Tag Archives: Joe Biden

national news

‘Far left candidate?’ Really?

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Donald J. Trump is killin’ me, I tell ya. He’s killin’ me!

The Republican president is trying to portray Joseph R. Biden Jr. as a “radical far-left” presidential candidate. Yes, the man who served for 36 years in the U.S. Senate and eight years as vice president of the United States, is a far-lefty, squishy liberal … according to the man with no discernible principle on which to run.

So now he is seeking to categorize his opponent as something he clearly is not.

Joe Biden is a mainstream Democrat. He is a working-class guy. He grew up in a family of modest means. Biden was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972 and didn’t become old enough to serve until the period between his election and when he took the oath of office.

He has been strong on criminal justice reform. He favors legislation that helps working families.

He is not going to “destroy the suburbs.” Biden is not going to take away our guns, dismantling the Second Amendment.

Yet the Demagogue in Chief will seek to have voters believe that Biden is beholden to some far-left ideology. He isn’t.

Let’s on hold on with both hands. This campaign will be as ugly as it can possibly get.

national news

Biden feeling the heat

(Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

Joe Biden is feeling the heat.

Who does he select as a vice-presidential running mate? When does he make that decision? It’s coming at him fast and furiously.

U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, one of the House members who prosecuted Donald Trump’s impeachment in the Senate, says Reps. Val Demings of Florida and Karen Bass of California would be excellent picks. I guess he wants one of those House colleagues to join the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee on the party’s ticket. They are African-American, as is Jeffries.

Then there’s former Pennsylvania Gov. and former Democratic National Committee Chairman Ed Rendell, who says Biden must select someone right now. As in now, man!

Rendell’s demand makes me laugh. Joe Biden will determine when it’s time to make the announcement, to which I want to tell Rendell simply: Shut the hell up and let your party’s nominee go through the process with all deliberate care.

Biden laid down the marker early when he declared his running mate will be a woman. Whether it’s a woman of color or a white woman depends, I suppose, on what the former vice president determines is in the best interest of the nation he hopes to lead.

Indeed, the first and most critical criterion must be: Is the person with whom he runs equipped to lead the country?

Meanwhile, the pressure is building. Be strong, Joe Biden.

national news

Feels like the first time

Anxiousness is setting in as I await Election Day.

To be candid, I do not believe I have felt quite like this prior to a presidential election since, oh, the first time I was able to cast my ballot. That was in 1972. A long time ago, yes? However, I do have much the same sense of anticipation that I felt way back when I was so much younger.

I want this outcome to turn out the right way. I want Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. to be elected president over Donald John Trump Sr. I want Trump banished from the White House, from my house, from your house.

I was a freshly scrubbed registered voter in 1972 when I got to vote for the first time. I had served my country in the U.S. Army. I returned home from my two-year stint impassioned to change the course of the nation. The Vietnam War was raging. I had gotten a look at that war up close for a bit of time and came away more confused about it than I was when I arrived there in the spring of 1969. They were still shooting guns, dropping bombs and killing people with the same regularity when I left as when I arrived.

I wanted that war to end.

I lined up behind Sen. George McGovern. I wanted President Nixon to lose the election. I wanted then, as I do now, a dramatic course correction for our nation. It didn’t work out well for us then. Nixon was bigly, as in really huge.

That’s where the symmetry between then and now ends.

Many presidential elections have come and gone, of course. Some of them turned out the way I preferred. Some of them went the other way. The nation survived. I feared we might not survive the 1972 election result. It turned out that another matter, Watergate, intervened to take care of things for us. Nixon quit less than two years later.

I am sensing much the same anxiousness now as I was then. Add a bit of anxiety, and you might grasp a bit more the importance I am attaching to ridding the nation of the repulsive conduct of our commander in chief.

Yep, it feels like the first time.

local news, State news

Biden showing strength in Texas? Hmm … still looking for it

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Let me be clear that the observation I am about to offer is purely anecdotal and based only on what my wife and I have observed up close while traveling through Texas.

It is that I am having a bit of difficulty understanding how the public opinion polls released lately can show Joe Biden tied with or leading Donald J. Trump in the race for president of the United States of America.

My observation is based on the absence of any Biden signs showing support for the presumed Democratic presidential nominee. Trump, meanwhile, enjoys at least a smidgen of lawn sign support that we have seen as we motored our way south from the Metroplex and into the Hill Country.

Before you climb all over me, chewing me up one side and down the other, I want to stipulate that I understand that lawn signs comprise a fleeting indicator public opinion. There’s nothing scientific about this observation. However, I try to add 2 plus 2; it still comes up 4. Biden’s reported Texas support, based on polling results, doesn’t seem to add up, based only on what I have noticed with my own eyes.

There might be a hidden Biden vote, one that keeps people from exhibiting their support in a visible fashion. You hear a bit these days about vandalism committed on those with certain political leanings. There also are reports of Trumpkins being a bit more, um, vehement in support of their guy.

I want to believe the public opinion polling that suggests a Trump-Biden contest in Texas is going to be a highly competitive contest. It fills me with hope that Trump will spend money in this state that he might otherwise spend in a more traditional “battleground” state.

We’ll keep traveling around the state. I also will keep my eyes peeled for signs — no pun intended — of Joe Biden strength in Texas. I remain hopeful it’s out there … somewhere.

national news, political news

Texas GOP to Trump: You can’t do that

Donald J. “Ignoramus in Chief” Trump has demanded a delay in the Nov. 3 presidential election.

Just one problem with that order. Donald Trump doesn’t have the authority to issue it. He cannot delay the election. The U.S. Constitution grants that authority to a second co-equal branch of government, Congress.

And to be sure, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — a Democrat and a Republican, respectively — aren’t having it.

It’s one of those matters of governance that a president ought to know. Except that Donald Trump has no knowledge, understanding or interest in government, its limitations and its authority. So he issues a hollow, feckless demand.

What is remarkable, too, is that Texas Republicans have joined other politicians around the nation in telling Trump that he can’t do it, that he has no authority under the law. So, the Texas GOP is telling Trump: Knock it off!

Why the delay? It seems that Trump has this paranoid fear of losing his effort at re-election, so he wants to delay the balloting to, um, guard against a phony voter fraud scare he has cooked up.

Trump is doing all he can to muddy up the electoral system. He wants to suppress the vote, which is code for “suppress the African-American vote.” 

He keeps yapping about the phony inherent corruption with mail-in voting. It doesn’t exist any more than it exists in the current system of voting done in all but about six states. Trump is seeking to foment unfounded fear in mail-in balloting.

Trump is stoking electoral fear. He is the one who appears to be afraid of what might await him at the end of the balloting.

It is that Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden will receive more votes than Trump, that he will win election through a substantial Electoral College victory and that Trump will give up an office of which he has zero understanding.

national news

Susan Rice for VP? Sure!

I love the conjecture about Susan Rice that is emerging as Joe Biden prepares to announce his selection as a running mate for the 2020 presidential campaign.

Some pundits are wondering whether Rice is “qualified,” given that she’s never run for elective office.

I laugh out loud. I guffaw. I roar my amusement! Why?

Look at who Americans elected as president in 2016! Yep, we elected a phony, fraudulent business tycoon who became known to millions of Americans as the host of a reality TV show. Donald Trump had never run for public office, either.

But … by golly, the dude won enough Electoral College votes to squeak by an eminently more qualified opponent, Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Now we might get to see whether Susan Rice has the chops to run for the vice presidency. She most certainly does!

She served in two posts in the Barack Obama administration: as United Nations ambassador and then as national security adviser. Let there be no doubt that Susan Rice brings credibility as a foreign policy expert.

So what, then, if she hasn’t sought elective public office? She has served the pubic in high-powered, highly sensitive positions.

As for the selection process that is under way, I am going to place my trust in the former vice president’s wisdom in finding the right person to run with him.

Biden has been through the vetting process already, with President Obama’s team looking high and low for the correct individual to work with the new president who had to cope with a financial collapse that was second in recent times in severity only to what is occurring at this time on Donald Trump’s watch.

Biden, who would be the oldest man ever elected president, has said publicly that he wants someone who can succeed him after a single term if he determines he is unable to seek re-election in 2024. He also is looking for someone who is “simpatico” with the presidential nominee, a trait that proved invaluable during the eight years Biden served as vice president in the Obama administration.

Does that individual happen to be Susan Rice? Or one of the other dozen or so women being considered by Biden?

The presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee knows what he’s doing. I will keep the faith that he selects someone with whom he can campaign successfully against Donald Trump.

national news

Would DJT actually resist leaving the White House if he loses?

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I cannot possibly be the only red-blooded American patriot who thinks this is plausible, so I will offer this notion to you to ponder.

I wouldn’t put anything past Donald John Trump to do whatever he can to resist accepting the results of the 2020 presidential election even if he loses bigly to Joseph R. Biden Jr.

By that I am willing to suggest that Trump might not accept the results, might not concede the election to Biden and might try some sort of legal jiu-jitsu to stay in office. The result might be that the next president would be forced to drag the Sore Loser in Chief kicking and screaming.

Truth be told, I would pay real American money to see such a spectacle unfold before our very eyes.

There’s a deep segment in my gut that tells me it’s a plausible end to the presidency of Donald John Trump.

national news

Biden is no far-left lackey

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We had better steel ourselves for the onslaught of demagogic attacks from Donald J. Trump’s campaign against Joseph R. Biden.

The current theme is laughable and disgraceful all at once.

Trump is contending that Joe Biden is a puppet of the far left, that he is intent on “defunding” local police departments and creating a lawless society.

Stop! Whoa! Hold it!

Joe Biden has said categorically that he does not favor any effort to “defund” police departments. He has said they should be examined and that police practices perhaps need to be reformed and improved. That, I want to assert, has nothing to do with whatever garbage is coming from Trump’s political campaign.

Biden also has argued that he does not favor “Medicare for All,” which has been a favorite talking point among the progressive movement. Instead, he has taken a more reasonable approach, which is to tinker with the Affordable Care Act, to improve the legislation he helped create.

Donald Trump is facing someone  I consider a traditional Democrat. Joe Biden comes from a working-class background. His legislative legacy is full of efforts to lend a hand to aid working families. His alliance with traditional Democratic constituencies has become legendary in political circles.

Donald Trump will not dissuaded from facing political reality. His poll standing very well is filling him with some sense of urgency to say damn near anything he believes will drag down the frontrunning challenger. So … he’s settled on the “far left lackey” argument.

It won’t work. It shouldn’t work. My hope is that Joe Biden’s team will ensure that it is ready to respond with equal or greater force to any demagogic lie that Donald Trump is willing to throw.

Game on!

national news

Amusing or disgusting?

I am trying to decide whether Donald Trump’s assorted campaign strategies amuse me or disgust me.

I’ll say it’s possibly a bit of both … but mostly disgusting.

I watched Trump try to suggest the other day that Joseph R. Biden is intent on destroying the “suburbs.” To which I raised my eyebrows and thought, “Huh? What in the world is the Demagogue in Chief saying?” Then it dawned on me.

He accuses the former vice president, as I understand what passes for logic in POTUS’s noggin, of creating a lawless inner city, which will drive people out of the city and into the ‘burbs. Thus, we have a situation, according to the No. 1 demagogue, where suburbs are populated by those who formerly lived in the inner city.

It’s a thinly disguised code for racial politics, my friends.

It ain’t funny, so I’ll cease being amused by that tactic. It’s downright disgusting, vile, venal and vicious. It is precisely the kind of trait that Trump demonstrates routinely, such as when he called the Klansmen and neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville “fine people.” Or how about when he continued to insist that the nation’s first black president wasn’t born in the United States and that he was constitutionally ineligible to campaign for the nation’s highest office?

You get the idea, yes?

So now Donald Trump says Joe Biden is going to destroy the ‘burbs.

Disgraceful.

national news

What if it’s Biden?

(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Let’s play a game of “What if?” … shall we?

Bear in mind that I am not predicting any sort of presidential election outcome. I merely am pondering the possibilities if my preferred result occurs at the end of ballot counting on Nov. 3.

  • What if Joe Biden beats Donald Trump in a landslide? Trump has indicated he might “not accept” the results of a free and fair election. He will suggest it was “rigged.” Will the president-elect summon the Secret Service to escort the previous first family out out of the White House? I would pay real American money to see that occur.
  • What if Biden is given the chance to “lead” the nation through the coronavirus pandemic? Trump has failed at virtually every level possible, no matter what VP Mike “The Sycophant” Pence says to the contrary. How will that leadership present itself? My hope is that the new president starts simply by expressing sincere compassion and empathy for the suffering of millions of Americans.
  • What if Joe Biden inherits an economy in absolute free fall? The nature and scope of our economic collapse makes the 2009 mess that Biden and President Obama inherited when they took over resemble a walk in the park. It’s related directly to the pandemic. Millions of Americans have been tossed out of their jobs. Where does the new president find the money to boost an economy that already is teetering on the precipice of a depression?
  • What if Joe Biden takes over as head of the world’s most indispensable nation and finds that our allies are laughing at us? The wreckage that Trump has brought to those alliances is epic in its scope. Trump has scolded our European allies for not doing enough to defend themselves against Russia. He has chided our continental neighbors in Canada and Mexico personally. Joe Biden, the master of diplomacy, needs to mend those fences in a major hurry.
  • What if Joe Biden gets to sit down face to face with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin? This is where the new president needs to wag his finger in Putin’s mug and warn him about the economic and diplomatic consequences that await him if (a) he continues to interfere in our elections and (b) continues to pay bounties to the Taliban for killing our troops.

A new president will have a monumental repair job awaiting him after the wreckage that Donald Trump has brought.