Tag Archives: Democrats

What will the polls tell us?

July 19, 2016 kanelis2012

Donald J. Trump has campaigned for the presidency while touting his standing in public opinion polls.

The media have followed his lead, reporting incessantly about his poll standing also while reporting on Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton’s poll standing as well.

Against that backdrop, I’ll offer this little bit of theory.

Whatever public opinion poll “bounce” that Trump gets from the Republican National Convention will be minimized almost immediately when the Democrats stage their convention … next week.

It’s a bit of an unusual juxtaposition, with the parties convening their conventions so close to each other.

The GOP convention got off to a raucous start today over some rules changes affecting delegate commitments, but it is concluding its first day tonight with the usual rah-rah one expects at these events.

Melania Trump delivered a fine speech supporting her husband; former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani fired the delegates up with his brand of fire and brimstone; the mother of the Benghazi victim hit Clinton hard.

Some polls are going to reflect positively for Trump once he received his party’s nomination.

Then the Democrats open their convention next week and we’re going to see the tables turned. Democrats will trot out all their applause lines, just as the Republicans have done today and will continue through the rest of the week.

The question then becomes: Will the Democrats or Republicans receive the bigger bounce once both conventions are adjourned?

My strong hunch is that the amount of whatever polling lift comes to Trump will depend to a h-u-u-u-u-g-e degree on the acceptance speech the nominee delivers.

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Really … a Sanders-Trump debate a bad idea

May 29, 2016 kanelis2012

I feel compelled to make an admission.

I was kidding when I sent out tweets that cheered the thought of a potential debate between Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and presumptive Republican nominee Donald J. Trump.

Yeah, I know. I shouldn’t kid about such serious matters.

One of these guys will be nominated by his party to run for president. It won’t be Sen. Sanders. It’s going to be the showman/carnival barker/rumor monger Trump.

The very idea of one guy who won’t be nominated debating the other guy who will is frankly preposterous — were you to ask me for my opinion.

Trump backed out, if you believe one version of how it came unraveled. He supposedly wanted Sanders to pay several million bucks up front. I’m not sure who would have gotten the dough.

But these debates ought to be reserved now — at this point in the campaign — for the individuals who’ll be nominated by the major parties. And, yes, if a third-party candidate gets enough public support, then invite that individual to take part, too.

So many conventional rules have been broken during this primary campaign. They start with the fact that Trump has survived this far into the GOP primary, given his unending string of insults, innuendo, lies and hourly flip-flops on controversial public policy statements.

The Republican and Democratic debates have been watched by the public not so much for the information one can glean from them, but for the entertainment value they bring to the serious process of nominating a presidential candidate.

Trump now has enough delegates in his pocket to be nominated in Cleveland. Clinton will have enough in her pocket very soon to get her party’s nomination in Philly.

Let’s focus now on how these two individuals are going to prep for what promises to be a series of barn burner debates.

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It’s over, Sen. Sanders

May 20, 2016 kanelis2012

Democrats and Republicans seem to operate under differing rules of political combat … in this presidential election cycle, at least.

Republicans opened the presidential primary campaign with 17 individuals seeking their party’s nomination. One of them remains. He is likely the most improbable candidate you ever could imagine.

Donald J. Trump is a man with zero public service record, a scatter-shot approach to what passes as foreign and/or domestic “policy” and a checkered personal history.

He’s the last man standing among all those Republicans.

Democrats opened their season with just five candidates. Three of them are now off the grid. Two are left: U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Clinton’s all but got her party’s nomination in the bag. Sanders is hanging on, cheered on by those big rallies.

So, here’s what I believe should happen: Sanders needs to call it a campaign. He’s made his point — repeatedly — about income inequality and Wall Street corruption. He’s not going to be nominated president.

It’s time for him to clear the field for Clinton to run against Trump — head to head.

Democratic gurus are growing a bit restive. They see these polls that show Clinton and Trump in a close race. They fear that the longer Sanders continues his sniping at Clinton, the more damage he inflicts on her chances to become the nation’s 45th president.

My own view is that this contest shouldn’t even be close.

Trump is patently — at virtually every level one can name — unfit to become president. Yet he continues to win cheers from those who think he “tells is it like it is.” They rally to his calls against what he calls “political correctness.” The man is a buffoon … yes, a wealthy one, but a buffoon nonetheless.

Clinton is far from the perfect candidate. But she’s been examined up close and personal for more than two decades. Her career — as first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state — has been dissected more carefully than a laboratory frog.

She continues to fend off the challenge from the remaining other Democrat in this contest.

The primary season is over, Sen. Sanders. You lost. Hillary Clinton won.

It’s time for Sen. Sanders to “suspend” his campaign and then start writing the fiery speech he plans to give at the Democratic Party’s presidential nominating convention this summer in Philadelphia.

As for Trump … well, uh, keep doing what you’re doing.

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Constitution silent about the nominating game

April 18, 2016 kanelis2012

All this yammering and yapping about the delegate selection process has given the 2016 presidential campaign its unique feel.

Interesting, to say the very least.

So-called Republican frontrunner Donald J. Trump is getting wiped out by Sen. Ted Cruz in these caucus states, resulting in Trump griping about the selection process. He calls it “rigged” against him.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders is wiping Hillary Rodham Clinton out in those caucuses, but can’t seem to make a serious dent in her delegate lead. She owes her lead at the moment to the “super delegates” who pledged to support her; these are the political heavy hitters who are free to declare their support for whomever they wish.

The U.S. Constitution doesn’t say a single word about the nominating process. This belongs to the parties exclusively. They make their own rules and force the candidates to play by them.

For that matter, the Constitution doesn’t even mention political parties. The founders wrote only in terms of governance.

We need not amend the Constitution to create a political party presidential selection system that everyone must follow.

How about, though, if the party bosses were to huddle along with selected members of their respective brain trusts to hammer out a uniform system that both parties could follow?

Is that so hard?

My first priority would be a way to apportion the delegate selection process for primaries and for caucuses that make sense for every state. Why not dole out the delegates in direct proportion to the votes they get in a primary election? But what the heck, perhaps the parties could follow the framework used in electing a president: Give the winning candidate all the delegates up for grabs in the primary state. If a candidate wins a state in the general election, he or she gets all the Electoral College votes in virtually every instance.

The caucuses also could be made uniform in those states that choose to select delegates in that fashion.

This whining and griping about delegate selection — which seems heightened this year by Trump — need not cloud the issue of the nominating process.

This is the most serious purely partisan political activity that occurs; I must add that it’s serious in spite of the picture of a 2008 Democratic convention delegate that accompanies this blog post. We do this only once every four years.

It seems we ought to be able to make these choices without quibbling and quarreling over whether the system is rigged.

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Now … about the Democratic wackiness

April 4, 2016 kanelis2012 1 Comment

Almost all the political chatter of the past, oh, six months has been about how Donald J. Trump turned his Republican Party primary presidential candidacy from a joke to a matter of serious discussion.

Who among you really thought this guy ever — in a zillion years — would achieve GOP frontrunner status when he declared his candidacy this past summer? I didn’t either.

He has. Trump is beginning to wobble, though, because his glaring lack of study of the issues is finally catching up to him. He’s likely to get hammered in Wisconsin on Tuesday. Then it’s on to New York, where he figures to do better, if not real well.

OK, enough of that.

Those Democrats have produced their share of campaign wackiness, too.

Let me ask you this one: Who out there really and truly thought at the beginning of her campaign that Hillary Rodham Clinton would be challenged as strongly as she’s been challenged by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont, the “democratic socialist”? I’m with you. I thought she was a shoo-in.

She’s been hammered by the right — as expected — over Benghazi, those “damn emails,” as Sanders has described them, and over an alleged lack of “authenticity.

But she’s also been pounded by the lefties. Those kids who’ve climbed aboard Bernie’s bandwagon because of his pledge to provide college education for everyone has helped lift this guy’s candidacy to heights never imagined when he started out.

Bernie well might win in Wisconsin this week. Then he goes to New York, which Clinton represented in the U.S. Senate after she served two terms as first lady.

Clinton’s task in Wisconsin is to keep the result fairly close; a blowout win by Sanders might light a serious wildfire in his campaign that could cause some serious trouble for Clinton in New York.

Clinton now has to win big in her “home state.” I put that in quotes because, as you know, she really didn’t spend much time there before being elected to the Senate in 2000. It’s that authenticity thing, aka “carpetbagging,” that keeps nipping at her.

Clinton remains miles ahead of Sanders in the delegate count. If she wins yu-u-u-u-u-ge in New York, then she is on track to sew the primary campaign up by the time it rolls around to California.

If she stumbles there after getting beat in Wisconsin, well, then we’ve got a different game.

Yesterday’s sure thing, thus, becomes a candidate in for the fight of her life.

Go figure.

I’m telling you that when historians over the next generation or two try to examine the impact of strange and weird presidential campaigns in this great country, they’re going to hold Campaign 2016 up as their starting point.

I’m not sure how it can get any stranger than what we’ve witnessed on both sides of the divide.

It probably will.

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‘Shame,’ ’embarrassment’ become campaign themes

March 28, 2016 kanelis2012

Oh, for shame!

The remaining men vying for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination appear to have become embarrassments to the very people whose support they will need this fall when one of them square off against the Democratic Party presidential nominee.

What in the world has become of the process that selects major-party nominees seeking to become the most powerful officeholder in the whole world?

It has become a sideshow, a circus act, a schoolyard fight, a proverbial food fight.

Voters should demand better of the candidates. Then again, perhaps they secretly like what they’re hearing and seeing.

The Republican side of this carnival act has been particularly disgraceful. And that is coming from Republicans who’ve watched it.

GOP pollster Frank Luntz asked viewers who watched one of the Republican debates, the one in Detroit, to summarize what they saw. The Washington Post reported: “Sophomoric,” “embarrassment,” “disappointing,” “shameful,” “despicable,” “angering” and “schoolyard brawl” were some of the responses he received during a broadcast on Fox News Channel.

As one Republican told the Post — and this guy is a Ted Cruz supporter — the candidates need to be talking about ISIS and the “loss of freedom.”

Instead, he noted, they were engaging in the kind of talk one hears on junior high school playgrounds.

Who and/or what is the culprit?

Have social media become the communications vehicle of choice for too many Americans? We appear to be relying on Twitter feeds and Facebook posts to learn things — most of it irrelevant to actual policy — about these candidates.

Have their been too many of these Republican and Democratic primary debates? It might be that the candidates have run out of creative ways to argue the fine points of policy and have been left to resort to the kind of shameful name-calling and ridicule we’ve been hearing.

Do the candidates themselves deserve blame? Pundits keep talking about Donald J. Trump’s lack of depth and his mastery of media manipulation. Then there’s the belief among many that he is a barely closeted sexist, xenophobe and racist. The response from Ted Cruz to Trump’s insults has been, well, less than stellar as well.

The campaign should have been dignified. It has been everything except that.

These individuals are seeking to become commander in chief of the world’s greatest military machine. They want to become head of state of what many of us believe is the greatest nation ever created. They seek to lead a nation of 300-plus million citizens into a still-uncertain future.

And this is what we’re getting?

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Likability vs. irascibility

February 17, 2016 kanelis2012

The Hill is reporting a story that seems to define — for me, at least — just how confusing and confounding this election cycle has become.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is trying to enhance her likability. She’s taking selfies with voters and celebrities. Remember when Sen. Barack Obama told her during a 2008 campaign debate that “You’re likable enough, Hillary”? Apparently not this time around.

She’s fighting image woes that seem to suggest she isn’t authentic, let alone likable.

Do her Democratic primary voters want her to become warm and fuzzy? Do they insist that she show her grandmotherly side more often? I have no clue.

Read the link.

Now, for the Republicans.

Likability isn’t part of the formula that’s propelled Donald J. Trump to the top of the GOP presidential candidate heap.

He’s not likable. Frankly, for my taste, he’s not a lot of things: He’s not presidential; he’s not sophisticated; he’s not grounded in a philosophy other than, say, narcissism.

But there he is. He’s leading South Carolina’s GOP primary polls after threatening to sue Ted Cruz over whether he’s qualified to run for office; after saying President Bush “lied” to get us into the Iraq War; after insulting candidates, a bona fide war hero, disabled people, voters, media types . . . anyone within earshot.

I’m not sure what this might say about any possible differences between Democratic and Republican “base” voters. I hope it doesn’t reveal that Democrats inherently are softer and that Republicans just as inherently love nastiness.

But now I’m beginning to wonder.

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Time to get back into the game

December 28, 2015 kanelis2012

That was a nice break from the presidential political campaign.

It’s now over.

High Plains Blogger has been pretty quiet for the past few weeks on the goings-on related to the Democratic and Republican campaigns for the White House. The intent was to stay quiet during the Christmas holiday. I had given thought to maintaining the moratorium through New Years Day. I admit it: I can’t do it.

So, I’ll be getting back in the game.

* * *

The Iowa caucuses are coming up, followed quickly by the New Hampshire primary.

Donald J. Trump continues to lead the GOP pack, although for the life of me I remain baffled to the max as to what’s going on with Republican voters. I keep hearing and reading things about how Trump has changed the rules of the campaign. How he’s rewriting the playbook.

The more offensive he is toward his primary foes, the better it goes for the guy. I thought he was toast at the very beginning when he denigrated Sen. John McCain’s heroic service during the Vietnam War. Good grief, the list of insults has grown beyond my ability to remember them all.

But … by golly he remains at the top of the heap.

The Democrats? It’s still Hillary Clinton’s contest to lose (although I’ve never quite understood that phrase; I’ll just use it anyway, because it’s what pundits keep saying).

I’m going to be watching and waiting for Trump to say the one thing that sends his campaign into the crapper. It might not be a single utterance, though, that dooms his weird campaign. It might be an accumulation of things that will dawn on GOP primary voters when they finally get the chance to cast actual ballots.

They’ll need to ask: Is this the guy we really and truly want to nominate to become the 45th president of the United States of America?

If it’s going to be Trump, well, as Hillary Clinton herself as said: Fasten your seatbelts.

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Executive orders go with the job

December 11, 2015 kanelis2012

Presidents serve as the nation’s “chief executive” and, therefore, have the constitutional authority that goes with the title.

An interesting graph came across my radar this afternoon. It comes with a year-old story, but it’s still rather fascinating.

Republicans have been pummeling President Obama by alleging that he’s too quick to issue executive orders, that he circumvents Congress too willingly.

The graph tells a fascinating tale of just how the 44th president has under-utilized the executive authority granted to him by the U.S. Constitution.

Take a look at the graph. You’ll see a number of interesting things.

One is an obvious point. President Franklin Roosevelt is the all-time champ at issuing presidential executive orders. No surprise there: He served three full terms and was elected to a fourth term before dying in office in April 1945.

It’s interesting, though, to look at who’s No. 2 in the executive authority rating. It’s FDR’s immediate predecessor, President Hoover, who served just one term.

A Democrat is No. 1, a Republican is No. 2, while Democratic President Woodrow Wilson is a close third.

That power-hungry and allegedly “lawless” 44th president, Barack H. Obama? He’s issued the fewest executive orders since President Grover Cleveland. (I’ll add here that the numbers of presidential executive orders are as of Oct. 20, 2014.)

So, I guess my question is this: What’s the beef with the current president’s use of the executive authority?

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Boehner is burning key congressional bridge

September 28, 2015 kanelis2012

John Boehner is showing some spunk now that he’s a declared short-timer in the halls of Congress.

The speaker of the House of Representatives announced his planned resignation from Congress, effective Oct. 30. He’s weary of the constant fighting with TEA Party members of his GOP caucus.

Then there’s word he might become a lobbyist after waiting a year, per House rules for former lawmakers.

So, what does he do? He starts torching the “false prophets” who gave him so much hell as he tried to manage the House’s legislative agenda.

Those “false prophets” well could become potential sources for the clients he would represent lobbying for their interests in the halls of Congress.

What’s up, then, with the speaker burning that key bridge?

It might be that Boehner could spend the next year campaigning for more moderate and, dare I say, reasonable Republicans. Those individuals, then, could be his target audience as he starts lobbying them for legislation favorable to whomever he hopes to represent.

Speaker Boehner has liberated himself from the shackles of trying to please the multi-faceted elements within his own political party, let alone trying to find common ground with congressional Democrats, who are angry with him for kowtowing to the TEA Party in the first place.

You go, Mr. Speaker!

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