Tag Archives: Joe Biden

national news

Good news! Trump might bail!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this news alert.

It said that Donald Trump might leave the United States if he loses the election to Joe Biden.

From my perch out here in Flyover Country, that sounds like good news. If he means it … that is.

He said something about the shame he would feel by losing to the “worst candidate” in the history of U.S. presidential politics. I beg differ. Trump is the worst candidate by far to ever run for any public office in U.S. history.

Well, I am pretty sure Trump is just blowing it out his ample backside.

But still, the idea does intrigue me.

national news

Biden talks detail; Trump talks trash

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92/@hotmail.com

It’s been clear from the get-go, but it is coming into sharper focus the closer we get to the end of this election season.

It is that Joe Biden speaks in mind-boggling (at times) detail about the policies he wants to enact; meanwhile Donald Trump speaks in insulting and ignorant generalities.

Biden took a question from a young African-American man last night about what he would do to improve the lot of African-Americans, urging Biden to go beyond the “You ain’t black” quip that has gotten into trouble with black voters. Biden’s answer included a litany of policy plans that at times suggested that Biden was talking past the sale. The young man, though, seemed satisfied with Biden’s long-winded soliloquy.

Trump took a question about what plans he had in mind to replace the Affordable Care Act. He offered nothing. No plan. No alternative. No improvement or reform of what he keeps referring to as “Obamacare.”

They spoke to voters at competing town hall gatherings. Biden was in Philadelphia; Trump spoke in Miami.

I sense we’ll hear even more of this startling contrast in the men’s command — or lack of command — of the issues of the day.

Invective and innuendo are how Trump rolls. Biden speaks to us in detail about what he intends to do if he’s elected president of the United States.

I have heard enough of Trump’s trash talk. I want to hear more from Joe Biden.

national news

Still frightened at what might occur

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I cannot shake the feeling of fear of what could happen down the stretch in this tumultuous election season.

What might that entail?

It would entail Donald Trump finding a way to cobble together yet another Electoral College victory while collecting as many as 5 million or maybe 6 million actual votes than Joe Biden.

You know the saying about “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Is it possible that we could be fooled a second time by this carnival barker/con man/charlatan?

I suppose anything is possible.

I see the polls each day. I thought I could ignore them. I cannot resist the temptation. They tell me Biden is doing damn near everything right. The polls were also favorable four years ago for Hillary Clinton; it didn’t work out that way.

Trump’s record is hideous. Across the board he has mismanaged our international alliances, our international agreements, the response to the COVID pandemic, the environment, race relations.

I want him out of the White House. I want him gone from the public stage. I want to restore the norms of dignity and decency and decorum to the presidency.

Biden promises to do that. I believe him. I disbelieve everything that comes from Donald Trump.

I also fear that Trump has one more nasty trick up his sleeve.

Oh, how I want him defeated.

 

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.

national news

A landslide in the making?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I cannot stop thinking about how this presidential election might turn out.

I won’t predict an outcome. Why? Well, the last time I tried to make such a prediction — Hillary v. Donald in 2016 — I got the surprise of my political life. I actually wrote on this blog that I thought Clinton would roll up a landslide against Trump.

Oh, how wrong that was … yes? So, I’ll move on.

The difference between then and now is stark in at least one key aspect.

Joe Biden is rolling up a lot of Republican endorsements. Clinton did not enjoy such a broad crossover appeal four years ago. Indeed, I am thinking at this moment of the last time we saw this kind of inter-party attraction.

Barack Obama didn’t have it in either of his successful presidential election campaigns; nor did George W. Bush; Bill Clinton didn’t, either; George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan depended on GOP votes; Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford had nothing of the sort.

That brings me to Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign. That was the first year I was able to vote for president. I cast my ballot for George McGovern. It turned out I was one of the “few and the proud” who voted for Sen. McGovern, who lost the popular vote by 23 percent and got swamped in the Electoral College 520-17.

That campaign featured an unusual crossover event: the formation of a group called Democrats for Nixon. The leader of that pack was a Texan named John Connally, the former governor of Texas. Big John cobbled together an alliance of Democratic pols who just couldn’t throw their support behind the progressive candidate for president. McGovern was just a squishy liberal who would surrender to the communists in Vietnam.

They helped propel President Nixon to a smashing victory.

As we move closer to the 2020 election, I am left to wonder whether the Republican pols who have turned their back on Donald Trump will be able to persuade their fellow Republicans into the Democratic fold.

Trump clearly has a firmer hold on the GOP faithful than McGovern ever had on Democrats; after all, he was nominated in 1972 at a convention that was damn near torn apart by intraparty disputes. That’s not the case now.

However, the enormous number of GOP-backed political operations that has turned on Trump fill me with a glimmer of hope that there well could be a significant victory for Joe Biden in store.

It won’t be on the scale of the landslide that Richard Nixon rolled up in 1972 … but it could be significant.

Do not hold me to this. My heart is speaking more loudly at this moment than my head.

national news

Get ready for the Hunter Biden slam

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I guess we’ll have to buckle up and prepare for the onslaught against Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, given that Donald Trump can’t seem to lay a glove on the Old Man.

Joe Biden’s lead over Trump holds firm at 10 to 15 percent. His lead in “key battleground states” also appears solid. Trump is flailing. He likely knows he is in deep doo-doo with the electorate.

Now we hear from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who said something about digging up emails sent by Hunter Biden while he was doing business in Ukraine.

The rule of thumb appears to be this: If you cannot challenge the candidate’s record as a lifelong career politician, then go after his son as a way to smear/defame both father and son.

I will not be dissuaded from supporting Joe Biden. Hey, I’ve already voted and Biden is the direct beneficiary of my vote.

Yes, Donald Trump sickens me.

Let’s just remember what we heard when Hunter Biden’s first surfaced during the Trump impeachment inquiry. It came from Ukrainian prosecutors who said that neither of them — Joe or Hunter — did anything wrong.

State news

Texas could determine this election

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I won’t predict this, given that my political predicting skills are quite suspect, but I want to offer a possible scenario to ponder as Texas prepares to commence early voting for the presidency.

If the state decides to grant its 38 electoral votes to Joe Biden when the ballots are counted, it will be “game over” for Donald Trump.

We keep hearing about astonishing early-voting turnouts in states where it has begun. The clarion call for early voting has come mostly from Democrats who encourage Americans to cast their ballots early to ensure they get counted. Five million-plus have done so, reportedly a huge increase over the early votes cast at this time in 2016.

Is Texas going to join the early-vote parade? I hope so.

Thus, it might be a harbinger of a major surprise for the Trumpkin Corps that believes — and they have some reason to hold onto that belief — that Texas will remain in the Republican column. The latest Texas Tribune poll puts Trump ahead by 5 percentage points; the Trump lead has been teetering a bit during the campaign, but that’s what it is at the moment, according to the Tribune.

Trump carried Texas by 9 percentage points over Hillary Clinton. A nice margin, to be sure, but far less than what Mitt Romney rolled up in 2012 against President Obama and even less than John McCain’s total in 2008 against Sen. Obama.

My point, I guess, is that Trump’s hold on Texans’ vote might not be as secure as he and the Trumpkins believe.

If Biden even cuts deeply into the Trump margin in 2016, then we still might be in store for a Biden blowout.

Please … don’t hold me to this. I’m just thinking out loud, man.

local news, political news

Don’t leave this matter up to someone else

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

There once was a time when I worked for a living … and during that time of my life I would write newspaper editorials urging people at election time to be sure to vote.

My argument was simple. I tried to rejigger it to avoid repeating myself. It would go something like this:

If you do not vote, then you are going to leave this critical decision to someone else, someone who might not share your world view. Do you really want to cede that responsibility when you can take control of it in your own hands?

That argument is never more relevant than it is today.

I refer to the presidential election that’s coming up on Nov. 3. My wife and I intend to vote Tuesday morning on the first day of early voting in Texas. I once was adamantly opposed to early voting. I sought to hedge my bet, guarding against someone who gets my vote from messing up after I vote for him/her but before Election Day.

That rationale is no longer in play this time. I am concerned about what Donald Trump might do to muck up the election result. He is going to challenge the result, possibly, if Joe Biden gets more votes for president than he does. That’s why I intend to vote early. My wife, too.

We intend to get our votes recorded and logged into the system.

I also want to encourage everyone who can to vote early. If we do not vote ourselves for the presidency, then we are going to leave that decision to someone else who might want to (gulp!) keep Donald Trump in office for another four years.

The person you see at the other end of the church pew might be a Trumpkin. So might your next-door neighbor. Or the crowds you see at the grocery store.

Me? I am a die-heard Bidenista. I intend to cast my vote early. I don’t want to be the only person at our Princeton, Texas polling place. I want there to be a crowd of folks. I am prepared to wait in line.

I’ll be damned if I am going to leave this decision to someone who doesn’t agree with my world view.

national news

Anxious to vote!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I cannot even begin to believe how my attitude about early voting has changed, given the context of the time.

That said, I am waiting anxiously to cast my vote on Tuesday. My wife and I will trek to a local church to cast our ballots. We want to get them recorded into the electronic system. We will insist that our votes count … as if we don’t always insist on it.

Donald Trump has sought to cast doubt on the integrity of our electoral system. I don’t believe a word he says about “rampant voter fraud” as a result of mail-in balloting. Still, I want to ensure my vote gets logged into the massive system in Collin County, then counted among the millions of Texas ballots that will be cast.

Yes, Joe Biden has our support. We want to ensure he gets it. We need him to win this election. We need former Vice President Biden to restore the presidency to a level of respect, dignity and decorum that Donald Trump has plowed asunder.

We also need him to exhibit actual leadership in this fight against the pandemic that has killed more than 215,000 Americans.

I once would have held out until Election Day to cast my ballot. The tenor of our times prompts me to rethink that dedication to Election Day voting.

We’ll be standing in line if there is a line forming at the church where we intend to vote. We’ll be masked up, standing a “social distance” from our fellow Americans and we’ll observe all the instructions the poll workers will provide to keep us safe and healthy.

Bring it!

legal news

Answer the question, Joe

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joe Biden and 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.