Tag Archives: 2016 election

political news, State news

Early vote numbers look like a record-breaker

Texans appear to be answering the call.

Final unofficial early vote totals for this year’s midterm election tell a potentially amazing story that might portend a record year in Texas electoral history.

About 4.9 million Texans have voted early. That number exceeds the total number of ballots cast in the 2014 midterm election. We still have Election Day awaiting us Tuesday. There will be a chance, therefore, for Texans not only to smash the previous midterm vote record to smithereens, but also to approach presidential election year vote totals.

Who knows? Maybe we’ll break the 2016 turnout.

Conventional political wisdom suggests that big midterm election turnouts traditionally bode well for Democrats. I am hoping that’s the case, not just in Texas but around the country. The U.S. House is poised to flip from Republican to Democratic control next January. That gives the so-called “other party” a chance at controlling legislative flow in one congressional chamber. The Senate remains a high hurdle, a steep hill for Democrats to clear.

But … there’s a flicker of hope — based on those early vote totals in Texas — that Democrats might be able to flip a Republican seat. It remains a long shot, from all that I can gather. Beto O’Rourke is mounting a stiff and stern challenge against Ted Cruz. The young Democratic congressman from El Paso has trudged through all 254 Texas counties, telling voters they should support him rather than the Republican incumbent.

I am one of those Texans who will vote Tuesday for O’Rourke. My hope is that there will be enough other Texans who will join me. Cruz long has been seen — even by many of his Senate colleagues — as a self-centered egotist far more interested in his own ambition than in the people he was elected in 2012 to serve.

O’Rourke has pledged, from what I understand, to serve his entire six-year Senate term if elected; Cruz has declined to make that pledge if he is re-elected. What does that tell you? It tells me the Cruz Missile is considering whether to launch another presidential bid in 2020, even against his new BFF, Donald Trump, who he once called a “sniveling coward” and an “amoral” and “pathological liar.”

Are we going to break records Tuesday? I do hope so.

national news

Obama asks: Why are the winners still angry?

Yamiche Alcindor, a correspondent for PBS, posted this Twitter message earlier today.

Pres Obama as protesters heckle him in Miami: “Why is it that the folks who won the election are so mad all the time? … Like when I won the presidency, at least my side felt pretty good. It tells you something interesting, that even the folks that are in charge are still mad.”

The former president ventured to South Florida to campaign for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillem and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, another Democrat.

He encountered hecklers. He engaged them directly.  The former president does pose an interesting question. The folks who oppose him and the candidates he supports are those who won the 2016 election.

They and their political party control the White House and both legislative chambers of Congress. They’re in charge! It’s their show!

Yet they’re still angry? What gives?

national news, political news

Clinging to a hint of conventional wisdom

Donald John Trump’s election as president of the United States should have taught us all a valuable lesson.

It would to be toss conventional wisdom straight into the crapper.

A first-time candidate for any public office had no business defeating a former first lady, former U.S. senator and former secretary of state. But he did. He whipped Hillary Rodham Clinton. Not by a lot. But he won.

That all said, I am going to cling to a bit of conventional wisdom as the 2018 midterm election comes hurtling toward us. It is this: 29 million ballots were cast nationally in early voting, compared to 21 million early votes cast prior to Election Day 2014. The conventional wisdom holds that the bigger the turnout the better it is for Democratic Party candidates.

This could portend a good thing for the immediate future of our system of government.

I know what you’re thinking. Sure, you’d say that. You’re a Democratic partisan. You’re biased toward those weak-kneed, socialist-leaning Democrats. You’ve stated your bias against the president. You can’t get over the fact that he was elected president.

Actually, my bias rests with divided government. Yes, I am unhappy that Trump won. I wanted Hillary Clinton to be elected president and I would support again today if I had the chance.

I’ll continue to rail against the president for as long as he holds the office to which he was elected legitimately and according to the U.S. Constitution.

However, good government needs a better form of “checks and balance” to stem the tide that Trump is trying to ride. He has hijacked the Republican Party and has turned into the Party of Trump. It’s now a party that foments fear, incivility, prejudice. It speaks Trump’s language. By that I suggest that absent any serious dissent from within the GOP’s congressional ranks, Trump is virtually unfettered, given that the GOP controls both congressional chambers.

That well might change after the midterm election. The House of Representatives appears likely to swing into Democratic control. The Democrats will handle the committee gavels. Democrats will decide the flow of legislation. Democrats will call the shots in the People’s House.

Moreover, they will act as a careful check against the Republican stampede that Trump wants to trigger.

Tax cuts for the wealthy? Slashing Medicare and Medicaid? Appropriating money to build that damn wall across our southern border? If Trump and the GOP maintain control of Congress — both House and Senate — the game is over. If Democrats manage to wrest control of the chamber where tax matters originate, then we’ve got a chance that Trump will be taught a lesson in how divided government works.

Conventional wisdom might be an endangered species. It’s still alive and breathing. It well might rise again to help produce a federal government that actually works.

If you haven’t voted already, you have a big day awaiting you next Tuesday. Be sure your voice is heard.

national news

‘Overwhelming victory’? Actually, no … not even close

I have given Sarah Huckabee Sanders the benefit of the doubt during her time as White House press secretary.

She’s got a tough job, speaking for a president who lies out of both sides of his mouth. I didn’t actually believe Sanders was a fellow liar, incapable of telling the truth. Until just recently.

She declared at a press briefing that Donald Trump won an “overwhelming victory” in the 2016 presidential election.

Oh, my. Sigh. I want to revisit a matter that I’ve looked at already. It just needs a revisiting.

Donald Trump collected nearly 3 million fewer popular votes than Hillary Rodham Clinton. The totals are: Trump, 62,985,134, or 45.93 percent; Clinton, 65,853,652, or 48.02 percent. Clinton won the popular vote by a significant margin, although she didn’t win an outright majority of popular ballots.

Trump won the Electoral College vote — which is where it matters — by a 304-227 margin. He needed 270 electoral votes to be elected.

Overwhelming margin? Let’s see. If three swing states that Trump won — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — had flipped fewer than 80,000 votes, Clinton would have won the Electoral College by three votes and, thus, would have been elected president.

OK, please let me stipulate — once again — that Trump was elected legitimately. I believe in the Electoral College and I don’t want it repealed. Trump managed to pull off one of the nation’s most historic upsets by campaigning in precisely the right states at precisely the right time in a hard-fought, bitter and nasty campaign.

The president keeps casting his victory in historic terms. He keeps saying he won handily. He didn’t. Sarah Sanders knows he didn’t. I know he didn’t and if he’s honest with himself — even if he cannot be honest with the rest of us — Donald Trump knows it, too.

In a way, Trump’s victory was historic in at least one sense. Damn few so-called “experts” thought he’d win. He did. Despite having no public service experience, let alone any interest in it prior to running for president, Trump was elected to the only public office he’s ever sought.

Overwhelming victory? Not even close. So, Mme. Press Secretary, stop repeating that lie.

State news

Due process anyone? Anyone?

Hey, what happened to due process, the presumption of innocence, the, um, rule of law?

Ted Cruz, the Republican running for re-election to the U.S. Senate in Texas, fired off a real knee-slapper Tuesday night in response to a supporter yelling “Lock him up!” in reference to Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke.

“Well, you know, there’s a double-occupancy cell with Hillary Clinton,” Cruz said. “Y’all are gonna get me in trouble with that,” he added at a campaign rally in Georgetown, Texas.

Doesn’t that just crack you up? That guy is hilarious, man!

Hillary Clinton was the object of GOP mobs yelling “Lock her up!” during the 2016 presidential campaign. They were just so darn angry over that email matter, Benghazi and other assorted fabricated crimes that they were ready to send her in shackles to the nearest — or farthest — penitentiary possible.

Now it’s Beto O’Rourke feeling the Republicans’ burn as he campaigns against the Cruz Missile.

I am unaware of anything in O’Rourke’s history that would prompt such a ridiculous shout-out from a Cruz clown.

Oh, but hey. That’s just politics … I guess.

national news

Call it a day, Sen. Sanders

I am going to admit that I ain’t feelin’ the Bern.

There’s chatter churning out there that U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who aligns with the Democrats, is considering another presidential run in 2020.

Please! No! Not again!

Sanders sang a one-note aria while running for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2016: It centered on income inequality and how the “1 percent is holding the vast majority of wealth” in this country.

I supported Hillary Clinton’s candidacy over Bernie Sanders, mainly because I felt uncomfortable with Sanders’s lack of stated understanding of the whole range of foreign and domestic issues that any president confronts.

Now he’s considering another run at it. A Politico story tells how he is setting up a showdown with U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who’s also considering a presidential run in two years.

I’m not yet sure who should get the party’s nomination to challenge Donald Trump for the presidency, assuming he runs for re-election.

Sen. Sanders is nowhere to be found on my list of preferred candidates. It has nothing to do with his acknowledgment of being what he calls a “democratic socialist.” I do agree in part with his view that too few people in this country control too much wealth. I do not believe his notion of providing a free public college/university education for all Americans is even possible, let alone reasonable.

He’s had his run. He came up short in 2016. I still believe the Democratic Party’s best chance at winning the White House rests with someone fresh and new.

Sen. Sanders is neither of those things.

Don’t do it, Bernie.

national news

Don’t keep the findings secret, Mr. Special Counsel

There’s some chatter developing about the conclusions that special counsel Robert Mueller might reach at the end of his investigation into what Donald Trump referred to as “the Russia thing.”

It goes something like this: There might not be an explosive finding that spells the end of Donald Trump’s administration; moreover, Mueller might not allow the findings to be made public.

None of us can control the first part. The second part, about secrecy, we can. I want to urge the special counsel to make damn sure the public gets to see the conclusions he draws.

My goodness! The Department of Justice charged Mueller with determining whether there was any “collusion” between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian operatives who hacked into our electoral system and sought to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The DOJ is our agency. It runs on our tax money. We are the bosses. We have a right — if not a need — to know the investigation’s outcome and how Mueller and his legal team reached it.

As Politico reports: “That’s just the way this works,” said John Q. Barrett, a former associate counsel who worked under independent counsel Lawrence Walsh during the Reagan-era investigation into secret U.S. arms sales to Iran. “Mueller is a criminal investigator. He’s not government oversight and he’s not a historian.”

But he is operating on the public’s time and on its dime.

To my way of thinking, that entitles the public to know the outcome and how Mueller’s team reached its conclusion.

national news

Keep it civil, Hillary

I have been on a mission quest for more political civility. It won’t end any time soon. I now want to issue some advice to a woman who should have won the 2016 presidential election, but who got the surprise of her political life.

Hillary Rodham Clinton needs an attitude check.

Clinton has told interviewers the time for civil public debate will occur when and if Democrats win control of Congress after next month’s midterm election. Until then? All bets are off, she says.

Republicans only understand “strength,” she said. She said Democrats cannot deal with a political party that won’t adhere to a code of civil discourse and debate.

The only option, according to the World of Hillary, is to take the fight straight to the GOP. Hit them as hard as they hit you, she said.

C’mon, Mme. Secretary/former senator/former first lady! 

That kind of attitude only begets more anger. It is unbecoming of someone who had my vote in 2016. Just for the record, I don’t regret for one second — or an instant! — casting my presidential vote for Hillary Clinton.

My hope is that we can return sooner rather than later to a time when Democrats and Republicans can work together, rather than at cross purposes. I want a return to an era when Republican lawmakers, such as the late Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois, locked arms with Democratic presidents, such as the late Lyndon Johnson. Or when Democratic lawmakers, such as the late Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, did the same with Republican presidents, such as George W. Bush.

Dirksen and Johnson helped forge the Voting Rights and Civil Rights acts; Kennedy and Bush helped formulate sweeping education reform.

These days, the two sides lob grenades at each other from a distance. That is not in the interest of good government.

I remain a bit of an idealist on this, but I believe one of the political parties can set the example for the other one to follow. If Hillary is right, that the GOP only understands “strength,” the remedy could be to show the other side an ability and willingness to bridge the great divide.

national news

Just remember: Trump actually won in 2016

It is useful to put a few things in perspective as we watch the 2018 midterm election campaign reach its merciful conclusion.

The “Blue Wave” that everyone is saying will happen well might develop. A lot of Republican-held seats in the House of Representatives are going to flip to Democratic control. I am willing to buy into that notion. What I am not yet certain about is whether there will be enough of a flip to hand control of the lower chamber to the Democrats.

Yeah, I know. All the pundits, experts, prognosticators and talking heads say the wave will sweep the GOP out of control of the House. Democrats will take the gavel for the first time since 2011, they say.

Sure. I hope so. I do not like the direction that Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans are taking the country. I want at least one congressional chamber to belong to the other party.

The Senate remains even more iffy for Democrats.

I had some hope that Beto O’Rourke was going to win a Senate seat in Texas from Ted Cruz. My throbbing trick knee tells me it ain’t gonna happen. It’ll be close, or so they say. I’m not predicting anything, mind you. My predicting days are over. They should have ended long before the 2016 presidential election.

Which brings me to the final point.

Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 upset all the predictors’ expectations. How in the name of Electoral College victory he did it remains a bit of a mystery to me. I do recognize that he tapped into some wellspring of resentment that had been gathering in voters’ hearts. He talked their language. He spoke directly to them.

Not to me. I am just a single voter sitting out here in Flyover Country/Trump Land.

But I am going to recognize that for a first-time politician — remember that Trump never campaigned for a single public office before seeking the presidency — Trump is beginning to master the art of revving up his base. Moreover, he has hijacked the heart and soul of a once-great political party and turned it into something no one recognizes as the actual Republican Party.

It’s a sickening development. However, it’s real. And it gives me pause as the midterm campaign staggers to its finish.

I am hoping for the best. I won’t fear for the worst. I just believe the country might have to settle for something in between. What should be a Democratic tsunami could become something less formidable.

Why? Because the Republicans are led by a demagogue who has persuaded them that it’s somehow OK to have a president who doesn’t know what the hell he is doing.

political news

Trump adviser: Don’t listen to ‘experts’ Blue Wave prediction

It’s not every day that you’ll read words of agreement from High Plains Blogger regarding senior Donald Trump administration adviser Kellyanne Conway.

However, she makes an important point. The same “experts” who are predicting a “Blue Wave” in this  year’s midterm election also predicted a Hillary Clinton landslide victory in 2016. Conway, who was Trump’s presidential campaign manager, reminds us that the election didn’t turn out the way the “experts” predicted it would.

Her message? Don’t listen to the prognosticators because, she says, they don’t know what they’re talking about.

You haven’t heard me predict a Democratic wipeout of Republicans in 2018. I’ve expressed some hope it would happen.

Trump’s victory two years ago caught a lot of observers by complete surprise. I was one of them who was shocked and dismayed by what transpired in November 2016. It also taught me a lesson: Don’t ever in a million years count Donald Trump out when he’s in the middle of a political brawl.

I’m not sure about the size of the Democratic wave that is forming out there. The Brett Kavanaugh hearing about his confirmation to the Supreme Court supposedly galvanized and energized the Trump GOP “base.” It also did the same thing to the Democrats’ base as well.

The question: Which political “base” is more organized as well as being more passionate about who controls Congress?

I suggest we take Kellyanne Conway’s advice to heart and understand that the “experts” who thought Hillary Clinton would win just might be blowing smoke in advance of the midterm election.

Then again … I hope they’re right and Conway is wrong.