By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I read a lot of conservative commentary during the day as I look for topics on which to fill this blog and I see a few overarching themes on all the essays I see.

One of them deals with that many of them call “hatred of Donald Trump.” Sigh …

I won’t delve too deeply into what I have said about Donald Trump since he announced his presidential candidacy in the summer of 2015; goodness, it seems actually longer ago than that!

I just feel the need to summarize my belief about this individual: The man brought no public service experience into politics; his entire life has whirled around self-enrichment; he has no empathy; he lacks compassion; he is unfit for public office. There you have it.

Is that alone going to be fuel that drives me? No.

I do have a deep abiding respect for the presidency. I want its occupant to restore the office to its intended stature. That is why I am all in for Joe Biden.

To be candid, former Vice President Biden was not my first pick among the Democrats. I actually didn’t have a favorite among the two dozen (or so) candidates who burst from the starting gate. Biden stood near the front of the second tier of candidates in that initially large field.

But he got through it. He survived several beat-downs in the debates. He won key endorsements and them steamrolled to the Democratic Party presidential nomination. He emerged as the candidate to run against Trump. I now am all in — with Biden!

I know enough about Biden to understand how he wants to restore the nation’s “soul.” Biden believes Trump has robbed our national soul of the TLC he believes is an essential part of good government. I go along with that.

I have said before — to some derision among critics of this blog — that I am driven by love of my country and not hatred of Donald Trump in opposing his presidency. I will stand proudly by that declaration.

I love my country enough to go to war for it when ordered to do so, to want my president to be a role model for all Americans, and to be able to criticize my government when I believe it is messing up.

That’s love of country in a nutshell, man. So spare me the “you hate Trump” nonsense.

We are witnessing what might become the most curious re-election strategy ever concocted.

Donald Trump seeks a second term as president by campaigning against his own record. He will say he has done things he hasn’t done. Trump will insist that all is going well in a country beset by a killer pandemic and an economic collapse. Trump will contend that we have ended street violence when in fact it is as bad as it’s been in 50 years.

All of this demonstrably verifiable. How in the world does Donald Trump seek to tell this nation that life is good when it clearly is nothing of the sort?

He cannot do it. Does that guarantee that Joe Biden will defeat him in the presidential election that is just 47 days away? Not at all. Trump has proven himself capable of electoral magic tricks, which he pulled off in winning the White House in 2016.

Trump keeps boasting about creating the greatest economy in U.S. history. He didn’t create a thing. He inherited an economy on the rebound. What happened? Well, the pandemic arrived in early 2020 and it all went straight to hell. Meanwhile, Trump talked it down, fed us a ration of lies about how he had the virus “under control.” Yep, and the nearly 200,000 deaths that have ensued didn’t really occur.

Street violence? He told us in his 2017 inaugural that the “American carnage” would end. It hasn’t. African Americans have died at the hands of police officers. Other Americans have protested those deaths. The protests have turned violent. More Americans have died. And, oh yes, we also have suffered through mass shootings in churches, night clubs, shopping centers. Yet the president insists he will restore “law and order.” If not now, when?

I am waiting to hear a vision from Trump about what he intends to do in a second term, which I hope with all I have within me won’t occur. Instead, I keep hearing about what he has done in the unfinished term when my own eyes and ears tell me a totally different story.

The record is out there for all to see.

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

During my many years in print journalism, I sought to remind voters in communities in Texas and in Oregon — where I worked — that local elections mattered more than national elections. Why? Because the local folks set tax policy that paid for essential services we need and use: police and fire, water, garbage pickup, street upkeep.

That was then. The presidential election that awaits 49 days from now might supplant local elections as the most relevant to our needs.

It’s Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump. Biden wants to replace Trump and restore a sense of national honor, of empathy, of concern for our safety. Biden wants to lead the nation through the pandemic that is still killing too many of us daily. Trump is continuing to lie about what he’s allegedly done. Biden wants to protect Americans against all threats, even those that arrive in the form of a killer virus.

We are being forsaken by a president who doesn’t give a rat’s a** about us. His concern is focused solely on his re-election. One might be able to link the two matters — re-election and a president’s concern for U.S. citizens. Except that Trump’s continual lying about the coronavirus renders his actual caring about us absolutely moot.

It is true that presidents don’t set tax policy. City councils still establish how much we pay for essential municipal services. So do our county commissioners courts. None of this is meant to diminish their relevance in our daily lives.

I do intend to take particular note of the stakes of the national election and to suggest that this Biden-Trump choice means more to us individually than most of the presidential choices we have made … arguably since the beginning of this glorious republic.

Both candidates call this the most consequential election in history. I believe them and I intend to do all I can to ensure we make a change at the top of our political chain of command.

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joseph R. Biden Jr. needs to do all he can to avoid being labeled by historians as the candidate who lost a presidential campaign to an incompetent, immoral, corrupt politician.

Donald Trump is the aforementioned individual Biden is facing in the upcoming presidential election. Will the incumbent slither his way to a second term as president? I have no possible idea.

I am hoping for all I can that Biden defeats Trump bigly.

However, Trump’s uncanny knack of wiggling free of political crises gives me the heebie-jeebies. While it is weird enough that Trump managed to defeat a demonstrably more qualified candidate for president in 2016, it would be far beyond bizarre for Trump — with the hideous record he has compiled in his current term as president — to pull it off again this year.

You have to get busy, Mr. Biden. Millions of us are counting on you.

By JOHN KANELIS

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I have reached a conclusion that others reached a long time ago, but it’s a big deal to me, so I am going to explain what it is and why it’s such a big deal.

The conclusion is that we are going to conduct the most important presidential election in at least the past century. Donald Trump v. Joe Biden is as big a deal as any I have seen since I’ve been voting and I suspect some even older folks would agree.

What’s at stake? I believe the size and gravity of the stakes make this election so incredibly critical. The stakes, simply put are the survival of our system of government.

In 2016, Donald Trump parlayed a desire for radical change in the way we govern into a fluky Electoral College victory. Roughly 77,000 voters in three Rust Belt states gave Trump the Electoral College margin he needed to win.

He said he would be “unconventional” and that he “alone” would solve our problems. He delivered on the first thing. As for the solution, he “alone” has made them worse.

Trump has lied and lied again and again. About everything. He has put unqualified individuals in key advisory roles; e.g., Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner. He has burned through national security advisers and White House chiefs of staff. Trump has made a mess of everything he has touched.

He has fomented conspiracy theories. He has called Nazis and Klansmen “fine people.” He has appealed only to his base of fervent supporters.

The experiment in unconventionality has failed.

Joe Biden represents a return to normal governance, to what the late John McCain would call “regular order.” Biden is campaigning to restore our national soul. It needs restoration. Our soul has been damaged, but not destroyed, by Donald Trump and his hideous conduct.

I am a good government kind of guy. I much prefer my presidents to be better than I am. I want them to set moral examples. Biden represents a return to an era of good government. He spent 36 years in the U.S. Senate and eight years as vice president.

Joe Biden knows how to govern. He is an ardent student of the government in which he has been a significant participant. Yes, I believe Joe Biden can restore our national soul and more importantly, revive our standing as the world’s most indispensable nation.

Thus, we are going to conduct the most significant election in anyone’s memory. It is, as Biden himself once said, a “big fu**ing deal.” 

My version of a perfect world includes Donald Trump losing the presidency of the United States to Joseph R. Biden in about, oh, 62 days.

It includes a significant Biden victory in both the actual ballots cast and in the Electoral College. Trump, though, is sending plenty of signals that he well might not go silently into the night, concede the contest, offer his full cooperation and then let the new team take over.

I have retired my trick knee, the one that betrayed me badly by allowing me to predict a Hillary Clinton victory in 2016.

So I want to offer this observation of what might occur if my perfect world plays out in November and we elect Joe Biden the next president.

The transition is going to be a cluster fu** of the first magnitude.

Does anyone really expect Trump to provide a smooth transition from one administration to the next one?

I am trying to imagine Joe and Jill Biden arriving at the White House to be greeted by Donald and Melania Trump. Do you see the couples smiling at each other, posing for the cameras?

Moreover, something tells me that no one should be surprised if Donald and Melania Trump don’t even attend the inaugural of the next president. Yes, I believe that Donald Trump is that much of a sore loser, that he would decide to forgo the boos that would rein down on him as he watches Biden take the oath of office.

Donald Trump’s entire presidency has been a case study in chaos and confusion. Why would anyone expect a transition to the next president to be anything other than what we have witnessed.

It won’t be pretty. However, political perfection need not always be a thing of beauty.