Tag Archives: 2020 election

national news, political news

Bernie calls it a campaign

The long and winding road to the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination has begun finally to show signs of straightening out … even as it is paused for a time while the nation wages war against the coronavirus pandemic.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ decision to drop out of the race leaves the nomination wide open for former Vice President Joe Biden, who now becomes the party’s presumptive nominee. I had hoped Sanders would have made this call sooner, but then again no one is talking overly seriously just yet about politics while the nation is essentially shut down during this health crisis.

Sanders did put up a valiant fight. I’ll give him credit for that. The 78-year-old independent senator from Vermont has written a significant chapter in the nation’s 21st-century political history. He helped push forward some important progressive ideas and possibly dragged much of the Democratic Party along with him.

Many of those ideas, though, were non-starters with mainstream Democrats: Medicare for all comes to mind, as does free public college and across-the-board college debt forgiveness.

Indeed, the self-described “democratic socialist” cannot claim too many legislative victories during his lengthy time in Congress.

He fought hard and now it’s time for him to rally his legions of supporters behind the remaining candidate who can rid this nation of the Liar in Chief who masquerades as president.

Sanders and Biden share the same overarching goal: defeating Donald Trump. Any sort of third-party effort from the left is certain to produce a second term for the man many of us consider to be the most fundamentally unfit human being ever elected to the U.S. presidency.

I’m glad to hear the news that Sen. Sanders has called it quits in his bid to become president. It soon will be time to get to work to usher Trump out of the Oval Office for the final time.

But … first things first. We all have to wage this difficult fight against a killer disease.

national news

It is time to come up with an alternate election plan

This is not a great flash, but I’ll offer this bit of advice anyway. Donald Trump needs immediately to order a blue-ribbon team of experts to devise a way to conduct a presidential election Nov. 3 if conditions do not allow for a safe in-person vote of citizens.

We have been at that moment for several weeks now. The U.S. Constitution sets out an election date, which is the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. That cannot be changed without amending the Constitution.

I offer this bit of advice only because presidents take an oath that implies many unspecified responsibilities. One of them is that the president must be able to multitask in times of  crisis.

We’re in the midst of a monumental crisis at the moment, with the coronavirus killing thousands of Americans and — at this time — making in-person balloting impossible, given the threat of exposure to infection.

So it becomes imperative, absolutely essential for there to be an alternative to voting drawn up, tested and determined to be an effective way for Americans to cast their ballots for president of the United States … on Nov. 3.

The best alternative to the current system, it seems to me, is mail-in balloting. Several states already conduct elections using the U.S. Postal Service. Surely, clearly there must be some statewide experts in, say, Oregon and Washington — where this is done already — who would be willing to share their knowledge and how we can employ such a system nationally if the need arises.

I am aware that Trump thinks Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is a “snake,” and he likely doesn’t think much of Oregon Gov. Kate Brown. I mean, they’re both Democrats. However, they also govern states that have employed voting by mail successfully.

Time is not anyone’s ally here. Let’s get busy looking for alternatives to conducting the 2020 presidential election.

national news

Pandemic response becomes overarching 2020 campaign issue

Should the federal government’s stumble-bum response to the coronavirus pandemic take center stage for the 2020 presidential campaign?

Oh, boy howdy, hoss! Damn straight it should!

This very moment might not be the right time to start campaigning on Donald Trump’s belated call to urgency. However, once we reach our “apex” and we start seeing declines in the infection rate among Americans, then I do believe it would be an appropriate issue to raise in the contest for the White House.

Are you listening, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.? I’m talking to you.

Even though it might be premature for a presidential contender to raise the issue, I consider it fair game for, oh, those of us on the outside, such as bloggers.

Donald Trump has done a terrible job coordinating the federal response. He has politicized the effort all along the way, and that came after he said initially that the pandemic wasn’t that big of a deal.

Nine thousand American deaths later, it most certainly a huge deal. It is so huge that it boggles my mind — and the minds of others — that the Trump administration would disband a pandemic response team assembled as part of the National Security Council during the Obama administration.

Trump’s supporters, of course, are quite willing to accept the president’s non-response as OK. Some of them are readers of this blog and are critics of what I post on this blog; they are likely to respond to this brief post. That’s fine. Let ’em have at it.

I am not going to remain silent, even in this terrible time, over what I see are egregious shortfalls in the president’s response. Donald Trump has been far too slow to get off the proverbial pot.

When the time comes to make this non-response a campaign issue, then my hope is that Trump’s adversaries zero in and remind us of what many Americans already know: Donald Trump is unfit to lead this nation.

national news

Is she really ready to become POTUS?

I am going to commit political heresy by questioning the qualifications of a woman of color who happens to be on a lot of folks’ short list for the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential nomination.

I present to you Stacey Abrams.

Joe Biden has declared he will select a woman to run with him if he becomes the Democrats’ presidential nominee this summer. That’s a done deal. No doubt about it. The former vice president has carved it in stone, signed his name in blood. For all I know he has sworn on a Bible.

I keep seeing Stacey Abrams’ name on short lists for that call.

So, I have looked up her background. I found some fascinating chapters in her life story.

The question that any presidential nominee must ask of a VP selection is this: Is the person I choose qualified to step into the presidency in the event I no longer can serve? Is Stacey Abrams qualified to do that?

She ran for Georgia governor in 2018 and lost by a whisker to Republican Brian Kemp. Prior to that her only political experience was as a member of the Georgia House of Representatives. Anything else … politically speaking? Nope. That’s it.

Now, let me be clear. Stacey Abrams is bright and well-educated. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Spelman College; she earned a masters degree in public administration from the University of Texas-Austin; and … she earned her law degree from Yale University. She packs plenty of intellectual wattage.

I just wonder whether she has earned a place on Joe Biden’s short list of candidates to be the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential nominee.

The former VP has a gigantic field of competent and highly qualified women he can examine as he looks for a potential running mate. He ran against some of them in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. But there are governors and other members of Congress he can consider.

I am just a bit leery of someone of Stacey Abrams’ limited political experience being thrust into this role of vice-presidential nominee.

She is young enough to gain more valuable experience. Abrams might do well working in a Cabinet-level post in a Biden administration. I just don’t think it’s her time … at least not yet.

Please forgive me.

national news

Trump gets ready to trash Joe Biden

Here it comes … as most of us have expected for a long time.

The Donald J. Trump presidential re-election campaign is beginning to launch salvos against Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic frontrunner for the party’s presidential nomination. Is the aim intended to disparage policy pronouncements? Or take the former vice president and former senator to task for votes?

Heavens no! They’re going to denigrate Biden because he tends to make verbal gaffes, because he occasionally mangles facts.

They’re saying Biden isn’t “playing with a full deck.”

I’m sure you get where this is going. They’re going to question Biden’s mental acuity. His smarts. His cognitive ability.

Joe Biden is 78 years of age; Trump is 73. Trump is going to call himself the “young man” in this head-to-head matchup.

Still, the irony of Donald Trump and his team questioning anyone’s mental fitness for office is ironic in the extreme.

If you can stomach watching a Trump campaign rally, you might understand what I am saying. Trump flies off the Teleprompter script and launches one of those nonsensical, idiotic, moronic, incoherent riffs. He speaks in sentence fragments and, oh by the way, he lies his a** off virtually with every other sentence that flies out of his mouth.

If you want to shudder in disbelief — as I have done repeatedly since January 2017 — that this guy is the president of the United States of America, I encourage you to look it up. Believe me, it’s a hoot!

So, just think of this individual denigrating an opponent who occasionally commits a rhetorical flub. I would laugh, except that it isn’t the least bit funny.

I am proud to stand with someone of Joe Biden’s immense character and capacity for empathy. I also am delighted to oppose vehemently someone of Donald Trump’s absolute lack of both.

national news

Pandemic pushes ‘most important election’ coverage to the back shelf

What in the world happened to the “most important election in our lifetime,” the one that is supposed to energize a nation, jacking up our interest in deciding whether to stay the course or to, shall we say, set a new course?

I know the answer to that question. It’s been pushed aside while the world comes to grips with how to handle a pandemic that has killed thousands of people already and is threatening to change everyone’s life … maybe forever.

Joe Biden has turned the Democratic Party presidential nomination fight into a runaway. He has routed what’s left of a once-huge field of contenders. U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard today dropped out of the race; I know, you had forgotten all about her, as did I. The only challenger still standing is U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who I reckon is going to bow out any day now.

No one is talking about it. The media have gone silent. News programming has erupted in a barrage of coverage of the coronavirus pandemic — as it should! We’re worried. We’re unsettled. Cities, counties and states are mandating crowd-size limitations. Mayors, county executives and governors are in front of us constantly, providing updates on what they’re all doing to stem the outbreak of new illness.

Oh, and the president of the United States, Donald John Trump? He’s, um, seeking to repair the rhetorical wreckage he has created by his idiotic pronouncements about the pandemic being a “Democrat hoax” and downplaying the severity of the crisis that is killing people daily.

Enough about him. For the time being.

The pandemic is Topic No. 1, and No. 2 and maybe No. 3 at the moment. That “most important election in our lifetime” will take place in November. The road between here and there, though, is going to take some very weird turns.

We had all better hold on with both hands.

education news, national news

‘No’ on tuition-free college

That ol’ trick knee of mine is telling me something I hope is true, but something I cannot predict will happen.

It’s telling me that Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are negotiating an exit from the 2020 Democratic Party primary campaign for Sen. Sanders.

The way this deal might play out is that Sanders might seek to demand certain elements of his campaign end up as part of the Biden campaign going forward. I want to express my extreme displeasure with one element of the Sanders Mantra: the one that seeks to make public college and university education free for every American student.

No can do! Nor should it happen. It’s a budget-buster for the national treasury not to mention for colleges and universities that depend on students’ tuition and assorted lab and book fees to stay afloat.

Former Vice President Biden has broken the Democratic primary for the presidency wide open. The nomination is now his to lose, to borrow the cliché. Sanders, though, isn’t likely to bow out quietly without making some demands on the nominee-to-be.

Sanders isn’t even an actual Democrat; he represents Vermont in the Senate as an independent. He is a “democratic socialist.” To be honest, I don’t quite grasp the “democratic” element in that label as it applies to granting free college education.

The free college plank has been critical to the support Sanders has enjoyed among young voters. How does Biden mine that support for himself? He could call for dramatic restructuring of student loans, making them easier to pay off. I didn’t accrue a lot of student debt while I attended college in the 1970s; I had the GI Bill to help me out. As a parent of college students, though, we were saddled with “parent loans” that took a long time to retire. There must be a better way to structure those loans.

Making public colleges and universities free, though, is a non-starter. Is it a deal-breaker if Joe Biden adopts it as part of his platform? Would that compel me to vote — gulp, snort, gasp! — for Donald Trump? Not a bleeping chance.

The former VP must not be bullied into embracing the free college idea as his own.

national news

Men need not apply for Biden’s VP slot?

(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Joseph R. Biden Jr. made some serious news Sunday night.

He did so with a clear, concise and deftly inserted pledge: He said he would name a woman to run with him if he wins the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

There. It’s done. The former vice president effectively eliminated by roughly half the number of candidates he might consider running with him.

That doesn’t mean he’s got a short list. Oh, no! It means only that he has made what sounded to me like an ironclad pledge to select a woman as his running mate. He also seemed to suggest that a woman who debated him on the 2020 primary stage would have an advantage in the selection process.

Whoa! Not so fast, Mr. Vice President.

The nation is chock full of women who could serve today as president. They are governors, former governors, former senators, former House members, in addition to current officeholders. The field is full. I do not want him to limit his choices, even though he’s done so with the remarkable pledge he made on that debate stage with Bernie Sanders.

So … Joe Biden has just made a big splash.

Wow!

national news

Trump sets the table for a new low of campaign viciousness

We all had better get ready for an onslaught of innuendo that is likely to come from Donald Trump’s re-election campaign.

Now that Joe Biden appears to be the Democratic Party presidential nominee in waiting, the Trump team appears to be getting set to launch a frontal assault on Biden’s mental health.

Never mind, of course, that Donald Trump himself is the king of gaffes, of lies, misstatements, prevarication. He seems set on focusing on some of the verbal blunders that the former vice president commits on occasion.

As Politico reports, Trump stood before some donors this past week in Florida and talked aloud about some of the mistakes Biden made. So, the battle may be joined.

Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has said Biden suffers from “dementia.” Fox News blowhards Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson have raised similar issues on their TV shows. As for the Biden team, it needs to prepare carefully for how it intends to respond to the idiocy that flies out of Trump’s mouth as well as what comes from his surrogates.

Given that they have so little that is defensible with which they can work to persuade Americans to re-elect Trump, they’ll rely on ways to tear down their opponents. If that reminds you of what they did to Hillary Clinton in 2016, well, it should.

After offering up some examples of Biden’s alleged intellectual slippage, Biden told donors, “I would hope you not repeat that.”

Sure thing, Mr. President. They already have in defense of the most dangerous and ignorant president in our nation’s history.

national news

It is time to judge women and men with the same measuring stick

Elizabeth Warren’s departure from the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primary contest has prompted a slew of questions.

Many of them center on this fundamental point: Do we judge women differently than men who seek public office?

My own answer is, regrettably, yes. We do. It needs to stop. How do we cross that line? I haven’t a clue.

Sen. Warren had a boatload of ideas and solutions to problems. She is an excellent campaign debater, as former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg learned to his extreme anguish; she peeled the bark off of Bloomberg and then he dropped out after face-planting in the Super Tuesday cascade of primary elections.

She was far from the only fine female candidate for president. None of them made the grade. Not Kamala Harris, or Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar or Tulsi Gabbard (who’s still in the race for reasons no on can seem to figure out). They all come from significant backgrounds; they’re all women of accomplishment.

The media tend to attach different-sounding labels to female candidates than they do to men. A male who’s loud and brash is seen as “aggressive”; a female is described as, oh, let’s see, “brassy.” A male who is tough on campaign staff is called “demanding”; a female is called “overbearing” or “domineering.”

Do you get my drift?

The media and the public need to apply identical standards to women and men. They need to accept the notion that candidates of both genders are equally fit to do the tough jobs required of them in the public office they seek.

Are we going to cross that threshold in my lifetime? Well, I am not so sure, given my advancing age. My sons and my granddaughter stand a much better chance of seeing it happen.

I want desperately to see that day arrive before I check out.