Tag Archives: Bernie Sanders

national news

Russians engaging in ‘strategic’ interference?

(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Hmm. Let’s see how this might play out.

Russia has re-entered the U.S. presidential election by trying to help Donald Trump win re-election. U.S. intelligence analysts have said as much to the president and to congressional leaders, prompting Trump to fire the acting director of national intelligence and replace him with a fierce loyalist

You got that? OK. Let’s look at the other side of it.

Russia also is helping Bernie Sanders, now the leading Democratic challenger to Trump. Sen. Sanders had a briefing on that bit of news. Why help Sanders? I’ll take a stab at it.

The Russians want the Democrats to nominate arguably the least electable challenger to Trump, enabling the president to cruise to re-election.

Sanders keeps talking about his own electability, how he’s going to get average Americans to rally to his side as he campaigns against Trump … assuming, of course, he gets the nomination.

I’m not sold on that notion. My strong hunch is that Russia is trying to sow deep division within the Democratic Party, which plays squarely into Donald Trump’s wheelhouse, paving the way to his re-election.

Just a thought.

national news

Is this for real? Sanders is becoming a prohibitive favorite?

My friends to the left aren’t going to like reading this, but that’s too bad. I happen to believe that Democratic Party primary voters are on the cusp of slitting their own proverbial throats if they think Sen. Bernie Sanders will defeat Donald John Trump in this year’s presidential election.

Sanders is the flavor of the moment. He is likely to win the Nevada caucus this weekend. He is gearing up for a big show in California on Super Tuesday, on March 3.

I cannot predict how a Trump-Sanders matchup will end, but it certainly appears as though the current president will be primed to win re-election in a significant manner. By that I believe it might turn into a landslide.

That, I submit, would be the most disastrous outcome imaginable.

Donald Trump needs to lose this election. The country needs for him to lose it. Is the Democratic Party going to do so by nominating a “democratic socialist” who has declared war on billionaires, who pledges massive wealth redistribution, who wants to provide free college education and free health care in that Medicare For All proposal?

Umm. No. Trump is quite likely to defeat Sanders. That’s my humble view, for whatever it’s worth.

I continue to prefer a more centrist approach. I want Democrats to nominate someone who can work with Republicans. I want the party nominee to be someone with legislative heft, with gravitas.

My first choice would be Joe Biden. I want the former vice president to collect himself and to start showing some signs of the formidable figure I believe he can become. That’s my hope.

My fear is that Democrats are hurtling toward the nation’s second consecutive presidential election travesty.

political news

Hoping for a credible alternative to current POTUS

I have voted in every presidential election since 1972.

I have been forced to think long and hard before marking my ballot precisely once during all those elections. The rest of my choices have come easily.

I can think only of one instance where I might suffer from a touch of anxiety as we get ready to vote for president in 2020. It involves one of the Democrats seeking to run against Donald John Trump.

That individual would be Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont who’s running in the Democratic Party presidential primary.

I dislike Sanders’ pie-in-the-sky approach to policy. He wants to enact a Medicare for All medical plan; he wants all college students to attend college free of charge; he continues to rail against billionaires, making us think of that immense wealth is inherently evil.

Thus, I have to square my reluctance to embrace his policies with what I perceive would be the alternative if Sanders gets nominated and then must run against Trump.

You probably have presumed correctly that my view of Trump’s unfitness for the presidency means there is no way on God’s Earth I can support this guy with my vote.

My strong preference is a politician who takes a more centrist approach to governing. I prefer a pol who can work with fellow pols on both sides of the great divide. Sanders isn’t wired that way. Neither, I should add, is Trump.

I mention Sanders because he is the current frontrunner for the Democratic Party nomination for president. I have no clue how he’ll hold up under intense scrutiny by his fellow primary candidates.

I would much prefer to cast my ballot without having to consider the consequence of my vote. I fear that Sen. Sanders would force me toward that direction.

Will it force me to vote for the current president? Not a chance!

I just want the opponent to win.

national news

Are Democrats flirting with a 1972 repeat?

1 Comment
(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster writing an essay for The Hill newspaper, poses a serious question that Democrats need to take seriously.

Are they flirting with a re-run of an electoral disaster by nominating a “democratic socialist” to run for president of the United States?

Penn writes about Sen. Bernie Sanders, the current Democratic frontrunner for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination: Sanders is an avowed democratic socialist whose “free college” mantra has captured the party’s youth vote, despite his having turned 78 years old. For decades he has lectured against the problems of big banks, an economy that works for the few and the need for revolutionary change. It is odd — in a time of such great prosperity, low unemployment and rising wages — that his message would resonate.

Yikes, man!

He seems to suggest in his essay that Democrats could face a blowout similar to what befell them when they nominated Sen. George McGovern in 1972 to run against President Nixon. McGovern lost 49 of 50 states to Nixon. I was a college student at the time. I was dedicated to electing George McGovern to be president. I was deflated quickly after the first polls closed on Election Night 1972; the networks called it almost immediately.

I am not willing to believe Donald Trump is going to blow Sanders out the way Nixon pummeled McGovern. I fear, though, that the president would cruise to re-election, which is an outcome I sincerely do not want to happen.

If Democrats are sincere in their belief that their nominee must be the most electable person they can find, they surely can do better than to elect someone such as Sanders. He isn’t a Democrat; his Senate career has produced next to zero legislative accomplishment; he talks a good game but doesn’t deliver the goods in the form of responsible legislation.

Sure, Sanders is drawing big, boisterous crowds. So did Sen. McGovern. The 1972 crowds cheered themselves hoarse urging McGovern to go after President Nixon. He tried. He failed … badly.

Check out Penn’s essay here.

Then ask yourself, if you are as devoted to Donald Trump’s defeat as I am: Is this the candidate who can actually win this most consequential election?

national news

Is there a doomsday scenario developing?

Bernie Sanders appears to be winning the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary.

Meanwhile, the one-time national frontrunner, Joe Biden, is finishing in a distant fifth or sixth place, pulling a single-digit turnout.

The former vice president of the United States, my preferred candidate, now must win in South Carolina. If he doesn’t win, he’s a goner.

Sanders is the “democratic socialist” who, if the Democratic Party nominates him, is going to walk straight into the Donald John Trump sausage grinder.

Are we being forced to accept the notion that Democrats just might nominate someone who wants to dramatically reshape the fundamental dynamic of our national economy?

Sanders keeps talking about leading a “movement.” Well, I am growing concerned that his movement is going to march off a political cliff and give a fundamentally unfit incumbent president a second term that — in my ever-so-humble view — might be more than this country can handle.

I am not liking what I am witnessing in this Democratic primary.

national news

Bernie is waging a ‘class warfare’ campaign

Bernie Sanders and his political allies seem to take pleasure in accusing Donald John Trump of separating Americans by class, that the president favors the rich over the poor, given the nature — they say — of the tax cuts that Congress enacted.

But … wait!

The Vermont independent U.S. senator who is competing for the Democratic presidential nomination is waging a class warfare campaign of his very own.

Listen to him. He blasts billionaires, accusing them of trying to “buy” the presidency. He says — with justification, I should add — that his campaign is being funded by non-billionaires, that he is soliciting small- to medium-sized contributions from regular folks.

Sanders vows to govern on behalf of the “average American” wage earner he is elected president of the United States near the of the year.

There’s plenty I do not like about Sanders. I oppose his Medicare for All mantra; I believe his pledge to give every American college student a free education is unrealistic; I am much more of a capitalist than a “democratic socialist.”

I also am wearing of hearing him invoke his demonization of wealthy Americans, of weaving the scolding lecture into virtually every answer he delivers to every question he receives.

Sen. Sanders is waging a class war while at the same time vowing to “unify” the nation he wants to govern. Just how does he do both things at once?

national news

Democrats need to pay careful attention to James Carville

1 Comment

Consider yourself forewarned: The item I am attaching to this brief blog post contains some rough language, but the underlying message is spot on.

It comes from former Bill Clinton political adviser — and creator of the phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid” — James Carville.

Carville warns that the Democratic Party is squandering its chance of defeating Donald John Trump later this year if it nominates a non-Democrat, a socialist in the form of Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Read it here.

Carville says he is “scared to death” of the party’s future if it marches down the far-left side of the highway upon which Sanders is traveling. I happen to concur with what Carville is asserting.

It is not unrealistic to believe that Trump could win re-election in a 40-state landslide if Democrats are foolish enough to nominate Sanders, who Carville said isn’t even a Democrat. He is an independent who represents Vermont in the Senate. But there he is, sitting at or near the top of the Democratic Party field.

Carville knows how to win these elections. He helped steer Bill Clinton to victory in 1992 in impressive fashion. Clinton won with a substantial Electoral College majority and a strong plurality among voters in a three-way race that included the late Ross Perot running as an independent candidate.

So, when Carville urges his party, the Democrats, to look more pragmatically at a nominee, someone who tacks more to the center than to the far left fringes, then I believe he is onto something.

national news

Baffled by Bernie’s big bounce

I don’t know a lot of things, so perhaps this isn’t a serious flash.

What in the world is fueling this reported “surge” by Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who is campaigning for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination?

Sanders reportedly is leading in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and is getting competitive in South Carolina.

His fans love him. They say he can beat Donald John Trump, the nation’s current president if he gets the chance to run against him head to head this fall.

Oh, he also wants to give universal health care for every American, he wants to provide free college education for every college student in the country, he wants to redistribute the nation’s wealth.

How is he going to do all that with a budget that’s running a trillion bucks in the red this year alone!

Trump will hang the “socialist” tag on him, which Sanders won’t deny, given that he calls himself a “democratic socialist.”

My major interest in this upcoming election is to defeat Donald Trump. I do not want him re-elected to a second term. Sanders might be able to gin up crowd fervor at his rallies; but then again, so does Trump.

I do not believe the Democrats’ path to victory against Trump should take them down the far-left lane. I continue to favor a more centrist approach to governance. I want the next president to be able to reach across the aisle to work with Republicans. Does anyone really believe deep in their heart of hearts that Bernie Sanders is the guy who can do that?

Yet the democratic socialist continues to “surge”? Go figure.

national news

Just not feelin’ ‘The Bern’

Allow me a moment or two to vent on what I see possibly transpiring within the fight for the Democratic Party presidential primary campaign.

It is that I am baffled at the support that Sen. Bernie Sanders continues to draw among those who want to defeat Donald John Trump, the nation’s current president.

Sanders is an independent from Vermont who is running in a party to which he does not belong. He is an avowed “democratic socialist,” a fellow who wants to redistribute the nation’s wealth. He wants to take money away from the “top 1 percent” who he says control everything in this great country.

He wants to make college education free for every American and favors something called “Medicare for All,” which in my mind is unaffordable.

He cannot campaign without lacing his rhetoric with the notes he pulls from that song sheet.

Sen. Sanders has lost me. I cannot back this guy. Yet he enjoys amazing support in Iowa, New Hampshire and possibly in Nevada … three of the early-primary states.

He is focusing more attention now on Texas, which has a March 3 primary on what is being billed as Super Tuesday.

Being more of a center-left kind of voter, I am inclined to look more seriously at candidates who seek to straddle the stripe that divides liberals and conservatives. I continue to long for a more compromising environment in the federal government.

It is clear to me that Donald John Trump isn’t the individual who can unite this country. He is campaigning to his base, firing ’em up at rallies and firing off epithets at his foes.

Bernie Sanders isn’t going to unite this country, either. He’s now making ad buys in Texas, seeking to elevate his profile here. Will the young folks who have glommed onto this fellow’s message now put him among the Democratic Party leaders in Texas?

I am among those voters who want to defeat Trump, who still appears all but certain to survive the impeachment trial under way in the U.S. Senate. I just cannot buy into the notion that Bernie Sanders is the guy who can do it.

national news

How does Bernie keep raking in all that cash?

I want to stipulate a political truism, which is that lots of money doesn’t always translate to lots of votes.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush had tons of cash when he launched his 2016 bid for the Republican Party presidential nomination. He, um, didn’t make the grade.

Four years later, we have Sen. Bernie Sanders out there raking in huge sums of money. They’re from small donors, he keeps telling us. Sanders, who’s actually an independent senator from Vermont, is running for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

I am baffled how so many voters keep “feeling the Bern.” They keep pumping all that cash into his coffers. He finished 2019 with a huge haul of $34.5 million in the final quarter of the year. He’s loaded, man!

You may color me amazed, along with baffled. The man sings off a single song sheet page. Wealthy people are bad for the country, he keeps saying. Every single answer to every question seems to turn on “wealth inequality.” He wants to redistribute the wealth, you know … take from the rich and give to the not-so-rich. I guess it has its appeal, but I am not sure why.

I hate to bring age into this argument, but he is 77 years old. He would be the oldest man ever inaugurated president were he to win. I mention this with some trepidation as I just turned 70 myself this past month.

Sanders has yet to demonstrate a broad swath of knowledge on matters far from the income inequality theme he keeps preaching.

The war on terror? Climate change? U.S.-Russia relations? Middle East policy? We know what he believes about taxation.

Plenty of my friends are supporters of Bernie Sanders. I just won’t sign on until I get a sense of a more well-rounded, comprehensive platform on which he intends to run. So far, I am not seeing it.

But … he still is awash in campaign cash.

Go figure.