Tag Archives: 2024 election

national news

Run from behind!

Michelle and Barack Obama laid it out in plain language last night; indeed Kamala Harris has been saying it since the moment she emerged as the Democrats’ frontrunner in the 2024 presidential election.

Do not believe for a second that Donald Trump, their Republican foe, is going away quietly as this campaign revs up.

Yes, Democrats are feeling high and mighty right now as the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz ticket takes shape and prepares its fight plan for the White House. And, yes, Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance have floundered, flailed and flubbed their way along since Joe Biden dropped out of the contest.

Let us all remember 2016. Every politician and pundit on Planet Earth “knew” that Hillary Clinton was going to win that election. Then, suddenly, she didn’t.

This sudden and invigorating reversal of fortune does feel different. It does feel unique, as if it’s something none of us has ever experienced. If it is the real thing, then Harris, Walz and their enthusiastic army of supporters need to just remember how we thought we would welcome President Hillary Clinton to power in January 2017.

Yes, last night was inspiring in the extreme. Just a word of caution: Do not count Donald Trump out until after every ballot is counted!

business news

Looking for votes? Well … yeah!

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A brief lesson in political context seems to be in order, as I must respond to a statement from a frequent critic of this blog.

I wrote something the other day calling attention to Kamala Harris’s support of an idea first pitched by Donald Trump: to end the rule requiring taxes on income received from tips for service workers.

My critic just couldn’t leave the issue well enough alone. He couldn’t just endorse Harris’s support of an idea first promoted by her presidential campaign opponent and then move on to the next point of contention.

No … instead he said something about how Democrats blasted Trump for the idea, saying he was just angling for votes.

In an election year? A candidate is looking for ways to win favor with voters? Who knew?

Here is the lesson. Listen up. In an election cycle, every single proposal offered by candidates is done with one primary goal in mind: to win votes! It makes no difference which politician does it, or which party to which he or she belongs. They all do it and they all have the same motive in mind.

I just want to make clear that we should understand the context at play here. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are of like minds on the principle of banning taxes for tips. They both want voters to believe them over the other person.

As for my critic. Pipe down, dude!

national news, political news

Crowd size doesn’t matter

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Donald J. Trump keeps crowing — apparently falsely — about the size of the crowds to which he has been speaking.

He calls them “the largest anyone’s ever seen.” His critics, led by Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz, accuse him of (what else?) lying about the size of the crowds.

Allow me for just a brief moment to put the issue into another perspective.

Crowd size doesn’t matter. Size might matter in a lot of different contexts — if you’ll take a moment to ponder them — but not the size of crowds.

When I returned home from the Army in 1970, I got politically active. I guess you could call me a member of the “Vietnam Vets Against the War” in Vietnam. In 1972, we rallied behind a candidate who vowed, if elected POTUS, he would end the war.

Sen. George McGovern spoke to huge crowds all across the land. They were gigantic. They set unofficial records, as I recall.

In Portland, Ore., where I grew up, McGovern held a rally in downtown Portland. Huge crowd, man! Thousands of people gathered. I was one of them.

McGovern got us all fired up. We were ready to kick ass and take names … you know?

You’ll remember what happened on that Election Day. Sen. McGovern lost 49 of 50 states to President Nixon.

This is my way of saying that Donald Trump’s empty boast about big crowds means absolutely nothing …. particularly when he lies about it!

national news

Harris reshapes election

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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.

national news

Walz is the one!

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As is always the case, the person to whom I directed an unsolicited recommended ignored my advice … but I am not crestfallen over it.

Vice President Kamala Harris this morning revealed that she has chosen Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her 2024 Democratic Party running mate on a ticket she — and millions of others – hopes will remove Donald Trump from our political landscape forever.

Walz has been described in terms used for another well-known Minnesotan. He’s been called a “happy warrior,” which is a title worn with pride by the late Vice President and Sen. Hubert Humphrey.

I preferred Sen. Mark Kelly among the finalists under consideration. But … Harris went in another direction.

That’s OK with me. Gov. Walz will acquit himself in a stellar fashion. Of that I feel comfortable in asserting. He’s the author of the “weird” quip now being used to describe the policies espoused by Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance.

May this campaign now begin in earnest and may it produce an outcome for which many millions of us are hoping.

national news, political news

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!

national news, State news

C’mon back, candidates!

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Every election cycle for as long as I can remember, I issue the same call to the candidates for president of the United States.

Come on back to Texas and campaign in person, tell us to our faces, that you want our votes!

Why do they avoid the state? Well, we’re not a “battleground” location for the major-party candidates for POTUS. Democrats have all but given up on us, while Republicans take us for granted.

Let’s see. How is that changing? Well, Vice President Kamala Harris’s entry into the campaign has fired up Democratic loyalists across land …. including in Texas!

Recent history suggests that we well could become a battleground in 2024. I know we’ve said that before, only to be disappointed.

Donald Trump won Texas’s electoral votes in 2020 by just a little more than 5%. In 2016, Trump’s margin was 9%. Mitt Romney carried the state with a 15% majority in 2012 and John McCain won in 2008 with 12%. Do you see a pattern? If not, I’ll tell you that the GOP margin has shrunk over the past three election cycles.

Joe Biden pulled out of the contest believing his re-election chances had sunk to near zero., In stepped the vice president. She has raised hundreds of millions of campaign dollars in just two weeks! She is firing up the Democratic base! Thus, it appears to me that the candidates would not waste their time by visiting us in North Texas during this election season.

Look, I like politics. I like retail politics, when candidates have to look voters in the eye and tell us what they intend to do if we elect them.

I realize I am likely piddling into the wind on this request, but I’ll make it anyway.

Texas provides a huge pool of votes. My preference would be for VP Harris to win most of them. Based on what might be transpiring, there seems to be a shot — I’ll measure its probability later — that Kamala Harris could break through this barrier.

national news

Trump challenges Harris’s ethnicity? What the … ?

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Who in this world of ours does Donald J. Trump think he’s bamboozling?

The Republican presidential nominee today sat before the National Association of Black Journalists and said — and you can’t make this stuff up — that Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris only recently identified herself as Black. It was his crass and boorish manner in which he actually questioned whether the vice president of the United States is who she has contended she is for as long as anyone can remember.

What the hell is the matter with this idiot?

Harris is the product of a Black father and an Indian mother. That means she is the first VP of Black and South Asian descent.

Trump’s cowardly attack, of course, drew the expected response from Harris, who in a few days will accept the Democratic nomination for president. She told a rally crowd in Atlanta, “If you’re going to say something about me, say it to my face!”

That was Harris’s way of challenging Trump’s waffling on his pledge to debate the Democratic candidate on Sept. 10. He and his campaign agreed to do so. Now he’s chickening out.

Just as Trump sought to foment the lie in 2008 about Barack Obama’s birthplace, questioning whether the future president was eligible to run for the office, he has launched yet another chickensh** effort to cast aspersions on another rival’s ethnicity.

This individual’s cowardice simply takes my breath away.

national news

Be on guard, Democrats

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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.

national news, political news

Let’s get busy, Mme. VPOTUS

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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.