Tag Archives: Joe Biden

national news

Hey, Sen. Sanders, stop the delusion!

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders apparently is clinging tightly to an illusion, which is that he thinks he still can win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination this year.

Earth to Bernie: No! You cannot!

The democratic socialist/independent senator from Vermont who masquerades as a Democrat has no path to the nomination. Former Vice President Joe Biden has trounced Sanders in a series of party primary elections and has piled up an insurmountable lead in delegates selected for the Democratic National Convention this July in Milwaukee.

Sanders cannot overtake Biden. Yet he continues to stay in the hunt, continues to insist that while the path to a nomination is “narrow,” he can walk it carefully. I have to ask: How in the world does that happen?

Joe Biden has emerged as the overwhelming favorite among Democrats whose main mission this election year is to defeat Donald John Trump. Thus, this nomination is all but in the bag for Biden.

I realize at this moment that virtually no one is talking seriously about the presidential election. The nation is fixated instead on more pressing crises presented by the coronavirus pandemic. Thousands of Americans have died already from the virus; many thousands more are expected to succumb to it.

Indeed, the crisis has frozen the election in place … for the moment. Which makes me think that the stalling of the nominating fight is the only thing that is preventing Sen. Sanders from making the patently obvious decision to drop out of the race and endorse Joe Biden.

Bernie is deluding himself if he actually thinks what he has said publicly, that he can still be nominated by the Democrats to take on Donald Trump. Get real, Bernie. End it now.

national news

Is she really ready to become POTUS?

I am going to commit political heresy by questioning the qualifications of a woman of color who happens to be on a lot of folks’ short list for the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential nomination.

I present to you Stacey Abrams.

Joe Biden has declared he will select a woman to run with him if he becomes the Democrats’ presidential nominee this summer. That’s a done deal. No doubt about it. The former vice president has carved it in stone, signed his name in blood. For all I know he has sworn on a Bible.

I keep seeing Stacey Abrams’ name on short lists for that call.

So, I have looked up her background. I found some fascinating chapters in her life story.

The question that any presidential nominee must ask of a VP selection is this: Is the person I choose qualified to step into the presidency in the event I no longer can serve? Is Stacey Abrams qualified to do that?

She ran for Georgia governor in 2018 and lost by a whisker to Republican Brian Kemp. Prior to that her only political experience was as a member of the Georgia House of Representatives. Anything else … politically speaking? Nope. That’s it.

Now, let me be clear. Stacey Abrams is bright and well-educated. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Spelman College; she earned a masters degree in public administration from the University of Texas-Austin; and … she earned her law degree from Yale University. She packs plenty of intellectual wattage.

I just wonder whether she has earned a place on Joe Biden’s short list of candidates to be the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential nominee.

The former VP has a gigantic field of competent and highly qualified women he can examine as he looks for a potential running mate. He ran against some of them in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. But there are governors and other members of Congress he can consider.

I am just a bit leery of someone of Stacey Abrams’ limited political experience being thrust into this role of vice-presidential nominee.

She is young enough to gain more valuable experience. Abrams might do well working in a Cabinet-level post in a Biden administration. I just don’t think it’s her time … at least not yet.

Please forgive me.

national news

Now … what about Bernie’s political future?

It seems oddly petty to talk about U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ next big political decision while Americans are fighting hammer and tong against the coronavirus pandemic that has sickened many thousands of us.

Still, I have to ask: Why doesn’t Sen. Sanders call it a campaign, step aside, cede the Democratic Party presidential nomination to Joseph R. Biden Jr., endorse the former vice president … and then make good on his pledge to do all he can to defeat Donald John Trump?

Sanders cannot win his party’s nomination. Biden has too many more convention delegates lined up than Sanders. It is impossible now for Sanders to catch up.

His campaign insists that Sanders is staying in, yet we hear of reports that the senator is “assessing” the status of his campaign. He can assess all he wants, but many of us already has issued our own assessment, which is that the fight is over.

Sanders fought hard. He has argued, with some justification, that he has won the argument over ideology. Biden has drifted a little to the left, but he’s nowhere near where Sanders is perched on the far-left end of the Democrats’ ideological ledge. That’s more than all right with me. I want a centrist to take on Donald Trump, not a candidate who calls himself a “democratic socialist” and who would be smothered by a Trump slime machine.

I don’t know what Sanders hopes to accomplish by staying in the fight. I do know what he has said is his No.  goal, which is to defeat Donald Trump. Where I come from, it looks like the better way to fulfill that mission is to bow out and line up alongside the candidate who can lead that fight.

national news

Trump gets ready to trash Joe Biden

Here it comes … as most of us have expected for a long time.

The Donald J. Trump presidential re-election campaign is beginning to launch salvos against Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic frontrunner for the party’s presidential nomination. Is the aim intended to disparage policy pronouncements? Or take the former vice president and former senator to task for votes?

Heavens no! They’re going to denigrate Biden because he tends to make verbal gaffes, because he occasionally mangles facts.

They’re saying Biden isn’t “playing with a full deck.”

I’m sure you get where this is going. They’re going to question Biden’s mental acuity. His smarts. His cognitive ability.

Joe Biden is 78 years of age; Trump is 73. Trump is going to call himself the “young man” in this head-to-head matchup.

Still, the irony of Donald Trump and his team questioning anyone’s mental fitness for office is ironic in the extreme.

If you can stomach watching a Trump campaign rally, you might understand what I am saying. Trump flies off the Teleprompter script and launches one of those nonsensical, idiotic, moronic, incoherent riffs. He speaks in sentence fragments and, oh by the way, he lies his a** off virtually with every other sentence that flies out of his mouth.

If you want to shudder in disbelief — as I have done repeatedly since January 2017 — that this guy is the president of the United States of America, I encourage you to look it up. Believe me, it’s a hoot!

So, just think of this individual denigrating an opponent who occasionally commits a rhetorical flub. I would laugh, except that it isn’t the least bit funny.

I am proud to stand with someone of Joe Biden’s immense character and capacity for empathy. I also am delighted to oppose vehemently someone of Donald Trump’s absolute lack of both.

national news

Pandemic pushes ‘most important election’ coverage to the back shelf

What in the world happened to the “most important election in our lifetime,” the one that is supposed to energize a nation, jacking up our interest in deciding whether to stay the course or to, shall we say, set a new course?

I know the answer to that question. It’s been pushed aside while the world comes to grips with how to handle a pandemic that has killed thousands of people already and is threatening to change everyone’s life … maybe forever.

Joe Biden has turned the Democratic Party presidential nomination fight into a runaway. He has routed what’s left of a once-huge field of contenders. U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard today dropped out of the race; I know, you had forgotten all about her, as did I. The only challenger still standing is U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who I reckon is going to bow out any day now.

No one is talking about it. The media have gone silent. News programming has erupted in a barrage of coverage of the coronavirus pandemic — as it should! We’re worried. We’re unsettled. Cities, counties and states are mandating crowd-size limitations. Mayors, county executives and governors are in front of us constantly, providing updates on what they’re all doing to stem the outbreak of new illness.

Oh, and the president of the United States, Donald John Trump? He’s, um, seeking to repair the rhetorical wreckage he has created by his idiotic pronouncements about the pandemic being a “Democrat hoax” and downplaying the severity of the crisis that is killing people daily.

Enough about him. For the time being.

The pandemic is Topic No. 1, and No. 2 and maybe No. 3 at the moment. That “most important election in our lifetime” will take place in November. The road between here and there, though, is going to take some very weird turns.

We had all better hold on with both hands.

education news, national news

‘No’ on tuition-free college

That ol’ trick knee of mine is telling me something I hope is true, but something I cannot predict will happen.

It’s telling me that Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are negotiating an exit from the 2020 Democratic Party primary campaign for Sen. Sanders.

The way this deal might play out is that Sanders might seek to demand certain elements of his campaign end up as part of the Biden campaign going forward. I want to express my extreme displeasure with one element of the Sanders Mantra: the one that seeks to make public college and university education free for every American student.

No can do! Nor should it happen. It’s a budget-buster for the national treasury not to mention for colleges and universities that depend on students’ tuition and assorted lab and book fees to stay afloat.

Former Vice President Biden has broken the Democratic primary for the presidency wide open. The nomination is now his to lose, to borrow the cliché. Sanders, though, isn’t likely to bow out quietly without making some demands on the nominee-to-be.

Sanders isn’t even an actual Democrat; he represents Vermont in the Senate as an independent. He is a “democratic socialist.” To be honest, I don’t quite grasp the “democratic” element in that label as it applies to granting free college education.

The free college plank has been critical to the support Sanders has enjoyed among young voters. How does Biden mine that support for himself? He could call for dramatic restructuring of student loans, making them easier to pay off. I didn’t accrue a lot of student debt while I attended college in the 1970s; I had the GI Bill to help me out. As a parent of college students, though, we were saddled with “parent loans” that took a long time to retire. There must be a better way to structure those loans.

Making public colleges and universities free, though, is a non-starter. Is it a deal-breaker if Joe Biden adopts it as part of his platform? Would that compel me to vote — gulp, snort, gasp! — for Donald Trump? Not a bleeping chance.

The former VP must not be bullied into embracing the free college idea as his own.

national news

Don’t narrow the VP field, Joe Biden

I am getting a strange feeling in my gut that the presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee, Joe Biden, already might have a super-short list of individuals he will consider to run with him against Donald John Trump.

Biden, who served two terms as vice president during the Obama administration, laid down an important marker at the Sunday debate with Sen. Bernie Sanders. He said he would select a woman to run with him as vice president if the Democratic Party nominates him as president this summer.

There. He’s now committed. No turning back, Mr. Vice President.

But wait a second. Now comes some chatter that Biden is going to look only at the women who once ran against him for the 2020 party nomination. They are Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (who’s still in the race).

I want to implore the former VP to look as well far beyond that short list. The nation is full of women who, in Biden’s terms, could “serve as president today.” They serve in the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House, in statehouses all over the land. They are titans of business and industry. They are retired from public service, but still with plenty of ideas and energy to offer the nation.

Joe Biden already has limited his list of potential VP nominees by excluding men. I’m OK with that. I just don’t want him to limit the remaining still-vast field of potential running mates to just those who have shared debate stages with him in the current campaign.

national news

Bernie faces the final stop on his valiant journey … perhaps

You know by now that my political prediction habit has been set aside because of poor past performance.

So, when I offer a possible scenario playing out I usually cover my posterior by saying that “I won’t be surprised” if such-and-such happens.

With all of that laid out there for you, I want to offer a brief look ahead at what I think could happen in the next bit of time as four more states conduct Democratic Party presidential primary elections on Tuesday.

Florida, Ohio, Illinois and Arizona Democrats are voting for their party’s presidential nominee. Two main candidates are still standing: former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Sen. Bernie Sanders; a third pretender remains, U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. It’s down to Joe and Bernie.

What could happen Tuesday? Let’s try this: Biden scores huge victories in all four states and collects about 300 (give or take) more delegates to the national nominating convention. He builds a gigantic delegate lead over Sanders. He slams the door shut on Sanders’ path to the nomination and tosses the key into the drink. What does Sanders do?

In my mind, Bernie needs to then call a halt to his campaign. It was a valiant effort but there’s no way on God’s good Earth he gets the nomination. He concedes to his “good friend Joe,” and then endorses his candidacy, vowing to make good on what he said Sunday night at the debate he and Biden staged, that he will work to “defeat the most corrupt president in modern U.S. history,” Donald John Trump.

Biden and Sanders share a common goal, to boot Trump out of the Oval Office. If Sen. Sanders is a man of his word, and I believe that’s the case, then he will realize that with no path forward, any effort to continue is futile.

Does he extract some concessions from Biden? Sure. That’s what politics is all about. Dare I call it seeking a quid pro quo? Sanders could offer to leave the race and throw his support behind the victor, but only if the other guy, Biden, buys into some of the more progressive planks in his platform.

Will any of this happen? I certainly hope it does. I hope the party unifies behind the winner of the fight, gathers its wits about it and then goes straight after the man who never should have been elected to the presidency.

national news

Men need not apply for Biden’s VP slot?

(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Joseph R. Biden Jr. made some serious news Sunday night.

He did so with a clear, concise and deftly inserted pledge: He said he would name a woman to run with him if he wins the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

There. It’s done. The former vice president effectively eliminated by roughly half the number of candidates he might consider running with him.

That doesn’t mean he’s got a short list. Oh, no! It means only that he has made what sounded to me like an ironclad pledge to select a woman as his running mate. He also seemed to suggest that a woman who debated him on the 2020 primary stage would have an advantage in the selection process.

Whoa! Not so fast, Mr. Vice President.

The nation is chock full of women who could serve today as president. They are governors, former governors, former senators, former House members, in addition to current officeholders. The field is full. I do not want him to limit his choices, even though he’s done so with the remarkable pledge he made on that debate stage with Bernie Sanders.

So … Joe Biden has just made a big splash.

Wow!

national news

‘Yes!’ on presidential debates without audiences

I hereby endorse the notion that all joint appearances with presidential candidates occur without audiences.

Tonight we heard from former Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. They went after each other at times with vigor and even a bit of annoyance at what the other guy was saying.

However, there was none of the cheering, jeering, hooting and hollering we hear too often from audiences. CNN, which played host to the debate, shunned the audience. The network moved the debate from Arizona to its New York studio; the change was made because of the coronavirus pandemic and the threat of potential exposure to audience members.

In the process, CNN has served the cause of serious discussion among presidential candidates. Biden and Sanders didn’t fire off applause lines … because there was no one in the room to applaud.

The debate focused on issues. How would they deal with the pandemic? How would they deal with climate change? How would they provide health care insurance for Americans? How would they govern? How do feel about autocratic governments around the world?

So there. No audience to distract us from the issues or to distract the candidates from the matters that should concern them.

Let’s have more of these kinds of political events.