Tag Archives: 2020 election

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One-note samba won’t cut it on campaign trail

I’ll give Washington Gov. Jay Inslee plenty of credit for candor.

He announced his candidacy the other day for president of the United States declaring right up front, out loud and for all the world to see and hear that he’s running on one issue only: climate change and the peril it poses for the world’s most powerful nation.

Fine. What about the rest of the job, governor? What about, oh, let’s see: fighting terrorism, creating jobs, fiscal responsibility, dealing with cybersecurity, border security? There are a whole lot of other issues, too.

Inslee wants to make climate change the strongest plank in his platform on which to seek the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2020.

I don’t dispute the urgency he is placing on the matter. I do dispute whether it’s enough all by itself to commend him for nomination and election.

Just as Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is running on economic inequality, which kind of mirrors Issue No. 1 for Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Inslee is staking his candidacy on a single issue.

We have Sens. Cory Booker, Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar in the hunt already. Former Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado is in. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is, too. I know I’m missing someone. There’s too many of ’em to keep up.

The Democratic Party field has reached a dozen candidates so far. There will be more. Many more, or so it appears. Texan Beto O’Rourke appears to be set to go. Former Vice President Joe Biden is letting it slip out that his family is all in on his running for president.

They all need to demonstrate a well-rounded, well-considered and well-tested competence on an array of domestic and foreign policy issues. Climate change is a big one. So is income inequality.

Spare me, though, the one-note samba. I tend to tire of hearing the same thing coming out of candidates’ mouths.

We’ve already elected an incompetent business mogul/boob to the nation’s highest office. We don’t need to train another president on the vast complexities of the nation’s highest office.

national news

Trump performance at CPAC is utterly jaw-dropping

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If you have the time — and arguably a stomach strong enough to withstand it — you need to take a couple of hours to watch the video attached to this blog post.

It is Donald John “Stable Genius” Trump’s full speech delivered this past weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

This record-setting tirade is a case study in presidential idiocy. It sets the stage for the kind of campaign we can expect from the 45th president of the United States if he decides to run for re-election in 2020.

I say “if” because I am not yet totally convinced he’s in. Trump probably is going to run. But . . . one never can presume anything as it relates to the president.

But this CPAC soliloquy is utterly jaw-dropping in the nonsense that poured out of POTUS’s mouth. The Washington Post counted more than 100 outright lies that came from Trump in his two-hour tirade.

The histrionics, the hyperbole, the hysteria is utterly, astonishingly, and unbelievably bizarre in the extreme.

I am forced to ask yet again: What in the name of all that is dignified did we get when this individual managed to win enough electoral votes to become the president of the United States of America?

I actually get it. This individual speaks for those who “think” as he does. He echoes their cynicism and calls it “populism.”

Unbelievable!

political news

What a ‘horse race’ this is going to become

Good grief, man! I thought the 2016 Republican Party presidential primary campaign would be one for the books.

I suppose it was, given who won that party’s presidential nomination and then was elected president of the United States.

But this one? Wow! The upcoming Democratic Party primary field figures to eclipse by a good bit the size of the GOP field four years ago.

Seventeen Republicans fought it out for the right to succeed Barack Obama as president in 2016. The upcoming election campaign already features 10 or 11 announced Democratic candidates and we’re nowhere near finished seeing the entire field filled out.

How do you suppose the media will cover this thundering herd of candidates looking to succeed Donald Trump?

They’re already in full horse-race mode. Former Vice President Joe Biden is thought to be the frontrunner — and he is one of those who has not yet announced whether he’s going to run for POTUS in 2020. It looks like he’s going to do it.

The horse race aspect of the media coverage is the kind of thing that drives me a nuts. I get batty listening to and reading reports of who’s up, who’s down, who’s an up-and-comer, who’s the has-been.

I hope to hear more issues discussion this year than we’ve experienced over the past several election cycles.

Donald Trump likes to boast about crowd size, TV ratings and the scope of his intelligence. What will Democrats offer in response? I hope whoever emerges from the huge initial field will talk about how they intend to repair the damage that Donald Trump has done to the presidency — not to mention to the country.

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Bernie to Hillary: Don’t call with advice

Bernie Sanders is still angry with Hillary Rodham Clinton, or so one might presume.

The two of them competed for the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination. Clinton, the former first lady/U.S. senator/secretary of state, defeated the Vermont independent U.S. senator in the primary contest.

Then, with the wind supposedly at her back, she managed to lose that year’s presidential election to Donald J. Trump in one of the country’s most stunning political upsets.

Sanders and Clinton “have differences,” Sanders said this week. Has Hillary called him? No, he told the co-hosts of “The View.” He won’t ask her to, either, he said.

No need to call

Hey, I kind of get why Sanders is miffed. It’s not that I buy into the notion that Clinton pilfered the nomination from him. She won more votes in the Democratic primary than Sanders. Thus, she collected more convention delegates. End of story.

The real story ought to be that Clinton was supposed to be a shoo-in to win the presidency. Then she threw it away, losing to the carnival barker nominee the Republicans sent against her.

Does the defeated Democratic nominee have any credible advice she could give to any of the growing horde of candidates now seeking to defeat Donald Trump? Probably. Who, though, is going to listen to someone who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory?

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Waiting for Beto’s decision

I think it’s a good bet that Beto O’Rourke, who says he’s made his decision regarding the 2020 political season, is not going to run for a seat on the El Paso County Commissioners Court.

Nor is he running for the U.S. Senate against John Cornyn, the senior Texas Republican senator.

Oh, I get it! He’s going to announce he is running for president of the United States. Is that it? Sure it is! Or so many observers are saying.

I am trying to get excited about it. I am not there. At least not yet.

O’Rourke came tantalizingly close to defeated U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018. He got Texas Democrats all fired up. He gave them hope that if a Democrat can come within a couple of percentage points of winning a statewide race, then perhaps there will be a chance for the party to break the GOP vise grip on the political structure.

But is the young man, a former El Paso congressman, ready for the Big Show? A big part of me wonders if he’s up for the biggest job on Earth.

Were he to be nominated and then run against Donald Trump for the presidency, O’Rourke would have my support. I just wonder if he’s able to defeat a gigantic field of Democrats lining up to take down the president of the United States.

He’s going to liven this contest up . . . even more than it is already.

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Will he or won’t he run for POTUS?

I am on pins and needles waiting for Beto O’Rourke to tell us whether he is running for president of the United States in 2020.

Well, actually, I’m not. I am amazed, though, at the excitement that a potential Beto candidacy is ginning up among Democratic partisans as the field for the presidential election keeps growing.

O’Rourke seems like a fine young family man. He represented El Paso, Texas, in Congress for three terms. Then he ran for the Senate in 2018 and came within a couple of percentage points of defeating Sen. Ted Cruz, the sometimes-fiery Republican incumbent.

That a Democrat could come as close as O’Rourke did in 2018 to upsetting a GOP incumbent still has politicos’ attention. Thus, they are waiting Beto’s decision.

He says he’ll let us know by the end of the month whether he intends to seek the presidency, which is just a few days down the road.

The political world awaits.

I remain decidedly mixed about Beto’s possible candidacy. I wanted him to win his race against Cruz. I think he would be a fine U.S. senator.

And, maybe, one day he will make an equally fine president of the United States. Still, there’s just something a bit too green about Beto.

Do his policies bother me? No. I consider myself a center-left kind of fellow. Thus, I don’t see Beto as a flame-throwing progressive bad-ass. He’s not a socialist — closeted or otherwise.

However, he seems to be trading on the excitement he built with his Senate run, believing possibly that he can parlay that into a national campaign.

I just don’t know

That all said, I’ll repeat what I’ve stated already: If he were to win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination and then face off in the fall of 2020 against Donald John Trump, he would have my support all the way to the finish line.

He just isn’t the perfect candidate to take on Donald Trump.

I’m still waiting for Mr. or Ms. Political Perfection — or a reasonable facsimile — to jump out of the tall grass.

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What’s with this Sen. Klobuchar ‘toughness’?

What the hell is going on here? Media reporting keeps harping about how “tough” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a declared Democratic Party candidate for president, is on her staff.

Now there’s this bit: She supposedly berated a staff member for failing to bring eating utensils; thus, Klobuchar was “forced” to eat a salad with — get this! — a comb.

A comb? What?

This social media gossip is getting weirder by the day.

I shudder to think what we’re going to hear about all the candidates once this 2020 campaign gets really heated up.

Hold on, folks. It’s gonna get bumpy. Real bumpy!

national news

Is Joe Biden really, truly ready for this?

The chatter is beginning to get louder.

It involves former Vice President Joe Biden and whether he intends to run for president of the United States in 2020. Media are reporting the ex-VP is a couple of weeks away from making that decision. The chatter includes a lot of speculation that he’s inclined to run — but that “family matters” might hold him back.

I would vote for the former vice president in an instant were he to win the Democratic nomination and run against Donald Trump in 2020. However, I don’t want him to seek the nomination. I want a younger, fresher candidate to face the president . . . presuming, of course, that he runs for re-election!

I want to broach this Biden “family matter” situation directly and speculate on what Biden might face in this social media age from the Twitter bully who masquerades as president of the United States.

Donald Trump is a vicious social media bully. He knows no bounds. He attacks anyone with impunity and is unafraid to attack anyone’s family. Vice President Biden’s family well might present Trump with a target that is too inviting to ignore.

Biden’s elder son, Beau, died in 2015 of brain cancer. After Beau Biden’s tragic death, Joe Biden’s younger son, Hunter, divorced his wife . . . and reportedly had been dating his brother’s widow.

This is precisely the kind of family drama that might lure the president into a hideous Twitter barrage. Thus, it becomes incumbent on the former VP to ponder whether he wants to expose his family to the torrent of viciousness that Trump is capable of unleashing.

When you take on Donald Trump, you must be willing to steel yourself against the ferocious nature of the president’s makeup. Donald Trump is capable — and, oh, so willing — to say anything about anyone who opposes him.

This is the kind of fight Joe Biden can expect to face if he decides to take this final plunge into the political free-for-all required of anyone who wants to become president of the United States.

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Not going to feel the ‘Bern’ this time, either

Readers of this blog no doubt understand that I want Donald Trump to be defeated for re-election in 2020. He is unfit for office. He is unfit for public service at any level. I want him to disappear from public view. The sooner the better.

That all stated — yet again! — I am chagrined that one of the possible challengers to the president has decided to re-enter the fight.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont, is now a member of the gigantic and still growing field of Democrats running for president in 2020.

Please, Bernie. Why are you back in this race?

Sanders isn’t even a Democrat. He runs for the Senate as an independent, meaning he is unaffiliated with either major political party. He caucuses with Senate Democrats, votes with them on virtually all legislative matters and so I guess that makes him a  de facto Democrat.

My hope remains as I stated it some months ago: I want the next Democratic Party presidential nominee to be someone no one has heard of. I want that person to emerge from the tall grass, to burst on the scene with flair and panache.

Please forgive me if I sound like an ageist, but I also want that nominee to be someone a lot younger than the 77-year-old Bernie Sanders.

Bernie Sanders is a political retread. He ran for the Democratic nomination in 2016 essentially on a single issue: income inequality. He beat that issue bloody while losing the nomination fight to Hillary Rodham Clinton. It is a totally legitimate issue, but it is not the singular issue that commends him to the highest office in the United States.

Indeed, the senator needed to demonstrate a much wider range of knowledge than he has exhibited.

I suppose his candidacy elevates him immediately to the top tier of potential Democratic nominees. He’s up there with, say, Sens. Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and perhaps even Elizabeth Warren.

The roster of candidates is sure to grow. Goodness, it might exceed 25 or so candidates.

I want one of those Democrats to emerge as The One, the individual who can take the fight directly to Donald Trump.

It’s just not Bernie Sanders.

Donald Trump, national news, political news

Run, Gov. Weld, run!

Wouldn’t it be just a kick in the backside if William Weld re-creates a Eugene McCarthy moment in the 2020 race for the presidency of the United States?

Weld, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts, has formed an exploratory committee to determine whether to mount a primary challenge against Donald Trump. Weld said many other Republicans “exhibit all the symptoms of Stockholm syndrome, identifying with their captor.”

Weld ran for vice president in 2016 on the Libertarian ticket headed by former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson. The ticket didn’t do too well, gathering just 4.5 million votes, or about 3 percent of the total.

He wants back into the fight, this time as a Republican.

The McCarthy moment? In 1968, the Vietnam War was raging and Sen. McCarthy, a Minnesota Democrat, mounted a Democratic Party primary challenge against President Lyndon Johnson. McCarthy — a vehement anti-war candidate — took his campaign to the nation’s first primary state, New Hampshire.

He then finished a very strong second to President Johnson, sending shockwaves through the Democratic Party establishment. McCarthy’s strong showing brought Sen. Robert F. Kennedy into the race. Then on March 31, 1968, LBJ spoke to the nation to announce an end to the bombing campaign against North Vietnam — and then said he would not seek or accept the Democratic nomination “for another term as your president.”

History does have a way of repeating itself. If only Gov. Weld can mount any sort of serious challenge to the wack job serving as president of the United States.

One’s hope must spring eternal. Mine does.