Tag Archives: 2020 election

national news

Polls are useless this far out from Election Day

I am going to breathe a heavy sigh as I write these next few sentences.

I heard today that Joseph R. Biden Jr. leads Donald J. Trump Sr. by 13 percentage points, according to a Quinnipiac University public opinion poll. The media have exploded over those findings. They say the poll results point to potentially serious trouble for the president if former Vice President Biden emerges as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in 2020.

Allow me to state the obvious: Any poll this far away from Election Day does not mean a single thing. Nothing, man! Zero.

Must we be reminded that Donald Trump was seen as a novelty candidate when he declared his presidential candidacy in the summer of 2015? No one took this TV celebrity/real estate mogul seriously.

We take him seriously now, at least in terms of his standing as the president of the United States of America.

Do I want him to lose the 2020 election? Well, yeah! I do! I intend to use this blog as a forum to seek his ouster as president no later than Election Day 2020.

However, the polling that’s being kicked around a year and a half from the next election shouldn’t be taken seriously.

Talk to me, pollsters and pundits, next spring. Or maybe next summer. Then I’ll pay attention to the polls.

national news

POTUS is an ‘existential threat’ to the country he governs?

Just wondering: When have you ever heard someone describe the president of the United States as an “existential threat” to the very nation he was elected govern?

Never? Maybe once in an epochal age? Yeah, maybe.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, one of many Democrats seeking to succeed Donald Trump as president, has called Trump such a threat to the nation.

He is touring Iowa, that key caucus state that kicks off the presidential campaign. He is talking about Trump’s politics of fear and division; he is warning us about Trump’s attacks on American institutions, such as the media.

He is going straight after Donald Trump’s character, or lack of character. He is calling the president a criminal and someone who cannot be trusted to represent this nation firmly on the world stage.

Yes, that is how I would describe the president as well.

Those elements comprise an existential threat to the very nation that somehow, against all reason and odds, elected him to the most noble office in the land.

Still, the hear such a description coming from a major candidate for that office call the incumbent an “existential threat” takes this discussion to a level I do not recognize.

It’s only going to get stranger.

national news

Civility likely to require long-term rehab

If we look ahead for a moment to the November 2020 presidential election, then we need to ponder what I consider to be the worst possible outcome: the re-election of Donald John Trump.

The president might win a second term. What in the world is going to occur then? How will the next Congress deal with a president who labels Democrats to be everything short of spawns of Satan? He won’t work with Democrats because they are continuing to insist on searching for answers to that still-nagging Russia electoral interference issue.

For their part, Democrats won’t be pleased, either, with the prospect of working while Trump is still in office. How in the world will they react? Will they keep saying and doing things that sets Trump off on endless Twitter tirades?

Imagine the president traveling overseas after the 2020 election and behaving as he did at Normandy during the commemoration of the D-Day landings of June 1944. He sat in front of those 9,000 headstones where U.S. servicemen are buried and called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a “disaster.”

Just suppose, too, that Pelosi keeps her speakership after the 2020 election. How is she going to react to more verbal trashing from the president?

Oh, and then there’s the Senate, which might flip from Republican control to Democratic control.

Imagine that scenario, with Democrats possibly controlling both legislative chambers while Republicans keep possession of the keys to the White House.

Civility? It’s a goner. I continue to hope we can find it. Somewhere. Somehow.

It’s gone for as long as Donald Trump remains in an office for which he is totally unqualified … and I’ll say it again: for which he is unfit.

national news

Large field broadens the scope of quality candidates

I said during the 2016 Republican Party presidential primary campaign that the GOP field was deep and full of highly qualified individuals.

My favorite in the field of 17 became then-Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a man of considerable legislative accomplishment during his years in Congress, particularly as chairman of the House Budget Committee when he worked with Speaker Newt Gingrich and President Clinton to produce a balanced federal budget.

He didn’t make the grade, of course. GOP voters settled on the carnival barker/reality TV celebrity/phony self-made real estate mogul Donald Trump.

The GOP winner is now running for re-election as president of the United States.

He faces an even larger field of Democratic challengers, not to mention at least one challenger from within his own Republican Party.

The big Democratic primary field is full of talent, too.

I am officially undecided on who I prefer to see nominated to run against the “stable genius” who masquerades as POTUS.

None of the heretofore unknowns has yet to bust through the glass, surprising the nation with his or her political strength. Yes, we have a former vice president in the field; he is holding on to a large lead among the candidates seeking to run against Trump.

We also have a 2016 primary also-ran in the Democratic field.

There’s the small-town mayor, a few U.S. senators, a couple of governors, some (current and former) House members and a smattering of candidates who, to be candid, I don’t know what they do during the day.

But . . . they all have assorted skills and experience that I am quite sure commend them for the toughest job in the world.

I won’t go so far out on that ol’ limb to suggest that any of dozens of Democrats would be preferable to the incumbent.

However, a lot of them fit the bill. I want to hear more from them this time, just as I wanted to hear more from the GOP field in 2016.

My hope is that the consequence of this large field of Democrats only shortens the odds of a quality challenger emerging to defeat Donald Trump a year from November and send him out of the White House as quickly as humanly possible.

Please, let there be no repeat of the hideous mistake that Republican Party primary voters made when they nominated the huckster in chief.

national news

Trump wasn’t kidding, apparently, about strength of his support

Many of us rolled our eyes in disbelief when Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump said he could “shoot someone on Fifth Avenue” and not lose any votes.

Sure, some Americans applauded. They laughed. They cheered. Others of us were, um, appalled.

Then the candidate got elected. Now the boast doesn’t seem quite so farfetched, given the strength of the president’s firewall in Congress against the amazing array of examples of his utter lack of character, his lack of decency, his disregard for the law, his ignorance of the U.S. Constitution.

Trump’s political base remains wedded to him at some level approaching 40 percent. They give him a pass as he tells Congress to stick where the sun doesn’t shine in search of answers to serious questions about whether the president obstructed justice. They stand and cheer this clown as he hurls juvenile insults at his foes.

They have shrugged as he called the late John McCain a “war hero only because he was captured” by the enemy during the Vietnam War; they laughed as he mocked a New York Times reporter’s physical disability; they didn’t care that he acknowledged groping women; the base didn’t flinch while he denigrated U.S. intelligence analysts’ view that Russians interfered in our 2016 election; they didn’t mind when he attached moral equivalence between Klansmen and Nazis to those who protested against them.

I could go on. You get my drift.

What was seen and heard as a preposterous assertion on the campaign trail no longer can be dismissed. Donald Trump rode that solid base of support to a victory no one saw coming. He is relying on that base now as he campaigns for re-election.

He has endorsed a hideous Twitter message that slanders House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, suggesting she is a drunk.

The base doesn’t care!

One of the many Democrats running for president this time, Pete Buttigieg, recently lamented how Republicans used to care about “character.” They no longer care about that.

They stand foursquare behind a president who lacks character at every level one can imagine.

Utterly amazing.

national news

Mayor Pete takes it straight to POTUS

Pete Buttigieg is stepping it up while touting his military, executive government and public service experience.

Consider what he said during a recent interview about Donald J. Trump’s “bone spur” medical deferment during the Vietnam War.

Buttigieg is one of more than 20 candidates running for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination. He said Trump used his family’s wealth and privilege to concoct the bone spur deferment that kept him out of the military during the height of that war.

“If he were a conscientious objector, I’d admire that,” Buttigieg said. “But this is somebody who, I think it’s fairly obvious to most of us, took advantage of the fact that he was the child of a multi-millionaire in order to pretend to be disabled so that somebody could go to war in his place.”

You go, Mayor Pete!

Indeed, Trump has managed — according to congressional testimony given by Michael Cohen, his former lawyer/friend/fixer — to insult millions of Americans who did serve in Vietnam. Cohen told the House Oversight Committee that Trump said, “Do you think I’m stupid? I wasn’t going to Vietnam.” Trump was trying at the time to hide the details of those medical deferments from the public.

So, only “stupid” Americans went to war in Vietnam? Is that what he said? Well, thank you very much, Mr. President. Call me “stupid.”

Buttigieg did volunteer for service in the Navy and did serve in Afghanistan. So, he does have more military experience than Trump. He also has said he has more military experience than any president since the late George H.W. Bush.

It remains an open question, of course, whether any of this will resonate with voters, who knew about Trump’s dubious deferment when he ran for president in 2016.

Still, I stand with Mayor Pete Buttigieg on this matter, that Trump used — and abused — his standing as a child of privilege when others of his generation found a way to thrust themselves into harm’s way.

national news

Democrats looking for sure-fire ‘diversity’ on 2020 ticket?

At the risk of confirming my pledge to avoid political predictions by getting another prediction dead wrong, I am going to offer a possible result in the Democratic Party’s presidential primary campaign in 2020.

It’s looking to me as though Democrats — whoever they nominate for president a year from now — will include (a) a woman or (b) a person “of color” on their presidential ticket to run against Donald J. Trump, or (c) maybe both.

A Politico.com story talks about how former Vice President Joe Biden is building on his early front-running momentum as he kicks his presidential campaign into high gear. It also references the chatter about how Biden, the prohibitive early front runner, could produce a political juggernaut if he wins the presidential nomination and then selects Sen. Kamala Harris to run with him as his vice-presidential nominee.

I don’t know who the Democrats will nominate. If it’s Biden, it seems to make all the sense in the world for him to find a young, vibrant running mate. Harris fits the bill. She also, quite obviously is of the correct gender and she also happens to be biracial.

A woman of color!

How does look?

As Politico reports: “Harris is everything the 76-year-old Biden is not. The freshman senator from California is younger, a woman and a person of color. As Biden gets dinged for his bipartisan bromides, Harris is winning applause for her merciless cross-examination of Trump officials.”

OK, I cannot predict a Biden-Harris ticket will materialize. It seems to make perfect sense, though, for Democrats to look consciously for someone who isn’t a white guy for one of the two spots at the top of their presidential ticket.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus call such a lineup to be a political “dream ticket.” They might be on to something.

economic news

Here’s a thought: Share the economic glory

Democrats running for president say that Donald Trump doesn’t deserve credit for the current boom in the nation’s economy.

They drape the credit over the shoulders of Trump’s immediate presidential predecessor, Barack H. Obama. They say President Obama’s policies are responsible for the continuing job growth, the diminishing unemployment rolls, the increase in the Gross Domestic Product, the increase in wages and salaries.

So, there you go.

Oops. Not so fast!

Hey, don’t misunderstand me on this matter. Donald Trump doesn’t deserve nearly all the credit he keeps taking. However, he does deserve credit at least for not botching the progress that was well under way when he took office in January 2017.

I resist granting him all that credit mainly because I want him out of office. I want him defeated in the 2020 election and I do not want him to ride behind the wave created by the good economic news that keeps coming his way.

However, the ongoing good news is occurring on the current president’s watch.

However, I cannot yet fathom why this president cannot give any credit to anyone else for the success he enjoys in the moment. That refusal to offer a positive nod to President Obama’s economic policies perhaps is fueling Democratic politicians’ current anger with the current president.

Hey, we’re heading into an election year. Thus, one man’s economic miracle is another man’s economic disaster. Donald Trump plays that game better than most.

national news, political news, State news

Beto’s early burst needs a boost

Beto O’Rourke burst on the national public political stage with a near-miss loss to a Republican U.S. senator in Texas in 2018.

Then the former El Paso congressman launched his presidential campaign and hearts started fluttering beyond Texas’s state line. He raised a lot of money in the first 24 hours of his 2020 presidential candidacy.

But then . . . O’Rourke plateaued. Other Democrats — and there are a lot of ’em out there — began stealing Beto’s thunder. They spoke in many more specifics than O’Rourke has offered.

So now, according to the Texas Tribune, O’Rourke is now finding himself looking for a bit of a reset. He is settling in for the long haul. The Tribune reports that O’Rourke is still campaigning “aggressively,” but he’s now just one among a large field of politicians who want to become the next president of the United States.

Yep. It’s going to be a long one, no matter how O’Rourke finishes this campaign.

The RealClearPolitics poll average has former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the runaway frontrunner for the Democratic Party nomination. Biden stands at 41 percent among all the announced candidates; Sen. Bernie Sanders is next at something like 16 percent. Beto stands at 4 percent, according to the RCP poll average.

It’s way too early to write Beto off, just as it way too early to anoint Joe Biden as the next Democratic Party presidential nominee.

I guess O’Rourke’s recent struggles tell us about the fickle nature of the voting public and offer an example of how a candidate cannot rely solely on a prior campaign . . . that he lost!

national news

Stop the ‘what about-ism’ with election interference

I totally understand that the Russian attack on our electoral system during the 2016 presidential election occurred during President Obama’s administration.

I’ve noted as much in this blog.

That all said, I am growing weary of Donald Trump’s team reminding us of that while suggesting that the current president is taking steps to ensure that it won’t happen again.

Fiddlesticks!

It’s not happening. FBI director Christopher Wray has reminded us that the Russians conducted a comprehensive attack on our system in 2016; they doubled down in 2018; and they are now preparing to engage in what Wray called “the big show,” which is the 2020 presidential election.

The Trump administration needs to demonstrate graphically that it is in fact taking measures to ensure that the Russians will not do once again what they have done in our nation’s most two most recent election cycles.

White House press secretary — and serial liar — Sarah Huckabee Sanders told us yet again that the Obama administration is the real villain here.

No! She’s got it wrong! Donald Trump’s refusal to acknowledge that Vladimir Putin is the No. 1 bad guy betrays the president’s lack of commitment to protecting the nation’s election system against a foreign hostile power.