Tag Archives: Joe Biden

State news

Texas becomes battleground

To be candid, I didn’t think this day would arrive so soon.

But it has. A new Quinnipiac University poll shows Joe Biden with a statistically insignificant 1 point lead over Donald Trump … in Texas!

It’s a dead heat, according to Quinnipiac. An earlier poll from the Dallas Morning News/University of Texas has Biden with a 5 percentage point lead. Other surveys all suggest the same thing, that it’s anyone’s game here.

Jimmy Carter was the latest Democrat to carry Texas, winning the state’s electoral votes in 1976 while defeating President Gerald Ford’s bid for election. I’ve long thought that Carter’s victory wasn’t the “last” time a Democrat would carry this state.

Now, though, it appears that Joe Biden has a puncher’s chance of making a serious contest for Texas’s 38 electoral votes.

We moved to Texas in 1984, settling in Beaumont, one of the state’s last Democratic Party bastions. Much of the rest of the state had turned Republican by that time, but the Golden Triangle remained heavily Democratic. That has changed in the years since then.

The new Democratic bastion now appears to be Dallas County, which borders Collin County, where my wife and I now reside.

My own Democratic leanings are well-known to readers of High Plains Blogger. No need to belabor that point.

However, I am heartened by former Vice President Biden’s strong showing in this state, given its heavy GOP leaning over many years.

The coronavirus pandemic is going to preclude any big campaign rallies between now and Election Day. That’s a bit of a bummer. I would love to attend a Biden rally, just as I attended a Trump rally in the summer of 2019 in downtown Dallas.

Whatever. We can now expect to buried/swamped/inundated with a flood of campaign ads on our TV screens. I’m guessing they’ll begin in September.

I used to complain that Democrats had given up on this state and that Republicans had taken us granted.

It looks as though that has changed … bigly!

national news

POTUS won’t commit to accepting results if he loses? Wow!

Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard a presidential candidate, let alone the incumbent president, say he cannot commit to accepting the results of a free and fair election if he loses.

OK, I’ll concede that we’ve heard it said once: Donald Trump made the same threat four years ago when he was one of two non-incumbents running for the office.

There he was today, on Fox News Sunday, telling reporter Chris Wallace that he cannot commit to accepting the results if he loses to Joseph R. Biden Jr. this fall.

As I think of that statement, all I hear is the president of the United States saying he doesn’t trust a government system of which he is in charge.

Trump told Wallace that since he didn’t commit to accepting the 2016 results if he lost that his saying the same thing now is no big deal. Actually, it is a big bleeping deal.

Trump has been hurling unfounded and unwarranted allegations of voter fraud for as long as he has been president. He declared that millions of illegal votes were cast for Hillary Clinton in 2016, which provided her with the 3 million popular vote lead over Trump. He is asserting much the same thing this time, with Biden’s team conspiring to collect illegal votes.

Trump alleges that mail-in voting is fraught with corruption, even though the states that conduct such balloting now stand firmly behind the integrity of their electoral systems.

Trump wants to suppress the vote. He doesn’t want to open the system up to every eligible voter. He has said that mail-in voting would make it damn near impossible for Republicans to win the presidency … ever again!

Donald Trump is sowing the seeds of suspicion on a system that works. For the president to in effect condemn that system by refusing to commit to accepting the results is yet another exercise in shameful demagoguery.

Still, I chuckled when I read the response from the Biden campaign. The Biden campaign responded: “The American people will decide this election. And the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House.”

You know, that might be worth waiting to see if it occurs.

national news

You have to watch it to believe it

I am not going to buy into the half-baked notion that Donald Trump is losing his marbles, much like the bullsh** that Trump’s team is peddling against Joe Biden, his presumptive Democratic Party opponent this fall.

Still, when you watch Donald Trump stand before reporters in front of the White House and then listen to his incoherent and incomprehensible riff about this and that, you start to wonder whether the president of the United States is afraid of losing.

I am sensing a serious fear factor weighing on Trump.

I see poll after poll suggest Biden is pulling farther ahead. I am not taking them to the bank just yet. You need to remember that President Hillary Clinton and President Michael Dukakis enjoyed wide margins against their foes in 2016 and in 1988; it didn’t work out well for them.

However, when you watch Trump make virtually no mention of the pandemic that has gripped the world and then launch into a campaign-rally riff at the White House, well … you get the picture, yes?

What’s even more amazing is how little connection all the myriad points he seeks to make have to each other. It all becomes a stream-of-consciousness tirade.

He boasts about what a great job his administration is doing to fight the pandemic, ignoring the 136,000 individuals in this country who have died from COVID-19. A nation with 4 percent of the world’s population has recorded 25 percent of the COVID infections and about the same percentage of deaths from the disease. That is success? Really?

Well, the campaign has begun. No need to wait for the traditional Labor Day kickoff. Trump is in full re-election campaign mode. Joe Biden is ramping up his effort to unseat Trump.

I will remain puzzled and baffled no doubt to the end, though, wondering how in the world Donald Trump can cling to the base of supporters who listen to the same nonsense that flows from this clown’s mouth that I hear.

They hear the Gospel according to The Donald.

I hear so much crap.

Go figure.

political news, State news

Texas becomes battleground?

The national political media continue feed my heebie-jeebies.

They talk about Joe Biden’s national polling lead over Donald Trump. They suggest there might be a Democratic “tsunami” about to sweep Trump and many of his Republican congressional sycophants out of office in Washington.

Why, many commentators are looking at a recent Dallas Morning News/University of Texas-Tyler poll that puts the former vice president up by 5 percentage points over Trump. They use that poll result as evidence that Texas is about to cast its electoral votes for the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Whoa, now! Let’s hold on. Let’s catch our breath.

I am not yet ready to toss Texas into the Democrats’ sack of political goodies. This is among the reddest Republican states in the country. Every statewide elected official here is a Republican. It’s been an all-R state since 1998. The state’s transition from overwhelming Democrat to Republican has been stunning in the speed with which it occurred.

Is Joe Biden the Democratic presidential candidate to carry Texas across a new threshold? Hmm. I have trouble believing it, although my heart wishes it would happen.

As the Dallas Morning News reported: “I really do think that Biden could win Texas, and I didn’t think that as recently as even a month ago. But the landscape has shifted so much,” said Nancy Beck Young, chair of the University of Houston history department and a scholar of Texas politics.

The Morning News poll does suggest that since Texas is being stricken so cruelly by the COVID crisis that Texans at this moment are enraged by Trump’s feckless and reckless response to the emergency. That well might be reflected in the polling results.

I think it’s fair to suggest, though, that if Biden somehow manages to win more votes than Trump in Texas then we are looking at an epic political landslide that will bury Trump. Moreover, if Biden falls short by just a little bit — say, 2 or 3 percentage points — then that, too, might portend a significant political defeat for Donald Trump nationally.

Still, the media keep fueling my nervousness. I get that’s the media’s job. It is to report the news and polling statistics that suggest a staggering defeat of the self-proclaimed “smartest man in human history” — or words to that effect — most certainly should get our attention.

national news, political news

Lincoln Project firing on all cylinders

It’s called the Lincoln Project.

It is a political organization comprising former and even some current Republican politicians and political operatives. They all have one important trait in common.

They want to defeat Donald John Trump in this year’s presidential election. Why is that so unusual? Well, let’s see: Oh, yeah … Trump calls himself a Republican.

But … is he really created in the same mold as the man after whom the Lincoln Project is named? Hardly.

Abraham Lincoln was the nation’s first Republican president. He is arguably the greatest man ever to hold the office. He fought to preserve the Union that had been torn apart by Civil War. The Union won the war, but that victory cost Lincoln his life at Ford’s Theater.

The party that Donald Trump now controls bears no resemblance to the party that Lincoln helped create. The Lincoln Project has taken an astonishingly high profile in this campaign. No only is the Lincoln Project working overtime to defeat Trump, it is working equally hard to elect a Democrat, Joseph Biden Jr., to succeed Trump.

As this election continues to take shape, I am struck by the number of GOP operatives — if not active-duty GOP politicians — who have spoken of their utter disgust with Donald Trump. GOP members of Congress remain essentially silent as Trump continues to bungle the national response to the COVID-19 crisis. Trump also appears feckless as the nation reels from incidents of brutality against African-Americans, not to mention his shameful silence over reports that Russian government officials placed bounties on the heads of American service personnel killed in battle in Afghanistan.

Thus, the Lincoln Project is looking for a suitable alternative to the man masquerading as president. At this moment, the only possible alternative happens to be Democrat, Joe Biden.

And so the Lincoln Project, which carries the name of arguably the nation’s greatest president, is seeking to remove the individual who to my way of thinking has carved out his own niche as the nation’s worst president.

national news, political news

Wishing media could dial back Biden’s poll reporting

The media are having a field day reporting on Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s spectacular poll ratings against Donald J. Trump Sr.

Biden is leading Trump by double digits, the media tell us. Biden is leading Trump in virtually all the critical “swing states,” they report. Biden might already have enough Electoral College votes in the bank to assure his election in November, the reporting continues.

I want the media to dial it back. Why? Because it is beginning to fill me with a sense of hope that might not hold up as we head down the stretch toward Election Day.

My memory is vivid on some things. One of those matters involves what the media reported at this stage of the 2016 campaign. They said Hillary Clinton would cruise to an easy election.

I bought that narrative four years ago. I was so confident that I attended an election-night watch party with my wife at some friends’ house in Amarillo. We went there expecting Hillary Clinton to make a victory speech upon getting the concession call from Donald Trump.

Uhh, it didn’t happen. My worst political nightmare came to pass on election night 2016.

I am acutely aware that Joe Biden doesn’t carry nearly the negative baggage that Clinton did against Trump. I also am aware that much of Trump’s message that sold against Clinton is hitting the deck with a thud against Biden.

We have an economy in collapse, the nation’s response to the pandemic has been disastrous. Trump is campaigning against his own record as president, if you allow me to parse the rhetoric he keeps using.

I know the media have a role to play and a job to do. Part of all that is to tell us what the polling is telling us about the race as it develops. It’s just making me nervous.

national news

Obsession with Obama seeks to conceal hideous reality

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ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

Donald J. Trump’s obsession with Barack H. Obama is beginning to look increasingly like a deflection of our attention from a hideous truth about the current presidential administration.

It is that Trump has presided over the most corrupt executive government branch at least since the era of Richard M. Nixon. Indeed, there is an argument being made that the corruption level of the Trump administration dwarfs what we saw during the Nixon administration.

More of Trump’s men have gone to prison than those who served time during Nixon’s time.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump continues to insist that President Obama presided over the “most corrupt” administration in U.S. history. Of course, and this is no surprise, he seeks to tie Vice President Joe Biden to what he alleges was the corruption of the Obama years. You get that, right? I mean, Biden is about to be nominated by the Democratic Party to run against Trump this fall and at this moment Biden appears headed for a smashing victory.

We have a former national security adviser who has pleaded guilty to lying to authorities; a former Trump friend and “fixer” has just been hauled back to the slammer for violating the terms of his house arrest; other campaign officials have been cloistered behind bars; that includes the guy who ran Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Trump flails away saying that it’s all a “witch hunt” and a “hoax.” It is neither of those things. Trump has presided over an administration fraught with criminal activity … not to mention scandals involving all manner of accusations.

His defense? To deflect attention by suggesting that President Obama and Vice President Biden — of all people — sat atop the most corrupt administration in history.

Oh, and how many people were indicted or served prison time during the eight years of Obama’s time in office? None.

national news

Hoping for a President Biden … but not predicting it!

I learned a bitter lesson from the 2016 presidential election, which is that I am a terrible political prognosticator.

I predicted Hillary Clinton would be elected president. Late in the campaign I was foolish enough to think she’d win in a landslide. I couldn’t foresee the FBI reopening an investigation into that email non-story, nor could I predict that Clinton would ignore key swing Rust Belt states down the stretch.

Thus, the door was flung wide open for Donald Trump to traipse through. He won. I was horrified. I still am horrified at the prospect of this clown’s potential re-election.

Trump’s polling at this moment looks dire. He well might lose to Joe Biden, the Democrats’ presumed nominee. Biden is polling 10 to 12 percentage better than Trump. The president looks as though he is flailing.

However, I am not going to predict that this Biden advantage will hold up. I will hope for it. I might even pray for it.

Joe Biden was not my first choice to be the Democratic Party nominee. I wanted someone to jump out of the tall grass and surprise everyone, mimicking the way Jimmy Carter did in 1976. That never happened.

Biden’s campaign was considered so much road kill after the first two primary events. Then he got an endorsement from Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, the leading African-American member of Congress; Biden won the South Carolina primary on the backs of black voters.

Now he stands on the verge of being nominated. I am all in.

Biden pledges to restore “the soul” of the nation that has seen its soul captured and re-created in the hideous image of Donald Trump. He now is talking about immediately reversing Trump’s decisions: on immigrants who were brought here illegally as children; on removing the nation from the World Health Organization; on removing us from the Paris Climate Accords; on restoring our commitment to the Iran nuclear deal.

Biden got beaten up during Democratic primary debates when he boasted of his ability to work with Republican legislators. I want him to bring that ability with him into the Oval Office. I am a firm believer in good government, not necessarily big government. Donald Trump doesn’t know how to cobble together a good government coalition. Joe Biden has many decades of experience working within Congress and the executive branch as vice president for two successful terms with the Obama administration.

Biden is no wacky socialist. He is, as Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham described him, “one of the finest men God ever created.”

I want Joe Biden to be elected president. I want to make that prediction, but I got burned in 2016. Therefore, I will rely on my hope that a better day will dawn once we count the ballots for president.

national news

Trump campaigns against … himself?

Cornell Belcher is a Democratic pollster, so I will acknowledge up front that he is a political partisan.

Still, he offered a fascinating analysis of Donald Trump’s re-election campaign strategy. Speaking on National Public Radio this morning, Belcher said, in effect that Trump is campaigning against his own record as president.

Belcher noted that Trump is painting a picture of a nation falling apart, that it’s crumbling before our eyes, that our social fabric is disintegrating. Is the president seeking to unify the nation? Is he calling on voters to support all the strength he has brought to the nation?

No. He is running as if he is the challenger seeking to defeat an incumbent who’s done a horrible job. Get it? How does that bizarre strategy work?

Belcher also noted that Trump’s re-election strategy is light years removed from President Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign theme that it was “Morning in America.” Reagan won a second term that year in a 49-state landslide.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is slipping farther behind his challenger, Joe Biden. Come to think of it, if this trend continues, we’ll see a new “morning in America” once we get all the ballots counted later this year … and Donald Trump can prepare to depart the White House for the final time.

national news

Entering a new era of campaigning

(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has laid it on the line.

He is going to campaign for the presidency without any massive rallies. There will be none of those events with admirers crammed together, cheering themselves hoarse at pronouncements coming from their guy on the podium.

Donald Trump isn’t ready to make that pledge. Why? Because he prefers the campaign rallies where he is able to stand at a podium and deliver his incessant, incoherent riffs on this and/or that issue or perceived opponent.

I submit that the COVID-19 Pandemic Era has ushered in a new style of campaigning, with social media becoming even more prevalent than before.

Trump had that rally in Tulsa, Okla. He promised a huge crowd. It didn’t materialize. He had to take down an outdoor venue set up to handle an “overflow” crowd that never showed up. The sparse turnout angered Trump. It has created gossip about a campaign shakeup on the horizon.

Whatever. Biden’s view is that the age of big-time campaign rallies is over … at least while the nation fights the pandemic that so far is still running rampant from coast to coast to coast.

Just between you and me, we’ll be fighting this disease long after they count the presidential election ballots, which gives me hope that Biden’s strategy is the smart strategy.

There has been a lot of talk about the “new normal” arising from the pandemic. We’re wearing masks in public. We’re keeping our distance from strangers. We aren’t shaking hands when we meet friends. We aren’t embracing when we see loved ones.

Nor will we be standing shoulder-to-shoulder among crowds of strangers cheering the candidates of our choice.

To be frank, I am having trouble grasping how this will play out. I am still trying to fathom the notion of a “virtual” presidential nominating convention. Democrats will nominate Biden in a virtual event; Republicans will nominate Trump who will speak to a crowd in Jacksonville, Fla., after the GOP gathering was moved from Charlotte, N.C., because the North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper wouldn’t clear the event out of fear of spreading the virus.

But … here we are. It’s a new day in a new era and with a new set of circumstances that are far beyond our ability to control at the moment. It has changed the way our politicians campaign for public office.

Given that I am slowly becoming a 21st-century man, I welcome the change with hope that it will produce new national leadership.