Category Archives: 2016 election

2016 election, national news

More unsolicited advice for the VP

Let there be not a hint of doubt that Vice President Kamala Harris is getting loads of unsolicited advice from experts, faux experts and just plain folks who want her to be elected president this fall.

You may count me as one of those folks.

If there is a lesson to be learned about why Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in 2016, one need look no further than to the grievous strategic and tactical errors Clinton made down the stretch.

National polling had Clinton leading Trump by 2 to 3 percentage points; that polling, by the way, turned out to be accurate, as that was the margin of the popular vote victory Hillary scored against Trump.

But ….

She erred in refusing to visit three key battleground states down the stretch: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — all of which went for Trump on Election Day and sealed his Electoral College victory. Clinton took voters in those states for granted, thinking they were in the bag for her. So, why bother?

Clinton learned the bitterest lesson imaginable. She most certainly should have bothered.

What might be the advice that Vice President Harris receives as the 2024 campaign ramps up? Do not, under any circumstance, take the voters of any state for granted. Harris will have plenty of polling experts in her corner. She’d better heed their advice.

And if that advice tells her to visit certain states that might appear to be too close for comfort, she’d damn well better heed it.

2016 election, national news, political news

Are we really that stupid?

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A member of my family and I disagree on the potential outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

My family member believes the 45th president is poised to regain the presidency. I disagree. He and I had an exchange that went something like this:

Family member: I think he’s going to win.

Me: No. He won’t win.

FM: You said the same thing in 2016 and look what happened.

Me: We have learned from the mistake we made as a nation. We aren’t going to make it again.

FM: I am not so sure about that. I don’t think we’ve learned anything. Besides, Biden didn’t win in 2020 by a landslide.

Me: I know. A few hundred thousand-vote switch in three states would have produced a vastly different result.

The exchange ended shortly after that. My family member does not want the 45th POTUS to win. He doesn’t exactly line up strongly in President Biden’s camp.

I do wish my family member had more faith in the collective intelligence of American voters. But … he doesn’t and I’ll accept his view that we are collection of gullible dummies. I, however, am going to stand on my wellspring of belief that we are smarter than we have demonstrated.

The former POTUS tapped into a heretofore mine of resentment in Americans’ hearts. He now vows to be “your retribution” for misperceived wrongs that have been committed against the former POTUS. He is going to unleash the Justice Department on his foes … and to think he accuses Biden of “weaponizing” the DOJ.

Are we really ready to welcome a return of this kind of political vengeance into the halls of power?

I think not.

2016 election, International news, media news, military news, national news

The moment still sickens me

Time for an admission, which is that every reference to the 2016 presidential election outcome fills me with the same level of revulsion I felt when the TV networks called it for the former Moron in Chief.

Case in point: I just finished watching a nine-part Netflix documentary series on the cold war, titled, “Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War.” It is well-done, thorough and it walks us through the period from World War II to the present day. The images from Hiroshima and Nagasaki are heart-breaking and stark, to be sure.

Then it walks us to the here and now. The Soviet Union has imploded and the new president, Vladimir Putin, is filled with delusions of grandeur and longs for a return to the Stalinesque era of repression.

He invades Ukraine in February 2022 and there he is, plastered on the TV screen, along with the 45th POTUS and his buddy-buddy relationship with Putin.

Netflix felt obliged to show the candidate-to-be riding down the escalator in the office tower that bears is name with his wife to announce his run for the presidency. It also replayed the moment when the GOP nominee was declared the winner of the 2016 contest.

So help me, I cannot help but feel sickened beyond measure at the idea of replaying that scenario this coming November.

The documentary made no editorial comment on what occurred in 2016. The producers delivered it straight and for that I applaud them.

Critics of this blog accuse me of suffering from the “Derangement Syndrome” associated with the once and likely future GOP presidential nominee. I plead guilty! Yes, I suffer from it.

But … so should all Americans who give a damn about preserving democracy and scorning the dictatorial impuses of the moron who aspires to re-take control of our nuclear arsenal.

2016 election, national news

Michael Moore: predictor in chief

Michael Moore is trying to emerge as the nation’s go-to guy on political predictions. Who’da thunk it?

Moore is a noted filmmaker whose works have chronicled key points in recent American history. He has taken on gun violence, terrorists, and political figures of all stripes with his films.

Now he has become a predictor of political trends.

Moore was one of the few public figures to say out loud that Donald Trump would win the presidency in 2016. I laughed at him. So did others.

Now he is on record — several weeks ago! — in predicting that Democrats would defy history and logic and Republicans by saying that Democrats would get the better of the GOP in the 2022 midterm election.

Pundits of all types scoffed at him.

But again … he was correct.

Wow! That’s all I have.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

2016 election, Donald Trump, national news, political news

Unable to understand this change

Make no mistake that I will go to my grave not ever knowing or understanding how a leading politician can speak with such promising rhetoric about political transition only to toss every single word he said four years earlier into the crapper.

Former President Barack H. Obama spoke to the nation the day after Donald J. Trump got elected president in 2016. He spoke glowingly of the president-elect’s commitment to a smooth transition from one administration to the next one. Obama spoke of the message he gleaned from Trump’s remarks the previous evening, about how Trump intends to be president for “all Americans.”

Then it all caved in.

Trump lost his bid for re-election and chose to ignore all the things he had said as he prepared to take office four years earlier. At one level, I wasn’t surprised, given that I learned early in Trump’s political career not to believe a single thing that came out of his mouth.

Then again, the eternal optimist that lurks inside me had hoped that he meant what he said in 2016 as he prepared to take office. Silly me. Barack Obama got fooled, too. As did Hillary Clinton.

All that noble talk about smooth transition was plowed asunder when Trump lost the 2020 election. He has attacked our democratic process in word and — as we witnessed on 1/6 — in deed. That begs a serious question: How do serious-minded American patriots square the words of a man who pledged unity and peaceful transition square that with what he did four years later?

I admit freely to being a bit slow on the uptake on some matters. This must be one of them. Therefore, I’ll just consign my pending visit to the hereafter with an acknowledgment that I do not — I cannot — grasp how this individual lives with himself.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

2016 election, Donald Trump, national news, political news

Peaceful transition?

I recently had a chance to watch snippets of every presidential concession speech dating back to 1960.

They all had one message in common. Whether the losing presidential candidate lost by a lot or a little, they all spoke of the marvelous element of our democratic process that has made us proud: that we should honor the results of an election, no matter how much it hurts.

Some of the presidential losers lost by landslides or near-landslides: Barry Goldwater, George McGovern, Michael Dukakis, Jimmy Carter, Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush, John McCain. They all pledged their support for the men who beat them. Others lost by just a little: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Al Gore, John Kerry, Mitt Romney, Hubert Humphrey, Hillary Clinton. They, too, honored the victors by offering their support.

Where am I going with this? One name is missing. As I listened to all the losing presidential candidates, I was struck by the grace and the class all the losing candidates exhibited in that moment of pain.

Concession Speeches: So Hard To Say Goodbye | NBC News – YouTube

Donald J. Trump didn’t exhibit either of those traits after the 2020 election. His refusal to concede that he lost an election has scarred the democratic process he swore an oath to protect and defend.

This individual’s behavior in that moment when defeat was declared will stand in my mind as the glaring testimony to his utter lack of character. It is the kind of behavior that illustrates in graphic detail this man’s complete and absolute unfitness for the very job he occupied for four years.

I have watched along with the rest of the country how he has denigrated the office with his insults and epithets. Many of those incidents individually would be enough to disqualify this man from public office.

I will circle back, though, to The Big Lie he keeps repeating and his refusal to honor the tradition we all — and this hurts to say it — seemingly had taken for granted. Which was that the individual who loses a presidential election concedes with grace, and we move on to the next steward of the nation’s executive branch of government.

Trump’s absence from that list of concessions is unforgivable.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

2016 election, national news

Hey, Sen. Graham, GOP is already destroyed

(AP Photo/Rainier Ehrhardt, John Locher, File)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Lindsey Graham, arguably Donald Trump’s most loyal U.S. Senate toadie, said impeaching Trump could “divide” the country even more and — I love this part! — could “destroy the Republican Party.”

I have news for the South Carolinian: The Republican Party already is badly damaged and well might be destroyed … thanks to the cult of personality planted and nurtured by Donald Trump.

Good ever-lovin’ almighty God in heaven! Graham himself has become suckered, snookered and snowed by Trump. Back when Graham was competing against Trump for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, he called Trump everything but the spawn of Satan. He was “unfit” for public office, Graham said, and he was right!

Then the carnival barker got elected president and Graham climbed aboard the Trump clown car parade.

The Republican Party would be “destroyed” by impeaching Trump? is this clown serious?

The Senate will put Trump on trial a second time in due course. He’ll be out of office and gone for good from the White House. The very structure of the Grand Old Party, I hasten to add, is just one of the many collateral casualties felled by this individual’s toxic tenure as president.

A party that once stood for fiscal prudence, taking a hard line against dictators and offering itself as a “big tent” organization has been plowed asunder by the self-serving designs of Donald Trump.

Get a grip, Sen. Graham. The party you once knew — what we all knew — appears headed for the trash heap unless it finds a way to rebuild itself into a responsible political organization.

Lindsey Graham can thank only Donald Trump and those — such as Graham himself — who bought into this con man’s lie for the damage that has been done to the once-great political party.

2016 election, national news

Voters are facing a ‘fool me twice’ challenge in 2020

I have been proud to proclaim for the past three years that I was among a plurality of Americans who did not vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

I proclaim yet again. There. I said it.

However, the 2020 election is going to present Americans with another challenge. It deals with that saying you’ve likely heard: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

A minority of Americans got fooled in 2016 by the huckster posing as a presidential candidate. A quirk in the U.S. election system enabled Donald Trump to win the presidency on the strength of the Electoral College system; he won enough electoral votes to win.

So, what might this mean for the 2020 election? It well might mean that Trump is in a position to stage the same kind of victory he scored four years earlier.

Which compels me to invoke what I believe was arguably the nation’s most profound political mistake with Donald Trump’s fluke election in 2016.

A man with no public service experience, or the lack of any shred of public involvement in his entire adult life managed to win the only public office he ever sought. He tapped into some dark national mood to win enough votes in just the right states.

What’s more, he has governed the same way he campaigned. He has appealed to Americans’ anger at, let’s see, the media, something called “The Deep State,” socialists, political correctness, immigrants (legal and illegal).

Granted, the economy has continued to do well under Donald Trump’s time as president. However, he inherited an economy in good shape, so I’ll give him credit for not shredding it.

It’s all the other stuff that has me hoping that he gets the boot in 2020 that he avoided getting in 2016. He treats allies like enemies; he disparages our institutions; he trashes presidential tradition.

And of course he abuses the power of his office. The House of Representatives is likely to impeach the president. He’ll stand trial and is likely to avoid conviction on a constitutional “technicality.” Then he will get to campaign for re-election.

Is this nation really and truly ready to return this man — who is replete with his myriad idiotic pronouncements — to the Oval Office?

My goodness. Let us not get fooled again.

2016 election, national news

‘Impeach This’ projects false narrative

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This emblem could be seen throughout the crowd of Donald Trump supporters milling about the American Airlines Center prior to the president’s “Keep America Great” rally inside the downtown Dallas arena.

Oh, it makes for a somewhat humorous response to efforts in the House of Representatives to impeach Trump on allegations that he has broken laws and violated his oath of office by soliciting foreign governments for political help.

The symbol it displays, though, misrepresents the 2016 presidential election result. I might not need to explain what it shows, but I’ll do so anyway.

The blue sections represent the counties that Hillary Rodham Clinton carried in 2016; the vast expanse of red on the map shows those counties that Donald Trump carried.

Impressive, yes? Well … not so fast!

You see, land mass doesn’t count in elections. What matters are the individuals who live on that land mass and how they cast their ballots.

My meaning is quite obvious. Clinton collected nearly 3 million more votes than Trump in 2016. Trump, though, was able to cobble together a narrow Electoral College victory — 304-227 — to win the presidency. He did so with a deft campaign strategy that focused on three Rust Belt states near the end of the campaign: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, all three of which voted twice for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. Clinton squandered those states’ electoral votes by essentially taking them for granted. Trump’s victory margin in all three states totaled roughly 77,000 votes; thus, he won their electoral votes and got himself elected president.

Trump didn’t win by a “landslide,” which he keeps saying while campaigning for re-election. It’s just another presidential lie that his followers have accepted as some form of truth.

2016 election, Donald Trump, national news

POTUS launches re-election bid with … a return to old gripes

That was some re-election relaunch by the president of the United States.

Donald Trump ventured to Orlando, Fla., to launch his bid officially for a second term in the White House. Did he unveil any grand new proposals? Did he provide a vision for the future? Did he tell us where he wants to lead the country?

Umm. That would no on all three counts.

Indeed, he managed to spend about 90 seconds crowing about an economy he has called the best in the nation’s history.

Then he returned to plenty of familiar turf. He brought up Hillary Clinton’s name dozens of times; yes, that Hillary Clinton, the Democrat he defeated in the 2016 presidential election.

He ripped into the “Democrat Party,” saying it wants to destroy the nation “as we know it.”

Let’s not forget the “fake news” media, the journalists he calls the “enemy of the people.” They received presidential broadsides as well from the lecturn in Orlando.

There you go. The president is seemingly set to rely on the same themes that got him elected in the first place in his quest for a second term in the White House.

There will be more name-calling, more insults, more invective, more gloom and doom, more baseless boasting, more lies, more self-aggrandizement.

Who is the president’s audience? It’s his base, the 41 or so percent of Americans who hang on his every misstatement, every lie. They don’t care that he doesn’t know how to behave in public. They give him a pass on the insults he has hurled at a reporter with a serious physical disability, or his admitted groping of women, or the hush money he paid to a porn star with whom he had a fling some years ago.

He is “making America great again.” How is he doing that? I guess the insults he hurls at allies is one way.

Good grief! This is the man who wants another four years in the nation’s highest and most venerated public office?

Give me strength.

I’ll leave it to Jeff Greenfield, the veteran broadcast journalist and commentator who’s seen a few of these re-election speeches over the years. Take it away, sir.

Read Greenfield’s take here.

Greenfield concludes with this: And if you were looking for a single grace note, a single appeal to the better angels of our nature, a single note of humility, a single note of simple ordinary decency … well, just go to YouTube and spend a few minutes with Ronald Reagan.

I believe I will do that.