Tag Archives: Joe Biden

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GOP dredges up Biden probe yet again

OK, so this is how it goes.

Joe Biden resurrects his flagging presidential campaign with a stunning Super Tuesday ballot performance and — bingo, just like that! — congressional Republicans decide it’s time to bring back a probe into the Democratic candidate’s son’s business dealings in Ukraine.

It doesn’t matter to Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson that prosecutors in Ukraine say there’s nothing wrong, that Joe Biden broke no laws, or that other political observers dismiss the investigation as a fishing expedition. Nope. Johnson’s going after the former vice president.

Sen. Johnson alleges that Biden committed a conflict of interest act by interfering on Hunter Biden’s behalf while he was vice president of the United States. Says who? Sen. Johnson, that’s who!

Johnson thinks he can summon enough votes to subpoena Hunter Biden to testify about his Burisma work and whether Dad played any role in his work for the company.

Johnson says his seeking a probe into Biden has nothing to do with the former VP’s surge and his return to frontrunner status in the Democratic presidential primary. Sure thing, senator … whatever you say.

Some of us out here think differently. This probe, as they say, just doesn’t pass the smell test.

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Big money supporting Biden? Not in this household!

The more I hear Bernie Sanders suggest that Joe Biden has become the candidate of big money, well-heeled special interests, the privileged few who run everything in America, the more offense I am taking.

I want to lecture Sen. Sanders about something. It’s the truth and I won’t back away from it.

I am not wealthy. I don’t get involved in establishment political activity. I watch the news constantly. I study the issues. I try to understand them.

I am drawn to former Vice President Biden not because he represents big money. I am drawn to him because I believe in his message and the promise he presents to return some decency, dignity and decorum to the office of the presidency.

Furthermore, I also suspect I am not alone in that view, given the surge that the former vice president saw on Super Tuesday. Evan Smith, editor in chief and founder of the Texas Tribune, noted during the election coverage Tuesday night that “same-day voters” had broken significantly for Joe Biden, wiping out pro-Sanders advantages run up by the votes cast by those who voted early.

Many thousands of Texans, along with those in other Super Tuesday states, were moved by the stunning victory Biden scored in South Carolina. I had been leaning toward Biden already, so my vote Tuesday wasn’t spurred by some last-minute conversion from one candidate to another.

I mention this only because Sen. Sanders is drawing what I believe is an inappropriate picture of the kind of support that is lining up behind Joe Biden. The so-called big money had written off Biden after his dismal election performance in New Hampshire.

Then suddenly, he awoke from the near (political) dead. Rank-and-file voters administered the smelling salts and he roared back on his own.

None of this will matter to Sanders. He wants to be nominated for president. Sanders will say what he believes he needs to say to revive the “revolution” he purports to lead. That’s his right.

I just happen to believe he is manufacturing a conspiracy where none exists. It offends me.

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Sanders is cooking up a conspiracy

This is one of the many things I don’t understand.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is now accusing the “Democratic establishment” of conspiring to defeat his bid to win the party’s presidential nomination, that it favors Joe Biden, whose Super Tuesday blowout across the South has inflicted serious injury to the Sanders campaign.

I don’t get where Sen. Sanders gets that.

Biden’s victory was fueled in two parts by African Americans.

First came Saturday’s stunning South Carolina primary victory that came in the wake of U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn’s emotional endorsement of the former vice president. Clyburn carries fantastic clout among African Americans in his home state; he is the leading black member of Congress.

Part two occurred Tuesday night when Clyburn’s endorsement carried over into Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, Arkansas, Oklahoma and then Texas … all states with substantial African American voter blocs. Biden won them all.

Indeed, do I need to remind everyone that the Democratic “establishment” was calling two weeks ago for Biden to step aside? He had performed dismally in Iowa and New Hampshire. Then came Nevada. He was considered the equivalent of political road kill. Leading Democrats wanted him to bow out, to go away quietly, to cede this fight to the next generation.

Now that Biden has breathed new life into his campaign he becomes a tool of the establishment? That’s what Sanders wants us to believe? C’mon, man! Sen. Sanders is concocting a conspiracy theory where none exists.

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Are we witnessing a comeback for the ages?

I’ve heard more than one pundit in the past few hours say that Joe Biden’s recovery from near political death is the most astonishing comeback they’ve ever witnessed.

I have to concur.

The Democratic presidential candidate who was given up for dead, who was considered little more than political road kill just 10 days ago, is now possibly on the verge of winning his party’s presidential nomination.

Politico reports that if Biden banishes Bernie Sanders in next week’s Michigan Democratic primary the end might be at hand for Sanders’ campaign.

I don’t want to oversell or overstate what we witnessed during last night’s Super Tuesday tidal wave, but Biden’s return from the near-dead is truly astonishing.

Sanders isn’t going to slink away quietly. He is going to fire up his attacks on Biden. He will challenge Biden’s vote on the Iraq War, on his trade votes, on the nature of his political donations.

Sen. Sanders, in my view, is going to ratchet up what I believe is a “class war” pitting the rich against the not-so-rich. He seems to be labeling Biden, a working-class hero to many voters, as some sort of puppet of the elite within the Democratic Party.

Biden ran the table across the South. He picked off Minnesota, Massachusetts and Maine. Sanders appears to have won California.

Next up is Michigan, which now appears to be the sort of “firewall” that kept Biden from combusting in South Carolina.

I am one American voter who wants Joe Biden to keep on winning.

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Can the new/returned frontrunner go the distance?

Before we start fitting Joseph R. Biden for a new inauguration suit we need to ponder a question posed by a friend of mine in an email overnight from w-a-a-a-ay down yonder … in South Australia.

My friend Peter follows U.S. politics closely and he asks this about Biden: And is he fit enough and sharp enough to take on Trump head-to-head, given the President will lie and cheat with impunity and without shame or pause for reflection?

Peter asks a good question, but I want to frame it a bit differently. The former vice president of the United States, who barreled through several primary victories Tuesday — including right here in Texas — first has to get past Bernie Sanders, who exhibited a continuing feistiness while declaring victory of his own.

Sanders got thumped in many of the states across the South. He did win in Vermont, in Colorado, Utah and he won the big prize in California. He isn’t going anywhere. He is in the fight to the finish; at least that’s what he is saying.

I was heartened to see Biden lift himself off the deck with a stellar run of victories. He is a long way from being nominated. It remains an open question at this moment whether he or Sanders will have enough delegates to win the nomination without a floor fight at the convention. Part of me sort of yearns for an actual fight, something to return these nominating conventions to what they were intended to be when the parties conceived of them.

However, I remain committed to hoping that Joe Biden emerges from this campaign in shape to take on Donald Trump.

Peter is absolutely correct. The current president of the United States will stop at nothing to smear, sully and slander his foe. He already has sought foreign government help in undermining Joe Biden’s candidacy, an act that resulted in his impeachment by the House of Representatives. The Senate acquittal only will embolden him to commit even more outrageous acts.

I also remain hopeful that Joe Biden would prepare himself for the onslaught that would come at him full force. He does exhibit some nagging tendencies to commit unforced verbal errors. Those must end. Now! He has to be on top of his game.

However, the once-prohibitive favorite to be the Democratic nominee has retaken his frontrunner status in the race to face Donald Trump. He is far from the clear favorite, but the fight is on.

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What a difference a primary victory has made

A single primary victory in the Deep South has injected a once-moribund presidential campaign with a vigor and vitality that one could not have imagined.

Joe Biden won the South Carolina primary this past weekend and set up a Super Tuesday ballot performance that has many of our heads spinning.

As I watch the coverage of the primary states poll closing, I am struck by the victories being rolled up by Biden in states where he was given up for politically dead a week or two or ago.

I heard someone say tonight that U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, the South Carolina political icon whose endorsement of Biden is seen as the turning point in the former VP’s presidential campaign, could be named “secretary of any Cabinet agency he wants” in a Biden administration if such an event comes to pass.

Gosh, do ya think?

Well, they’re still counting the ballots. I don’t know how Super Tuesday will shake out. As I write this brief blog post, I am hopeful that Democrats across the nation have snapped out of their revolutionary mood and returned to some semblance of rationality and reason.

Joe Biden represents a sort of political comfort zone that I believe we will seek as we ponder who we want to lead us for the next four years. I have had more than enough of the stomach-churning uncertainty of Donald Trump.

Of all the candidates left standing among that once-gigantic Democratic Party primary field, Joe Biden appears at this moment to be the one who can restore the decency that once was the hallmark of our nation’s most exalted public office.

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Biden fits the bill for this old man

Joseph R. Biden Jr. got my vote today for president of the United States.

It is no surprise to readers of this blog. I waffled, wavered and wiggled a bit during the run-up to today’s Super Tuesday vote. In the end, though, I happen to fit into the demographic that is drawn to this fellow’s candidacy.

I once thought he was nearly finished as a candidate:

https://highplainsblogger.com/2019/11/painful-to-acknowledge-but-ex-vp-biden-likely-is-finished/

I am an older voter. I am a white guy. I consider myself to be a patriot. I am a veteran who once went to war for my country. I am retired. I live a quiet life in North Texas with my bride of more than 48 years. I am a one-time firebrand who once wanted to change the world with my single vote; that was a long time ago and I have grown out of that desire.

My keen interest today is in restoring the presidency to what I have grown up understanding it to represent. I believe Joseph Biden would do that for me.

We have been “treated” to more than three years of chaos, confusion, controversy … and contempt for the norms associated with the exalted office. I am tired of it and I want the presidency returned to the dignity the office demands.

I won’t belabor the point I have made already about Donald Trump’s unfitness for the office. I want to make another point, though: It is that Joe Biden, despite his verbal clumsiness and occasionally weird rhetoric, is profoundly fit to deliver the presidency from where Trump has dragged it.

As I ponder now where this primary race heads after today, it is my hope that Biden can collect more support along the way and that he can parlay that support into a presidential nomination … and then election.

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Democratic establishment gets its act together

Both major political parties have “establishment” wings.

The Republican establishment, sadly, has been co-opted and corrupted by Donald J. Trump and his fanatic base, the bloc of voters who think it’s OK to lie incessantly, to hurl insults and innuendo and to mock those with whom they disagree.

The Democratic establishment is being challenged by the far-left “progressive” wing of its party seeking to launch a “movement” that wants to toss aside an economic structure that has made this country so immensely wealthy.

The far-left wing of the Democratic Party is seeking to capture the presidential nomination and send a nominee, Bernie Sanders, against the godfather of the GOP fanatical wing, Donald Trump.

But wait! The Democratic establishment is beginning to come to its senses. Two center-left candidates for POTUS, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar have dropped out; they’re going to endorse their new main man, Joseph R. Biden Jr., tonight in Dallas.

I am hearing some chatter out there in social media land that the D establishment is trying to “steal” the nomination from Bernie. Poppycock! There is no theft involved when people are acting in good faith to back an individual they believe can actually win a political campaign against someone — namely the current president — who needs to lose the next election.

And, no, I do not include the zillionaire Michael Bloomberg among the party establishment; Bloomberg isn’t an actual Democrat. Elizabeth Warren is fading away after a stellar start.

Buttigieg’s withdrawal speech spoke to the need for unity. He spoke to the desire to return to a political structure that seeks compromise and cooperation. Does anyone believe the “movement” leader, Bernie Sanders, is able to reach across the yawning political divide to work with those on the other side? I am not one of them.

Thus, it is my considered opinion that Democratic establishment political figures know of the need that exists out there.

What’s more, both wings of the Democratic Party share a mutual desire to defeat the Republican in the White House.

My desire now is for the Democratic establishment to catch its breath and persuade the progressives to join them in the political battle they both want to win.

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Can the ‘Black Belt’ deliver for Biden in Alabama?

Take a look at this map. It is of Alabama. The blue counties depict those that Donald Trump carried in the 2016 presidential election; the counties in red show those that voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The red swath across the middle of Alabama is what is known as the “Black Belt.”

Check it out here.

I became aware of the Black Belt while visiting my dear friend and former colleague, the late Claude Duncan, in 1985. I had attended a conference in Atlanta and I stopped for a brief visit in Tuscaloosa, where Claude lived. We went to the race track one evening in Green County, the heart of the Black Belt, to bet on some greyhounds. We were among the very few white guys in the crowd.

Duncan told me how this part of Alabama is as reliably Democratic as many parts of Texas used to be before the Lone Star State converted from Democrat to Republican.

I thought of Claude the Saturday night as I watched Joe Biden pile up that big win in South Carolina, carried over the finish line after lapping the field on the backs of the African-American vote that rallied to the former vice president’s cause.

And then I thought of how Biden might fare in Alabama, which is one of 14 states voting Tuesday in the Democratic Party presidential primary, aka Super Tuesday.

There was a lot of talk about Biden’s “firewall” of African-American support in South Carolina. I am wondering now if the ex-VP can parlay that black voter support into a big payoff in Alabama and in other states with large numbers of African-American voters.

Greene County voted 82 percent for Hillary in 2016, even though only 4,880 ballots were cast. The Black Belt, though, contains many other more populous counties, such as Montgomery County, that also voted heavily for Clinton over Trump.

If Joe Biden can parlay a 60 percent black vote in South Carolina into something similar in Alabama, Tennessee and Arkansas on Super Tuesday, he might be able to withstand the onslaught of delegates Bernie Sanders is slated to win in California and New England.

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Money can’t buy love … or votes?

Tom Steyer thought money could buy him a path to the White House.

He was mistaken. The billionaire folded up his campaign tent after the South Carolina votes were cast and he ended up with 11 percent of the total, several miles behind the lead piled up by Joe Biden.

What now? What lies ahead for the other billionaire in the Democratic Party presidential primary campaign, Michael Bloomberg, the ninth-richest person on Earth, who’s already spent a half-billion of his own dollars on this race?

He hopes to do well on Tuesday, aka Super Tuesday. Will he win any of the states where he’s been airing all those TV ads, such as in Texas? I doubt it.

Bloomberg ought to rethink this exercise in futility as well.

The former New York mayor entered the race vowing to defeat Donald J. Trump. The way I see it, the longer he is in the contest siphoning off votes that could go to another centrist who actually can beat DJT — Joe Biden — the more he helps Trump than hinders his path to re-election.

Bloomberg has crashed and burned at two debates. He doesn’t play well live and in person. He looks disinterested, annoyed and cannot craft anything resembling the kind of sharp rhetoric one needs to develop a message.

Furthermore, I just am one Democratic-leaning voter who doesn’t believe he is faithful to the party to which he purports to belong. He ran for NYC mayor as a Republican; then he became an independent; now he’s a Democrat. He’s good on gun issues and on climate change. What else? Who knows?

As for Bernie Sanders, I do not want a “movement” leader or a “revolutionary” to carry the banner against Donald Trump. I much prefer a seasoned, veteran politician with a record of actual accomplishment to take the fight to the carnival barker in chief.

To my way of thinking, that would be Joe Biden.

We need to cull this field down immediately to the two men left standing: Biden and Bernie. Let pragmatism prevail over passion.