Author: Ronald

Donald Trump’s Greatest Nightmare: Joe Biden, Who Can Take The Midwest And Pennsylvania Away From Him In 2020

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It is very clear, a week into former Vice President Joe Biden’s Presidential campaign, that he has alarmed President Donald Trump, who clearly sees him as the most dangerous threat to a potential second term.

We know that because Trump is on a crazed Twitter rant on a daily basis against Biden, and for good reason.

Joe Biden is the closest to an “average guy” who has run for President, and served in high office as a Senator and Vice President.

He has always been seen as one of the “poorest” public officials, as he has few assets, other than his salary and pension; his wife’s teaching job at a community college; their home in Delaware; and whatever he has gained from his book publishing and lectures, nowhere near the level of the Clintons, or the Obamas, by any means.

Joe Biden came from a lower middle class background in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and has always been seen as a person who truly related to the white working class of Pennsylvania, and the Midwest, and to those without a college education,and his capacity for empathy and sincerity and concern for average Americans has always resonated as true and genuine.

This does not mean that others, who had struggles, such as Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Julian Castro do not also have empathy and sincerity and concern for average Americans. They most certainly do, but there is something about Joe Biden, with all of his faults and shortcomings, which all of the above have, that makes him seen in polls and generally as the most dangerous barrier to a second Donald Trump term in the Presidency.

Many have felt that if Joe Biden had somehow run in 2016, that he might have been able to overcome Hillary Clinton, win the nomination, and win the key states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio, and would have taken the Presidency, and saved the nation from the nightmare of Donald Trump.

Geographical Locations Of Democratic Presidential Candidates 2020: Every Area Represented

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One thing is clear as the Democratic Presidential race heats up: Every area of the nation is represented, unless one wants to list the Great Plains as a separate geographical area.

We have three people from New England—Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Seth Moulton.

We have five people from the Mid Atlantic states—Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, Joe Biden, John Delaney, Andrew Yang (Entrepreneur and Philanthropist).

We have three people from the South—Julian Castro, Beto O’Rourke, Wayne Messam (little known African American Mayor of Miramar, Florida).

We have three people from the Midwest—Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Tim Ryan.

We have three people from the Rocky Mountain West—John Hickenlooper, Michael Bennet, Steve Bullock (not yet announced)

We have five people from the Pacific Coast—Kamala Harris, Eric Swalwell, Marianne Williamson (Author, Lecturer, Activist), Jay Inslee, Tulsi Gabbard.

And the latest news and leaks say New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is about to announce.

And also, while no one takes him seriously, former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (1969-1981), who is 88 years old, and also was an announced candidate for President in 2008, is also an announced candidate.

So if you count every candidate, even those who are not serious, we have 24 candidates announced, or soon to be announced.

No more than 20 will be in the debates, and one can be assured that Messam and Gravel will be unlikely to meet the threshold required to make the debates, and that de Blasio, Bullock, and Bennet, coming in after so many others, may not make the deadline either for the first debate at the end of June.

If one leaves out the two people who are not politicians along with Messam and Gravel, with none of those four seen as having any real chance to be the nominee, we are left with:

7 Senators–Sanders, Warren, Gillibrand, Booker, Klobuchar, Bennet, Harris

6 House of Representatives or former members–Moulton, Delaney, Ryan, O’Rourke, Swalwell, Gabbard

3 Governors or former —Hickenlooper, Bullock, Inslee

3 Mayors or former—Buttigieg, Castro, de Blasio

1 Former Vice President and Senator–Biden

And Now Number 22 Announces: Colorado Senator Michael Bennet

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When this author and blogger published yesterday about the impending announcement of Presidential candidacy by Montana Governor Steve Bullock, he did not know or imagine that Colorado Senator Michael Bennet would “jump the gun” and announce, probably two weeks before Bullock is expected to announce for President.

In any case, once Bullock jumps in the race, with Bennet already now in, we will have 22 Democratic Presidential candidates, the most ever.

However, one can be sure that once the debates begin in late June, and go on for every month, and once the question of money, polls, and adequate staff support start to kick in, we can expect that by the fall, probably half of the group will not be competing in the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primary and beyond.

The newest entrant is the 7th sitting US Senator to announce, and has been in the Senate for ten years, first appointed to replace Ken Salazar as he became the Secretary of the Interior under President Barack Obama a decade ago.

Bennet graduated from Wesleyan University, and then Yale Law School, where he was editor in chief of the Yale Law Journal.

Previously, Bennet had been the Chief of Staff to Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, before the latter became Colorado Governor. Ironically, now Bennet is competing with his former boss for the Presidency. He was Superintendant of the Denver Public School System from 2005-2009 before his appointment to the Senate. He was elected to a full term in 2010, and reelected in 2016.

Bennet’s father was a major figure in Democratic politics, having worked for Hubert Humphrey, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton; and his grandfather was an adviser to Franklin D. Roosevelt. The father also was President and CEO of National Public Radio, and President of Wesleyan University, so Bennet comes from a very distinguished background.

When Bennet won his second term in 2016, he gained more votes than Hillary Clinton, who won the state. He also won more votes than any Democrat in Colorado history in a state wide race, and more votes in rural counties than any Democrat in Colorado history.

Bennet has been a typical Democrat in his record on voting, and has been noted for sharp attacks on Senator Ted Cruz, causing more views on C Span when he attacked Cruz in January 2019 for his hypocrisy on the federal government shutdown spurred by President Donald Trump.

Bennet was born with a Jewish mother and Christian father, and while not observant, he acknowledges his Jewish roots.

Bennet underwent what is termed as successful prostate cancer surgery in April, and says it is cured, but that could become an issue in the campaign.

The fact that he was born in New Delhi, India, while his father was an aide to the US Ambassador to India, could become an issue as well, although it seems that he was born on the US Embassy grounds, which would be US territory. This is similar to John McCain born in the Panama Canal Zone, which his dad was serving at the US Navy Air Station in 1936.

Whether Bennet, who is 54, can make a dent in the Presidential campaign is yet to be seen, but at the moment, not perceived as likely. He portrays himself as a pragmatist and centrist. Coming from Colorado, a key purple state that has gone to the Democrats lately, makes him significant, although John Hickenlooper, his former boss, is also competing with his aide for the Presidency.

Yet Another Presidential Contender: Governor Steve Bullock Of Montana

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We already have 20 Democratic Presidential contenders, and now another one is imminent: Montana Governor Steve Bullock. It has been made public that he will announce in two weeks, in mid May.

It would seem that Bullock could be dismissed as a serious candidate, but looking at his record gives one pause.

Bullock is 53, making him one of the younger potential Presidents, and he has been successful in a heavily Republican state, first as Attorney General from 2009-2013, and then as a two term Governor, elected in 2012 and again in 2016. He is also the Chair of the National Governor’s Association, elected last year to that position, which gives him more publicity and attention.

Bullock has been rated the most popular Democratic Governor in public opinion polls, and has managed to be effective with a heavily opposition controlled Republican legislature, with Democrats having been able to hold on to the Governor’s chair despite Republican statewide dominance, with Brian Schweitzer for eight years before Bullock, along with one Senate seat, that of Senator Jon Tester. He was the only incumbent Democratic Governor to win reelection in a state that Donald Trump won in 2016.

To survive as a Democrat, Bullock, like Tester, is a moderate Democrat, but he is pro choice; a believer in climate change; is supported by organized labor; refuses to cooperate with immigration authorities on the issue of separation of families on the border with Mexico; supports net neutrality; favors campaign finance reform; and backs gay marriage.

Bullock has emphasized the need for Democrats to gain support from rural and suburban areas, rather than focusing on urban areas, the traditional Democratic base. His visits in 2018 to Iowa and New Hampshire fueled belief he would announce for President, and now it is imminent.

As a moderate centrist Democrat, however, he is competing with Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke, and Pete Buttigieg, and possibly others whose ideas are not fully developed as of yet. So the odds that a man from Montana could go all the way seems unlikely, but of course, he could be a Vice Presidential choice of the Democratic Presidential candidate.

Vice Presidency Has Led To Presidential Nominations Multiple Times Since The 1960s

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The Vice Presidency was never good breeding ground for Presidential nominations since the Civil War.

Only John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren and John C. Breckinridge were nominated for President before the Civil War, with all winning the Presidency, except for Breckinridge, who had been Vice President under James Buchanan from 1857-1861, and then nominated by Southern Democrats who refused to accept the official Democratic nominee, Stephen Douglas in 1860.

The only Vice President from 1860 to 1960 who was nominated for President was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s third term Vice President, Henry A. Wallace, who ran as the Progressive Party nominee for President in 1948 against his own successor in the Vice Presidency, President Harry Truman.

But since 1960, six Vice Presidents have run as Presidential candidates, including;

Richard Nixon in 1960 and 1968

Hubert Humphrey in 1968

Gerald Ford in 1976 (who had succeeded Richard Nixon under the 25th Amendment)

Walter Mondale in 1984

George H. W. Bush in 1988

Al Gore in 2000

Nixon and Bush won the Presidency, while Ford lost a full term after finishing the partial term he succeeded to, and Gore won the popular vote, but failed to win the Electoral College.

The point is that Joe Biden would be the 7th Vice President who ran for President after serving as Number 2 in the executive branch.

And Nixon the first time, Mondale, Bush, and Gore all had a jump start on the nomination of their party for the Presidency, with only Humphrey and Ford having major challengers.

So at least by recent history in the past half century plus, being a Vice President gives a leap forward to those who wish to run for President.

230th Anniversary Of The American Presidency: Now In Greatest Crisis Of Its Entire History

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Today, April 30, 2019, is the 230th Anniversary of the swearing in of George Washington as our first President in New York City in 1789.

Thirty years ago, George H. W. Bush commemorated the bicentennial of that first inauguration two centuries earlier, and the feeling was that the Presidency had finally overcome the crisis and tragedy of Richard Nixon, fifteen years earlier.

Now, however, 30 years later, the Presidency of Donald Trump has set records for its corruption, venality, crudeness, destruction of the American domestic and foreign policy created by earlier Presidents of both parties, and has just passed the 10,000 mark for lies and deception, as reported by the Washington Post.

The American Presidency is a great institution now under massive attack by evil people led by Donald Trump, who are systematically destroying the sense of an American Union, as they work to divide people by race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, and sexual orientation and identity, and take away our basic civil liberties and civil rights and promote an authoritarian dictatorship led by a monarch who has no regard for American history and traditions.

America could be on the verge of a new civil war, as we have gratuitous gun violence, a repudiation of the immigrant tradition which made America the last great hope of mankind, and an ever increasing challenge of climate change that threatens the future of our children and grandchildren and beyond.

It is a time which is hard to have optimism about the future, and the urgency of defeating Donald Trump, and removing him from office peacefully is a mandate!

The next President needs to be a unifier, a man or woman of statesmanship who can promote our better instincts and inspire hope and optimism, who has the character of empathy and human decency to guide him or her through the tough readjustment we will have to experience in the 2020s.

Richard Lugar, A Rare Decent Republican, And True Statesman, Remembered For His Principles, Courage, Bipartisanship

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Former Republican Indiana Senator Richard Lugar, who served 36 years in that chamber from 1977-2013, passed away over the weekend at age 87.

Lugar was that rare Republican, considered a moderate, who became highly renowned as a foreign policy expert, and headed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1985-1987 and 2003-2007.

While usually considered a conservative, he was the kind of Republican who no longer exists now in that party. He “crossed the aisle” and worked with Democrats, including President Barack Obama, who he had come to be close to in the four years Obama was in the Senate before being elected President. He was co-chairman of the Obama Inaugural Committee.

His major commitment was to work with Georgia Democratic Senator Sam Nunn toward the dismantling of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons around the world after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

His views on immigration, climate change, and Cuban policy were outside the norm of his party. He supported Obama’s two Supreme Court nominees, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, one of a very few Republicans to do so.

He was Mayor of Indianapolis from 1968 to 1976, and gained a reputation as Richard Nixon’s favorite mayor. He was overlooked by George H. W. Bush in 1988, who picked fellow Indiana Senator Dan Quayle, a total lightweight selected for Vice President, and gave America four years of concern were anything to occur to Bush.

The longest serving Senator in Indiana history, and one of the longest serving in American history, his defeat in the primary in 2012 was another sign of the deteriorating nature of the Republican Party. And Lugar in retirement was a critic of Donald Trump, who represented every trait that Lugar was the exact opposite of, as Lugar was a man who fit the image of being decent, reasonable, intelligent, well mannered, principled, and highly respected.

Lugar even challenged President Ronald Reagan on the issues of the Philippines and South Africa policies during the mid 1980s, and never felt he must be slavishly loyal to the party line, and that is what his legacy will be, a remnant of what the Republican Party had once been, but no longer is, a party of principle and mainstream ideas, now lost in the age of Donald Trump.

Can Joe Biden Overcome The Obstacle Course Awaiting Him In 2020?

Ronald 12 Comments

Former Vice President Joe Biden finally announced his campaign on Thursday, starting off as a front runner in polls.

But can he overcome the obstacle course awaiting him in 2020?

In his long career of 44 years in national office, 36 in the US Senate and eight years as Vice President, the longest public service record of any Presidential candidate in modern history, Biden came across as genuine, sincere, decent, and compassionate, and gained millions of fans, including this blogger and author.

But he also made judgments that are problematical, including being against school busing in Delaware; supporting the credit card industry in his state, and in so doing, undermining the ability of debtors to protect themselves by bankruptcy; his lack of protection of Anita Hill in the Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991, for which he continues to apologize but in an unsatisfactory manner; his support of an interventionist foreign policy in Iraq; his many gaffes, many of them harmless but still giving him a reputation for loose and thoughtless language; and his habit of being too touchy feely with women and girls, although never accused of sexual improprieties.

Biden also promoted tough crime and drug laws in the 1990s, which are now looked at as blunders that put too many African Americans in prison unjustifiably, and his leadership at different times of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee has been criticized. His ability to “cross the aisle” and work with many Republicans is seen by some as a weakness, while others see it as a strength.

Biden is a centrist Democrat in 2019 at a time when many progressives are much further to the left than him, and one wonders if he could gain the support of those to his left if he wins the nomination, as he is perceived as too close to the traditional power centers of the party.

Joe Biden has many positive attributes, but his negative side and shortcomings, as seen by many critics, could doom him in a race against Donald Trump, when the most important thing possible is to insure that Donald Trump does not gain a second term, as that would be destructive of every progressive goal in the short run and long run.

This blogger and author has always looked at Joe Biden as a hero of his, as much as earlier, Hubert Humphrey was his model of what a political leader should be like. But Humphrey had the same problem 50 years ago of being admired and praised, but seen by many as not the best choice to oppose Richard Nixon in 1968, against Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy.

So the same quandary of 1968 awaits us in 2020, to find the best person to be successful against the greatest menace, Donald Trump, that we have had in a half century of American political history, far more damaging than Richard Nixon.

And while Hubert Humphrey was 57 at the time he ran for President in 1968, Joe Biden will be 78 shortly after the election, and as in 1960, 1976, 1992, and 2008, Democrats were able to elect a “new generation” leadership of John F. Kennedy (age 43); Jimmy Carter (age 52); Bill Clinton (age 46); and Barack Obama (age 47).

Should that be the direction for 2020 is the ultimate challenge for the Democrats.

And will Joe Biden be able to win the white working class of the Midwest and Pennsylvania? Will he be able to keep the African American community around him? Will he be able to draw moderate independents and alienated Republicans, who do not wish to vote for Donald Trump? Will he be able to win suburban whites, who veered toward Democrats in 2018? Will many seniors who supported Trump come back to the Democrats they once supported? And will enough young voters who have supported Bernie Sanders, who is 14 months older than Joe Biden, extend their allegiance to Biden if he stops the Sanders juggernaut?

These are the questions that will dominate the upcoming Presidential campaign of 2020.

Censure Of President Trump An Alternative To Impeachment, Since Conviction Impossible With Republican Senate

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With the latest poll indicating that 56 percent of Americans do not favor the impeachment of Donald Trump, it might be wiser for the Democrats to consider a censure motion instead, much less controversial and likely to gain some Republican support.

Censure was done by the Senate against Andrew Jackson in 1834 over the National Bank issue, and the House of Representatives agreed to censure of James K. Polk over the Mexican War prosecution in 1848.

Attempts to censure John Tyler in 1842, Abraham Lincoln in 1864, and Bill Clinton in 1998 failed.

It is far from an impeachment, but it would be a strong statement by either house were censure to be considered in place of impeachment, which would never get a two thirds vote of the Senate for conviction.

It looks more than ever that impeachment will NOT happen, due to the circumstances that are present, and it sets a bad standard for the future regarding Presidential abuse of power.

Age Range Of Democratic Presidential Candidates

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The Washington Post has done a study of the age range of all 20 Democratic Presidential candidates.

It turns out that half are under age 50, and half are ages 50-77.

Four are age 40 and lower, and six are between 40 and 50.

Four are in their 50s, and four are in their 60s, while Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are in their mid 70s.

Of course, all 20 Democrats will be nearly two years older when the inauguration comes.

Interestingly, both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are in the lead in polls, despite their age, while two women, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren between 50 and 70 are right behind them, and with Beto O’Rourke in his 40s also competing, and one of the four below age 40, Pete Buttigieg, also doing well at this point.

So we have a wide variety of age distribution, and the question is how the different age groups will vote once the primaries and caucuses begin in about 10 months.