Tag Archives: POTUS

national news

Looking for electoral perspective

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By JOHN KANELIS / [email protected]

The dust hasn’t yet settled on this presidential election, but it’s time nonetheless to seek to put some perspective on the impact of this momentous result.

President-elect Joe Biden is en route to an Electoral College victory that will mirror the win that Donald Trump scored four years ago. Trump called it a “landslide” victory over Hillary Clinton.

It wasn’t. It was a squeaker. Trump won on the strength of 77,000 votes cast in three Rust Belt states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — that previously had voted for President Barack Obama.

On another matter, Trump was outvoted at the ballot box. Hillary Clinton collected nearly 3 million more votes than Trump, but just didn’t win the Electoral College votes she needed to become president.

Biden will finish with 306 electoral votes. Just as significantly, he will garner at least 5 million more votes than Trump; that number sits at 4.1 million at this moment, but they are far from finished counting all the ballots across the nation.

Does this election result constitute a landslide? No. It doesn’t. Joe Biden’s victory, though, is going to produce more of a mandate than Donald Trump ever was able to claim.

One more matter of perspective is in order. The composition of the U.S. Senate remains undecided. Two Senate races in Georgia are headed for runoffs. If two Democrats win those races, the Senate will end up with 50 Democrats (including two Democrat-leaning independents) and 50 Republicans. That puts Vice President Kamala Harris, as the Senate’s presiding officer, in position to cast tie-breaking votes if the need arises. You’ll recall that Vice President Mike Pence performed that task to confirm Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

Joe Biden’s victory was historic to be sure. He was reduced to so much political road kill after early miserable primary showings early this year. He stormed back on the strength of an endorsement from Rep. James Clyburn in advance of the South Carolina primary, which he won. Biden never looked back.

He is now set to become president of the United States thanks to a victory that is decisive and clear cut. The great American experiment in electing an individual with no political or public service experience is about to end.

We’re about to welcome a president and vice president to the pinnacle of power who have political capital — which Donald Trump never acquired — they can spend. My hope is that President Biden and Vice President Harris spend it wisely.

national news

Let the healing begin

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By JOHN KANELIS / [email protected]

I have to say that the words “President-elect Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.” have a stirring ring to my eyes and ears.

The networks and major media organizations have made a call many of us wanted to hear, that we have new president of the United States.

I am a happy fellow at this moment.

We’ll get to unpack all the reasons for our happiness in the weeks ahead. The end of Donald Trump’s tenure as president is just around the corner. He likely won’t concede the race, at least not in the immediate future, which to be honest doesn’t bother me near as much as I thought it might.

His refusal to concede and to offer a full cooperation with the new president and his team will inflict some damage to the nation’s image abroad, but it will cast most of the shame on Trump.

What’s more …

Let’s not forget a key historical moment that occurred just a little while ago: the election of Kamala Harris as the first woman vice president. Indeed, she embodies a historical trifecta as the first woman, the first black woman and the first Indian-American woman.

And so there you have it.

President-elect Biden pledged to heal the country. He has been through emotional hell in his own life, so he knows all about what it takes to heal a shattered heart. He has buried two of his children and his wife. He has climbed out of the depths of despair.

Joe Biden now stands at the political pinnacle.

This is a good day for the nation we love.

national news, Uncategorized

POTUS damages democratic process

By JOHN KANELIS / [email protected]

Allow me this bit of candor, which is that I hadn’t given much if any thought to whether a president of the United States would actually speak against the democratic process in the country he was elected to govern.

Until now.

Donald Trump is demanding that states that are counting ballots cast in this week’s presidential election should stop the ballot-tabulation process. Yes. The president wants them to stop counting ballots that were cast legally in a free and fair election.

Is there a precedent for this kind of coercion, this sort of bullying? I cannot think of it.

Donald Trump entered the presidency four years ago with no knowledge or experience with government, or with public service. That ignorance is playing out in full view as Donald Trump is being forced inch by inch out of office by the vote totals run up by Joseph Biden, the seeming winner of the presidential election.

Trump is filing court challenges. The courts are routinely dismissing them. The challenges seek to cast aspersions on the legality of the ballots cast; the courts are saying the challenges have no merit.

Trump has taken to Twitter to insist that states stop counting the ballots. He has no singular authority to make such a demand. But he persists and adds to his already shameful conduct.

We will get through all of this eventually. I am waiting with bated breath for a declaration that we will have a president-elect who then can commence the transition from chaos to collegiality within our federal government.

As for Trump, it falls on him to decide whether he will exit the office with dignity and pledge the traditional “peaceful transition of power” to Joe Biden and his team … or whether he will continue to conduct himself in a manner that brings abject shame and ridicule.

national news

Who are the undecided?

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By JOHN KANELIS / [email protected]

Political pundits from coast to coast to coast are pondering the effect of the second and final presidential joint appearance with Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Namely, which of them persuaded the “undecided” voters spread across the land.

I am left to scratch my head and wonder: Who in the world is actually undecided at this stage of a campaign that has been raging for more than two years?

I’ve seen the polls that put Biden ahead by roughly eight to 12 percent across the board. The former vice president’s lead has been steady, if not overwhelming. I can find few undecided voters tabulated in any of the major surveys conducted.

Are there enough undecided voters to swing the balance from Biden to Trump as we head into the final week of this campaign? If there are, then they are lying to pollsters.

I want to remind everyone who actually cares that in 2016, the public opinion actually called it correctly between Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton. They said the polls would tighten down the stretch; they did. They also said Clinton would lead Trump by two to three percent by Election Day; they had that right, too.

Clinton defeated Trump in what I will call the “actual vote” by nearly two percentage points. Trump, of course, won the presidency because he captured enough Electoral College votes. There you have it. Game over.

Who, though, really is undecided about Trump this late in his term as president? You either endorse the way he has conducted himself or you don’t. Count me as a serious voter who opposes Trump’s reelection. Hell, I opposed his election four years ago with everything I could muster.

I am trying to discern whether there really is enough of an undecided voter cache to claim for Trump to turn a losing re-election effort into a winning one. I don’t see it.

Then again, I didn’t see Hillary Clinton losing to Trump; I don’t feel too badly about that, as virtually no one in America saw Trump scoring a political fluke for the ages.

Get busy, Joe Biden. Time is not your friend.

medical news

Chaos reigns in COVID response

By JOHN KANELIS / [email protected]

If there is an issue that demands continuity in a government response it must include the health and well-being of our head of state and commander in chief.

Are we getting now from the White House as Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, battle the coronavirus? Hardly.

We are getting more of the chaotic mixed messaging that has afflicted the White House since, oh, when Trump became president.

Donald Trump is a patient at Walter Reed Medical Center. The doctors tell us that Trump’s condition is progressing; then we hear from others close to the situation that Trump’s vital signs are “worrisome” and that the next 48 hours will be critical.

Which is it?

Americans cannot get a clear reading of whether the doctors administered oxygen to Trump. White House doctors tell us that he doesn’t have oxygen “right now,” or “today.” No mention of whether he ever has received it.

We don’t know when Trump might have tested positive for the virus and whether he continued his activities for another full day after getting the diagnosis.

So many questions. The White House seems unable or unwilling to deliver a clear, unambiguous message. What’s at stake? The health of the president. Not only that, we have our national security apparatus in potential jeopardy when the public does not have a clear understanding of the president’s health.

Donald Trump, lest we forget, happens to be part of a major at-risk group: elderly, overweight males are among those most vulnerable to serious symptoms if they test positive for the COVID-19 virus.

Therefore, we need a crystal clear message that tells us the whole truth about the physical condition of president.

Stop the chaos!

legal news

Electoral consequences? Yep, we have ’em!

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By JOHN KANELIS / [email protected]

It has been said more times than I care to recall that “elections have consequences.”

That truism is playing out in real time as I write these few words.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death has opened the door wide for the most unfit man ever to hold the office of president to nominate his third selection to the nation’s Supreme Court.

You want consequences? The court, if Trump’s nominee gets confirmed, will be locked in a solid 6 to 3 conservative majority possibly for a generation.

Yes, this is what we get when we elect someone with no moral compass, no ideological basis, no authentic sense of what justice really means to the nation’s highest office.

Trump says he’s going to nominate a woman to succeed Ginsburg.  I always am struck, by the way, at Trump’s use of platitudes to describe individuals. He calls Judge Amy Coney Barrett, one of the frontrunners to be nominated, as “fantastic,” that she’s a “brilliant lawyer,” that she’ll do a “great job.” What is missing in these platitudes is any sense that Trump knows anything of substance about the individuals he is considering.

How in the name of electoral power do we rectify what’s about to happen? I believe the first and perhaps last option is to ensure that Trump gets defeated, that Americans elect Joseph R. Biden as their next president. I know that electing Biden won’t undo the damage that Trump might inflict on our federal judiciary — given his penchant for heeding the advice of far-right-wing commentators and thinkers. Electing Biden does set the predicate for a longer-term repair of the damage that Trump will inflict.

Thus, the upcoming election — shall we say — has intense consequence on the future of our nation.

If you disbelieve the value of elections and the consequences they can produce, I present to you Exhibit A: Donald John Trump’s fluke victory in 2016.

national news

POTUS makes strange SCOTUS ploy

By JOHN KANELIS / [email protected]

I have been intrigued by Donald Trump’s decision to roll out the names of possible U.S. Supreme Court appointments should he win a second term as president of the United States.

I guess I come down to this notion: Trump is playing with fire by throwing out names while he is in the midst of a campaign that might rile the dickens out groups of voters who detest the philosophies of the prospective nominees.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has gotten the most buzz out of the list of 20 names tossed out there by Trump. You know this guy, whom I have labeled the Cruz Missile owing to his rather mercurial political trajectory.

He actually wants to be elected president one day, which to my way of thinking suggests he wouldn’t want to end up on the high court.

But back to the point. Trump’s tactic here puts his re-election effort in some jeopardy.

All of the names he has floated are, for example, likely to be avidly anti-reproductive rights advocates. They all would oppose a woman’s right to end a pregnancy. How do you suppose that’s going to play with suburban women, who already are tilting strongly away from Trump and toward the candidacy of Joseph Biden?

Yes, I know Trump has his support base that thinks the tactic is working out just fine. I just consider it a huge gamble at this juncture of a campaign that by all objective measure isn’t going well.

I suppose, therefore, I shouldn’t spend too much time worrying about any of this.

So … I won’t.

national news

This question is vital

David Gergen has hobnobbed at the center of power for decades, going back all the way during the Ford administration.

He has served Republican and Democratic presidents. The CNN political analyst has crystallized the Big Question that Joe Biden must be able to answer as he ponders who he wants to run with him on the Democratic ticket against Donald Trump. According to CNN.com, it goes like this:

But the Biden campaign should be paying the most attention to this question: If history calls, will his vice president have the capacity and talent to become a first-class president?

There you have it. Compatibility with the presidential nominee is important; so is personal chemistry; same for whether she will be a political asset.

The threshold question must be whether the VP is ready from Day One to step into the big job.

Look, let’s be candid. Joe Biden will be 78 years of age were he to take the oath of office next January. He will be the oldest president by a good bit ever to assume the office. That does not mean that the vice presidential nominee should start preparing for the job.

Lyndon Johnson was selected by John Kennedy to run for VP in 1960. Kennedy was 43 years old, the youngest man ever elected president. Fate intervened on Nov. 22, 1963. JFK chose well, as it turned out.

Joe Biden will have to choose equally well as he selects the person to run with him in what figures to be the nastiest, filthiest campaign in modern history … maybe of all time!

The other stuff is window dressing. The first and last criterion must be presidential readiness.

Read Gergen’s essay here.

The man knows his stuff. Pay attention to the advice this guy offers, Mr. Biden.

national news

Trump’s boorishness is beyond … boorish

I am running out of ways to express my disgust and utter astonishment over Donald Trump’s public utterances.

I look at some of the public opinion polling that puts Trump at a 42 percent — give or take — approval rating and I wonder: How in the name of sanity does anyone continue to stand with this idiot?

Trump’s passel of platitudes now includes some hideous accusations about Joe Biden being against God, against the Second Amendment, how he has forsaken African-Americans, that he is a far-left socialist.

Trump sounds like someone who thinks he is going to lose the election in November.

Then he tells reporters that he might not accept the election results, which he says will be the result of the “most corrupt election in history.” What if the Russians interfere this year as they did in 2016 and try to persuade Americans to re-elect Trump? Then it’s OK, he will say.

Trump’s hideous record, exemplified by the reprehensible initial non-response to the coronavirus pandemic, only confirms what I and other critics have said all along … which is that this guy cannot lead the nation. He has no understanding of the role he took an oath to perform.

He is left now to fabricate issues against which he will run.

Trump’s incessant lying, demagoguery, posturing, fraudulent characterizations of his record have revealed to the world that the United States made a terrible mistake in electing this clown in 2016.

My goodness, we have to correct that mistake.

national news

Fright is setting in

I don’t want to sound alarmist.

However, I am getting filled with astonishing feelings of fright at the prospect of a second presidential term with Donald John Trump sitting in the Oval Office.

I don’t scare easily, so this isn’t some sort of Chicken Little screed. The very notion that Donald Trump could actually win a second term is filling me with dread. It’s the real thing, man. I mean it!

Trump took office without a single moment of public service experience under his belt. His entire adult life was aimed at self-enrichment, self-aggrandizement and self-promotion. He took that experience with him into the White House.

The man doesn’t possess an ounce of empathy or compassion. I mean, my goodness, he admits to preferring to trample over people than to hold them up.

Trump’s lack of public service experience has been coupled with his abject ignorance of the government over which he presides. He talks about enacting “bills” all by himself. Remember when he told the Republican convention in Cleveland that “I, alone” can solve the nation’s ills? He cannot. That hasn’t stopped him from continuing to imply such a moronic strategy.

We’re now well into the 2020 presidential campaign. I have not yet heard a single coherent statement that speaks to how he wants to govern during a second term. He continues to spend his entire re-election campaign effort at denigrating his Democratic foe, Joe Biden. Where’s the plan for governing, Donald? It ain’t there.

So are we going to expose ourselves to four more years of the kind of (non)leadership we’ve gotten during the past four years? Are we going to hand this president an invitation to do anything he thinks he can do without recrimination?

My goodness, we cannot allow this guy to send in federal “agents” to put down protests in our cities. We can’t allow him to “dominate the streets” with “heavily armed” troops. We cannot allow this individual to assault his foes using language that to my ears sounds overtly racist.

This clown snookered too many of us in 2016. A lot of us saw this disaster coming the moment he announced his candidacy at Trump Tower. I happen to one of those who now is frightened at the possibility that this guy could fool too many of us once again.