I am going to make a request of the president of the United States.
Mr. President, you need to take wing in that big jet of ours and visit the nation you are trying to govern. And no, sir, I don’t mean just those states you won. You need to go to those places you lost bigly to Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016.
I’ve griped in the past about previous presidents’ failure to reach out to those parts of the country that backed the other guy.
The only time Barack Obama ever came to Texas, for example, was to attend those private, high-end fundraisers. He didn’t visit the Panhandle, which voted twice for his Republican opponents by, oh, significant margins. We have concerns, too, that the president should have addressed. Farm policy is a big deal around here, you know?
So it is with Trump. He spent a good bit of the transition period visiting those deep-red states he won in 2016. It was that so-called “thank you tour” in which he seemingly continued harping on the campaign themes that helped him win the election in the first place. He kept chiding Clinton for failing to visit states such as Wisconsin in the final weeks of the campaign. He talked about his “massive landslide” victory, which of course it wasn’t.
Trump promised to be every American’s president. He vowed to unify the country. He has pledged to work for the common man and woman.
Well, he gets to fly on that big Boeing 747 that we pay for and maintain. It’s not his plane, but it’s ours. I am more than willing to foot the bill for it as long as the president puts it to good use.
The way I see it, flying that bird to places like San Francisco, Boston, Portland, Seattle, Albuquerque and Denver is a pretty good use of the plane. He even ought to visit some liberal enclaves in those red states, too. You’ve heard of Austin, right, Mr. President?
Sure, he’ll get some protestors. That goes with the territory.
He jets back and forth between Washington and his posh estate in South Florida. I believe he’s been there three weekends in a row. Hey, he knows they love him there.
We’ve got a great big country out here full of citizens who cast ballots for the other candidate. Pay them a visit, too, Mr. President. Tell them how you plan to “make America great again.”
They’re all ears. As am I.
Great Advice, Mr. Kanelis. Pres. Trump really should expand his travel itinerary.
I continue to struggle to decode our new president’s self-expression. I pray that his counterparts worldwide will do better with that.
I must admit, the red state, blue state thing – as currently used always gives me pause.
You and I know that our cold war foe gladly embraced the color red (their flag in particular). It’s more a matter of history for us that American
Intellectuals embraced the USSR – turned a mostly blind eye to the deprivations and atrocities of Lenin, Stalin, Khruschev, et. al.
The American 1930’s were later called The Red Decade.
Wikipedia is our friend – at least for those not desiring “alt facts”. Here is its summary:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states
Under “Origins” different origins are offered:
Before the 2000 presidential election, the traditional color-coding scheme was often “Blue for Republican, Red for Democrat,”[5] in line with European
associations, where red is used for left-leaning parties, and blue for the right.[6] The colors red and blue also are featured on the U.S. flag. Traditional
political mapmakers, at least throughout the 20th century, have used blue to represent the modern-day Republicans, as well as the earlier Federalist
Party.
More to the point:
According to another source, in 1976, John Chancellor, the anchorman for NBC Nightly News, asked his network’s engineers to construct a large
illuminated map of the United States. The map was placed in the network’s election-night news studio. If Jimmy Carter, the Democratic candidate that
year, won a state, it would light up in red; if Gerald Ford, the incumbent Republican president, carried a state, it would light up in blue.
This makes sense, since Chancellor was alive during the 30s, and was probably no “intellectual” in the corrupt sense cited above.
It seems that CBS and ABC soon F#@Ked things up and so the red/blue usage is now – despite past and current opposite world-wide usage.
This makes sense in a weird way, since for decades 80% (+/- 10%) of journalists claim to be registered Democrat.
Anyway the wiki-entry is considerably richer than my cherry-picked summary – perhaps worth five minutes to read.
It’s one of those ironies of modern politics that “red” now stands for Republican and “blue” stands for Democrat. Yes, I remember the “red scare” and the belief among those who said Dems were more sympathetic to the commies than the Rs.