Category Archives: political news

political news

The Electoral College is worth keeping

I traveled to Greece in November 2000, at a time when the U.S. presidential election was still being deliberated.

Al Gore won more votes than George W. Bush. That recount of ballots in Florida hung up the final decision. Then came the Supreme Court ruling to stop the recount. Bush won the state’s electoral votes and was elected president.

The Greeks I met on that trip were baffled. How can someone get more votes than the other person and still lose an election? they wondered. Greeks are sophisticated folks. Their forebears gave birth to democratic government nearly 3,000 years ago. They understand politics and government.

I tried my best to explain the Electoral College to them. I sought to interpret what our nation’s founders had in mind when they created the system.

Here we are nearly two decades later. Another president was elected with fewer votes than his opponent. Now we hear from Democratic candidates for president who want to abolish the Electoral College.

Sigh.

I do not favor that electoral overhaul.

Here is what the Electoral College means

Am I happy with the way the most recent election turned out? Of course not! That’s not my point. Nor should it be the point of those who want to throw out the system that has worked quite well during the existence of our republic.

Eliminating the Electoral College would surrender smaller states’ power to the vast urban centers. The founders intended to spread the power among all the states.

I will concede that the past several election cycles have turned into fights for selected “battleground states'” electoral votes. Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa, Florida have gotten the bulk of candidates’ attention; occasionally, New Hampshire sneaks in among the bigger states.

In 2020, Texas might join the list of battleground states as well.

I just do not see the need to toss out the Electoral College system because someone was elected even though he piled up nearly 3 million fewer votes than his opponent, which is what happened when Donald Trump got elected in 2016 over Hillary Clinton.

The system isn’t perfect, but keep it anyway.

Here is what I wrote on the subject nearly five years ago:

https://highplainsblogger.com/2014/04/presidential-election-change-at-hand/

 

national news, political news

‘Horse race’ takes on new meaning

Many of us lament the nature of political coverage, how it centers on the “horse race” aspect: who’s up and who’s down?

Now, though, the “horse race” element is taking on a new context.

Beto O’Rourke’s entry into the Democratic Party presidential primary field this past week was followed immediately by his jaw-dropping fundraising effort. O’Rourke managed to raise $6.1 million in just 24 hours, a record for such political fundraising. Beto beat Bernie Sanders’s previous record of $5.9 million in the first day of his 2020 presidential campaign announcement.

So now the media are talking about the Texan’s prodigious fundraising capability. They take note of how they come from small donors living in all 50 states and the various U.S. territories.

The political pros also are comparing Beto with Barack, saying that O’Rourke’s huge initial cash take dwarfs the amount that Sen. Obama raked in as he campaigned for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

All this money is just fine. Beto has a lot of it to spend as he seeks to elbow his way past the gigantic — and still growing — 2020 Democratic field.

The pile of cash doesn’t necessarily translate to a pile of votes. At least that has been the norm.

Until this year?

national news, political news

Beto gets ’em fired up early

The media and political fascination with Beto O’Rourke has commenced. It’s at full throttle already.

The former West Texas congressman announced his presidential candidacy this week, jetted off to Iowa and had the political media following his every move.

I heard one commentator gushing over how physically attractive he is and how O’Rourke already has ignited the national flame much as he did in Texas when in 2018 he came within a whoop and a holler of defeating U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

None of this early excitement is surprising. O’Rourke presents a different type of presidential challenger. He nearly defeated Cruz in a heavily Republican state. He ran close and hard with nary a political adviser to be found; he had no pollsters; he toured every one of Texas’s 254 counties.

He is pledging to do something similar as he runs for president. Good luck with that, young man.

I remain fervently on the fence regarding Beto O’Rourke. I am inclined to want to support him. I am just not there. I don’t know if I’ll get there. I’m thinking hard about it, along with the rest of the already-gigantic field of Democrats lining up for the chance run next year against Donald Trump.

The media fascination in a strange way seems to mirror the fascination they showed toward Trump as he announced his candidacy in 2015.

I don’t expect O’Rourke, though, to inflame animosity the way Trump did, even though the president likely owes the media debt of gratitude for elevating him from carnival barker to serious presidential candidate.

Welcome to the big time, Beto O’Rourke. This will be wild ride.

political news

Bring it to the middle, candidates

I dislike radicals on both ends of the vast political spectrum.

Yes, that includes the far lefties who at the moment seem to be dictating the direction the Democratic Party appears to be heading. I guess it’s understood that I harbor an intense loathing of those on the far right; no need to elaborate there.

The 2020 presidential campaign is taking shape.

You’ve got the incumbent on side, Donald Trump. Where he stands on that spectrum remains a mystery to me. He is a Republican In Name Only, the RINO in chief. He’s also a serial liar, a self-proclaimed genius and also a self-proclaimed self-made zillionaire; now that I think of it, the latter two items are related directly to the first one. He is an amoral narcissist who possesses zero empathy for the plights of others. He spent his entire pre-political life enriching himself and looks to me as if he governs in the same manner.

I want the president out of office, but you know that already.

As for the Democrats, I tend to tack toward the centrists. I don’t like the far-left rhetoric that comes from Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke . . . and many among the rest of horde of Democrats running for their party’s nomination. That leaves, oh, Amy Klobuchar. Then we have a one-issue hopeful: Jay Inslee.

I remain a devoted centrist. I am a deficit hawk. I want us to remain vigilant in the war against international terror. I favor strong border security (although I do not want to build Trump’s Wall along our southern border). I want to retain the Electoral College system for electing presidents.

On the flip side, I want stronger — not weaker — environmental regulations. I believe Earth’s climate is changing and we need to tackle the crisis head on. I believe transgender Americans deserve to serve in the military if they wish. I support the Affordable Care Act and believe the U.S. Constitution gives women the right to choose whether to terminate their pregnancy and whether same-sex couples have the right to be married.

My hope over time is that we can move the dialogue from the fringe and toward the center.

I am not confused. I once was a radical lefty. The older I get the more shades of gray I see on many issues.

It starts, too, with electing someone who appreciates the majesty of the office to which he or she will be elected. The guy we’ve got now needs to go.

media news, national news, political news

Rookie congresswoman elevated to star status

The Onion is a brilliantly written satire of current events. It is so brilliant that one might actually be inclined to believe its content is true. It isn’t.

Still, the publication has produced something that might as well be true, given the conservative media’s fixation with a rookie Democratic congresswoman from New York City.

The Onion “reports” that Fox News has launched a new premium channel that devotes 24/7 coverage of U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, aka AOC, the well-known (already) socialist who represents a New York City congressional district. Ocasio-Cortez made a big splash in the spring of 2018 when she defeated longtime Rep. Joseph Crowley in the Democratic Party primary; Crowley was considered a potential speaker candidate and already was a member of the Democratic caucus leadership in the House of Representatives.

Ocasio-Cortez was the main attraction at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, with right-wing pundits and pols standing at the podium pontificating on how she wants to destroy the American way of life.

Yep. This freshman member of the House — one of 435 members of the lower legislative chamber — is going to dismember the American economic and political superstructure all by her lonesome.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are ascribing way too much power to an individual who doesn’t deserve it. She hasn’t earned it. She is a loudmouthed congressional newbie who has managed to capture the attention of the right wing and has ingratiated herself with the far left of her own Democratic Party.

She isn’t the bogeywoman the far right calls her.

Still, I am amazed, astonished and astounded at the attention she is attracting from those who detest her politics. By demonizing her in the manner that they are doing they are elevating her profile to a far greater level than she deserves.

Give her time. She might eventually earn the iconic status some have bestowed on her. Or . . . she might flame out.

Leave it to The Onion, though, to highlight the far right’s goofy fixation with AOC.

national news, political news

Beto has one distinct advantage over rest of huge field

As I ponder the impact of Beto O’Rourke’s entry into the burgeoning Democratic Party presidential primary field, I keep thinking of a distinct advantage he holds over most of the rest of the thundering herd.

He doesn’t have a job at the moment.

Beto once served in Congress. He represented El Paso in Congress for three terms. Then O’Rourke decided to give up his House seat. He ran for the U.S. Senate against Republican incumbent Ted Cruz. O’Rourke ignited the Texas Democratic Party, which had been in a state of slumber, er . . . stupor for the past three decades.

O’Rourke almost won!

Now he wants to take the fight to an even higher level. He wants to become president of the United States.

He is running against a lot of U.S. senators, some governors and others who are gainfully employed. Beto doesn’t have a job.

One of the points he sought to make while losing narrowly to Cruz was that the junior senator from Texas spent too much time running for president and too little time casting votes in the Senate.

The many folks who are running against him for president in next year’s Democratic primary will be unable to slather him with mud from that particular pit. He’s jobless at the moment and can devote his waking moments full time to the task of running for POTUS.

He’ll be able to parlay that advantage at least for a little while.

Then he well might have to cope with another high-powered politician with no gainful employment.

Joe Biden? Are you out there?

political news, State news

Cornyn might face a lengthy list of challengers

John Cornyn is now Texas’s latest marked man, politically speaking.

The San Antonio Republican U.S. senator is running for re-election in 2020 and he is facing a lengthy list of Democratic primary candidates who will fight among themselves for the right to run against him directly in the fall.

I have to say that the list of possible foes is looking pretty impressive.

Two names jump out at me: U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, who also hails from San Antonio and former state Sen. Wendy Davis of Fort Worth. Given the premium voters place on name identification, I would have to rate those two as potential front runners in the Democratic Party primary. Joseph Kopser and MJ Hegar also are in the mix.

Castro is the identical twin brother of Julian, who’s running for president of the United States in 2020. The two are so identical, in fact, that Joaquin is growing a beard (more or less) to distinguish himself from Julian.

Joaquin Castro, I suppose you could say, comes from the more progressive wing of the party. I hesitate to label him a “democratic socialist” in the mold of Bernie Sanders, but he’s out there near the left-end fringe of the party. He hasn’t announced his candidacy for the Senate, just yet. My guess is that he’ll go all in soon.

Then there’s Sen. Davis. She made hay in 2013 with her filibuster in the Legislature against a restrictive anti-abortion bill. She gave Democrats hope that she could break the GOP stranglehold on statewide office — but then she lost to Greg Abbott in 2014 by more than 20 percentage points.

I keep thinking, too, that Beto O’Rourke of El Paso — who is widely considered to be getting set to announce a presidential campaign in 2020 — might enter the Senate donnybrook. I am not going to predict it. I’m just waiting for Beto to announce what he says he’s decided already.

Do I want Sen. Cornyn to lose? Yeah, but not with the passion I wanted O’Rourke to defeat Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018. I know John Cornyn. I actually like him personally. He and I have joked about our respective heads of gray hair and has assured me that he was that gray at a much younger age than I was; I believe him, too.

I want the 2020 race between Cornyn and whoever Democratic voters nominate to be as competitive as the 2018 contest turned out to be between O’Rourke and The Cruz Missile.

Texas needs two healthy major political parties and it appears — finally! — that Texas Democrats are awakening from their 30-year slumber/stupor to give Republicans a serious challenge to their superiority.

environmental news, International news, national news, political news

One-note samba won’t cut it on campaign trail

I’ll give Washington Gov. Jay Inslee plenty of credit for candor.

He announced his candidacy the other day for president of the United States declaring right up front, out loud and for all the world to see and hear that he’s running on one issue only: climate change and the peril it poses for the world’s most powerful nation.

Fine. What about the rest of the job, governor? What about, oh, let’s see: fighting terrorism, creating jobs, fiscal responsibility, dealing with cybersecurity, border security? There are a whole lot of other issues, too.

Inslee wants to make climate change the strongest plank in his platform on which to seek the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2020.

I don’t dispute the urgency he is placing on the matter. I do dispute whether it’s enough all by itself to commend him for nomination and election.

Just as Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is running on economic inequality, which kind of mirrors Issue No. 1 for Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Inslee is staking his candidacy on a single issue.

We have Sens. Cory Booker, Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar in the hunt already. Former Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado is in. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is, too. I know I’m missing someone. There’s too many of ’em to keep up.

The Democratic Party field has reached a dozen candidates so far. There will be more. Many more, or so it appears. Texan Beto O’Rourke appears to be set to go. Former Vice President Joe Biden is letting it slip out that his family is all in on his running for president.

They all need to demonstrate a well-rounded, well-considered and well-tested competence on an array of domestic and foreign policy issues. Climate change is a big one. So is income inequality.

Spare me, though, the one-note samba. I tend to tire of hearing the same thing coming out of candidates’ mouths.

We’ve already elected an incompetent business mogul/boob to the nation’s highest office. We don’t need to train another president on the vast complexities of the nation’s highest office.

political news

Don’t mess with Electoral College

I am a blue voter who lives in a red state. I tilt toward Democratic candidates for president while residing in heavily Republican Texas.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, I want to redeclare my view that efforts to circumvent the Electoral College are counterproductive. They shouldn’t go forward.

However, it appears that Democrats in states that lean blue are intent on monkeying around with the Electoral College with legislation that bypasses the system codified in the U.S. Constitution by the nation’s founders.

They want their states to cast their electoral votes for whichever candidate wins the popular vote. It’s part of what is called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

Is the nation’s electoral system in peril of breaking down? I don’t believe that is the case.

We have had 59 presidenti

al elections in this country since its founding. Only five times has the candidate with fewer votes been elected president.

However, what has alarmed those who want to overhaul the electoral system insist that such a trend is in danger of escalating. They point out that it’s happened twice just since 2000! George W. Bush was elected that year despite getting about a half-million fewer votes than Al Gore. Then in 2016 Donald Trump was elected with nearly 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Rodham Clinton.

It fascinates me to know that the move to tinker with the Electoral College is coming from aggrieved Democrats, given that the 2000 and 2016 elections went to the Republican nominee for president.

We are witnessing what I believe is a knee-jerk reaction to an overblown issue. It kind of reminds of me how Republicans in Congress pushed for enactment of the 22nd Amendment limiting presidents to two elected terms; they did so after Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt won election to four consecutive terms as president.

Let me reiterate an essential point. If we’re going to change the electoral system, then eliminate the Electoral College. It is an absurd notion to tweak and tug at the edges of the system.

I happen to still believe in the Electoral College system of choosing our president. I endorse the idea that it helps spread the power among more states, giving less-populated states a stronger voice in choosing our head of state.

If we’re going to mess with the Electoral College, then go all the way.

Or else leave it the hell alone!

political news

What a ‘horse race’ this is going to become

Good grief, man! I thought the 2016 Republican Party presidential primary campaign would be one for the books.

I suppose it was, given who won that party’s presidential nomination and then was elected president of the United States.

But this one? Wow! The upcoming Democratic Party primary field figures to eclipse by a good bit the size of the GOP field four years ago.

Seventeen Republicans fought it out for the right to succeed Barack Obama as president in 2016. The upcoming election campaign already features 10 or 11 announced Democratic candidates and we’re nowhere near finished seeing the entire field filled out.

How do you suppose the media will cover this thundering herd of candidates looking to succeed Donald Trump?

They’re already in full horse-race mode. Former Vice President Joe Biden is thought to be the frontrunner — and he is one of those who has not yet announced whether he’s going to run for POTUS in 2020. It looks like he’s going to do it.

The horse race aspect of the media coverage is the kind of thing that drives me a nuts. I get batty listening to and reading reports of who’s up, who’s down, who’s an up-and-comer, who’s the has-been.

I hope to hear more issues discussion this year than we’ve experienced over the past several election cycles.

Donald Trump likes to boast about crowd size, TV ratings and the scope of his intelligence. What will Democrats offer in response? I hope whoever emerges from the huge initial field will talk about how they intend to repair the damage that Donald Trump has done to the presidency — not to mention to the country.