Tag Archives: Barack Obama

legal news, national news

McConnell leaves cheap legacy

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I won’t think often of Mitch McConnell once he leaves his post as US Senate Republican leader.

But when I do …

I will remember the cheap partisan game he played by blocking President Obama’s decision to name a justice to the U.S. Supreme Court.

You remember, right. Justice Antonin Scalia was vacationing in Texas when he died suddenly in February 2016. Scalia was the intellectual leader of the conservatives who sat on the high court. A brilliant jurist to be sure. Obama had a right under the Constitution to select a successor.

President Obama paid his respects to Justice Scalia and then turned to the D.C. appellate court and nominated Judge Merrick Garland to succeed Scalia. Garland, by all accounts, was a serious judge, fair-minded and scholarly and, yes, a good bit more liberal in his judicial philosophy than Justice Scalia.

Not so fast, said McConnell, who then led the GOP majority in the Senate. The president shouldn’t be allowed to make an appointment in an election year. He said there would be no confirmation hearing for Garland. The Senate would wait for the election results, McConnell said.  He took a huge gamble, as Donald Trump was a decided underdog in early 2016 in his race against Democratic Party nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton.

What happened? Donald Trump got elected, took the oath in January 2017 and then selected conservative judge Neil Gorsuch to succeed Scalia.

I shall be clear.  McConnell acted legally. He had the right as Senate majority leader to block the president’s nomination.

However, McConnell’s stiff of a president from doing his constitutional duty still doesn’t pass this blogger’s smell test.

The tactic stunk to the highest of the heavens and that should stand as this partisan hack’s most enduring legacy.

national news

What does the VP do?

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Critics of Kamala Harris continue to knock me out, bowl me over and simply slay me with their line of criticism.

It goes something like this: What has she done in the nearly four years she has served as VP in the Biden administration?

They contend that she’s been little more than a potted plant in Cabinet meetings, in the Situation Room, or any Oval Office conference led by President Biden.

Biden, of course, says she has been a vital member of his inner circle.

Here’s something we all need to ponder: The US Constitution purposely created the vice presidency with no actual power. All the VP can do under the law is break tie votes in the US Senate, where the VP serves as presiding officer. Vice President Harris has been called upon to break those tie votes when a sharply divided, even-steven Senate cannot find a majority vote to enact legislation.

President Obama has said many times over the years that Vice President Biden often was the last person to leave a Cabinet meeting and Biden often would tell Obama where he disagreed with a policy decision. Obama said he valued that disagreement, as it helped him maintain some level of perspective.

Biden has said much the same thing about Harris.

Biden has asked Harris to be his point person on reproductive rights and on border security issues. As near as I can tell, she has done well on both matters.

Does she have any real authority? No more than any of the men who preceded her. I will say, though, that the office is far more than what that crusty Texan, Vice President John Nance Garner, described of the office he held under FDR.

It is far more worthwhile than a “bucket of warm piss.”

And it has prepared Kamala Harris for the next — and final — step toward the pinnacle of power.

national news

Friendships suffer grievous collateral damage

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Quiz time, kids: What part of our political existence has suffered the most grievous example of collateral damage from the current political climate?

Time’s up. I’ll offer my own belief. The greatest casualty happens to be, in my view, the political friendships that at one time survived whatever political differences existing between politicians.

The wounds being inflicted these days almost appear to be mortal in nature. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump calls Kamala Harris “not very smart.” He questions her ethnicity. The convicted felon accuses the current president, Joe Biden, of being the most corrupt politician in history.

For her part, Harris will not let anyone forget about the disgraceful conduct Trump endorsed during his term as POTUS.

There once was a time in this country when losing presidential candidates would lick their wounds, concede to the winner and then pledge to work with the winner to solve the nation’s problems. Trump brought us a whole new element into how not to lose an election. He never conceded he lost to Joe Biden in 2020 and then commenced to sic the mob onto Congress to stop the certification of the 2020 electoral result.

I will presume that Harris wins this election. Can you imagine Trump doing anything different from what he did in 2020? Hillary Rodham Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016, even had the good taste and grace to offer to work with Trump as he sought to build his administration. So did Mitt Romney and John McCain, who lost to Barack Obama in 2012 and 2008, respectively.

These days political foes have become mortal enemies.

I much prefer the time when foes would batter each other with hammer and tong … and then shake hands when it ended. It’s the democratic way.

 

national news

Run from behind!

Michelle and Barack Obama laid it out in plain language last night; indeed Kamala Harris has been saying it since the moment she emerged as the Democrats’ frontrunner in the 2024 presidential election.

Do not believe for a second that Donald Trump, their Republican foe, is going away quietly as this campaign revs up.

Yes, Democrats are feeling high and mighty right now as the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz ticket takes shape and prepares its fight plan for the White House. And, yes, Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance have floundered, flailed and flubbed their way along since Joe Biden dropped out of the contest.

Let us all remember 2016. Every politician and pundit on Planet Earth “knew” that Hillary Clinton was going to win that election. Then, suddenly, she didn’t.

This sudden and invigorating reversal of fortune does feel different. It does feel unique, as if it’s something none of us has ever experienced. If it is the real thing, then Harris, Walz and their enthusiastic army of supporters need to just remember how we thought we would welcome President Hillary Clinton to power in January 2017.

Yes, last night was inspiring in the extreme. Just a word of caution: Do not count Donald Trump out until after every ballot is counted!

national news, political news

What does Biden’s courage mean?

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Time gives us a chance for reflection, and so just a few hours after hearing gut-wrenching news of President Biden’s decision to bow out of the 2024 presidential race, I want to reflect briefly on what I believe it means.

And not just for the candidate, but for the country he loves.

Every strand of Joe Biden’s being seemed to pull him toward staying in the race. I mean, he ran for the presidency twice before actually winning the 2020 contest. He sought the 1988 Democratic nomination, but got derailed over a plagiarism scandal. He ran again in 2008, but fell to the Barack Obama buzzsaw.

He had a horrible debate performance in mid-June. He vowed to stay in. Democrats bailed on him. The money spigot dried up.

Then this past weekend came the announcement: He would end his candidacy and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for the Democratic nomination.

Biden likely knew he couldn’t defeat Donald Trump. He stepped aside to let a young, more intellectually agile public servant, VP Harris, make her effort to keep Trump out of the White House.

He said he did it out of love for his country, which he wants to shield from the evil impulses that Trump would deploy if he gets the chance at another presidential term.

Joe Biden served his country honorably for more than 50 years … as a senator, vice president and president. He left his most indelible imprint on our nation by walking away from a fight he knew he couldn’t win.

That’s how you define patriotism.

national news

Get ready for bruising fight, Mme. VPOTUS

Kamala Harris, this message is directed at you, for your benefit and for — I hope — your political survival.

It appears, Mme. Vice President, that the Republican smear machine might be targeting you in unprecedented ways, using heretofore unseen and unheard messages aimed at denigrating you, your husband, and perhaps even your extended family.

You know your place in history as the first Black, first woman, first South Asian ever elected to the nation’s second-highest office. No need to remind you of that.

However, it is those trailblazing traits that will become targets for the GOP smear mongers. They’re out there.

We saw them try to demonize Barack Obama — the first Black man elected president — in 2008. There was the lie about his birthplace and about his associations with certain political luminaries. The GOP, led by Donald Trump, sought to make Barack Obama somehow unqualified to run for president, let alone serve in the office.

I can feel the same sort of thing happening to you, Mme. VP, as you campaign for re-election alongside Joe Biden.

I feel the compelling need to tell you that I consider you eminently qualified to serve as vice president. Yes, President Biden’s age is going to be a campaign issue, too. Get ready for the onslaught, Mme. Vice President, questioning whether you are up to the job if the need should arise. That will be the sexist element of the campaign against you.

I watched you during your time in the Senate as you took down political foes with steely questioning. I have no doubt — none at all! — that you brought that same backbone to the office you now hold.

I will just implore you to ensure that it holds up under what will be relentless attack. I have faith in you.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Recalling a more civil time

I spend a good bit of time these days — when politics enters my noggin — thinking about how it used to be on the national stage.

I recently watched a YouTube video of a young U.S. senator-elect talking to David Letterman about his campaign for the Senate and how he didn’t run “negative ads.”

He lamented how the tone in 2004 had degenerated into what it became and he vowed to change it once he took office.

Barack Obama on His Multiracial Identity | Letterman – YouTube

Barack Obama didn’t succeed in changing the political tone. Indeed, he would have higher aspirations eventually and when he ascended to the presidency in 2009, he ran smack into a Republican obstruction machine operated by the GOP Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, who declared his intention would be to make Obama “a one-term president.”

It didn’t work out the way McConnell wanted … but that’s all right with me.

What also didn’t work out the way President Obama wanted was the tone of debate. It only worsened during his two terms in office and then it spiraled out of control when his successor got elected in 2016.

Who’s to shoulder the bulk of the blame? The current fire-breathers happen to be the MAGA cabal among congressional Republicans. I’ll go with that.

They need to be removed from the political stage. Which is what elections are designed to do. They are designed to cleanse the political system, to remove the toxicity from the fabric of our government. Will they do so in 2024? I damn sure hope so.

Then, perhaps, we can return to some semblance of civility where we can, as the young senator said prior to taking office in 2005, restore a climate where we can disagree over policy without condemning the other side.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joe Biden

Biden remains my first choice

I declared more than once prior to the start of the 2020 presidential campaign that Joe Biden was not my first pick to be nominated by the Democratic Party to run against Donald Trump.

My preference then was that Democrats should go with a new voice, a fresh face, some new approaches to good government. It didn’t work out that way.

The former vice president ended up as the man for Democrats around whom they would rally. I joined that crowd when it became clear that Biden would win the nomination.

That all stipulated, the president remains my first choice for the next presidential election. He should be re-elected and my hope is that he would win a second term by an even more handsome margin than he won the first time.

I have long admired the man’s tenacity. Yes, he is ambitious. He ran for president the first time in 1988, only to pull out after he got caught plagiarizing speeches delivered by a British Labor Party pol. He went after the Democratic nomination 20 years later, only to get steamrolled by a young senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, who then selected Biden to serve as VPOTUS; they won the 2008 election.

Biden has scored enough legislative victories to signal a successful term as president. Gun legislation, infrastructure rebuilding, climate change investments, tax cuts, deficit reduction, alliances are strengthened … and lastly, his steadfast support of the Ukrainians in their struggle against the Russian invaders.

Indeed, President Biden’s stance against the Russian goons who attacked Ukraine has helped strengthen the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO has held together more tightly than ever before.

Joe Biden appears to be getting ready for an announcement that is coming not long into the new year that looms just ahead.

The man is hitting his stride as president. Joe Biden needs to stay on the job.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Now will GOP reassess itself?

Mitt Romney’s loss to President Obama in the 2012 presidential election prompted the Republican Party to determine it needed a thorough examination of its future.

The party pledged to search its soul and look for ways to appeal to more Blacks, Hispanics, suburban women and other demographic groups known to be friendlier to Democrats.

I don’t know what the party came up with, but four years later it nominated a certifiable racist, sexual assailant, pathological liar as its presidential candidate. Donald Trump then won the 2016 election. The party since has taken many steps backward from where it was when Romney led the GOP.

I want the Republican Party to reassess its position these days as much as Republicans do … if only for different reasons.

I remain committed (more or less) to Democratic Party principles. I also want a return to honest debate pitting philosophies against each other. Today’s Republican Party is too enamored with The Big Lie, with MAGA demagoguery and with fealty to Donald Trump.

Furthermore, I want to state for the record once again that Trump entered politics in 2016 without spending a moment of his disgusting life working to improve people’s lives. Even after serving a term as president, public service remains an unknown concept to Trump.

I would welcome a return to honest and vigorous debate. I relish a good fight between politicians with serious policy disagreements. We aren’t getting that quality of discourse now. Instead, as we just witnessed, we saw a stable of Republicans defeated because they had earned the anointment of the twice-impeached former POTUS, who backed them because they swilled the Big Lie Kool-Aid.

We can do better than that.

Mitt Romney’s narrow loss a decade ago should have taught Republicans a valuable lesson. It didn’t. Maybe now the GOP will heed the message that voters are telling them.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

2016 election, Donald Trump, national news, political news

Unable to understand this change

Make no mistake that I will go to my grave not ever knowing or understanding how a leading politician can speak with such promising rhetoric about political transition only to toss every single word he said four years earlier into the crapper.

Former President Barack H. Obama spoke to the nation the day after Donald J. Trump got elected president in 2016. He spoke glowingly of the president-elect’s commitment to a smooth transition from one administration to the next one. Obama spoke of the message he gleaned from Trump’s remarks the previous evening, about how Trump intends to be president for “all Americans.”

Then it all caved in.

Trump lost his bid for re-election and chose to ignore all the things he had said as he prepared to take office four years earlier. At one level, I wasn’t surprised, given that I learned early in Trump’s political career not to believe a single thing that came out of his mouth.

Then again, the eternal optimist that lurks inside me had hoped that he meant what he said in 2016 as he prepared to take office. Silly me. Barack Obama got fooled, too. As did Hillary Clinton.

All that noble talk about smooth transition was plowed asunder when Trump lost the 2020 election. He has attacked our democratic process in word and — as we witnessed on 1/6 — in deed. That begs a serious question: How do serious-minded American patriots square the words of a man who pledged unity and peaceful transition square that with what he did four years later?

I admit freely to being a bit slow on the uptake on some matters. This must be one of them. Therefore, I’ll just consign my pending visit to the hereafter with an acknowledgment that I do not — I cannot — grasp how this individual lives with himself.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com