden as a grim reminder of what might happen if he is elected president in November.

Biden stepped onto the stage in Pittsburgh today and said, in effect: What the hell are you talking about? The nation today is unsafe and it’s happening on Donald Trump’s watch!

Well, this is the kind of response that Biden will need to deliver as the presidential campaign heads toward its final sprint.

Trump wants to change the narrative from the pandemic, which he is ignoring while it continues to kill about 1,000 Americans daily. He wants us to talk instead about protests that, sadly, have turned into riots. But … wait! It’s happening now! Donald Trump vowed to protect Americans. Is he doing it? No. He is doing nothing of the sort! Nor is he doing anything to correct the economic collapse that has wiped out all the jobs created in the past decade.

I am the very last person on Earth to give a professional politician any campaign advice. I just sit out here in the Peanut Gallery, wringing my hands while worrying if the candidate I prefer is able to persuade enough of my countrymen and women that he is the one we should elect to the nation’s highest office.

What I heard today from Joe Biden suggests to me that the guy I want — that would be Biden — is up to the task at hand.

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Conway delivers parting gift

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Thank you, Kellyanne Conway, for the parting gift you delivered as you prepare to return to some semblance of a private life.

The soon to depart senior adviser to Donald Trump has said out loud what many of us have thought all along, which is that that more rioting, looting and violence occurs the better it is for Donald Trump’s re-election chances.

According to Business Insider: “The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order,” Conway said during an interview on “Fox and Friends.”

Gosh who do you think to whom she refers? In other words, according to Conway, Trump wants the rioting to continue.

Let’s roll that around for a brief moment.

Presidents of the United States usually seek to calm roiling waters. They usually seek to quell national tensions with speeches that appeal to our better angels. They want stability, calm, peace and quiet in our cities.

Not this clown. Not Donald Trump. If we are to believe Kellyanne Conway — who is leaving her office this week to spend more time repairing the damage done to her family — Trump is so damn concerned about re-election he wants to fan the anger that simmers in places like Portland, Kenosha, Minneapolis. Trump refuses to speak to the protesters or to even say the names of the individuals who have died at the hands of rogue cops.

Many of us out here in Flyover Country are left to wonder about what is going through what passes for Donald Trump’s mind. Well, we don’t need to wonder any longer. Kellyanne Conway has laid it out there for us in plain view.

Donald Trump wants the chaos to continue.

I wish Conway well as she steps away from the White House. I also want to thank her for telling us what I believe to be the truth about what motivates Donald Trump effort to stay in power.

I hope it helps derail the Donald Trump re-election train.

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