Tag Archives: Joe Biden

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Tempting to put faith in polls, however …

It is so tempting for those of us who want Donald Trump to get his head handed to him at the ballot box this November to place faith in all those polls showing him trailing Joe Biden by double digits.

Then again, these polls only serve to remind us of a painful truth about Trump, which is that he might be the luckiest — even with his utter incompetence and unfitness — politician in U.S. history.

I am forced to remind myself that Hillary Rodham Clinton also held big leads against Trump in the early summer of 2016. She enjoyed the backing of every major newspaper in the country. Pundits across the board predicted not just a Clinton win, but a possible landslide win at that!

Then it happened. Trump committed an act of proverbial political thievery by capturing three swing states that had voted twice for Barack Obama: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. He won all three by a combined vote of 77,000 ballots and with them earned enough Electoral College votes to be elected president of the United States.

So, as tempting as it is to believe that Trump is in trouble politically in 2020 as he seeks re-election, I must reel in my enthusiasm.

I want Joe Biden to win this election. He wasn’t my first choice among Democrats. My initial hope was that the party would find a “sleeper,” a new voice among the huge field to back for the nomination. It didn’t pan out.

The former VP is now the presumptive nominee. He is beginning to clear his throat and is speaking with clarity and conviction about why we need to evict Trump and his cabal from the People’s House.

Circumstances have handed Biden some tailor-made issues on which to run: the pandemic, and George Floyd’s tragic death have produced hideous responses from Donald Trump. The economy has flat-lined as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. Trump has failed miserably to rise to the level of leader. He is unable or unwilling to assume the role of Consoler in Chief. He has become instead the Numbskull in Chief with his idiotic posturing on the pandemic and then on how he favors unleashing “thousands of heavily armed” active-duty military personnel to put down peaceful protests against police brutality.

None of that guarantees a Joe Biden victory. Indeed, the former vice president has to pay attention to the political landscape and avoid giving away an election as Hillary Clinton did in 2016.

The polling data looks promising. However, it is far too early in this game to get excited about what it is telling us.

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Biden faces biggest decision of his political career

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci, Pool)

There’s no way on Earth to overstate the importance of Joe Biden’s pending decision on who to select as a vice-presidential running mate in his campaign against Donald John Trump and Mike Pence.

When given the opportunity to speak of Biden, former President Barack Obama says often that his selection of Biden as VP in 2008 was the “best decision” he ever made as president.

So it will be for the Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee in 2020.

Biden has pledged to select a woman to run with him. That wipes out roughly 50 percent of all the qualified individuals from whom he can select. The remaining field of VP candidates, though, is a rich one indeed.

Here is where it might get a bit sticky for the former vice president: He has this crisis involving the death of an African-American man at the hands of police officers who roughed him up, then suffocated him on a Minneapolis street. There is pressure building on Biden to select an African-American woman to run with him.

Make no mistake at all, the field — even if Biden is narrowing his choices even more — remains packed with talent, with accomplished individuals who have stellar public service records.

I will not get into trying to name the possible VP candidates Biden should consider. I would forget someone. I won’t go there.

However, it is no small task facing the former vice president — who President Obama has called the “best vice president we’ve ever had.” Whether he is the best ever or whether Obama was just saying so to brag about his executive appointment skills, what matters now is whether Joe Biden can find someone who will enhance his chances of defeating Donald Trump.

More critically, though, he must find someone who is able to serve as president of the United States. I mean, let’s stare reality in the face: Biden will be 78 years of age in November of this year; he has suffered some potentially serious health issues in the past.

Joe Biden has to hit this pitch out of the park.

national news

Get ready for the worst ever

I am steeling myself for what I expect to be the most disgusting, disgraceful, disheartening campaign in history for the U.S. presidency.

Joe Biden is waiting in the wings to take on Donald Trump.

If only I could harbor a glimmer of hope that somehow these two men will be able to discuss issues, debate them intelligently and leave it to voters such as you and me to decide who between them is the better fit for the presidency.

If only …

That won’t happen. Donald Trump will not allow it. He wants to drag this campaign into the sewer, which is where he tossed his moral compass long, long ago.

The coronavirus pandemic is worthy of campaign discussion. Namely the president’s shameful initial response to it and, indeed, his ongoing fecklessness in dealing with it. Joe Biden can make the case that he would have handled it differently. He’ll try to make the argument. Trump will deflect it and turn it all toward something else … likely a tirade about “Sleepy Joe.”

Well, I cannot begin to list the myriad ways that the Boor in Chief will turn this campaign into a mud fest. He showed us his chops in 2016 when he hammered Hillary Clinton into submission. Yes, he lost the “popular vote,” but won the presidency because he won enough Electoral College votes. That was the preliminary to the main event that is about to unfold.

I am not looking forward to this bloodbath.

You will hear it again on this blog, but I’ll say it once more right now: Donald Trump is unfit for the presidency.

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It isn’t ‘political correctness,’ Mr. POTUS

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A reporter stood before Donald Trump today to pose a question; he said he had to speak loudly because he was wearing a surgical mask.

“You’re being politically correct,” Trump told the reporter, speaking in that dismissive tone he uses to discuss measures people are taking to avoid being sickened by the coronavirus.

The reporter answered that he was merely being cautious, that he doesn’t want to catch the killer virus.

And so it goes on and on with the Dipsh** in Chief, who continues to dismiss the wearing of masks as a preventative measure by Americans.

Trump won’t wear one in public. He says a mask makes him “look ridiculous.” He poked fun today at his likely election opponent, Democrat Joseph R. Biden, for wearing a mask during Memorial Day services in Delaware. Biden was asked by a CNN reporter whether wearing  mask is a sign of “strength” or “weakness.”

Joe Biden’s answer? It’s a sign of “leadership.” Bingo!

Donald Trump has failed every leadership test he has ever taken since becoming a politician.

Oh! There’s this: The disease that would in Donald Trump’s words disappear “miraculously” when we had recorded 15 cases is about to claim its 100,000th fatality.

media news, national news

Campaigning via Twitter? Sweet!

We are witnessing the birth of a new style of presidential campaigning. OK, it’s not entirely a brand new thing, but it’s taking on a life of its own.

The world is being treated to a presidential campaign conducted via Twitter. The antagonists? Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

For those of us who came of political age in an earlier — and decidely more quaint — era, this is a strange evolution to watch. However, I am learning to get used to it.

Donald Trump has perfected the Twitter gambit. It has become something of an art form with this guy. He has an 80-million follower crowd, many of whom hang on his every word. I admit to following Trump on this medium, but it’s primarily a way to keep this guy in front of me at all times. Better to keep the bad guys visible than to have them lurking unseen or unheard in the shadows.

He blathers, bellows and bloviates via Twitter constantly. He most recently has taken to the medium to fire back at criticism of his golf outings in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. He accuses Biden of having a poor work ethic while serving as vice president in the Barack Obama administration.

Biden has fired back. He said, also via Twitter, that Trump should concentrate on the pandemic rather than firing off tweets aboard his golf cart.

So it will go until the end of this presidential campaign … and likely far into the future of presidential campaigns. It’s a new age.

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Looking ahead to a brighter day

I like playing a mind game that enables me to look ahead to the short- or the medium-term future. I don’t have a name for it … but what the hey!

The game I am playing at the moment involves the moment when Donald Trump walks away from the presidency. It could happen Jan. 20, 2021 or (gulp!) on Jan. 20, 2025. Oh, how I want it to be the first date.

But still, Donald Trump has become — in addition to being the most unqualified, unfit and uninformed person ever elected president — a first-class, top-tier boor. His treatment of others has become almost legendary in its crassness.

So what might happen at the moment the new president takes over from Trump? The transition from one president to another is filled with niceties, photo opportunities, pro forma courtesies. Let’s assume for a moment that the new president will be Joseph R. Biden Jr., the 2020 Democratic nominee-in-waiting.

In a normal political environment, Joseph Biden and his wife, Jill, would go to the White House. The first couple, Donald and Melania Trump, would greet them. They would exchange some small talk, pose for pictures, then go inside for some more chatter, perhaps have a meal.

This campaign, though, will be far from “normal.” It will be as abnormal as it can get. Trump will sling epithets and baseless accusations at Biden. The former vice president will fire back with his own attacks. Trump won’t like the things Biden says about him and he’ll ratchet up the rhetoric.

How low it stoops is anyone’s guess.

Then there will be the inaugural ceremony. The new vice president and the president take their oaths of office, then the president — and I do hope it’s Biden — will begin his remarks. In a more genteel time, the new president would turn to the outgoing president and thank him for his service to the country. My favorite moment of that nature occurred in 1977 when President Carter turned to President Ford — whom he had defeated in a bruising campaign — and thanked “my predecessor for all he has done to heal our land” after Watergate.

It is difficult for me to believe we will witness any of that kind of dignity and decorum whenever Donald Trump’s time as president has expired. This individual has poisoned the atmosphere.

Ugh!

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Trump vs. Obama … ‘er Biden?

Donald Trump has been asking for it. He’s been needling, ridiculing and criticizing his immediate presidential predecessor since the moment he won the 2016 election.

Now he’s getting a portion of what he has dished out. He doesn’t like it. He called former President Barack Obama a “grossly incompetent president.” Indeed, Trump’s response to Obama’s chiding tells me plenty about the fundamental differences between these two individuals.

One of them is urbane, erudite, sophisticated. He speaks with high-minded nobility, such as what we heard Saturday night during his “virtual” commencement remarks to the nation’s high school class of 2020.

The other one is, well, crude, petulant, petty. He resorts to name-calling. He deals in innuendo, defamation of character. We have heard that, too, and we’re going to hear a lot more of it from this fellow.

Barack Obama and Donald Trump just might go at each other’s throats before this election season winds down.

But wait! Only one of these guys is running for public office in 2020. It’s Trump! He’s got an opponent out there and it’s not Barack Obama! It’s the guy who served nobly for two terms as vice president of the United States during the Obama administration.

Joe Biden has been holed up in his Wilmington, Del., basement during the coronavirus pandemic. Meanwhile, the former president has endorsed Biden’s presidential candidacy and has made it abundantly clear he intends to work hard to ensure his election this November.

Biden and Obama, though, have a difficult dance to perform. Biden will emerge in due course — and I hope it’s soon — as the Democratic Party’s titular leader. He slogged and slugged his way through a grueling primary process against a record number of primary opponents. Biden stands alone as Donald Trump’s most pressing immediate political threat.

However, Barack Obama’s standing as the nation’s most engaging political figure threatens to eclipse the former vice president. None of this, of course, doesn’t matter one damn bit to Donald Trump, who’ll continue his insufferable tirades against the former president.

Through it all, we just might be able to take a full measure of the smallness of the individual who wants a second term as president of the United States. If Barack Obama can reveal more of that to us through his measured, dignified commentary on the quality of our current leadership, then so much the better … for Joe Biden.

national security, political news

What happens if Trump loses?

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REUTERS/Sarah Silbiger

This notion, as preposterous as it sounds, is worth pondering nevertheless, given Donald Trump’s extreme penchant for unpredictability.

What happens if Donald Trump loses the presidential election and (a) rejects the results and (b) refuses to vacate the White House?

You are entitled to snicker and maybe even guffaw at the notion. However, some learned political pros are talking about it out loud. That tells me that even though they dismiss the reject and refuse-to-leave notion as implausible, they are still talking about it … which means it’s, well, possible.

I have posed this notion already not long after Trump took office. Some of my Trumpster friends and acquaintances scolded me for suggesting such a thing. However, with this guy nothing on this good Earth is beyond the realm of possibility.

He has ranted already about “rigged” elections. He accused “millions of illegal immigrants” of voting for Hillary Clinton in 2016 but hasn’t yet produced a shred of evidence to back up the spurious claim. When every pundit on Earth was predicting Hillary would defeat Trump, the Huckster in Chief said he would lose only because the election would be rigged in Hillary’s favor.

Does anyone with a half a noodle in their noggin actually believe that Donald Trump would orchestrate a smooth and orderly transition to Joseph Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee?

The campaign already is shaping up to be the most hideous, the nastiest, the most innuendo-filled, defamatory campaign in anyone’s memory. It makes me shudder to ponder what could happen in case Donald Trump loses this election.

Trump will say anything, will resort to any tactic he can consider to win a second term. If he loses, well, we ought to prepare for the worst.

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Good news: This will be Trump’s final campaign!

Millions of us have been lamenting the presidency of Donald J. Trump since the moment he took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2017.

It’s been a serious downer damn near every step along the way. Here, though, is some news that might bring the hint of a smile to your puss. This upcoming election will be Trump’s final campaign for the presidency.

Yep, win or lose, this is it! The U.S. Constitution — despite Trump’s public ruminations to the contrary — sets in stone that presidents can be elected to just two full terms in office. The Imbecile in Chief managed to get elected to that first term in 2016. He wants a second term … over my strongest objection imaginable.

Joe Biden must defeat him. How that will occur remains a work in progress.

Might a defeated Donald Trump seek another public office? Oh, sure. I suppose he can do that. The presidency, though, appears to be out of the question if Joe Biden is able to do what I hope he is able to do on Election Day 2020.

Having revealed a snippet of cheer for us to ponder as we gird for this campaign, I also feel the need to remind us of what is about to unfold. If you thought the 2016 campaign for president was as low as it could get, well I want to tell you that 2020 is likely to make the Donald Trump-Hillary Clinton scrap resemble a Girl Scout cookie sale.

Donald Trump is as ruthless an individual as any of us have ever witnessed in public life. He has no conscience, which means he lies without understanding the consequence he might suffer. He doesn’t care. He is not equipped with an ounce of shame.

So when he accuses Biden of committing crimes while serving as vice president during the Barack Obama administration, he does so blindly and with no thought to the defamatory nature of what flies out of his mouth. He will do the same thing with President Obama, just as he did for years fomenting the “birther” lie that Obama was not qualified to run for president.

We need to get ready for what is to come. The good news is that this will be the final time we’ll have to listen to this idiot’s campaign pitch. The best news will occur if Joe Biden emerges victorious from the campaign carnage that will ensue.

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Where is the truth to be found?

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I admit readily that I don’t understand a lot of things in this crazy old world of ours.

One of those unknowable things — at least to me — is this: How do we establish the truth between someone who levels an allegation against a politician and the person who has been accused of behaving badly?

I present to you Joseph R. Biden and Tara Reade.

Reade has accused Biden of assaulting her sexually in 1993; she says Biden, then a U.S. senator from Delaware, pinned her against a wall in the Capitol Building, shoved his hand under her skirt and touched her where he shouldn’t have touched her.

Biden denies it. Categorically. Emphatically. Says it did not happen.

Who is telling the truth? I don’t know. Nor do I understand fully how we get to the truth.

Do the accuser and the accused submit to polygraph exams? That’s dicey for this reason: Polygraph examinations cannot be used as evidence in a court trial, which often renders the results potentially suspect.

Biden is now the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. His opponent this fall will be Donald J. Trump, who’s got a lengthy list of accusers who have alleged he has done many things to them. Indeed, Trump can be heard on an audio recording bragging about how he has grabbed women by their genitals; he has admitted to philandering; he has boasted of the boorishness he has exhibited with women. In this context, though, that is beside the point.

The crux of this blog post deals with how Biden can possibly put this matter aside beyond merely denying he did what Reade says he did.

I suppose this matter falls the category of “Whom Do You Believe?”

I am inclined to believe Biden. Reade reportedly filed a sexual harassment complaint against the Biden Senate office. Indeed, Biden has acknowledged behaving in a manner that some women have said crossed the line into sexual harassment. He has apologized for it and has vowed to keep his distance among women. Sexual harassment, though, is a huge distance away from sexual assault.

Reade waited only until now to allege a sexual assault? Victims of such acts often have good reasons for not wanting to file complaints in the moment.

I don’t know what to believe. Nor am I aware of anything Biden can do to push this accusation aside. A flat-out denial never is good enough. Indeed, even proper “vetting” of such an accusation will not dissuade the most hardened cynics/conspiracy theorists from believing there’s more to the accusation than meets the proverbial eye.

This is the kind of story that gives me an upset stomach. I need to gulp some Pepto.