Tag Archives: Super Tuesday

national news

Big money supporting Biden? Not in this household!

The more I hear Bernie Sanders suggest that Joe Biden has become the candidate of big money, well-heeled special interests, the privileged few who run everything in America, the more offense I am taking.

I want to lecture Sen. Sanders about something. It’s the truth and I won’t back away from it.

I am not wealthy. I don’t get involved in establishment political activity. I watch the news constantly. I study the issues. I try to understand them.

I am drawn to former Vice President Biden not because he represents big money. I am drawn to him because I believe in his message and the promise he presents to return some decency, dignity and decorum to the office of the presidency.

Furthermore, I also suspect I am not alone in that view, given the surge that the former vice president saw on Super Tuesday. Evan Smith, editor in chief and founder of the Texas Tribune, noted during the election coverage Tuesday night that “same-day voters” had broken significantly for Joe Biden, wiping out pro-Sanders advantages run up by the votes cast by those who voted early.

Many thousands of Texans, along with those in other Super Tuesday states, were moved by the stunning victory Biden scored in South Carolina. I had been leaning toward Biden already, so my vote Tuesday wasn’t spurred by some last-minute conversion from one candidate to another.

I mention this only because Sen. Sanders is drawing what I believe is an inappropriate picture of the kind of support that is lining up behind Joe Biden. The so-called big money had written off Biden after his dismal election performance in New Hampshire.

Then suddenly, he awoke from the near (political) dead. Rank-and-file voters administered the smelling salts and he roared back on his own.

None of this will matter to Sanders. He wants to be nominated for president. Sanders will say what he believes he needs to say to revive the “revolution” he purports to lead. That’s his right.

I just happen to believe he is manufacturing a conspiracy where none exists. It offends me.

national news

Are we witnessing a comeback for the ages?

I’ve heard more than one pundit in the past few hours say that Joe Biden’s recovery from near political death is the most astonishing comeback they’ve ever witnessed.

I have to concur.

The Democratic presidential candidate who was given up for dead, who was considered little more than political road kill just 10 days ago, is now possibly on the verge of winning his party’s presidential nomination.

Politico reports that if Biden banishes Bernie Sanders in next week’s Michigan Democratic primary the end might be at hand for Sanders’ campaign.

I don’t want to oversell or overstate what we witnessed during last night’s Super Tuesday tidal wave, but Biden’s return from the near-dead is truly astonishing.

Sanders isn’t going to slink away quietly. He is going to fire up his attacks on Biden. He will challenge Biden’s vote on the Iraq War, on his trade votes, on the nature of his political donations.

Sen. Sanders, in my view, is going to ratchet up what I believe is a “class war” pitting the rich against the not-so-rich. He seems to be labeling Biden, a working-class hero to many voters, as some sort of puppet of the elite within the Democratic Party.

Biden ran the table across the South. He picked off Minnesota, Massachusetts and Maine. Sanders appears to have won California.

Next up is Michigan, which now appears to be the sort of “firewall” that kept Biden from combusting in South Carolina.

I am one American voter who wants Joe Biden to keep on winning.

national news

Early voting seems less relevant than ever this election year

I am delighted to be true to my belief in voting on Election Day, that I won’t cast my vote early out of fear that my candidates will do something foolish or drop out of the running.

The Texas Democratic Party primary is coming up next Tuesday. Texas is one of 15 states casting ballots. Collectively they will select about one-third of all delegates to the Democratic National Convention this summer in Milwaukee.

My guy is still in the hunt. Except that he’s got to win bigly in South Carolina, which votes on Saturday. If you want to the truth, I wish we voted on Saturday, too, but that’s another topic for another time.

I am longing to cast my ballot for a centrist Democrat, someone who knows how to govern, someone with a public service record that demonstrates an ability and a willingness to work with politicians on the other side. Yeah, that would be Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Now, if he flames out Saturday in South Carolina, he is likely to bail sometime after the Super Tuesday balloting. His name will remain on our ballot. However tempted I might be to reconsider my own vote, I likely will continue to stand behind Joe Biden regardless of the South Carolina result.

Still, waiting until Election Day gives me a touch of flexibility in the event someone else emerges from the shrinking field of Democratic presidential contenders.

I know this with absolute certainty: I will never vote for Donald John Trump. I don’t believe we need a radical change in political direction from this clown. I do believe we need someone in the Oval Office who knows what he’s doing, someone who understands the limits of his office and someone who can restore the dignity that the office once commanded.

State news

Beware of Super Tuesday mischief

Listen up, my fellow Texas residents. I want to alert y’all to what might be lurking as we prepare to vote on Super Tuesday.

Democrats are going to vote on March 3 for president, choosing from a still-lengthy list of contenders vying for the nation’s top office. One of them, a “democratic socialist” named Bernie Sanders, has stolen the momentum from the rest of the field. Sen. Sanders is going to march into Texas as the man to beat. I saw a poll just the other day that shows Sanders with a 3-point lead over Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Republicans, meanwhile, have no seriously contested primary awaiting them. Donald John Trump, the nation’s current president, is going to cruise to the GOP presidential nomination.

Meanwhile, millions of Texans have voter registration cards that don’t have a mark on them, other than their signatures. We haven’t voted yet in either primary.

I am suggesting there might be some mischief-making on the horizon. By that I mean that some Republican voters can cross over and vote in the Democratic primary for the candidate they want their guy, Trump, to face in the fall election campaign.

I mentioned Bernie Sanders a moment ago. Do you get my drift?

Sanders is a far-left winger. He talks a good game about being “electable.” I have serious doubt about that. He is a prime target of the GOP slime machine that is going to smear him as a godless socialist/communist. Indeed, many of his proposals have set himself up for the Republican attack machine.

Given that Texas’ open primary system enables voters to cross over into the “other party’s” primary, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see a gigantic Democratic turnout with numbers inflated by a significant number of GOP voters seeking to cause a bit of trouble among Democrats.

Consider yourselves forewarned.

State news

How will the Bloomberg strategy play in Texas?

BLOGGER’S NOTE: This essay was first published on KETR-FM radio’s website, ketr.org.

The Super Tuesday Democratic Party primary presidential race is just a shade less than a month away.

On March 3, Texans will get to vote for who should be the next Democratic nominee for the presidency. The Texas ballot is going to include a name thatā€™s been missing from ballots that will precede this huge political event.

Michael Bloomberg is the man of the hour. Or at least he wants to be the man of the hour ā€“ or the man of the primary ā€“ at the end of that quite important election.

I am trying to assess whether Bloombergā€™s strategy of staying out of the early primary states while concentrating initially on the Super Tuesday.

Democrats are going to select a significant majority of their convention delegates that day. Bloomberg wants to gather up most of them. Will his Super Tuesday strategy pay off?

My wife and I watch a good bit of TV during the day in our Princeton home and we see and hear millions of dollarsā€™ worth of ads touting the candidacy of Bloomberg, the former three-term New York City mayor. The latest round of ads includes a spot that features former President Barack Obama saying nice things about the leadership qualities that Bloomberg has exhibited while running the nationā€™s largest city.

Oh, wait! Joe Biden, the former presidentā€™s ā€œbrother from another mother,ā€ also is running for the presidency this year. Obama hasnā€™t endorsed Bloomberg. He also hasnā€™t endorsed his good friend and former political partner (Biden served as vice president for eight years during the Obama administration). The former president is staying out of the nomination fight. Heā€™ll likely endorse whomever his party nominates this summer.

Bloomberg is opening 11 more campaign offices in Texas. He is hiring hundreds of political workers. He is setting up what they call a ā€œground gameā€ here. What Iā€™m trying to grasp as Bloombergā€™s date with Super Tuesday draws closer is how his platform will play here.

He talks about gun control. He speaks in support of a womanā€™s ā€œright to chooseā€ whether to remain pregnant. Bloomberg wants to amend the Affordable Care Act, not toss it aside. From what Iā€™ve witnessed in Texas is that (a) Texans donā€™t want to mess with the Second Amendment, (b) Texans are mostly ā€œpro-lifeā€ on the issue of abortion and (c) Texans donā€™t think much of the ACA.

Michael Bloomberg, though, needs to demonstrate that heā€™s a real Democrat, as opposed to some sort of faux Democrat who changes his party affiliation to suit the political mood of the moment. I mean, he once was a Republican; then he became an independent; now heā€™s a Democrat.

Whatā€™s more, Hizzoner also once declared his intention to stay out of the 2020 presidential campaign. Now heā€™s all in.

But ā€¦ is he? All in?

national news

Just not feelin’ ‘The Bern’

Allow me a moment or two to vent on what I see possibly transpiring within the fight for the Democratic Party presidential primary campaign.

It is that I am baffled at the support that Sen. Bernie Sanders continues to draw among those who want to defeat Donald John Trump, the nation’s current president.

Sanders is an independent from Vermont who is running in a party to which he does not belong. He is an avowed “democratic socialist,” a fellow who wants to redistribute the nation’s wealth. He wants to take money away from the “top 1 percent” who he says control everything in this great country.

He wants to make college education free for every American and favors something called “Medicare for All,” which in my mind is unaffordable.

He cannot campaign without lacing his rhetoric with the notes he pulls from that song sheet.

Sen. Sanders has lost me. I cannot back this guy. Yet he enjoys amazing support in Iowa, New Hampshire and possibly in Nevada ā€¦ three of the early-primary states.

He is focusing more attention now on Texas, which has a March 3 primary on what is being billed as Super Tuesday.

Being more of a center-left kind of voter, I am inclined to look more seriously at candidates who seek to straddle the stripe that divides liberals and conservatives. I continue to long for a more compromising environment in the federal government.

It is clear to me that Donald John Trump isn’t the individual who can unite this country. He is campaigning to his base, firing ’em up at rallies and firing off epithets at his foes.

Bernie Sanders isn’t going to unite this country, either. He’s now making ad buys in Texas, seeking to elevate his profile here. Will the young folks who have glommed onto this fellow’s message now put him among the Democratic Party leaders in Texas?

I am among those voters who want to defeat Trump, who still appears all but certain to survive the impeachment trial under way in the U.S. Senate. I just cannot buy into the notion that Bernie Sanders is the guy who can do it.

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Trump doesn’t know …

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A Texas Panhandle political leader and I were having lunch today at an Amarillo restaurant.

We talked about a lot of things: loyal pets, the state of affairs in the county where he works, Amarillo City Hall turmoil related to the interim city manager. Then we talked briefly about the presidential campaign.

My good friend is as loyal a Republican as you’ll find.

I asked him, “Is your party going to nominate Donald Trump as its candidate for president of the United States?”

“It’s not the party” that’ll nominate Trump, if it comes pass, he said.

People are angry, he said. They want things done. Trump needs to do three things, my friend said: secure the border, bolster our military and get rid of Obamacare and send health insurance back to the states.

Fine. I said. Will he get it done?

My friend doesn’t know. But if he does, he said he’d vote for him for a second term as president — presuming, of course, that he gets elected this November. My friend didn’t vote for him in today’s Super Tuesday primary; he didn’t tell me who got his vote, and I didn’t ask him.

My pal believes the nation is on a course to “implode.” He wants something done. Now. Suffice to say I do not share his gloomy vision of the future. I chose not to engage him on that, as we both had to be other places.

As we walked out the door, my friend said, “I’ll tell you this much: Donald Trump doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.”

He meant that Trump has never worked in government. Never been exposed to its inertia, or lack thereof. He doesn’t know what he’s getting into if lightning strikes (that’s my description) and he gets elected.

That could be a curse or a blessing, depending on what you want, my friend indicated.

I came away from my meeting with my pal getting what he meant. My own sense is that Trump’s utter ignorance of government has made itself quite evident with every proclamation andĀ brash promise he’s made.

I sincerely hope we don’t have to pay for his ignorance come next January … and I will hold on to the belief that we won’t.

 

national news, political news

Get ready for the battering, Mr. Trump

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There are times when my mind wanders into seriously weird flights of fancy imagination. This is one of those times.

Take the future of Donald J. Trump’s candidacy for president of the United States.

All the smart money today suggests that Trump’s Republican nomination campaign is going to take big leap forward once they count the ballots in the 12 Super Tuesday primary states.

The likely Democratic nominee figures to be Hillary Rodham Clinton.

We all know that the Clinton political machine is a formidable beast. It is well-funded, well-organized, well-tooled — and well-supplied with opposition research staffers who spend their waking hours digging up dirt on political foes.

Let’s play this out.

Suppose Trump captures the Republican nomination in Cleveland this summer and Clinton walks out of the Philly convention with her party’s nomination.

Then the battle will be joined.

Clinton’s public life has been pretty much an open book for, oh, the past 20-plus years, dating back to her husband’s first campaign for president. Trump’s public life? Not so much.

It figures to be opened gaping wide for all to see and hear.

The Republican Party hierarchy doesn’t trust Trump. They believe he’s a faux Republican. We’ve been exposed in Texas to a devastating 30-second TV ad that contains only Trump’s words in which he declares himself to be pro-choice on abortion, that he considers himself to be a Democrat, in favor of universal health care and in which he thinks Hillary Clinton is just a fantastic person.

On top of that, you need to watch a brilliant comedic put-down of Trump by John Oliver.

Here it is.

It’s long, but it’s hilarious. It also rings so very true.

And this kind of thing marks only the beginning of the evisceration that Trump will face if he secures the GOP presidential nomination.

Now let’s ponder another admittedly remotely possible outcome.

I cannot shake this very strange feeling that he really and truly doesn’t want to be exposed fully for the fraudulent circus-clown act that he is.

I’m going to wonder aloud now about whether TrumpĀ intends to take this fight all the way.

Just suppose this master of political theatrics does the unthinkable. He goes to the convention having taken all the battering that his so-called fellow Republicans have delivered.

Then he decides, “You know what? I don’t need this. I’m really wealthy. I have several beautiful homes. A gorgeous wife. I have all the creature comforts. I think I’ll just declare that I’m out. I’ll release my delegates. Maybe I’ll make an endorsement. And then I’ll go home.”

Wouldn’t it deliver the final blow to the GOP brass that has sought to take him down? He could toss the convention into utter chaos and leave it to that very same brass to figure out how to nominate a candidate. He could stick it straight into the party’s gut.

I cannot predict whether he’ll accrue enough delegates prior to the convention to secure the nomination. I also am not going to predict that the scenario I’ve just described actually will take place.

However, given the incredible twists, turns and gyrations this campaign that taken to date, nothing — not a single, solitary thing — would surprise me.

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Get ready for possible anti-Trump ‘last stand’

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Nevada has weighed in.

Donald J. Trump scored big. Yuuuuge! He won the state’s Republican caucus last night. He’s now being touted by some in the media as the “presumptive” GOP presidential nominee.

Not so fast.

We’ve got a big election date coming up. I won’t predict how it all shakes out, but this could turn out to be the “last stand” of the party’s brass that seeks to derail the Trump Express.

Twelve states are going to the polls. Republicans are taking part in all the primaries. They’re going to award a huge trove of delegates to this summer’s GOP convention in Cleveland.

Oh yeah. Texas is one of them.

The states are mostly scattered through the south and east. Alaska’s voting, too.

So, what happens if Trump runs the table on March 1?

Game over. That’s what the “experts” say.

An interesting debate occurred this morning on one of the cable news shows. It involved discussion over why U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida — one of the three leading contenders for the nomination — won’t unload on Trump. He instead aims his political fire at U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. The question being kicked around was whether Rubio is either afraid of how Trump would respond or if he’s angling for a vice-presidential spot in the event that Trump actually wins the presidential nomination.

I cannot pretend to get into the mind of the young man from Florida.

It’s do or die for two other candidates: Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. That’s a given and hardly qualifies as a huge scoop here.

As an interested observer of these things, though, I am going to await the GOP result with decidedly mixed feelings.

I told a friend of mine this morning in an e-mail message that I shudder to think that Republican primary voters have devalued the “essence of the presidency” so much that they actually would nominate a crass, callow, foul-mouthedĀ blowhard to represent their party in an election to elect our head of state.

I won’t predict what they’ll do next Tuesday. Whatever it is, we’d better prepare ourselves for a major political eruption.