So I was not able to watch the Democratic presidential candidate debate in New Hampshire but from what I read, even though she was not characterized as the winner, Amy Klobuchar stood out. Watching one clip I loved her comment about candidates who claim they are Washington outsiders. She said that is an easy thing to say and makes you look like a “cool newcomer” (she was referring directly to Pete Buttigieg) but experience counts, adding, “we have a newcomer in the White House and look where that got us”.
(Of course for you Trump lovers that does not have much punch, but you would not be reading this anyway.)
And just now I saw a clip of Klobuchar relating how Trump blamed the king of Denmark for something and the prime minister of Canada for cutting him out of a movie: “who does that?” she asked rhetorically, and mockingly, adding that the U.S. needs to maintain its allies.
I already have my California ballot. But I am going to hold off on voting until I hear and read more about the candidates. But Klobuchar is certainly on the top of my list. I try not to be partisan in this blog but of course admitting that I am voting in the Democratic primary kind of gives it away. But like I have written previously, I would vote for a Republican if he or she gave me an excuse. In fact I think I did at least once vote for a Republican congressman years ago. He had long tenure and could and did get things done for the district. And anyway, under our current state law you have to register for a party in order to vote in the primary. And I emphasize, I classify myself as a moderate.
Bernie Sanders is seen as the front runner currently, or maybe Buttigieg. But here’s the problem: I don’t think the majority of the electorate wants a socialist (just like we, thankfully, never went communist), and Sanders classifies himself as one (a socialist). I am also not afraid to be politically incorrect and say I doubt that the electorate is ready for putting a homosexual, Buttigieg, in the White House. Does that make me a “gay basher”? I hope not, but I think I am just looking at reality. But then I could be wrong of course. Would I vote for Buttigieg? Maybe. He is seen as highly intelligent and one heck of a debater. And he is young, and I am old (relatively; I am 70). Most of the other likely contenders are long in the tooth. We need young blood. Oh, and is there something morally wrong about being homosexual? I believe evidence we all can see is that people are born that way so, no, nature or God, if you insist, planned it that way, or at least it was not a choice by the individual.
But we need someone who can beat Trump. I think Klobuchar could do it. She seems young enough, a mere 59, bright, level headed, and moderate, and above all civil.
Former vice president Joe Biden had previously been seen as the front runner. No more. He is too much from the past. His day has come and gone I think. And, fresh off his Ukraine aquittal, Trump will use Biden’s questionable Ukraine connection against him, and likely quite effectively.
As the campaign moves on, though, the candidates will need to emphasize in detail what they can do or will do and not talk directly about Trump, except it some circumstances. I read a story about a political science professor who suggests there is no such thing as a swing voter. People tend to be entrenched politically. However, some voters are encouraged to the polls if they like a candidate’s stance on certain issues, but if not, they just stay home.
I think this presidential election might be the most important in my lifetime. We need to rid the White House of a dangerous demagogue, who uses Hitler tactics, and who has no conscience whatsoever. While I do not know for sure whether he should get the most credit for what is said to be a great economy, I do know he gets the blame for threatening the very existence of our democracy. He is ignorant, crude, and vindictive.
(And what good is a thriving economy is you lose the democracy? Do you want the thought police coming after you? That is what you get at both extremes of right or left.)
A moderate candidate can continue any policies that bolster a thriving economy but at the same time restore democracy.
The week that was:
After the actions of President Trump in these past days since his acquittal, I feel a sense of not fear but deep concern that I felt during the dark days of Watergate. There was talk that with the walls closing in on him President Nixon might resort to drastic action, such as declare martial law on the grounds that things were just too out of hand on the demestic side while the nation was at war in Vietnam.
Nixon never could understand why anyone would want anything less than some honorable way to get out of Vietnam, save just pulling up stakes in that no-win deadly contest; he did not comprehend the anti-war movement. But that movement spread beyond the hippies into the mainstream.
Even before the Watergate scandal (which saw Nixon hire thugs, who thought themsevles clever and patriotic undercover operatives, to break into the Democratic Party campaign headquarters), Nixon ran his campaign not on his name but using the theme “Re-elect the president”. Actually “tricky dick”, as he was known, had made a lot of enemies and was not even all that well liked within his own party. So it was better not to use his own name so much — he just ran as “The President”. It was like: long live the king.
The rumors of Nixon’s paranoia got so bad that the story was that the military had to be advised not to act on any orders from the president to fire off nuclear missiles.
Well I have not heard yet of concern that Trump would fire nuclear missiles but he did take it upon himself recently to up and order a foreign military general to be assassinated. While that general reportedly did direct terrorists and supplied our enemies, which resulted in the deaths of American soldiers, that is quite a step to take unilaterally for a president, seeing as how the assassination was done in not the same nation from which the general came but another one that did not give its permission and was not even informed of before the action. We did take out a Japanese general in World War II but that was a declared war.
But back in the time of Nixon, I actually wondered that Nixon might try to cancel our democracy. His own daughter at the time was quoted as saying that people ought to quit criticizing her daddy and let “him rule”. I think she meant “govern”, but there was a kind of sense that you either supported president or you were a traitor.
And that is what Trump, free now of the constraints of impeachment, if there ever were any, is trying to do now, that is set the scene where citizens, and particulary elected officials, are thought of as supporting him and thus patriotic or not supporting him and thus treacherous traitors bent on evil.
And he is surprisingly effective at this. He seems to have almost the entire delegation of Republicans in both houses of congress kowtowing to him in fear. Oh, yes, in public they make excuses but in private, according to one Democratic senator, they confide that they do so in “fear”. One bad word from Trump and you’re toast, you’ll be shunned and perhaps run out of town on a rail, or at the very least primaried out, that is your own party will run someone against you.
Former and perhaps future presidential aspirant and now Utah Senator Mitt Romney stood up to Trump and actually voted for his removal from office in the wish-we-could forget impeachment fiasco. Trump has laid into him and others with vile invective.
Romney is either brave or perhaps just as likely an opportunist who sees some way he might make points in a future presidential race, maybe in a revival of the old-time mainstream Republican Party (it may be too late; the rabble has taken over).
Tricky Dick met his match with the smoking gun that was the revelation of his secret White House voice tapes that showed him actually committing a crime or crimes.
While there were breathless reports of smoking guns during the past year or more in the investigations of Trump, they all seemed to have been firing blanks.
Nixon always tried to stay above the fray, wise enough to let others do his dirty work.
Trump does have others doing dirty work but he likes getting right into the fight himself, as well, and he fights dirty and mean. He’s crude — so was Nixon in private, but Trump is publicly crude.
So, what do you do if you don’t like the way he acts?
And if you are one of those who say, oh my I don’t like some of the ways he acts out by I like what he is doing for the economy and other policies (would that be canceling environmental standards? and denying climate change and a global climate crisis?), spare me. We could certaily have a good economy and lots of good things without a crude tyrant who threatens our democracy and the free flow of ideas.
p.s.
On Trump ridding the administration of those who testified against him. That does not bother me. Of course anyone would do that. How can you have someone working for you who has done what he or she can to topple you?
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi tearing up Trump’s speech may have been symbolic, i.e., he tore up the constitution she tears up his speech, but it seems a bit Trumpian to me. Stooping to his sophmoric level is beneath her. Trump revels in getting one’s goat.
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