Tag Archives: DNC

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Way to go, Joe

I am joining the chorus of Joe Biden supporters to declare that Thursday night’s presidential nomination acceptance speech, while perhaps not a grand slam home run, could pass as a stand-up triple.

I am giving the Democratic presidential nominee credit for stepping up his game, for offering a glimpse into the future he foresees if he gets elected president and for reminding us — without overdoing the rancor — that Donald Trump has failed in his primary mission as president, which is to protect Americans.

The former vice president had a big hurdle to clear. It was erected the previous night by vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris and, of course, by former President Barack Obama and their respective speeches to the nation.

Biden cleared the hurdle. I am more than satisfied with how he comported himself and how he delivered an important message to those of us who wanted to hear what the nominee had to say.

My major takeaway? Joe Biden intends to lead us out of the darkness and into the light.

Even on his best days, Donald Trump cannot stop alleging that America has lost its way, that we no longer were great, strong and economically healthy when he took office. Trump has told those myriad lies for too long.

Joe Biden reminded us that the pandemic needed Trump’s attention from the very beginning. As a result of his early denials of the seriousness of the COVID crisis, we have lost too many American lives and seen too many more infected by the killer virus.

Trump and the Republicans get their turn next week. They, too, will conduct a virtual convention, with Trump set to accept his party’s nomination with a speech delivered from the White House.

I’ll state it once more: My mind is made up. There is no way on God’s precious and fragile Earth that Trump will earn my support. However, I intend to watch the Republican show if only to see how they intend to defend the indefensible … which is Donald Trump’s record in the only public office he ever had sought.

national news, political news

Most important … ever?

(AP Photo/John Minchillo)

We hear it every presidential election cycle, about how “this election is the most important in our lifetime … or in the past century … or in the history of our glorious republic.”

Take your pick. It’s one or some or all of them, right?

Well, I happen to think the election we’re about to conduct might qualify as the most important election ever. As in ever in the history of the great nation we love and cherish!

Donald J. Trump became president by trading on voters’ unhappiness with the “status quo,” whatever that meant. What the nation got has been a lesson in chaos, confusion, incompetence, disloyalty and an obsession with hostile dictators at the expense of our national intelligence community.

Who would think they ever would hear a president trash his predecessors’ records in the White House while extolling the “love letters” he receives from a murderous Marxist dictator? Moreover, who would have thought that another dictator would stand accused of paying bounties on the lives of American service personnel and our commander in chief would refuse to punish him; the president has betrayed the oath he took to protect the men and women he sends into battle.

Joseph Biden stands poised — I hope! — to remove Donald Trump from the White House, a place he never should have been allowed to enter, let alone as president of the United States.

I have tried to make a singular point about Donald Trump, which is that this individual’s entire adult life — all of if! — has been focused solely on enriching Trump. Public service has been totally foreign to him. We now are witnessing the consequences of what I have sought to tell readers of this blog. He doesn’t comprehend the public service aspect of his job.

As President Barack Obama noted in his speech Wednesday night, Trump views his office as a “transactional” endeavor, meaning that he would enact public policy in exchange for favorable treatment.

That is not good government. It is not in keeping with public service at any level, let alone at the highest level possible.

Yes, we are faced with a monumental election in just a few weeks. Americans who were fed up with the status quo now have learned what they got. They got a president who doesn’t know what he’s doing, he doesn’t care to learn anything about the office he occupies or the limits built into it.

We need to rid ourselves of a president who is endangering the very democratic principles he took an oath to protect.

Is this the most important election we’ll ever decide? It looks like the real thing to me.

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Barack Obama delivers

Barack Hussein Obama delivered the goods and laid them directly at the feet of Donald John Trump.

Those goods contained a fairly detailed recital of precisely why — in my own view — Trump is unfit for the office he holds and why former President Obama’s “brother,” Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., deserves to be elected the next president of the United States.

The media are making quite a lot of the “unprecedented” nature of a former president taking a sitting president to task so directly and so harshly. Hmm. Well, my own sense is that Trump merely is reaping what he has sown.

Why? I consider equally unprecedented the level of direct criticism, denigration and disparagement that the current president has laid on his immediate predecessor. I feel the need to point out that President Obama had remained essentially silent in the face of those unfair and unwarranted attacks … until now!

Obama said Trump has failed to grow into the office. He has failed to grasp the gravity of the awesome responsibility he inherited when he walked into the Oval Office. He said Trump has failed to rein in his angry impulses, failed to cease labeling foes as the “enemy.”

Yes, the 44th president delivered the goods. As did Sen. Kamala Harris, the VP nominee who’s running with Biden against Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

What’s next? Joe Biden has a steep hill to climb tonight when he accepts his party’s presidential nomination. He will need to at worst to meet the level that Obama and Harris reached with their speeches.

Biden has a stirring and compelling personal story, full of heartache and tragedy and perseverance. We know the story. He needs now to tell us where he intends to lead the nation if he becomes elected as our 46th president.

I am all ears, Joe. Talk to me.

political news

Not missing convention noise

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Given the nature of presidential nominating conventions and their evolution from actual conventions to televised infomercials, I am prepared to say that I do not necessarily miss all the trappings of the way the conventions used to be piped into my living room.

The Democrats have nominated Joe Biden as their 2020 presidential candidate; they’re about to select Kamala Harris as Biden’s running mate.

They’re doing all this remotely, per the conditions brought on the COVID pandemic.

We’re getting the speeches, the TV spots extolling the candidates, the testimonials. Just like before. The only thing missing is the thunderous applause in the convention hall and the sight of delegates cavorting on the floor of the place wearing the goofy hats and buttons.

I get the drift of what the Democratic Party is trying to tell us. Next week the Republican Party will do its thing. They’re both going to be “virtual” conventions. The one big difference will be that Donald Trump will make his acceptance speech in the White House, a publicly owned, federal building that is supposed to be exempt from partisan political activity. Aww, but what the heck. Trump doesn’t give a rip about risking federal employees to potential criminal liability by making them violate the Hatch Act, which prohibits them from participating in partisan activity.

But … the beat goes on. We’ll have two presidential tickets named after next week. We have broken from the normal way we usually do these things. It’s still legitimate.

Now comes the rest of it, which is the sprint to the finish.

May the better ticket win. Oh, and I hope with every fiber of my being that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris cross the finish line first.

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Why the squabble over GOP support?

I hear that some Democrats are miffed because their virtual presidential nominating committee includes testimonials for Joe Biden from, get ready for it, Republicans.

My answer: Get used to it.

The presumed Democratic presidential nominee is known as a bipartisan kind of guy. He worked across the aisle during his 36 years as a U.S. senator from Delaware. As vice president, he did the same thing, working with Republican legislators on critical fiscal matters.

That the Democratic presidential nominee would welcome the endorsement of Republicans is no surprise. One of his best friends in the Senate was the late John McCain, the Republican Vietnam War hero. McCain was no fan of Donald Trump. The late senator’s wife, Cindy, is going to line up behind her friend Joe Biden’s candidacy.

So has former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, former EPA administrator and New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, former U.S. Rep. Susan Molinari and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Democrats who are grumbling about the infusion of Republicans standing up for the Democratic nominee need to get over themselves.

Their party is on the verge of nominating someone who knows the value of compromise and who uses that concept to further the cause of good government legislation.

The nation needs more of the bipartisan spirit that Joe Biden seeks to bring to the office of president of the United States.

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Time of My Life, Part 50: Virtual meeting triggers memory

I intend to watch most of the Democratic and Republican presidential nominating conventions … such as they are.

They are “virtual” affairs, with no delegates, no applause, no balloon drops. The nominees — Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and Donald Trump and Mike Pence — will deliver their acceptance speeches with no fans to cheer them on.

But these events that occur every four years do remind me of the two political conventions I was able to attend while working for a daily newspaper. The Beaumont Enterprise, in the Golden Triangle region of Texas, sent me to New Orleans in 1988 and to Houston in 1992 to cover and comment on two Republican national conventions.

I have to say that rarely have I had so much fun doing my job.

The COVID crisis has put a damper on the spectacle of these conventions. I hope the parties are able to resume them in 2024 and beyond. Why? Because they are so uniquely American in their atmosphere.

I have long been amazed at how grown men and women who gather in a convention hall to do some of the most serious business imaginable in a representative democracy can don goofy hats, adorn their clothing with buttons, drape bunting around their necks and carry on like school children. But they do all of that while nominating candidates to become president of the U.S. of A.

I was privileged to watch two of these events up close, first in the Superdome and then in the Astrodome.

In 1988, President Reagan strode to the podium to deliver a ringing endorsement of Vice President Bush, who was the party’s presidential nominee that year. After speaking to the adoring crowd, he and Nancy Reagan stood to accept the applause, then walked back toward the rear of the stage. I was sitting in the press gallery behind the podium and, so help me, the president and I made eye contact as he walked off the stage.

I got to meet the likes of Chris Matthews and the late Cokie Roberts. In 1988 in New Orleans I made the acquaintance of a young business executive named George W. Bush as we rode the elevator together up several floors. He asked me for my name and where I worked. I told him. He said, “Oh yeah, I’ve heard of you.” Do I believe he was sincere? I’ll just take him at his word. Besides, it did make for interesting convention chatter with my colleagues.

The virtual conventions will deprive journalists of the kind of excitement I had the pleasure of enjoying.

I will await the day when the pandemic recedes and we can return to some semblance of normal life. Political conventions just aren’t the same without all the hustle, bustle and real-time tussle.

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The moment swept me away

I find myself at times trying to avoid getting caught up in moments when I see things occurring in real time.

It happened to me Monday night watching the opening of the Democratic National Committee’s virtual presidential nominating convention.

I have no need to stipulate that I want Joe Biden to become the next president. Oops! I just did!

Watching the assorted celebrities, politicians and oh yes, former first lady Michelle Obama make their case for why Biden is the right man at the right time to correct the wrong policies that Donald Trump has enacted almost swept me out of my chair.

The first night event was quite stirring, with testimonials from pandemic victims’ loved ones, from Republican politicians speaking on behalf of a Democratic politician. I also must give a shout out to the spine-tingling way the DNC presented the singing of the National Anthem.

I am left to wonder: How are the Republicans going to top this? How does Trump make anyone apart from the fervent base feel better about re-electing him as president? What is he going to say? How is he going to say it?

I am acutely aware that the Republican National Committee has its share of marketing geniuses and gurus. They’ll put on a show, too. Right now I am having difficulty imagining how they will top what the Democrats are prepared to deliver as the 2020 presidential campaign kicks into high gear.

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Time for a vision

There won’t be cheering crowds. No balloon drops. No demonstrations of delegates wearing goofy hats and festooned with buttons of all sizes, colors and slogans.

No. The Democratic National Convention is going to be a “virtual” event with speakers talking to the nation from their own living rooms, or their dens, or their basements.

What has to happen at this event, in my humble view, is not unique to this uniquely delivered political event. What we need is to hear a vision for the future from presidential nominee Joe Biden, from vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris and from the assortment of speakers who will talk to us over the course of the next four days.

You see, that element has existed in political conventions going back through the history of our great and beloved republic.

I do not expect to hear a futuristic vision from Donald Trump, the Republican whose party convention occurs next week. Trump is trading on division and disunity, on distrust of others and on fear. I look for him to keep beating that drum all the way to the election.

What’s left for Democrats? They have to lay out a plan for how they intend to fix what Trump has damaged. Trump has wrecked our international alliances; he was impeached over his attempts to bribe a foreign leader for dirt on Joe Biden; he has sought to dismantle environmental protections; Trump has threatened to deport U.S. residents who came here as children because their parents sneaked into the country without proper documentation.

The Democrats’ strategy is as traditional as any part of this nominating process that hasn’t been altered by the coronavirus pandemic. They need to speak plainly and honestly to Americans who will tune in.

I will be one of them. I am awaiting a message of hope and revival and I damn sure don’t need a cheering crowd to persuade me to prefer their message over the fear-mongering that will come from Donald Trump.

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Cease-fire? Really?

The Joe Biden-Kamala Harris presidential ticket has made a pledge it might have difficulty keeping.

They have declared a “partisan cease-fire” while Donald Trump is mourning the death of his brother, Robert. It’s a grand gesture, showing a brand of empathy and compassion we complain has been lacking in the current president.

But how are Joe Biden and Kamala Harris going to avoid taking shots at Trump while their political party stages its virtual convention in Milwaukee beginning on Monday?

Presidential nominating conventions by definition are the most partisan events imaginable. Speakers usually spend their podium time trashing the folks in the other party. You know?

Well, let’s just see how this plays out.

Donald Trump certainly is entitled to an appropriate amount of time to mourn his brother’s death. However, politics awaits.

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‘I’ll look at it’

There you go. The president of the United States had a chance this week to shoot down in flames the latest lie about a politician who happens to be “of color,” that she somehow isn’t constitutionally qualified to run for public office.

Instead, Donald Trump said “I’ll look at it.” The “it” being reports that U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, a California Democrat who is now set to be nominated as her party’s vice-presidential candidate, was born somewhere other than the United States.

This is a racist rant that needs to be plowed under. Why in the name of presidential statesmanship doesn’t Donald Trump do so? Well, I know why. It’s because he is no statesman. Trump is a racist chump who trades on innuendo and invective.

Moreover, Trump is a card-carrying member of the lunatic/wack job/fruitcake/racist wing of what used to be a great political party.

Trump, you’ll recall fomented a similar lie about President Obama. Then he surrendered, offering a tepid “He’s a citizen of the United States” response to a question about the birther lie.

For the record, Sen. Harris is the daughter of a Jamaican man and an Indian woman. They met in California. They got married and they produced a daughter. Little Kamala came into this world in Oakland. Calif., in 1964. There. She’s a U.S. citizen. She is fully qualified. End of argument, yes?

Hardly. It will continue for as long as Donald Trump gives such idiocy any sort of currency, which is what he did with his “I’ll look at it” non-answer.

I like the response given by Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, who called the birther baloney a “racist, ignorant lie.”

It’s all of that … and I also would call it “hate speech.”