Tag Archives: 2020 election

national news

Trump-Pence 2020 in possible doubt?

It’s not unheard of, but in recent years it’s a rare occurrence when a president of the United States jettisons a vice president and runs with a new running mate while seeking re-election.

Newsweek magazine is reporting that Donald Trump’s key advisers are floating the notion of replacing Vice President Mike Pence with U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley.

Why? Because the vice president was highly critical of that hideous “Access Hollywood” tape in which the future president disclosed how he could grab women by their genitals. Pence, a devout Christian, reportedly was incensed over what he heard … and Trump hasn’t forgiven Pence for the apparent “disloyalty,” according to Newsweek.

I am not going to dictate what I think Trump should do. That’s his call. Frankly, the vice president’s future is of little interest to me, other than whether he would ascend to the presidency if — dare I suggest it — that Trump doesn’t finish his term.

The most recent president to switch VPs was Gerald R. Ford, who kicked Vice President Nelson Rockefeller — who was appointed to the office — to the curb. President Ford selected Sen. Bob Dole as his 1976 running mate. The president lost his bid for election to the office to which he was appointed to Jimmy Carter.

Newsweek reports: The president could be considering new strategies for his next campaign after Republicans were dealt major blows in last week’s midterm elections. Democrats picked up at least 36 seats to retake the House and prevented Republicans from further bolstering their lead in the Senate. This was an election Trump had turned into a referendum on his first two years in office.

Indeed, as I watched the returns roll in, it appears to many of us that Trump lost that “referendum” … bigly, if you know what I mean.

Does he toss the vice president overboard in some sort of hail-Mary effort to save his presidency? Not a damn thing would surprise me.

local news, political news, State news

Texas remains a red state, just not as red

I was hoping the 2018 midterm election would turn Texas from blood red to purple; turning the state blue was out of the question.

The results are in and from my perch it appears the state is still red, as in Republican-leaning. Texas, though, is not as red as it was prior to the balloting this past week.

Yes, “red” means Republican, “blue” means Democrat and “purple” is a combination of the two primary colors, meaning that “purple” states are those “swing” territories, battlegrounds if you will.

Texas’s roster of statewide offices remains occupied by an all-GOP lineup. The state’s featured race, between U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic challenger, finished with Cruz being re-elected by less than 3 percentage points. The closeness of that contest gives Texas Democrats some hope they might break the GOP’s death grip on statewide offices as soon as the 2020 election.

The Texas Legislature saw Democrats gain 12 seats in the 150-member House; Democrats gained two seats in the 31-member Senate. The House GOP majority remains substantial, but the Republican hold on the Senate is bordering on tenuous, although it’s not there yet.

Democrats did manage to flip some U.S. House seats. The one that interested me was the seat held by GOP Rep. Pete Sessions, who got beat by Democratic upstart Colin Allred in North Texas.

What does all this portend for the state as we head into the 2020 presidential election year? It might be that Texas becomes more of a battleground than it has been since, oh, 1980. In every election year since the Ronald Reagan landslide the state has been cast aside by both parties: Democrats have given up on the state; Republicans take us for granted.

That has-been role might change come 2020.

I am highly reluctant, though, to suggest that Texas is anything other than Republican red. It’s just that the state’s reddish hue isn’t nearly as vivid as it has been for so very long.

The next election cycle, therefore, might be a lot more interesting than anything we’ve seen here in some time.

national news

Say it ain’t so, Hillary

Hillary, Hillary, Hillary …

Your former campaign aide, Mark Penn, says he thinks you’re going to run for president a third time in 2020.

I’m going to implore you to put the kibosh on this talk right now. You keep saying you have “no intention” to run, yet you say “I want to be president.”

Understand this: I marked my ballot for “Hillary Rodham Clinton” with pride and conviction in 2016. I would do so again in 2020 if you manage to win the Democratic Party presidential nomination. I would have not a single qualm about doing so were it to be you vs. Donald J. Trump.

Here’s the problem, Hillary. I fear a repeat of 2016. Trump made mincemeat out of you in the closing days of that campaign. Your campaign disserved you and the nation by keeping you away from Wisconsin during the general election effort. Your loss in that state by a fraction of a percentage point contributed to Trump’s shocking victory. You know that already.

Yeah, I know you wouldn’t make the same mistake.

That’s not the point, though. As much as I admire all you’ve done throughout your time in the public arena, I hear the same rumbling you have heard: the public has developed a case of Clinton Fatigue.

Barack Obama’s derisive “You’re likable enough, Hillary” putdown in 2008 set the table for what happened to you in 2016. As profoundly unqualified and unfit Donald Trump was to seek the presidency — let alone actually be president — he managed to reveal the perception of your unlikability to just enough voters in key states to win a race he had no business winning.

I am one American who doesn’t want to see a repeat of that travesty.

My request is a simple one: Issue a statement that declares, “I am not going to run for president of the United States ever again. I have had my time in the arena. It is time for me to step aside and turn this fight over to the young Turks within my party.”

Do it. Please.

national news

Beto in 2020? Hmm, let’s slow it down

Beto O’Rourke certainly captured the nation’s attention even though he lost a tough race for the U.S. Senate from Texas.

The Democratic challenger came within about 3 percentage points of knocking off Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, a conservative stalwart representing a conservative state.

What’s next for Beto? Some folks want him to run for president of the United States in 2020. To which I would implore: Hold on a minute! Let’s get over our star-struck infatuation, shall we?

I supported O’Rourke’s candidacy. I talked about him as much as I thought reasonable in this blog. I am sorry he lost. He would make a fine U.S. senator. He’s conscientious, dedicated to the state and unlike Cruz he seems more interested in my worries than his own political ambition.

Beto-mania heats up

However, I want him to take reset on this presidential business.

Yes, I want a fresh face to emerge as the Democrats’ foe to face Donald Trump, the Republican president. I also would like that challenger to have some seasoning. I don’t know that O’Rourke — the congressman from El Paso — has acquired it just yet.

The chatter and clamor for O’Rourke to run for president appears to my thinking to be more a result of the celebrity status he gained through the nature of his campaign for Texas. He visited all 254 counties. He campaigned hard in the most GOP-friendly parts of the state. Beto gave it his best shot. He became something of a political heartthrob.

Beating hearts aren’t enough to qualify for the most serious, high-minded, toughest job on Planet Earth. We are learning, too, that business and reality TV experience aren’t enough, either, to equip someone to deal daily with the myriad problems affecting the entire world.

Beto well could get ready over time for the toughest job on Earth.

Just not yet.

national news, political news

Beto loses, but in a way he wins

I cannot recall a time — before now — when a candidate has lost a campaign for public office and then is mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in just two years.

Beto O’Rourke came within 3 percentage points of defeating Ted Cruz for the U.S. Senate seat in Texas. O’Rourke is a Democrat; Cruz is the Republican incumbent senator.

That’s a big deal worth mentioning, given that Texas hasn’t elected a Democrat to any statewide office since 1994. The last Democrat to win a U.S. Senate race was the late Lloyd Bentsen, who was re-elected to the Senate in 1988 while he was losing his race to become vice president on a national ticket headed by Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis.

O’Rourke gave Cruz all he could handle. He gathered more than 4 million votes out of 8.2 million ballots cast. O’Rourke ran as a progressive Democrat. He didn’t tack to the middle. He carried his progressive message to every one of Texas’s 254 counties. He told the folks in the Texas Panhandle the same thing he was telling them in Dallas County, Travis County or Harris County.

O’Rourke led a Democratic Party slate of candidates and perhaps helped down-ballot candidates make their races more competitive. Mike Collier lost the lieutenant governor’s race by about 4 percent; Justin Nelson came up short in the race for attorney general by the same margin. Virtually all the Democrats on the statewide ballot were competitive in their races against Republicans; the exception was Lupe Valdez, who got hammered by Gov. Greg Abbott.

So, what does the future hold for Beto O’Rourke? Hmm. Let’s see. Oh, John Cornyn’s seat is up in 2020. Might there be another Beto candidacy for the Senate in the offing? He isn’t being cast aside as a has-been, having lost his bid to defeat Sen. Cruz.

Indeed, he is continuing to be hailed in many corners in Texas and around the nation as a potential political superstar.

And to think that Beto is basking in this standing as a losing candidate. Go … figure.

national news

Get ready for ’20 election contestants

Many political junkies — and I include myself in that crowd — are awaiting the results of the 2018 midterm election.

Some of us, however, also are awaiting the announcements for the next big political event that’s coming up … two years from now!

That would be the 2020 presidential election.

The incumbent president already has declared his intention to run for re-election in 2020. Donald John Trump has begun raising money; he’s making speeches against potential Democratic opponents. So, the president is in.

There is some chatter out there that sometime this week, maybe by the weekend, we’re going to hear about announcements from notable Democrats who have been rumored to be considering a run.

I suppose we’ll hear announcements of the formation of “exploratory committees,” those pre-candidacy announcements candidates use to determine whether they have a chance in hell of winning.

I’m not waiting with bated breath. So far, I haven’t seen or heard much from any potential Democratic candidates who excite me. Maybe someone will surface, will emerge from nowhere. That’s the kind of candidate I want to challenge the president.

The old war horses won’t cut it for me. I hope to hear that someone will burst out of the tall grass and catch us all by surprise. I am secretly hoping for a candidate in the mold of Jimmy Carter to spring forth.

You know my thoughts about the incumbent. Enough on that … for now.

The end of one campaign is likely to signal the start of another. It’s the big one, man! Let’s all hold on for a wild ride.

national news

Call it a day, Sen. Sanders

I am going to admit that I ain’t feelin’ the Bern.

There’s chatter churning out there that U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who aligns with the Democrats, is considering another presidential run in 2020.

Please! No! Not again!

Sanders sang a one-note aria while running for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2016: It centered on income inequality and how the “1 percent is holding the vast majority of wealth” in this country.

I supported Hillary Clinton’s candidacy over Bernie Sanders, mainly because I felt uncomfortable with Sanders’s lack of stated understanding of the whole range of foreign and domestic issues that any president confronts.

Now he’s considering another run at it. A Politico story tells how he is setting up a showdown with U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who’s also considering a presidential run in two years.

I’m not yet sure who should get the party’s nomination to challenge Donald Trump for the presidency, assuming he runs for re-election.

Sen. Sanders is nowhere to be found on my list of preferred candidates. It has nothing to do with his acknowledgment of being what he calls a “democratic socialist.” I do agree in part with his view that too few people in this country control too much wealth. I do not believe his notion of providing a free public college/university education for all Americans is even possible, let alone reasonable.

He’s had his run. He came up short in 2016. I still believe the Democratic Party’s best chance at winning the White House rests with someone fresh and new.

Sen. Sanders is neither of those things.

Don’t do it, Bernie.

national news

Don’t run, Joe; leave the 2020 race to the young’ns

Readers of this blog know it already, but I’ll restate it: I am a big fan of former Vice President Joe Biden.

There. I’ve got that out of the way. Now I want to declare that I do not want the former VPOTUS to run for president in 2020. It’s not that he can’t do the job. It’s not that he is incapable.

It is that I want new blood, new ideas, new faces, new voices to be seen and heard.

This will sound as though I’m an ageist. Believe me, I know what ageism looks like. I believe I’ve been victimized by it in recent years, so I say this next piece with a good bit of caution.

Biden’s age is going to work against him. He will be 77 years of age in 2020. He would be the oldest man ever elected to the nation’s highest office were that to occur. That would mean he would be 81 in 2024. Would he seek a second term, which would put him into his mid-80s were he to win?

Or … would a President Biden declare himself to be a one-termer, thus making him a lame duck the moment he takes his hand off the Bible at his inauguration in January 2021?

Biden is ruminating yet again about whether to run for president.

His pondering is the subject of an article in Atlantic. Read it here.

My hope for the country is that Donald Trump is defeated in 2020. I didn’t want him elected in 2016 and was shocked along with most political observers when he squeaked out that Electoral College victory over Hillary Clinton.

He remains more unfit for the high office than any man who has ever held it. I want him gone. Defeated either in the GOP primary or in the general election.

Joe Biden isn’t the man to do it. I want him to remain active in the political discourse. He can lend plenty to the discussion of the issues of the day.

However, he needs to let the next generation of Democratic politicians have their time. Let them seek to take hold of the levers of power.

The former veep has had his day. It was a great run through 36 years as a U.S. senator and then as the second-in-command of the greatest nation on Earth.

Let it go, Mr. Vice President.

business news

Why worry now about Trump’s business history?

Someone, somewhere — maybe a lot of folks out here in Trump Country, where I live — may be asking: Why are the media obsessing now about Donald Trump’s business practices when he was a much younger man, an up-and-comer in the real estate development industry?

I think I might have an answer. It’s because Donald Trump sold his presidential candidacy largely on the notion that he is a self-made man, that he had a “little bit of help” from his father, Fred Trump, as he sought to build a business empire.

The New York Times has put the lie to that boast. It has revealed in an exhaustive investigation that Trump received a lot of help from his father and that he well might have used fraudulent tax schemes to benefit his father’s business.

Donald Trump’s status as president of the United States of America makes this a legitimate issue of discussion, particularly as he prepares to campaign for re-election in 2020. The issue of his truthfulness in describing his pre-political business career must be brought up and it must be discussed thoroughly.

I doubt seriously that Trump himself will engage in that serious discussion. He’ll toss out insults at the media and his foes. He will energize his base of supporters. The president isn’t likely to provide forthright answers to direct questions about the Times’s story.

However, the president’s business history and the huge disparity between what a media outlet has uncovered and what he has said about that history demand a full and complete airing.

I hope the president would explain himself. My fear is that he won’t.

national news

‘I am totally focused on the Senate’

I love listening to politicians who give these non-denial denials pertaining to their political future.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, offered up the latest example of such a pol’s attempt at rhetorical dodge ball.

Someone asked her if she is considering a run for the presidency in 2020. Her answer was classic: “I am running for the Senate and I am totally focused on being the kind of senator” her constituents expect her to be.

She even put some emphasis on the words “totally focused.” As if that makes it an even more declarative and believable statement.

Sorry, senator. Your so-called “denial” doesn’t work. Skeptics out here heard what you didn’t say, which is that you won’t run for president in 2020.