Category Archives: political news

Hillary says she’ll ask for Bill’s advice . . . duh?

hillary clinton

This might qualify is a dumb question.

It came Sunday night during the Democratic Party presidential debate and the questioner wondered whether Hillary Rodham Clinton would seek the advice of the 42nd president of the United States.

Wow! Do you think?

Why wouldn’t she? Bill Clinton left office in January 2001 with a 65 percent approval rating, and that was after he’d been impeached by the House of Representatives.

I totally understand that the former president had, um, some issues relating to a certain White House intern. I’m also aware of the official reason for the impeachment, that he committed perjury to a federal grand jury that asked him directly about the relationship.

But let’s get real here. Bill Clinton’s presidency was a rousing success. Was it totally free of tragedy? Of course not.

However, if the former first lady/U.S. senator/secretary of state is elected this November as the nation’s 45th president, she’d be stupid beyond belief not to enlist the advice of her husband.

Bill Clinton presided over eight years of superb economic growth in this country. The president — with support from Congress — managed to balance the federal budget and left office with the budget operating in the black for the first time since seemingly forever.

Is the former president’s advice worth obtaining?

Yeah, I kind of think so.

 

GOP contest is a two-man match race

rs-trump-cruz

Will Rahn, writing for the Daily Beast, has concluded that the Republican Party presidential primary campaign has settled into a two-man race.

It happens to comprise perhaps the two unlikeliest candidates of the field . . . but there’s a third highly unlikely guy out there who’s been left in the dust.

Donald J. Trump vs. Ted Cruz.

That’s who the GOP has left to decide in this primary battle, Rahn writes.

A part of me is saddened  by that possibility. Another part of me wonders if either Trump or Cruz really and truly can defeat whomever the Democrats nominate.

It’s looking a bit dicier at this moment for one-time prohibitive Democratic favorite Hillary Rodham Clinton. She once was thought to be invincible. No longer.

Still, I am trying to grasp the notion of either Trump or Cruz being able to defeat Clinton in a national election. I cannot get there.

Both men represent the so-called “outsider” wing of the party, even though Cruz has been a member of the U.S. Senate since January 2013; I guess that means he isn’t an entrenched member of Congress.

The once-enormous GOP field had a number of highly qualified individuals seeking the presidential nomination. My favorites, if you consider their skill and experience, were John Kasich, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie and Rand Paul. They remain my personal favorites.

Then we had Ben Carson, the retired pediatric neurosurgeon seeking election to the only public office he’s ever sought. He isn’t qualified and that’s all I intend to say about that.

The rest of the field? I’ll just shrug.

We’re going to be left with Trump and Cruz fighting it out to the end, says the Daily Beast writer.

It appears to me at least that the Republican Party is morphing into a political organization that some truly great Americans — Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater — wouldn’t recognize.

 

 

What’s with this ‘national poll’?

polls

More often than not I’m going to look carefully at public opinion poll results.

In this election season, we’re being inundated with them. Republican-leaning polls say one thing; Democratic-leaning polls say another. I prefer to look most closely at polls unaffiliated with either party, or certain ideological think tanks, or media outlets I know to have bias in either direction.

But one recent poll has me wondering: Is this one even relevant to anything?

Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders by 25 percentage points nationally, according to a poll released by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal.

The relevancy issue?

Well, consider a couple of things.

They’re both running for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, which means that they’re not going to face each other in a national election. Therefore, they are battling state by state: Iowa, then New Hampshire, then South Carolina . . . and on it goes.

They’ll get to Texas in early March.

Therefore, whether Clinton beats Sanders by a single percent or a million percent in a national poll doesn’t matter one bit.

How are they faring in each state?

The poll does compare the candidates’ chances against a potential Republican nominee and it shows Clinton faring better against the GOP foe than Sanders.

That’s relevant, I guess.

However, these polls pitting one candidate against the other running in the same party primary simply doesn’t register with me.

 

So very wrong about Campaign ’16 . . . so far

rs_1024x759-150709052426-1024.Donald-Trump-Hillary-Clinton-JR-70915_copy

I’ve said it more times than I can remember, which is that I’m wrong far more frequently than I am right.

My political prognostication skill has been exposed for what it is: shaky . . . at best.

Thus, I am prepared to acknowledge how wrong I’ve been about the current campaign for the presidency. My wrongness tracks along both parties’ trails.

First, the Republicans.

Donald J. Trump’s candidacy has withstood the candidate’s own serious shortcomings as a presidential aspirant, let alone his actual ability to govern.

Never in a zillion years did I think he’d still be in this campaign — let alone leading the GOP gaggle of candidates — after the countless insults he has hurled along the way.

Sen. John McCain’s valor during the Vietnam War doesn’t make him a hero? The ridiculous back/forth with broadcast journalist Megyn Kelly during the first presidential debate? His assertion that he’ll build a wall along our southern border and force Mexico to pay for it? His revealing Sen. Lindsey Graham’s cell phone number? His proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States? His assertion that he witnessed “thousands of Muslims cheering” the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11?

OK, I’ve left some of ’em out.

Despite all that, this guy continues to lead the pack.

Anger among GOP voters? That’s what is moving this man forward? If that is the case, then the Republican Party “base” is lost its sanity.

During President Obama’s State of the Union speech, I tried to imagine Donald Trump standing at that lectern offering high-minded, soaring rhetoric designed to lay the groundwork for how he intends to govern. Imagine him as well standing on the steps of the U.S. Capitol next January offering his inaugural speech to the nation as its 45th president.

All I hear coming from this guy are blustering, blistering insults.

Is that really what we want in the next president of the United States? Our head of state? Our commander in chief?

Now for the Democrats.

I once thought Hillary Rodham Clinton’s nomination was a shoo-in. She had it locked up. Nothing, or no one, would derail the Hillary Express on its way to the nomination and to the White House.

Then came Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist with a campaign theme that has resonated with his party’s base. Break up the big banks, de-fang the Wall Street power brokers, spread the wealth around, lift up everyone’s wages and reduce the income gap between the very rich and the rest of the country.

Republicans have made a lot of hay over Benghazi, which has become a form of political shorthand that means: Clinton lied about what she knew about the attack on the U.S. consulate in that Libyan city. There’s a congressional select committee that’s still looking for something to torpedo Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Meanwhile, Sanders — the independent U.S. senator from Vermont — is drawing huge, enthusiastic crowds. He’s ahead by a good bit in New Hampshire, the site of the nation’s first primary vote and is now virtually tied with Clinton in Iowa, which is about to kick off the voting with its caucuses.

Do I believe Hillary Clinton will be denied the nomination? No. But it sure ain’t the coronation I thought it would be when this campaign began.

Let me add, too, that I do not believe Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. I have some faith — although it’s been hammered — that the Republican Party brass comprises reasonable, intelligent and sane men and women who understand the consequences of nominating someone whose main skill lies in his ability to insult anyone who disagrees with him.

I don’t like acknowledging how wrong I have been.

Still, I feel better now for saying so out loud.

 

Anger: It’s strewn all along the campaign trail

articleLarge

I guess you can sum up the tone of the 2016 presidential campaign with a single word.

Anger.

I might live in a dream world, although I doubt it. Donald J. Trump, the leading Republican presidential candidate, and Bernie Sanders, the surprising Democratic candidate, apparently have tapped a vein that neither of them would be able to find on my body.

Voters are angry with the status quo. They hate politics and politicians. So, many of them are turning to so-called “outsiders” for relief from what they say ails the nation.

Isn’t that interesting? Ironic, too, if you want my take on it.

Trump and Sanders by the very definition of the word are politicians. Never mind that Trump made his fortune selling real estate, developing ritzy hotels and appearing on reality TV. Or disregard that Sanders has been a small-town mayor, member of the U.S. House of Representatives and now is a U.S. senator. They’re not “politicians” the way we’ve understood the word.

To quote the great fictional TV character U.S. Army Col. Sherman T. Potter: buffalo bagels!

They both are pursuing the granddaddy of American political offices, the presidency. Thus, they are politicians. Let’s stop pretending they aren’t, OK?

I don’t know what’s fueling the anger. From my vantage point, I remain the eternal optimist. Our national economy has recovered; we remain the strongest nation on the planet — by a mile, maybe two; we have avoided another 9/11-style terror attack since that hideous event more than 14 years ago; the price of gasoline is falling; we’re making strides in protecting our environment; our budget deficit has been cut by three-quarters.

And people are angry?

I believe the gloom-and-doomers have won the national shouting match. They’ve out-yelled the rest of us who, by our very nature, are not inclined to rouse rabbles and raise hell.

So, people are sick and tired of politicians.

Well, all right then.

The nation will be hearing a lot more from those purporting to be outsiders and those who have some actual experience running a massive government.

You may choose to believe — or disbelieve — this final point. I am willing to listen to the outsiders. I want to hear their solutions. I also am willing to consider all they have to offer.

The late House Speaker Tip O’Neill used to say “all politics is local.”

I believe, though, that for me politics is personal. I am happy with my lot in life, with the direction my life is taking. I believe I have it within my power to guide my own destiny.

Government is not in the way. It does not threaten me or those I love.

I also know that there will be those who read this blog who will call me “naĂŻve,” “Pollyanna,” “ignorant,” “bleeding-heart” . . . whatever. Fine. Go ahead.

I’ll let the shouters keep trying to drown out the rest of us. I also am awaiting to hear some semblance of a solution from any of them.

First, they need to persuade me that we need one in the first place.

I’m all ears.

Oops . . . another loan goes unreported

cruz

Here it goes again.

First it was a loan from Goldman Sachs to his 2012 U.S. Senate campaign that has caused some head-scratching. Now a second loan to Ted Cruz’s campaign has been discovered to have been omitted from required election campaign filings.

Is there a third, or fourth or fifth loan out there that the Republican presidential candidate failed to report properly?

The second loan was a $500,000 sum from Citibank directly to Cruz’s Senate campaign in Texas.

The GOP presidential contender’s campaign said the failure to report the loans to the Federal Election Commission was “inadvertent” and would be corrected.

OK, fine.

I’ll point a couple of quick points.

One is that Cruz campaigned for the Senate against Wall Street giant banking institutions. Yet he took money from the one of the big ones, which also employed his wife at the time.

Two is that Cruz has been tossing the word “lawless” around with abandon while describing the Obama administration’s actions. Let’s be careful — shall we? — with that kind of harsh language, senator.

Hey, maybe all this is as Cruz’s campaign describes it. An oversight that can be corrected quickly.

If, however, we get more of this kind of thing trickling out, it’s fair to wonder if a pattern is beginning to emerge.

 

 

Tough talk rises from GOP debate

chrischristie_0

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said the following at the latest Republican Party presidential debate Thursday night.

Frankly, it’s a hoot.

“Mr. President, we’re not against you. We’re against your policies,” Christie said. “The American people have rejected your agenda and now you’re trying to go around it. That’s not right. It’s not constitutional. And we are going to kick your rear end out of the White House come this fall.”

This is the guy who told a constituent to “sit down and shut up!” when the constituent — for whom Christie works in New Jersey — had the temerity to issue a critical statement at a public event. I’m trying to imagine myself telling any of the bosses for whom I worked to “sit down and shut up!”

It’s the kind of rhetoric that seems to endear him to many within the GOP.

But the idea that the Republican presidential nominee, whoever he or she is, will kick the president’s “rear end out of the White House come this fall” misses a fundamental point.

Barack Obama isn’t on the ballot. The U.S. Constitution places term limits on him. The 22nd Amendment says a president can be elected twice to the office. That’s it. Two and out, man.

Barack Obama was elected in 2008, winning 365 electoral votes while capturing more than 10 million more popular votes than Republican nominee Sen. John McCain; he was re-elected in 2012 with 332 electoral votes, while defeating GOP nominee Mitt Romney by nearly 5 million popular votes. He needed 270 electoral votes to win both times. His Electoral College majorities in both elections were substantial.

So, have “the American people rejected” the president’s agenda?

Seems to me — and I’m just tossing this out from the Flyover Country peanut gallery — that the president’s agenda played pretty well in the past two presidential elections.

The president is going to leave the White House a year from now on his own terms. He isn’t going to get his rear end “kicked out” of the place.

However, the tough talk that Christie — not to mention the other GOP hopefuls who debated the other night — sounds good to those who want to hear it.

If only it were true.

 

Birther debate getting muddier

rs-trump-cruz

Ted Cruz didn’t need to go where he went . . . but he did.

The Texas Republican U.S. senator raised a curious and completely irrelevant issue in seeking to refute presidential rival Donald J. Trump’s questions about Cruz’s eligibility to run for president of the United States.

During the GOP debate in North Charleston, S.C., Cruz said that under “some theories” Trump might not be eligible to serve because his mother was born in Scotland.

Oh, boy.

Sen. Cruz? That’s even more of a non-starter than the questions that Trump and others are raising about your own eligibility.

Trump keeps questioning whether Cruz can run for president because he was born in Canada. Cruz’s mother is an American, which by the reckoning of many constitutional scholars, makes him eligible; he became a U.S. citizen simply because of his mother’s citizenship.

End of discussion? Not even close.

Cruz muddied it up even more by suggesting that Trump’s mother’s birthplace might jeopardize the frontrunner’s eligibility.

This discussion is venturing into a realm that is reaching far beyond ridiculous.

Trump’s mother’s place of birth is not an issue. Neither is Cruz’s place of birth. Both men are qualified to run for the presidency.

How about staying focused on the real issues of this campaign?

Such as how they intend to govern.

 

Trump is no Reagan

MondaleReagan1984DebateMomentNBCNews_600.jpg.jpg

Donald Trump keeps making bold comparisons between himself and, well, whomever.

Now he says the “revolution” he is leading is bigger than the one led by that one-time actor, turned California governor, turned 40th president of the United States: Ronald Wilson Reagan.

Allow me to differ with that view.

Trump’s contention is false on so many levels.

Ronald Reagan energized disaffected Democrats. They came to be known as “Reagan Democrats” or “Hard Hat Democrats.” They were blue-collar voters who had grown disaffected with their party.

Trump says the current revolutionaries following his campaign have more “intensity” than those who idolized The Gipper.

(Incidentally, I was not among those. But I am guessing you already know that.)

Allow me now to say a word about the nature of Reagan’s message. Yes, it was stern. He took great pleasure and pride in sticking it into the ear of his Democratic rivals. But his call for change had a certain good humor about it. Did that tamp down the intensity of his supporters? Hardly. It made them love him more.

I’m trying to imagine a President Trump (my hands quiver when I type those words) sitting down with political leaders from the opposing party, sharing an adult beverage and a few off-color jokes — as President Reagan often did with House Speaker Tip O’Neill. I can’t get there.

Did Reagan ever call his foes “stupid,” or “incompetent,” or “pathetic”? Did he ever use words like “weak” to describe this country?

He used language much more artfully and with much more nuance. Did that skill weaken the intensity of his supporters? Not even close.

The intensity of the late president’s supporters carried him to two landslide victories — the second of which came within about 2,000 votes of a 50-state Electoral College sweep!

Do you remember that great moment during the second presidential debate in 1984 with Democratic Party nominee Walter Mondale? The first encounter produced several stumbles, bumbles and mumbles from the president. Observers wondered aloud about the president’s mental fitness for the job.

Then came the question during Debate No. 2: Are you up to the job, Mr. President? “I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience,” Reagan said.

You know who laughed the hardest at that line? Walter Mondale.

With that, I’ll paraphrase a line made famous by another great American politician, U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, the Texas Democrat who ran for vice president in 1988.

Mr. Trump, you’re no Ronald Reagan.

 

Just suppose the Democrats turn on Hillary, Bernie . . .

Dewey-convention-photo

Whenever the subject of “brokered convention” comes up in political circles, it always refers to Republicans.

The idea goes something like this: Several GOP candidates will remain in the race, dividing up the delegates among themselves, denying the frontrunner — whoever it is — the majority needed to sew up the nomination.

The delegates gather in Cleveland and then bicker among themselves, nominating someone on the umpteenth ballot.

It’s not likely to happen. But it could.

However, let’s play take this game a bit further.

What if the Democratic candidates do the same thing?

Two of them, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, are fighting for supremacy; a third candidate, Martin O’Malley, lags far, far behind.

But what if Sanders upsets Hillary Clinton in Iowa and then beats her in New Hampshire, which is next door to his home state of Vermont. He builds momentum heading into South Carolina. Perhaps he wins there, too. Then the fight is on.

Meanwhile, you’ve got O’Malley out there picking up stray delegates here and there in those primaries where winners do not take all.

Clinton and Sanders carve each other up to deny both of them enough delegates to get a majority at their convention.

Democrats gather in Philadelphia and commence a floor fight. No one emerges as the consensus. To whom do they turn?

Oh yeah. The vice president of the United States, Joseph Biden.

Will that happen? It’s far less likely to occur than a Republican donnybrook.

Then again . . .