Tag Archives: 2020 election

national news

Trump: the gift that keeps giving

The Stable Genius who masquerades as president of the United States is leaving a bread-crumb trail that is leading straight toward impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Donald Trump today — in full view of the entire world — called on China and Ukraine to investigate Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter, over business dealings that Trump has characterized as “crooked.”

I need to mention that the elder Biden is running for the Democratic presidential nomination and might face off against Trump next year during the 2020 presidential election.

So, there you have it, loudly and clearly and with no ambiguity.

The president of the United States has solicited another foreign government to help him win re-election. Sound familiar? Well, yes. It does! He got that kind of help from Russia during his winning presidential campaign in 2016 against Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Man, on man. This guy is off his rocker.

He is now openly abusing the awesome power of his office for personal political gain. There can be no pretense. There can be no need to put “alleged” or “allegedly” in front of reports that Donald Trump has enlisted the aid of foreign governments.

This is astonishing, incredible, mind-blowing — just name it.

The idea that Trump would seek help from a authoritarian power such as China to investigate a U.S. citizen is utterly and completely beyond the pale.

If there is any doubt that the president deserves to be impeached for abusing his office, I believe he has just emptied the gasoline can over an already raging political wildfire.

national news

Awaiting a wonderful experience at MAGA Rally

I intend fully to enjoy myself in a few days when I venture into Dallas to attend a Donald John Trump “MAGA Rally” at the American Airlines Center.

No, I won’t cheer the con man’s lies at the Oct. 17 rally. I won’t slap others on the back for being so devoted to this pathological liar. I won’t join in any idiotic chants to lock anyone up; indeed, the only person who needs to be locked up appears to be the president of the United States … but I digress.

My good time will center on enjoying what I believe is a unique political experience.

I intend to pass out business cards as I talk to folks at the rally. I want to ask them why they (a) support the president and (b) dismiss the concerns of much of the nation that he has compromised our nation’s security in exchange for his own political future.

The answers should be, um, edifying in the extreme.

I want to report them to you on this blog. I also intend to offer my own views on what I see, hear and sense inside the building.

I’ve attended concerts at the American Airlines Center. I know roughly how many people it seats. I will be casting my gaze about the place to look for empty seats. I also want to report the size of the crowd that gathers to hear the president’s assorted rants. I keep hearing about how Trump inflates these crowd sizes. I intend to see for myself who takes time to attend this event.

Look, I am a partisan. I admit it freely and without reservation. I won’t vote for Trump’s re-election when — or if — the chance presents itself in November 2020. I still believe Hillary Rodham Clinton would have been a superior president in any way you can imagine.

However, I am not an idiot. I know how to behave myself at these events. I had the honor of reporting and commenting on two Republican Party presidential nominating conventions: in 1988 in New Orleans and 1992 in Houston. I thought the copy I filed while working for the Beaumont Enterprise was reasoned, rational and coherent.

I attended the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., but that was as a civilian. I had obtained media credentials to cover it for the Amarillo Globe-News; however, I got reorganized out of my job there, turning me into a non-journalist the moment I resigned my post as editorial page editor. My wife and I went to Charlotte anyway and I attended the DNC as a spectator and someone who supported the Barack Obama-Joe Biden ticket.

So … a new opportunity and challenge awaits. Donald Trump no doubt will be, oh, shall we say, entertaining. I might laugh a time or two at the president. However, I will be laughing at him, not with him.

national news

Impeachment story is giving me fits

I have to admit something that makes me highly uncomfortable: The impeachment saga involving Donald John Trump is giving me fits.

I do not know on which side of the fence to plant myself. To proceed full bore toward impeachment. Or to put impeachment on the back shelf and wait for the 2020 election to play itself out.

Trump deserves to be impeached. Of that I am certain. He asked a foreign head of state for help in his re-election effort; he sought that help while seeking to do damage to Joe Biden, a potential 2020 election opponent. Moreover, he seems to have withheld a military aid package in exchange for the help he sought from the Ukrainian president.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has switched gears. She once resisted impeachment. She now has called for an “inquiry” into whether Trump should face impeachment.

Oh, the dilemma.

Does the speaker now want to risk the consequences of impeaching Trump in the House only to have the Senate acquit him?

Impeachment is a highly political process. Its aim is to remove someone from office. If one doesn’t get the boot after being impeached, then the process is deemed a failure.

Then there is this complication of embarking on an impeachment trek in the middle of an election year. How in the world does this play out?

Two presidents have been impeached already. The first one, Andrew Johnson, had inherited the office upon the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. There was no provision for selecting a vice president in 1868. Johnson escaped conviction by a single vote after a Senate trial. The House impeached Bill Clinton in 1998. He already had won re-election to a second term, so there was no election awaiting him. He, too, was acquitted by the Senate.

Trump is running for re-election under this storm cloud of doubt and despair.

Thus, my stomach is turning. My head is spinning.

I support impeachment at one level because Donald Trump has violated his oath of office. Then again, my more cautious side compels me to believe it might be wiser to defeat this con artist/flim-flammer/fraud at the ballot box in November 2020. If he loses, then pursue criminal charges against him after he leaves office. If he wins, dust off the impeachment portfolio of evidence and go full bore yet again.

I hate this story and the agony it is causing. I only can imagine what it must be doing to the principals.

national news

Waiting for Trumpsters to make positive case for POTUS’s re-election

The 2020 presidential election campaign is still in its formative stages. Democrats still are winnowing down a huge field of contenders/pretenders for their party’s nomination. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is gearing up as the Republicans’ nominee.

OK, so what might we expect to hear from the Trump Team as it seeks to get its man re-elected?

The economy will be front and center of Trump’s theme. Fine. The numbers have been good. Unemployment is low. Job growth has been brisk. However, there are danger signs lurking. Economists suggest a recession might be in the country’s near future.

However, even though he denigrates his immediate predecessor’s record over two terms as president, Trump did inherit an economy that was in far better shape than the one that dropped onto President Barack Obama’s lap in January 2009.

Beyond that, I want to hear from Trump’s allies why this man who has masqueraded as president deserves to be re-elected. I want them to make a positive case for him.

I’ll be clear that there’s nothing they can tell me that will change my mind. In my view, Trump is unfit for office. Name any category you wish — previous experience, business acumen, morality, ideology, presidential behavior — in my view he fails every test you can imagine.

I am willing to listen to those who are willing to make the case.

Who will stand up, grab a microphone and tell us that Donald Trump possesses all the essential qualities we expect in a president. Who will say he is compassionate? Or that he listens to Americans? Or that he studies the issues before acting on them? Or that he grasps the complexities of his office, or the massive federal government?

Trump’s own strategy likely will be steeped in innuendo, just as it was in 2016 when he surprised the political world by defeating Hillary Rodham Clinton. He won’t proclaim his own virtues, other than those he fabricates: his intelligence and his memory.

Trump’s campaign team will have to craft a message that echoes the boss’s own penchant for tearing down the opposition, just as it did when he won the previous presidential election.

Is that enough to send this guy back to the Oval Office for another four years? No. It damn sure isn’t.

However, I am awaiting something that resembles a positive message. To be candid, I likely won’t know how to react if I hear one.

Maybe I will just laugh out loud.

International news

Going for two in a row, yes, Mr. President?

Donald Trump accepted help from Russian goons in 2016 who decided to hack into our nation’s electoral system to help him win that presidential election.

Now the president appears to be looking toward a Russian neighbor, Ukraine, in digging up dirt on the son of a possible Democratic candidate for president in 2020.

The target this time is Hunter Biden, son of former vice president Joe Biden. The allegation is that Hunter Biden is doing business with a Ukrainian oligarch who also happens to own an energy company.

Trump is pushing back on reporting that he is looking for dirt on Hunter Biden. He denies it … of course! Naturally, he is totally believable in his denial, right? Well, no. He isn’t.

He is blaming the “Democrat Party” and the “Fake News Media” for concocting the story.

Actually, I happen to believe there’s a gun under all that smoke. It’s just me, perhaps. Then again, the president already has proven to be a pathological liar who cannot tell the truth under any circumstance.

Let’s all remember that former special counsel Robert Mueller determined that Russians interfered in our election in 2016. He joined other intelligence experts in making that determination. Trump, as his style, denigrated Mueller and all the other trained spooks who work for this country.

How does anyone believe anything the president ever says?

I cannot.

national news

Hoping this dropout triggers many more from Democratic field

Bill de Blasio should have seen it from the beginning.

New York City residents don’t think much of him. Yet the mayor decided he wanted an upgrade, to become the next president of the United States.

De Blasio never got to 2 percent in any national poll among Democratic candidates for president. So, today he pulled out. He’s done.

My hope is that de Blasio’s decision will trigger more withdrawals from the lengthy list of never-will-win Democrats seeking to win their party’s 2020 presidential nomination.

De Blasio didn’t qualify for the latest Democratic joint appearance in Houston, which I suppose was the last straw. The hard truth for the mayor was that a man who couldn’t engender broad support within his own city wasn’t likely to do any better on the national stage.

I reckon the still monstrous Democratic field has more candidates who will pack it in. They’ll leave this race to the half-dozen or so who actually have a chance in hell of being nominated and then running against the huckster in chief, Donald Trump.

Call it a campaign, folks. Follow the NYC mayor’s lead and go home.

political news

Just who can slug it out with Donald Trump?

It is now a given. Donald J. Trump will conduct a mean, unorthodox and vile campaign for re-election as president of the United States.

The question facing Democrats as they look over their still quite large field of presidential candidates is: Who among them is willing and able to stand up to the onslaught that Trump will hurl at them?

I have my doubts about all of ’em.

I believe it is becoming clearer by the week, if not daily, that this campaign is going to rest between Trump and one of four, maybe five, Democratic contenders.

Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie (gulp!) Sanders, Pete Buttigieg and (maybe) Beto O’Rourke stand at the top of candidates who I think will stay the course beyond the first caucuses and primaries. If only Kamala Harris could shake the race up just a bit more.

It might be that someone will emerge as the gut fighter the Democrats will need if they have a chance of defeating the carnival barker in chief. Remember when former first lady Michelle Obama implored Democrats to “go high” when Republicans “go low”? We can kiss that mantra good bye, or so it appears to me at this moment.

Trump is a street fighter. The hideousness he displayed while beating Hillary Clinton in 2016 might resemble a hen party by the time he gets ramped up against whomever the Democratic Party nominates next summer to run against him.

I will lay this out right now, as if it’s a big surprise … which it isn’t. Any of the Democrats now in the field — with the possible exception of Bernie Sanders — would have my vote against Trump in November 2020. Why not possibly Bernie? Because his mantra about wealth inequality is becoming like a one-note samba.

Donald Trump never should have gotten elected in 2016. The Democrats’ major error was in nominating someone who had at least as many negatives going for her as Trump. I know what you might be thinking: Sure, you can say that now, even though you were predicting a big win for Hillary the last time. Well, I wasn’t alone.

I guess the task now for the field of Democratic challengers is for someone among them to emerge as the toughest of the bunch to handle the nastiness that is sure to come from the president.

I just wish someone could stake that claim.

national news

Castro launches cheap shot at Biden

You may count me as one of those Americans who gasped just a tad tonight when Julian Castro seemed to launch an ageist attack against Joe Biden.

The two men were part of a 10-candidate Democratic presidential candidate joint appearance tonight in Houston.

The former vice president, Biden, sought to make a point about “Medicare for all.” He opposes a plan pitched by opponents Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. He said he supported a provision in the Affordable Care Act, which gave Americans a chance to “buy in” to insurance plans provided by the ACA.

Castro then launched a verbal barrage, accusing the former VP of “forgetting” what he just said. He said several times in just a few seconds that Biden “forgot” something he said only moments earlier. The audience at the Texas Southern University hall gasped audibly.

I have to say I thought the moment revealed an ugly side of the former Housing secretary and former San Antonio mayor.

Moreover, he misrepresented what Biden actually said … which makes his attack even worse.

Ageism has no place

I don’t know who won this encounter. They all seemed to score sufficient points arguing with each other at times. However, Julian Castro’s baseless barrage appears to have been the lowest point that any of the candidates suffered.

Too bad.

national news

How will Donald Trump depart the presidency?

Hey, it’s worth asking: Am I the only American who wonders just how Donald Trump is going to leave the presidency, particularly if he happens to lose the 2020 election?

I wonder because of all the norms that the president has tossed into the crapper since taking office more than two years ago.

He makes policy pronouncements via Twitter; he uses the social medium to fire Cabinet officials and top executive branch leaders; he berates our allies while cozying up to our foes; he lies through his teeth on every level imaginable. You get my point.

Suppose he loses the election in 2020. What in the name of good losers is he going to do? Will he pledge to work for a smooth transition with whomever defeats him? Will he go quietly into the night to pursue a new life as a private citizen? Will he form a foundation that does good work? Will he write his memoir? Will he select a site for a presidential library?

Pardon me while I laugh out loud.

He won’t do any of that. You know it, too. He’s going to go out kicking and screaming. He’ll bitch about the election being “rigged” and he’ll launch a never-ending Twitter tirade against any and all of his foes.

President Bush 41 lost his re-election bid to Bill Clinton in 1992. He went out with class. President Carter did as well when he got clobbered in 1980 by Ronald Reagan. President Ford lost his bid for election in 1976 and became good friends with the man who beat him, Jimmy Carter.

Do you believe Donald Trump will exhibit that kind of class when he exits the White House, either in 2021 should he lose his bid for re-election or — and perish the thought — in 2025 if he manages to finish a second term as president?

I know. It’s laughable on its face.

political news

GOP ‘canceling’ elections in effort to ‘rig’ POTUS’s re-election?

I am sure you remember when Republican Party presidential nominee Donald J. Trump accused Democrats of trying to “rig” the 2016 party nomination process to favor of Hillary Clinton.

He never really offered any scenario on how that would be done, but he kept yammering and yapping about it.

Well, the GOP now has a strategy to “rig” its nominating process to favor Trump’s effort to be nominated by his party in 2020. They’re planning to cancel primary elections in various states in an effort to protect a weakened incumbent.

Trump faces possibly three party challengers, former U.S. Reps. Mark Sanford and Joe Walsh and former Gov. William Weld. States party organizations are seeking ways to cancel the primary elections because they fear a possible Trump loss in any upcoming GOP primary.

Is it “rigged”?

I know this isn’t exactly unprecedented. Democrats have done the same thing in recent election cycles, such as what happened in South Carolina in 2012 when President Obama sought re-election; the South Carolina Democratic Party canceled that state’s primary eight years ago. One thing, though: No Democrats rose to challenge the president.

This one seems a bit different, given the expressed interest among three Republican politicians in challenging an incumbent GOP president.

Yep. It looks like they’re “rigging” the outcome.