Tag Archives: 2020 election

media news

‘Don’t call me a celebrity?’ Sorry, bub … you are one!

Michael Avenatti cracks me up.

The lawyer who is pondering a run for the presidency in 2020 has scolded the media for calling him a “celebrity.” He bristled at the idea of the media labeling him something he most certainly has become.

Avenatti represents Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels, the porn actor who alleges she and the future president of the United States, Donald Trump, had a fling in a hotel room years ago. The president paid her hush money to keep her quiet, but denies the tryst occurred … go figure.

Avenatti has stepped into the public spotlight by being everywhere, seemingly at once. That, by my definition, makes him a celebrity.

Oh, no, he answers. He is a lawyer with an 18-year career. He has represented “Davids against Goliaths.”

I guess this means that if decides to run for president, he’ll tell us he isn’t a politician.

He then will fit the definition of two terms he doesn’t like.

Too bad, counselor/celebrity and maybe — politician.

I mean, if the shoe fits …

national news, political news

Wanting a presidential candidate with policy chops

I just watched a snippet of Michael Avenatti delivering a sort of campaign stump speech to some listeners in Iowa.

The high-profile lawyer is considering a run for the presidency. His only claim to fame/notoriety to date has been that he represents Stormy Daniels, the porn star who says she and the future president, Donald Trump, had a fling in a hotel room back in 2006 — and that the president paid her $130,000 to keep quiet about it.

Avenatti is her mouthpiece. He also is a blowhard, a celebrity who’s trying to parlay his celebrity status into something that requires a lot more of those who seek high public office.

Does that remind you of anyone else? Of course it does!

I’m a bit old-fashioned. I want presidents to have some public service experience. I want them to demonstrate a commitment to the public. I want them to be well-versed, well-spoken and well-educated on policy and on the nuance of government. I do not want some showboat to prance onto the political stage and bellow, “Vote for me because I am not a politician!”

The 2020 election will feature, more than likely, a large field of Democratic candidates, the size of which of might rival the number of 2016 Republican candidates who sought to succeed Barack Obama as president.

Given the electoral success that Donald Trump experienced in 2016, I am pretty certain that the opening-day field of Democratic contenders will include its fair share of carnival barkers, goofballs and unqualified showboats.

That is how I consider Michael Avenatti, who well might be a great lawyer, but who is about as qualified to serve as president as the guy who’s in the office now. Which is to say he is patently unqualified.

My hope is that Democrats can produce a newcomer, someone who isn’t much of a presence at this moment on the political horizon.

That all said, I hope Avenatti sticks to lawyering and clears the field for candidates who actually know what they would do were they to get elected president.

national news, political news

President Biden? Not so fast

This just in: Early polls say former Vice President Joe Biden is the early favorite to win the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2020.

Sigh. Oh, my. Please. No!

It’s not that I dislike Vice  President Biden. I happen to admire him. I have admired him for many years, dating back to when he served in the Senate. Even to when he was first elected to the Senate, only to suffer the loss of his wife and daughter in a tragic car crash before the start of his first term.

He thought about quitting before he took office. He stayed the course and served with honor.

Having sung his praises, I don’t think he’s the ticket for Democrats in 2020. I would much prefer someone no one knows about. I want a much younger individual to run for the presidency.

VP Biden is 76. He’d be 78 in 2020. He would be 82 at the end of his term in office. I have nothing against old people. After all, I’m one of ’em, too.

The Democratic Party needs a fresh outlook, a fresh voice, a fresh approach to governing.

However, if it turns out to be Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump in 2020, well … you know who gets my vote.

Spoiler art: It ain’t the incumbent.

national news

Looking ahead — already! — to Trump departure

Forgive me for getting ahead of myself, but I cannot help but think about how Donald J. Trump is going to leave the world stage when his time comes.

My gut tells me it won’t be pretty, no matter the terms of the president’s departure.

He’ll either leave after one term in January 2021; or he could get a second term and he’ll leave in January 2025.

Or … he’ll leave before the end of either term. If you get my drift.

The custom is that presidents hand over the keys to the White House to their successor. They get on the helicopter and fly away toward retirement. They then serve their retirement years in relative quiet, pursuing this and/or that cause.

Do you really think Trump will go out with that usual customary class and grace? I don’t. I fear he’ll keep yapping well beyond his years in the White House.

And that’s if he is able to walk away on his own terms, either after one term or — God forbid! — two terms.

If he is forced out by issues that have preoccupied many of us for most of his term to date in office, well, we will need to settle in for an indeterminate siege from the 45th president of the United States.

I’ll need to put these thoughts aside for the time being and concern myself with the issues of the day.

They concern whether the president colluded with Russians who attacked our electoral system. Hey, they’re real. They aren’t a “hoax.”

national news, political news

What do you mean by ‘everybody,’ Mr. President?

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Donald J. Trump sat down with Piers Morgan and made yet another astonishing exaggeration, which compels me to disabuse him of the idiocy he put out there.

Morgan asked the president if there is any doubt he will seek re-election in 2020. Trump said he’s all in for a re-election bid.

“Everybody wants me to run” for a second term, he said.

Huh? Wha … ? Eh? Everybody wants him to run?

Count me out, Mr. President. I am not a member of the Everybody Brigade he is citing.

Not only do I want him to walk away after his term, I want him booted out before the end of his term. Although I must concede that a President Mike Pence gives me pause as well, but for reasons that deal more with public policy than with general incompetence, ignorance, arrogance and rhetorical idiocy.

OK, I get that I’m likely nitpicking what Trump said about “everybody” wanting him to run again. However, if we’re being asked to take the president at his word, then I cannot remain silent when he blathers such absolute nonsense.

national news

Trump vs. Warren gets going early!

Donald Trump must believe U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is going to run for president in 2020, and … that she well might be the Democratic Party nominee for the office Trump currently occupies.

He went after Warren in typical Trumpian fashion Thursday at a rally in Great Falls, Mont., calling her by that derisive nickname he has hung on her, “Pocahontas,” owing to her claim of having Native-American heritage in her background.

Trump has been dismissing that for years. He gets lots of laughs from his political rally crowds.

But here’s my observation about the manner that Trump might campaign for re-election. He won’t take the high road. He won’t ride the moral altitude that his high office allows him.

Oh, no! He’s going to return to the insults and the innuendo that energized his base and helped him get elected in 2016. We’re witnessing it again as he rails and rants against potential rivals for his job.

His rally speech in Great Falls flew off the rails — quite naturally.

He said the following, according to The Hill:

“I’m going to get one of those little kits and in the middle of the debate, when she proclaims she’s of Indian heritage — because her mother said she has high cheekbones, that’s her only evidence,” Trump continued.

“We will take that little kit, we have to do it gently because we’re in the “Me Too” generation, we have to be very gentle,” Trump said mocking the movement that seeks to expose sexual misconduct in media, entertainment and politics.

“We will very gently take that kit and we will slowly toss it, hoping it doesn’t hit her and injure her arm, even though it only weighs probably 2 oz,” he said.

“And we will say, ‘I will give you a million dollars, paid for by Trump, to your favorite charity if you take the test and it shows you’re an Indian,” Trump said. “And we’ll see what she does. I have a feeling she will say no but we will hold it for the debates.”

Doesn’t that sound like a man immersed in the dignity of his high office? Of course not! Dignity and decorum are foreign to this guy.

national news

Tax returns, Mr. President?

A Rhode Island state senator has pitched a fascinating idea that I hope becomes law. Indeed, her idea has already passed the state Senate. Where it goes next is anyone’s guess.

I fear that it won’t see the light of day.

Democrat Gayle Goldin authored a bill that would keep Donald J. Trump’s name off the 2020 ballot unless he releases his income tax returns, something he has so far refused to do.

Trump already has launched his re-election effort. He won’t win Rhode Island’s electoral votes in 2020, just as he didn’t win them in 2016. Sen. Goldin wants him to do something that every presidential candidate has done for the past 40 years, which is release his tax returns for public scrutiny.

Trump’s excuse for refusing to do so is as lame as it gets. He says the Internal Revenue Service is auditing his returns. The IRS says an audit doesn’t prevent someone from releasing their returns to the public, although it has not commented specifically on whether it is actually auditing Trump’s returns.

For that matter, the president hasn’t even produced any evidence that the IRS is in fact auditing his returns, which makes many of us question whether any such audit even has taken place.

Democrats control the Rhode Island Senate. Goldin’s bill passed 34-3. It now goes to the state House. I don’t yet have confidence that this gutsy measure will become law.

I hope it does. I also hope it catches on in all 50 states. I know. It’s not likely to happen. One can hope.

political news

Trump ‘no sure thing’ for 2020?

A lame-duck Republican U.S. senator from Tennessee has weighed in with an interesting — but possibly worthless — conjecture about Donald J. Trump’s political future.

Bob Corker — who has announced his intention to retire at the end of the year — has said it is not a “sure thing” that the president will seek re-election in 2020, even though he has formed a committee and has begun raising money for an expected effort at winning a second term.

I won’t comment on whether Corker knows something no one else on Earth knows. He does pose an interesting notion.

Consider what might be coarsing through the president’s self-acknowledged ample brain.

  • He is facing a possible “blue wave” election later this year, with Democrats taking control of the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate. That means he could become the third president ever impeached by the House of Representatives. I am not going to bet the farm that a Senate controlled by a slim Democratic majority would convict him.
  • Trump also might face a primary challenge in 2020. There could be any number of Republicans who are furious enough with the president to challenge him in two years. They could draw substantial political blood in the process.
  • The president might have to watch every single legislative agenda item on his to-do list stalled over the “Russia thing,” the porn queen scandal, the nagging tempest over his business dealings.

What in the world might that portend if hell freezes over and he actually is re-elected in November 2020?

Does the president really want to subject himself to the humiliation that might await him? I mean, he is a narcissist extraordinaire. It’s all about him as president, just as it was all about him as reality TV celebrity and business mogul.

This is the payback that well might await a man who built his entire pre-politics reputation on self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement. Public service was never part of his modus operandi.

Might he decide to bail after one term? I have no idea. My hope is that he calls it a career. But with Donald Trump, well, one never can predict a single thing.

national news, political news

By all means, welcome back, Katrina Pierson

She’s back. Dallas resident Katrina Pierson is going to return to the presidential campaign trail on behalf of Donald John Trump Sr.

I am delighted to see her return to the partisan battle.

Pierson is a long-time Texas TEA Party activist, which is where she earned her spurs before becoming a senior adviser to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Here, though, is the real reason why I want to see Pierson back in the fray. She is prone to making truly bizarre statements.

Such as when she blamed President Obama for starting the Afghan War — in 2001. Oops! That fight began on President Bush’s watch, about a month or so after the 9/11 attack on New York City and Washington, D.C.

Or the time she blamed Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for the death of U.S. Army Capt. Humayan Khan, whose parents were strong supporters of President Obama; remember how they stood before the 2016 Democratic convention to excoriate the GOP nominee, Trump. Oh, darn! She must have forgot that Capt. Khan died in Iraq in 2004, five years before Obama and Clinton assumed power.

So, I’m all excited to see Katrina Pierson return to the presidential campaign trail.

She’s good for plenty of laughs. We’ll need to keep our sense of humor when 2020 rolls around to keep from going insane!

national news

Biden in ’20? Yes, but … why ?

Joseph R. Biden’s possible presidential candidacy in 2020 fills me with equal parts hope and dread.

Actually, the dread part might be a bit greater than the hope.

The former vice president reportedly is thinking hard about running for president in 2020. I presume he wants to challenge Donald John Trump Sr., who’s already formed a re-election campaign committee and has been speaking at political rallies almost from the first day of his presidency.

Biden is being coy, naturally. He says he is concentrating first in this year’s mid-term election that he hopes will elect more Democrats to public office.

Let me stipulate two points about hope and dread.

The Hope: I have admired Biden for decades, dating back to the horrific personal tragedy he endured in 1972 when he was first elected to the U.S. Senate. His wife and daughter died in a car accident shortly after the election that year and Biden wrestled with whether he wanted to become a senator.

His friends counseled him to serve. He took their advice and served in the Senate from 1973 until he was tapped by fellow Sen. Barack Obama to run with him on the 2008 Democratic ticket; Obama and Biden won that contest and Biden became a valuable member of the Obama administration.

Biden’s Senate career hit its share of bumps along the way. He was prone to talking too much. He got ensnared in a copycat scandal in which he lifted remarks from a British politician and used them as his own in telling his life story; that embarrassment cost him dearly and he had to pull out of his first run for president in 1987.

Then there was the time during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Samuel Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Biden had five minutes to ask a question, but he spent damn near all of it on a soliloquy about why he opposed Alito. Sheesh!

But the ex-VP is a patriot who loves this country and has given much in service to it. He might want one more tour of public service duty.

The Dread: As much as I admire Biden, I still believe Democrats need to reach out to the back bench to find a nominee to challenge Trump. I believe 2020 will provide an opportunity to find someone who is on no one’s political radar at the moment.

Barack Obama came out of nowhere in 2008. So did Jimmy Carter in 1976. I’m not saying Democrats should nominate another Obama or Carter, but rather they should find someone who is as unknown as they both were to the American public.

There’s also the issue of age. Vice President Biden would be the oldest man ever elected president were he to win in 2020. He’s already on record saying he would serve a single term before bowing out — which would make him a lame-duck the minute he took his hand off the Bible at his swearing in.

I am reminded of something a late Clackamas County (Ore.) sheriff once told me after he took office when his predecessor resigned. Bill Brooks announced immediately he would run for election. “If I don’t run I become a lame duck,” Brooks said. “Lame ducks get bulldozed and I don’t bulldoze worth a s**t.”

A 78-year-old President Biden would get bulldozed, too.

Would I still support a Biden candidacy over Donald Trump?

Duh! What in the world do you think?