Tag Archives: Kamala Harris

Donald Trump, Joe Biden, national news

These wounds won’t heal quickly

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Let’s start with the obvious.

The wounds on our nation inflicted by the rioters who stormed the Capitol Building this week won’t heal any time soon. They will fester at least for as long as the nation remains transfixed on the doings of the man who instigated the riot: Donald John Trump.

I want the wounds to heal a soon as possible. However, I believe we need to remain vigilant and alert to what brought the havoc to the doorstep of our democracy.

Donald Trump will be gone from the White House in 11 days. The House of Representatives appears set to impeach for a second time early next week. The Senate isn’t likely to convene a trial in time to decide whether to convict him. Still, President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will be in office on Jan. 20 and they can get right to work dealing with the issues that matter the most.

Like, oh, that pandemic.

Trump wants to remain a political factor. My strong hope is that if the House impeaches him and the Senate convenes a trial after he leaves office that senators can muster up some sort of nerve and approve a provision that bans Trump from seeking public office ever again. He has proved demonstrably that he is unfit for public office. I want the Senate to codify that unfitness with an outright ban.

None of that will silence the mobsters who stormed into the Capitol Building. They could surface again. Indeed, there appear to be threats that Trumpsters could demonstrate on the day that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris take office. Our fondest hope should be that the D.C. police force is better prepared to respond to violence if it presents itself a second time.

Even as we allow time to lapse from the events of this past Wednesday we should be as alert to the rumblings from within our nation as we have continued to be to those we hear from terrorists abroad.

The rioters who stormed into the seat of our representative democracy are domestic terrorists who inflicted grievous damage on our system of government.

Donald Trump’s exit from the political stage cannot occur quickly enough. He’ll be gone, but the damage he and his followers have done will take time to heal.

national news

Time makes Person of Year pick … sigh

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I’ll be candid: Time magazine’s selection for Person of the Year is not the choice I wanted the venerable publication to make.

It’s not that I object strenuously with Time naming President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris as its Person of the Year. It is that I wanted the mag to honor an entire category of human beings: those on the front lines in the fight against the coronavirus … namely the first responders, health care workers, educators. Those folks are society’s heroes and they earned the honor of Person of the Year.

But that’s just me, I suppose.

As for the president- and vice president-elect, they indeed made history. They defeated the most corrupt, amoral, venal and disgraceful presidential administration in U.S. history. They did so convincingly. Joe Biden deserves kudos for making history by selecting Kamala Harris, the first black and first candidate of South Asian descent to run with him as vice president.

They both acquitted themselves well on the campaign trail. They have rolled up 81 million votes en route to a solid Electoral College majority.Ā Biden and Harris are assembling a first-class team with which to govern.

In some ways, the Time choice is the politically safe choice. Winning presidents (and this case winning VPs) often get the Person of the Year nod.

However, the pandemic is the overwhelming story of 2020. The chief element of that story, in my view, has been the heroism displayed in hospital emergency rooms, ICU rooms and the bedsides of COVID-19 patients; moreover, there have been heroes abounding in our classrooms as educators seek to teach our children amid the threat of exposure to a potentially deadly virus.

And this heroism is a worldwide phenomenon.

So, I’ll accept Time’s choice simply as the editors’ call. It’s not one I would have made but it’s their magazine, their decision.

Just to be clear — one more time: I am delighted that we’re about to welcome Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as our new president and vice president.

national news

Biden, Harris set a refreshing pace

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I just watched our new president and vice president on TV, interviewed together for the first time since the election.

My firstĀ  reaction? What a remarkable change from what we have endured for the past four years!

President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris spoke candidly, openly and thoroughly with CNN’s Jake Tapper, who I should add did not lob only softball questions at them. They spoke clearly and cleanly about whether they would allow family members to stay involved in business interests that could conflict with their roles as president and VP; they both said “no.”

And so … we are heading toward a return to the norms of the nation’s highest offices that Donald Trump has trashed.

I don’t know about you, but I am looking forward to when President Biden and Vice President Harris take their oaths of office.

I no longer want to see public policy dished out via Twitter; Biden says it won’t happen. Nor do I want to see the president bullying and pressuring the attorney general to investigate so-and-so for such-and-such; Biden says that won’t happen, either. I yearn for a return to this nation as a world leader among the nations of the world; Biden and Harris said the United States will restore our alliances.

I want the president and vice president to lead our fight against the COVID pandemic by demonstrating they, too, will wear masks and practice social distancing. President-elect Biden said he will issue a direct order as president that anyone doing business in federal buildings will be wearing masks and staying apart from each other; moreover, he pledged tonight to ask all Americans to mask up for the first 100 days of the Biden administration.

Biden believes nationwide mask-wearing will help reduce the rate of infection, illness and death. If he wants us to wear a mask, then I am going to do as he asks.

Yes, the nation is about to leave the age of chaos and confusion on the side of the road. I like what I heard tonight from the new team.

national news

Waiting for the pageantry

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am a sucker for pageantry. I love military parades. I love patriotic music. I even get caught up in pomp and circumstance.

It’s especially true when it comes to presidential inaugurations. I guess you’ve heard but we have one of those coming up. It’s fewer than 60 days from today.

President Joe Biden will take office. His wife, Jill, will hold a Bible and Chief Justice John Roberts will instruct the president to recite 35 words contained in the presidential oath.

The pageantry will be immense, even if it’s scaled back. The coronavirus pandemic is likely to inhibit the crowd size that will be gathered before the new president and the former presidents who will be there to witness his moment of pageantry.

The absence of President Biden’s immediate predecessor won’t inhibit the majesty of the moment. I don’t expect to see Donald Trump there, given that he won’t acknowledge that Biden actually beat the stuffing out of him in the Nov. 3 election.

So what if he takes a pass? No big shakes for me, to be honest.

I am going to focus my attention on the new team, led by a new president, who will seek to right the ship of state that has been listing badly for the past four years.

Yes, the lunacy of the campaign, the tragedy of the pandemic, the chaos associated with the transition will do nothing to distract me from the pageantry and majesty that awaits as we welcome a new president and vice president.

I’ll make an admission, too. I am likely to shed a tear or two as Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden receive these words once they take their oaths: “Congratulations, Mme. Vice President” and “Congratulations, Mr. President.”

Yep, the pageantry gets me every time.

national news

Cheers to the career politician

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The term “career politician” long ago became a four-letter word.

People would toss the term out there with the sound of derision in their voice. Well, I intend at this moment to tell you that the term does not deserve the derision it attracts.

President-elect Joe Biden is a career politician who has devoted his adult life to public service. I am going to place my faith in my belief that the nation’s next president is going to parlay that commitment to public service into constructive governance as the head of the executive branch of the federal government.

Contrast that with the pre-political background that his predecessor, Donald Trump, brought to the presidency. Trump spent his entire adult life to enriching himself. He sought to make buckets of money. Trump took that background with him into the White House.

There can be no doubt about the effect that a non-political background brought to the presidency. It brought relentless chaos.

Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris tonight spoke to the nation in their new elevated roles. They spoke to a nation’s aspirations and renewed their pledge to “restore the soul of the nation.”

So now the job will begin. Trump hasn’t conceded anything. He might never concede to the president-elect. As a Biden campaign aide said tonight, the Constitution doesn’t require a concession from the losing presidential candidate. All it spells out is that the winner must accrue enough Electoral College votes to take office. Biden and Harris have done that.

They bring a record of public service to the nation’s highest, greatest and most exalted political perch.

I won’t shy away from recognizing that the next president is a career politician. After what we’ve been through for the past four years, we need someone in the presidency who knows and understands the complexity of governance.

President-elect Biden’s experience has prepared him well for the task he and the vice president-elect are about to assume.

national news

Trying to avoid spiking the ball

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I have been resisting with all the strength I can muster the temptation to spike the proverbial football in light of the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as president and vice president of the United States.

I won’t go there.

However, I do feel the need to reveal that I am surrendering to the temptationĀ  to send Donald Trump into the world of irrelevance. To that end, I do not intend to launch criticism at Trump … unless the president forces me to do so.

How would he do that? By insisting he will take his loss into the courts to challenge a free and fair election, to suggest it was “stolen” from him. He well might commit some boorish acts along the way. He could forgo the usual courtesies that outgoing presidents extend to their successors. He could skip President-elect Biden’s inaugural. Trump could decline to pledge a “peaceful transfer of power” to the new president’s team.

He also would incur my wrath if he makes dangerous policy dangerous in the next 10 weeks before he exits the political stage. The court challenges he intends to mount will be accompanied by relentless Twitter messages.

Donald Trump will humiliate himself and will do significant additional damage to the “legacy” he will leave behind once he exits the White House.

Accordingly, I do not intend waste any more of my attention than is absolutely necessary on a man who deserved to lose the presidential election.

President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris have delivered the nation from the chaos and confusion that have been the hallmark of an administration that is on the verge of disappearing.

national news

Trump looks like a loser

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump looks, sounds and is acting like a loser.

I know he hates the word applied to himself, given that he tosses it at others with sickening regularity.

I spend a big chunk of my day listening to political analysts who contend that Trump is on the brink of losing the presidential campaign. It might be a landslide, some of them say. Others contend we’re in for a nail-biter Tuesday night.

To be honest, I don’t know what to think, who to believe, what to expect. Why the uncertainty? It has everything to do with Donald Trump. He makes me queasy. He gives me the heebie-jeebies. I am frightened — yes, actually frightened — by the prospect of a second Trump term as president.

This individual is capable of doing anything to win. By anything, I mean … anything. He doesn’t like governing. Trump doesn’t bother to study the issues he should confront. He savors the limelight that the presidency casts on him. Accordingly, he wants to stand on center stage and in my view will do whatever it takes to remain there.

But, damn! He looks like such a loser as this campaign heads down the stretch. Trump is not seeking to expand his voter base. Joe Biden, the challenger, is taking his mostly positive message of unity, healing and hope to places such as Georgia.

Get this: Biden’s VP running mate, Kamala Harris, is coming Friday to Texas; she’ll campaign in McAllen, Houston and Fort Worth. The Texas swing is big, folks. Texas most recently voted for a Democratic presidential ticket in, um, 1976!

I wish I could take the loser look and sound of Trump to the bank. I just cannot. Not yet.

Donald Trump yanked victory from defeat’s jaws four years ago. I am not suggesting he can do it again this time. I merely am practicing an abundance of caution while watching this campaign head for the finish line.

local news, political news, State news

Will this surge spell end of Trump Era?

(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Harris County, Texas, has set two records in a row since the start of early voting on Tuesday.

Dallas County up Interstate 45 hasn’t done too badly, either.

Oh, and how about Travis County, where the state Capitol can be found? They’re turning out in huge numbers, too.

Same for Bexar County.

What does this mean for the 2020 presidential election. Some Democratic activists believe it bodes well for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and us Bidenistas who want the Democrats to oust Donald Trump and Mike Pence from the White House.

I am not going to count them chickens just yet.

However, I hasten to add that Democrats have been all over TV, radio and in print telling us all to “get out and vote.” If the first two days of early voting in Texas are an indication, the message has been heard. Democrats hope it means Biden and Harris are reaping the ballot-box reward.

Let me crystal clear: I do, too, want them to harvest the electoral fruit of this get-out-the-early-vote drive.

Harris, Dallas, Bexar and Travis counties all are Democratic strongholds. I have acquaintances in blood-red Randall and Potter counties who believe the Democratic ticket is catching fire up yonder in the Panhandle. I … am not so sure about that.

However, the record-setting early-vote turnout in those Democratic bastions gives me hope that just maybe, perhaps, possibly the state could turn from an R to a D on the strength of that monstrous balloting tide.

To be sure, the Trumpkins are turning out as well. They’re flying plenty of “Trump-Pence” flags in rural Texas. Donald Trump, though, isn’t going to pitch a huge early vote among his faithful. Indeed, he wants fewer of us do our patriotic duty. Go figure.

legal news

Answer the question, Joe

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joe Biden andĀ Kamala Harris, the Democratic ticket seeking to defeat Donald Trump and Mike Pence, are performing a clumsy dodge when it comes to a simple, straightforward question.

It is this: Do you endorse a plan to add members to the U.S. Supreme Court in the event Judge Amy Coney Barrett gets confirmed to the seat vacated by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg?

Many progressives are alarmed at the addition of another conservative to the high court and they want to add at least two seats to the nine-member bench presumably with progressives/liberals to, um, provide some ideological balance.

The move might pick up steam if Democrats gain control of the U.S. Senate, which is looking more plausible each day we draw closer to the election.

Biden and Harris have danced all around the question about whether they back such an idea. For the record, I happen to oppose it. The court has been a nine-member body for more than 150 years and it should remain that way. Even the late Justice Ginsburg opposed the idea of “packing” the court.

Donald Trump and Mike Pence are raising a ruckus over Biden and Harris’s refusal to answer the question. To be candid, they do have a point. Biden said he will make that decision public “after the election.” Harris, when asked during her VP debate with Pence this past week, turned the discussion instead to the “packing” being done by Republicans who are filling lower-court bench seats.

Biden and Harris need not provide the Trumpkins with ammunition to fire at them down the stretch of this campaign.

Just answer the question. No matter what they decide, rest assured that the Democratic Party presidential ticket will continue to have my support. Honest. Really and truly.

national news

That’s more like it …

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

If that first Joe Biden-Donald Trump brawl turned out to be an unwatchable fiasco, we got something a whole lot more civil tonight.

That’s about it.

Vice-presidential nominees Kamala Harris and Mike Pence chided each other. They refused to answer direct questions. All told, though, it was much more of what we think of as a “debate,” given that they were able to answer each other’s accusatory rhetoric.

I suppose one takeaway was how Vice President Pence talked over Sen. Harris’s answers, to which she would scold him, “I am talking, Mr. Vice President.”

To her credit, Harris didn’t interrupt Pence … except perhaps for a time or two.

I remain committed to supporting the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris ticket. Based on what I witnessed tonight, Pence did nothing to persuade me to even think about supporting his side.

He didn’t answer questions related to the pandemic and his role as leader of the White House response team; Pence sought to pivot at times from a direct question to speak about an unrelated issue.

As for Harris, I just wish she would have answered the question about whether she supports adding to the Supreme Court if the Senate confirms Amy Coney Barrett as the next justice. She danced away from it.

Still, I declare Kamala Harris the winner by a split decision.

The Biden-Harris ticket remains in the lead. I just hope now that they can hold onto it through the end of this most unusual campaign.