Tag Archives: Joe Biden

Biden made unprecedented move

I want to bask for just a little while longer in the afterglow of the Democratic National Convention, which wrapped up Thursday and sent its presidential and vice-presidential nominees to fight the Republican ticket.

My point is to echo the praise we heard from the convention podium about the selflessness exhibited by President Joe Biden as he dropped his re-election bid, endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him … and he did this on his own.

I won’t quibble or quarrel over what motivated him to take that dramatic action. Biden said he loves being president but added quickly that “I love my country more.”

Indeed, when you ponder it for just a moment, the act of voluntarily giving up political power has to rank as one of the most improbable acts imaginable.

Could the president reverse his political fortune and defeated the GOP ticket? I believe it was possible. The seamless handoff to Kamala Harris, though, has energized Democrats beyond all expectation.

I also agree with Biden about the imperativeness of keeping Donald Trump away from the Resolute Desk … forever!

If that was Joe Biden’s primary motivation in surrendering power, then I’m all in on that effort.  I also join others who have hailed this act as one of high political courage.

As former President Obama said at the end of his stemwinding speech at the DNC: Let’s get to work!

Getting ready for curtain call

Many readers of this blog perhaps can recall a time or three when I have revealed that I can be a bit of a sap when my emotions get the better of me.

Therefore, when I turn on my TV Monday to watch the Democratic National Convention, I am prepared to lapse into my sappy mode that evening.

Democrats are going to stand and cheer the incumbent president of the United States, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., and likely won’t stop cheering for a good while. They are going to thank the president for the job he has done during his term in office … and thank him for stepping aside and handing the party nomination to Vice President Kamala Harris.

Of course, I will be far from the Chicago convention site; I’ll be watching from my North Texas living room. I might even join the crowd in giving the president my own expression of thanks. It’ll make me feel better.

Joe Biden had vowed to stay in the contest after his godawful debate performance in Atlanta. Then he decided to put his country first by stepping aside and delivering to Harris his blessing as she transformed in an instant from loyal VP to the party’s standard bearer in the effort to keep Donald Trump as far away from the White House as is humanly possible.

But … first things first. President Biden is going to stand before the nation and the world Monday night in Chicago and receive the raucous curtain call he so richly deserves.

May the emotions flow.

A landslide in the making?

Let’s get to the first thing I must say … which is that I dare not even try to predict the outcome of the 2024 election for president of the United States.

I can, however, offer an opinion of what I believe might be playing out as we speak.

What was beginning to look like a Donald Trump rout over President Biden might be turning in a 180-degree reversal, with Vice President Kamala Harris coming out on the long end of an electoral landslide.

The landslide might manifest itself only in the Electoral College. What do I mean? I am going to speculate that the popular vote of all Americans might not meet or exceed landslide proportions, which generally is about a 10% or greater margin of victory.

The Electoral College could be a different matter. Polling data released since Biden ceded the nomination to Harris tells us the VP is making serious headway in many swing states, that she is either tied or leading Trump that the GOP nominee was leading over Biden.

Political experts across the spectrum who once said the race was “Trump’s to lose” now say the tide is turning dramatically in Harris’s favor.

I am just a spectator to all of this in the middle of what once was called Trump Country.  I am not going to venture any guesses on what I think will happen, I am left only to offer what I hope occurs on Election Day …. and my hope is looking more realistic all the time.

A landslide might be developing, but not in the manner to which many of us have grown accustomed.  All eyes will be turned on the Electoral College.

Who’s lost his mind?

All that idiocy about whether President Biden’s butter has slipped off his noodle seemingly ignored a more critical issue facing voters in this presidential election year.

It is whether the guy nominated by the Republican Party has flipped his wig, gone ’round the bend, booked a one-way ticket to la-la land.

Biden resolved the issue about whether he was a drag on the Democratic ticket by stepping away from his re-election bid. He handed the frontrunner mantle to Vice President Kamala Harris, whose rollout was flawless; she has picked an outstanding running mate in Tim Walz and the two of them have been wowing the faithful ever since.

Then comes this nugget of nonsense from Donald Trump: He accuses Harris and Walz of faking the huge crowd sizes at all those rallies through the use of artificial intelligence. Yep, those thousands of cheering partisans were AI creations. They weren’t real, according to the Madman in Chief.

I don’t know what part of that moronic declaration is most astonishing.

  • That Trump would say it out loud.
  • That he would believe anyone would take it seriously.
  • That millions of Americans would swallow that bait.

I’ll go with all three.

The Republican Party nominee for POTUS has lost his mind.

Harris reshapes election

Kamala Harris’s stunning 11th-hour arrival in the center of the US political conversation drives home a point I want to make about the length of our election process.

It need not drag on for months and months!

It’s almost impossible to comprehend, but the vice president has been campaigning for president for less than a month. Less than one month!

She and her team have raised hundreds of millions of dollars, she has picked a vice-presidential candidate to run with her, she and Donald J. Trump have agreed to a debate on Sept. 10, Harris is formulating an economic strategy.

All of this and more has occurred in less than a month.

Circumstances overwhelmed the previous presumptive Democratic frontrunner, President Joe Biden. He pulled out and endorsed Harris to take over the top spot. If there has been a more perfect roll-out of a presidential campaign, then someone will have to show it to me. Because this one looked like perfection in real time.

It all just goes to demonstrate that we need not drag this process out forever and then some!

I’ve never wondered aloud how we could shorten the length of time we devote to political campaigning. Would it require a federal law enacted by Congress? An amendment to the U.S. Constitution? Does each state have the power to ban campaign activity?

We ought to look at all of the above.

Blogging gets new life

I resigned from my final full-time journalism job on Aug. 31, 2012, having been informed by my publisher that I no longer would do what I had done for the Amarillo Globe-News for the past 18 years …. and I thought I was pretty good at it.

Silly me.

I would learn later that the publisher had me in his crosshairs when he announced that everyone’s job description had been changed. I fought for my job fiercely, telling the publisher ultimately that the industry I entered in 1976 bore no resemblance to what it had become by 2012. And that he was asking me to do things only a little different.

It didn’t work.

Immediately, I. began focusing my attention full time to High Plains Blogger, a platform I created a few years earlier.

I have mentioned many times on this blog how much I enjoy writing on it, offering my assorted views on this and/or that policy issue.

I have boasted from time to time that writing comes easily to me. I won’t brag about the quality of the prose I produce, just say that it does flow fairly easily off the tips of my fingers.

The subject matter helps determine the ease. I’ll be candid. Prior to President Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential campaign, it was becoming a bit problematic to find issues on which to comment.

Up stepped ‘vice President Kamala Harris. Biden endorsed the VP. She launched a full-frontal campaign from a virtual dead stop, raised a few tons of cash and injected this campaign with an energy level I haven’t seen since, oh, 2008 when Barack Obama took the nation by storm.

What does this mean for your friendly blogger? It means the proverbial chest where I store my ideas is full again.

I intend to remain engaged fully in this campaign. The blog is the only venue I have to offer commentary on the status of the effort.

So … I will weigh in. It feels good to be relevant.

Feeling energized by campaign revival

I cannot recall the last time I felt such a palpable, tangible and visceral re-energizing of a political campaign.

The current campaign for president of the United States falls into a unique category of an effort once thought to be DOA but is now a living, breathing organism.

Thank you, Vice President Kamala Harris, for giving life to this effort.

She had help, of course. It came mostly from President Biden, who ended his re-election effort after it became clear to him — reportedly — that he couldn’t defeat Donald J. Trump, the moron he defeated in the 2020 election.

I had hoped Biden would stay the course, but he chose otherwise … and I chose to back whatever decision he made.

Up stepped VP Harris. She is now the Democrats’ nominee for POTUS. She is taking the fight directly to Trump. Her fundraising effort has been spectacular, raising $300 million in the first month.

Harris and Trump now reportedly will debate in September. I am rubbing my mitts together in anticipation of that event. I look forward to seeing how Harris might respond to Trump’s “stalking” of her on a debate stage, a la what he did against Hillary Clinton in 2016.

I am acutely aware that Harris still has to catch Trump, who still, inexplicably, continues to cling to a narrow lead. Oh, how I hope she does.

I quit watching polls during election campaigns, as they tend to reflect the nation’s mood of the moment. The mood during this campaign, is of a highly energized electorate.

It’s contagious, too!

Be on guard, Democrats

A certain level of smugness appears to be creeping into coverage of the 2024 presidential campaign.

Just as Republicans were feeling all gooey about Donald Trump’s chances against President Biden, the tide has turned significantly in favor of Kamala Harris, who succeeded Biden as the Democrats’ frontrunner for the party nomination.

A word to the wise: Republican campaign hatchet men (and women) have turned “negative campaigning” into an art form. The most recent incarnation of it goes back to around 1988. I got to cover that campaign while working in Beaumont, Texas, at the Beaumont Enterprise.

You remember it, right? Massachusetts Gov. Mike Dukakis was riding high on a 17 percentage point lead over Vice President Bush. He came out of his party’s Atlanta convention ready to rock ‘n roll once he got into the White House. Then the attacks came from Bush and his team. Dukakis was deemed soft on crime because he opposed the death penalty; he granted a furlough to a killer who, while on that furlough, committed another violent crime.

Let’s not forget that disastrous “photo op” of Dukakis in the tank.

The Democrat’s lead shrank to zero, then Bush won the election in a landslide over Dukakis.

I’m just sayin’, Democrats … do not get smug over Kamala Harris’s remarkable rollout of her campaign.

Let’s get busy, Mme. VPOTUS

Vice presidents rarely, if ever, can run on the accomplishments achieved by the presidents whom they serve.

Thus, it becomes imperative that Vice President Kamala Harris build a program for the future as she prepares to be nominated for president by the Democratic Party.

Harris and her team have conducted a flawless, seamless, perfect transition from VP running mate to becoming the top half of a presidential ticket. It happened, quite literally, overnight … when President Biden ended his re-election campaign and handed the party banner to his governmental partner.

Another truism is that campaigns always are about the future, not the past. While the GOP nominee Donald Trump keeps trying to relitigate The Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen, Harris should look forward and tell Americans what they need to hear.

President Biden talks about making rich Americans pay their fair share of taxes; VP Harris needs to remind us all that the uber rich won’t end up in the poor house if they have to carry their share of the tax burden. Will the VP carry forth Biden’s infrastructure package, his climate change initiative, his efforts to reduce inflation, his superb job creation efforts?

We shouldn’t be consumed about complaints that have no basis in fact. We should look ahead to the future that, from my vantage point, looks pretty bright.

Mme. Vice President, it is time to get busy.

Campaign suddenly sizzles

When was the last time a presidential campaign thought to be mired in moribund monotony has sprung to life literally overnight with the emergence of a new candidate?

Do you give up? No worries. I can’t think of an earlier time, either.

President Biden, the former oldest man to seek the presidency, surrendered his re-election campaign. He anointed Vice President Kamala Harris as his heir apparent … and then it hit the fan!

Harris raised $120 million in a single day. She has scarfed up thousands of endorsements, not to mention enough delegates to secure her nomination as the Democratic Party nominee next month.

Young voters tell pollsters they are excited again. So are women who are still furious over the Supreme Court decision that ended the right to an abortion.

VP Harris, meanwhile, is beginning to hone her attack rhetoric against Donald Trump, reminding voters that as a career prosecutor, she has taken on sexual assailants, crooks and frauds. “I know Donald Trump’s type,” she tells campaign rallies.

It has been a remarkable, not to mention rapid, acceleration of Democratic enthusiasm for the top of their party’s presidential ticket. The party was worried about whether its presumptive nominee has the wattage to stay in the race.

He vows to stay the course. Then … he declares that his reverence for the office he is “honored” to serve is eclipsed only by his “love of country.” The time has come, Joe Biden said, to hand the reins to a younger group of leaders.

Thus, a new campaign was given life instantly by a simple act of patriotism.

May the new frontrunner maintain her high energy for the next 100 days. This blogger looks forward to typing the words “President Kamala Harris.”