Tag Archives: 2024 election

national news

Joe Biden: Sure, let’s debate … as in now!

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You gotta hand it to Joe Biden. The man knows how to steal the thunder from the twice-impeached, indicted Republican nominee-in-waiting who’s on trial for alleged illegal campaign spending.

President Biden today agreed to meet the former POTUS in a debate in June; the former guy also agreed. The two of them reportedly will meet in a venue sans audience members. It’ll just be the two of ’em in a room, along with a panel of journalists.

I kinda like the notion of the two men going head-to-head like that.

It’s interesting that the former Liar in Chief wouldn’t debate his GOP rivals during the primary campaign but jumped on the chance to joust with the president.

I understand they’ll also meet again in September, probably in a format more like what we’ve seen in recent election cycles.

Whatever. I expect this first debate could smash viewership records, given what’s at stake, which I believe could be the future of our representative democracy.

Donald Trump, political news

We have dumbed down our standards

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You are welcome to conclude whatever you wish about the statement that will follow in this blog … such as that I am the “master of the obvious.”

I don’t mind. Nor do I care.

The trial in New York on the hush money payment POTUS No. 45 made to Stormy Daniels — aka Stephanie Clifford — is revealing in the starkest terms possible how our political climate has dumbed down voters’ concern about character in the candidates who seek public office.

I haven’t been following the trial too closely, but I have gleaned enough from it to realize many things about the support that the one-time Philanderer in Chief is able to claim among the MAGA cultists around the country.

We have learned in graphic detail about Clifford’s assertion over what happened in the hotel room that night in 2006. The future POTUS’s wife had just given birth to his fifth child, yet there he was in the room dressing down to his silk skivvies asking the adult film actress to take a tumble with him.

Do you remember the day — I sure do! — when that kind of conduct was considered a deal-breaker? How about the sickening “Access Hollywood” recording in which the Groper in Chief boasted how he would grab women by their private parts? And that they enjoyed it because he was “famous”?

I do not get any of this! So help me, I do not understand how an individual who once held the office of POTUS, who wants it once again, continues to receive the level of support from American voters who do not now seem to give a sh** about the acknowledged behavior of the man who seeks their vote.

This drama will play out in due course. I am left to wonder: Are we really ready to toss aside the standards we once set for the people from whom we choose to lead this great country?

God help us if we take that perilous path.

national news, political news

So many issues …

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So many issues from which to choose that will define this upcoming presidential election … so little time to decide which one matters the most.

If you were to ask me the one issue that resonates the most clearly with voters, I would go with “reproductive rights.”

Call it “abortion rights” as well. Whichever term you prefer, I believe this single issue could help decide who wins the presidential election. At least as importantly, may be more so, it could decide which party controls Congress. Democrats at this moment hold a slim majority of Senate seats; Republicans, meanwhile, hold an equally slim majority in the House of Representatives.

You know my preference, but I’ll repeat it here: I want Democrats to tighten their Senate grip and want Democrats to wrest control of the House from the GOP.

Republicans are hellbent to make abortion illegal nationwide. They would deprive women the right to make this profoundly personal choice on their own. The 45th POTUS managed to get three Supreme Court justices seated in his term in office.

He is taking personal credit for “killing” Roe v. Wade. Let us hope the boast bites him in his overfed backside as he seeks the presidency yet again.

Abortion is far from the only linchpin issue that could swing this election. We also have democracy vs. autocracy, support for Ukraine in its war with Russia and the ongoing crisis on our southern border.

The fight over whether women should control their own bodies, though, resonates with me as the one issue that could propel women to vote en masse to protect those rights against the mostly male governing bodies wanting to dictate to them.

Joe Biden, national news, political news

What happens if … ?

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So help me I don’t like even thinking about this possibility, but the reality of the moment requires me to do so.

Here goes: What will happen if Joe Biden actually loses the election this November to the Republican presidential nominee, who at this moment looks as though it will be the dipsh** Biden defeated in 2020?

Specifically, will the president extend an olive branch to the man who has refused to acknowledge his own loss to Biden four years ago?

My gut and my trick knee tell me President Biden likely will do the proper thing. He would place the obligatory phone call; he then will invite the president-elect and his wife to the White House; he will smile and speak about “working with” the new president.

Given all the bad blood, the recrimination, the Big Lie, and all the things that POTUS 45 has said about POTUS 46, I wouldn’t be surprised to see No. 46 stick it in No. 45’s ear.

But then again, President Biden understands the process better than practically any of us. He also is a man who adheres to tradition.

Will the president’s adherence to custom force him to behave like the pro that he is? Probably.

However, if he falls victim to the hurtful blather of POTUS 45, well … I wouldn’t blame him one little bit if he told him to fu** off.

Joe Biden, national news, political news

This is no normal year

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If only this were a normal presidential election year, but it is far from normal.

We have two major-party candidates who reportedly are the two most unpopular public figures since, oh, The Flood. We also have a third-party goofball, who happens to be a scion of one of the 20th century’s great political families.

Does all this portend a dismally low voter turnout? Not so fast.

We had the same two major-party guys running in 2020. When all the ballots were counted, 158 million Americans voted, a record. Joe Biden was elected president. The other guy called the election “rigged” and said it was “fake.” Never mind that the Republican Party presidential nominee tried like hell to rig the election in his favor.

Oh, and he hasn’t conceded that he lost to President Biden.

In steps Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the former U.S. attorney general and former U.S. senator from New York. RFK sought the presidency in 1968 and well might have been elected … except for the assassin who gunned him down in the Los Angeles hotel kitchen.

This isn’t a normal election any more than the previous one, or the one before that when the former Liar in Chief got elected.

Joe Biden promised a return to normal presidential behavior. He has behaved like the adult in the room. Unlike the guy he defeated,

Now they’re preparing to square off again. I get that they’re bold old men. Allow me this bit of candor: Time is on neither man’s side, although the chatter almost always seems to focus on Joe Biden’s alleged decline in acuity. I am prepared to argue that the GOP nominee in waiting is exhibiting even more frightening examples of unhinged behavior.

Does any of this mean a dismal turnout in this fall’s election? Hardly.

Both sides are going to gin up their respective bases. My fervent hope is that President Biden wins the day, the election and continues to restore our national soul.

Uncategorized

POTUS to debate … him?

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Joe Biden kinda/sorta put it on the record, which is that he will debate the likely Republican Party presidential nominee before we cast ballots this coming November.

No date, place or format has been decided, President Biden told Howard Stern. OK. Fine.

Work it out. Do I want the president to debate POTUS No. 45? I guess so, but I am not thrilled about it.

It’s not so much that I worry about the president’s ability to exchange views with the ex-Liar in Chief. It’s that Americans aren’t likely to learn anything new about (a) why POTUS 45 is unqualified and unfit for office or (b) what policies Biden will articulate.

Joe Biden is making the case for his re-election. His immediate predecessor, though, is making the case that he shouldn’t be found anywhere near the Oval Office ever again.

I fear that a one-on-one debate between these men will be an exercise in futility.

national news

Shouldn’t be close, however …

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A presidential election that by all rights should be a runaway for the incumbent looks as though it’ll produce a lot of gnawed-off fingernails.

President Joe Biden is sitting on an economy that is on fire. Oh, wait. The Gross Domestic Product data came in this week a good bit cooler than expected. Am I worried that we’re about to implode? Hardly.

Here he is, now facing the probable nomination of the guy he defeated in 2020. The former POTUS is poised to take the Republican nomination despite all those criminal indictments and a history of being impeached twice by the House of Reps during his single term in office.

I’m still reasonably confident that President Biden is going to prevail when they count the ballots. My confidence, though, is tempered a bit by POTUS 45’s persistent poll standing among those who are so fed up with the government that they’re willing to give the former Philanderer in Chief a pass on his wretched behavior.

I have been visiting friends in Germany for the past 12 days. They, too, express alarm at the ex-Liar in Chief’s poll standing. My friends are learned folks. They know the lay of the land.

I am going to stand on my belief that we are better than the polling suggests of us.

This congest, by any reasonable measure, should be a blowout for the incumbent. It isn’t. Nor does it appear it will become one between now and Election Day.

That is … unless the courts deliver us some good news between now and then. Here’s hoping.

local news, political news, State news

Cruz seeks to rebrand himself … yeah, right

Rafael Edward Cruz, aka Ted Cruz, is trying to pull off the biggest rebranding effort in U.S. Senate history.

The Republican firebrand now calls himself a “bipartisan” member of the Senate, citing his working relationship and friendship (if you dare believe that) with leading Senate Democrats.

It’s a joke, I’m tellin’ ya. Except that I ain’t laughing at it … except perhaps in derision.

Cruz is in for another tough re-election fight, this time against Democratic U.S. Rep. Colin Allred of Dallas, who — according to many leading polls — is in a dead heat with the two-term senator. Cruz was first elected in 2012, then won a bitter re-election battle in 2018 against former Rep. Beto O’Rourke by about 3 percentage points.

Ted Cruz angles for a bipartisan rebrand | The Texas Tribune

Allred, serving his second term in the House, has established a bipartisan reputation in the lower chamber and says Cruz’s effort is a bald-faced sham. Allred told the Texas Tribune: “I don’t think Ted Cruz is fooling anybody,” Allred said. “He spent 12 years being the most divisive — and proudly so — partisan warrior in the United States. And I think it’s kind of laughable actually that at this point, when he’s in a close race, that he wants to now stress, ‘Oh, actually I have been working in a bipartisan way.’”

He’s nothing like the bipartisan statesman he is portraying himself to be. Recall how he filibustered in the Senate in trying to kill the Affordable Care Act. He has been a front-row election denier, questioning the validity of the 2020 presidential election that gave us Joe Biden as president. He has been virtually silent about the 1/6 assault on our government and has endorsed the 45th POTUS’s bid to win back the White House after losing to President Biden in 2020.

According to the Tribune: “When I first arrived in the Senate 12 years ago, there was such a thing as moderate Democrats. They existed. You could work them,” Cruz said at the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Texas Policy Summit last month. “There aren’t any left. The Democrats, they hate Trump so much their brains have melted, and what’s happened is they have gone crazy off the edge to the left.”

Now he wants us to believe he’s willing to work with Democrats whose “brains have melted”?

Hah!

2016 election, national news, political news

Are we really that stupid?

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A member of my family and I disagree on the potential outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

My family member believes the 45th president is poised to regain the presidency. I disagree. He and I had an exchange that went something like this:

Family member: I think he’s going to win.

Me: No. He won’t win.

FM: You said the same thing in 2016 and look what happened.

Me: We have learned from the mistake we made as a nation. We aren’t going to make it again.

FM: I am not so sure about that. I don’t think we’ve learned anything. Besides, Biden didn’t win in 2020 by a landslide.

Me: I know. A few hundred thousand-vote switch in three states would have produced a vastly different result.

The exchange ended shortly after that. My family member does not want the 45th POTUS to win. He doesn’t exactly line up strongly in President Biden’s camp.

I do wish my family member had more faith in the collective intelligence of American voters. But … he doesn’t and I’ll accept his view that we are collection of gullible dummies. I, however, am going to stand on my wellspring of belief that we are smarter than we have demonstrated.

The former POTUS tapped into a heretofore mine of resentment in Americans’ hearts. He now vows to be “your retribution” for misperceived wrongs that have been committed against the former POTUS. He is going to unleash the Justice Department on his foes … and to think he accuses Biden of “weaponizing” the DOJ.

Are we really ready to welcome a return of this kind of political vengeance into the halls of power?

I think not.

national news, political news

Get out of the way, RFK Jr.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is really pissing me off … in a serious sort of way.

Now he’s talking smack about the traitors who are jailed for storming the Capitol building on 1/6, refusing to call them what they are, criminals who were caught seeking to overturn the results of a free, fair, legal and moral election.

Democratic Party officials — many of whom with fond memories of Junior’s father and uncles — now want the independent presidential candidate to drop out of the race. I join them in their anger at RFK Jr., who’s sounding more like a crackpot than a serious candidate for POTUS.

Man, I never thought I was say these things about the scion of one of America’s great political families, and the second-oldest son of my first political hero.

The great Robert F. Kennedy no doubt would climb out of his Arlington National Cemetery grave — if he could — and deliver a serious ass-kicking to his son.

Does Junior not understand what this treasonous mob sought to do and does not appreciate the consequence he could bring to the result of an election he has zero chance of winning?