Saturday, March 16, 2024

The 2024 Election, Part XIV. Wishful Thinking.


February 27, 2024

Just yesterday, I posted this item by Robert Reich:
I'm seeing a lot less of this sort of commentary than I did for a while. At first Democrats would post the "I hope the GOP nominates Trump" as we'll beat him for sure, followed by, next "everyone is ignoring how well Joe Biden is really doing."  

Over the last month Trump has cemented his nomination.  He will be the GOP nominee.  He is ahead in the polls for the Fall.

What Reich notes is correct.  There's a very larger number of independents who will not vote for Trump under any circumstances whatsoever. And, added to that, there are an appreciable number of Republicans who feel the same way.

But are there enough of both in swing states?

I really doubt it.

A second Trump Presidency is going to be, at best, a very unpleasant and bad thing for the United States.  It doesn't speak well for the country right now that somebody like Trump can even pull down a sizable number of votes, let alone be a serious contender for the Oval Office.  Whether it's a sign of American decline or will be remembered as a tragic, ignorant era for the US is yet to be seen, but it's not good anyway you look at it.

Of course, I could be wrong. And odd things are now happening.  Republicans are being forced to deal with the real meanings of social conservatism for the first time since the early 1970s, and are proving uncomfortable with it.  The behind the scene hopeful backing Trump hope to go a lot, lot further yet, even though the MAGA crowd appears perfectly comfortable with its own vices that real social conservatives would address.  Mike Johnson, who saw himself as a would be Moses in this effort, looks instead to be pathetically weak. The abandonment of Ukraine by the MAGA GOP over Donald Trump's bizarre love for Putin is looking pretty bad. There are a lot of things left to occur, but anyway you look at it, we're in the strangest American election to have every occured.

February 28, 2024

Biden and Trump won their respective primaries advancing the two tickets Americans want the least for the Fall, assuming that Americans continue to believe the absurdity that both parties shove on them, that nobody can vote for a third party.

About 13.5% of Democrats joined in a childish protest against Biden over support for Israel in the Middle East, somehow believing that throwing the election to Trump, who can be guaranteed to be a bigger supporter of Israel than Biden, serves their interest.  This also is evidence of the strong progressive wing in the party, whose influence drives away moderate Democrats.  This shows Biden to be in real trouble, but then, as the song says, the Democrats have decided to "knock on wood".
Marianne Williamson has unsuspended her campaign, and is back in the Democratic race, where nobody noticed she was running in the first place.

Get a clue, Marianne.

March 1, 2024

On the US Mexico border yesterday, Donald Trump complained about:
People who don't speak languages. We have languages coming in to our country, nobody that speaks those languages. They're truly foreign languages. Nobody speaks them

What?

I think I know what he means, but this is completely nonsensical. People don't speak the languages?  Nobody speaks them? How are they coming here then.

Something isn't right with Trump.

March 3, 2024

Trump won the Idaho Caucus and Missouri Caucus and took the delegates from the Michigan Convention.

At a rally within the last few days, Trump stated:

"And Putin has so little respect for Obama that he's starting to throw around the nuclear word."

On this occasion, the crowd actually fell into silence.  But here we are again.  Trump not being able to recall who he is running against is significant.

March 4, 2024

Hinging its decision on the idea that the 14th Amendment is not self enacting, the Supreme Court reversed a Colorado Supreme Court decision barring Trump from running.

And so the disaster continues.

Trump won North Dakota yesterday.

He will win Super Tuesday today.

Haley won Washington, D.C. over the weekend.

Democrats are now pinning their hopes on the 40% of GOP voters who are opposing Trump in the primaries.  That's a forlorn hope.

March 5, 2024

Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, in her announcement that she is not running for reelection, took Americans to task, stating:

Americans still choose to retreat farther to their partisan corners... The only political victories that matter these days are symbolic, attacking your opponents on cable news or social media. Compromise is a dirty word.

She's right. 

March 6, 2024

Trump won every Super Tuesday primary except for Vermont, which was won by Haley.

Biden won all the Democratic Super Tuesday states.

March 6, 2024

Nikki Haley had dropped out of the race.

Dean Phillips dropped out of the race.

And so the Republican Party will present with an ancient, strange narcissist who attacked the democratic institutions of the country but who is loved by his right wing base like a bobbysoxer at an Elvis concern, and the Democrats will present with an ancient nice man who has been willing to compromise his beliefs to satiate the left in his party. 

It's the race that most of America doesn't want.

Assuming both men are alive by the election, which given their ages is not a certainty, it's very unlikely that either will survive the next term of office, making the VP choice more important than ever.  We don't know who Trump's VP will be, but that person will have to at least appear as a fawning sycophant. Biden's is, of course, the unliked Kamala Harris.

And so the nation continues to endure the tragedy of inadequacy that is propelling it to destruction.

March 7, 2024

Mitch McConnell has endorsed Trump, although in a very lukewarm fashion.

Nonetheless, it's a disgusting end to his role as the leader of the GOP in the Senate.

John Barrasso, who has already endorsed Trump, and who is running for reelection, has put his hat in the ring to be McConnell's successor as head of the party in the Senate.

March 8, 2024

George Santos showed up at the State of the Union Address and is indicating he's running for Congress again.

March 12, 2024

North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Michael Whatley was chosen by the RNC to serve as the party's new Trump sycophantic head, and Trump's daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair in unanimous votes.

The Republican Party has died, which makes up my mind in my earlier "shall I stay or shall I go" question I posed here.

Positions with the RNC are being slashed as the party merges with the Trump campaign organization so that it can more effectively apply the Führerprinzip.

March 13, 2024

Both ancient candidates now have enough delegates from an ancient and outdated electoral system to make them their party's nominees.

Which doesn't mean they have to be the choices, even though they will be.

An ABC News/Ipsos survey found that 59% of Americans view Trump unfavorably while 29% rate him favorably.

A weird sideshow occured on This Week last weekend when the host repeatedly asked Nancy Mace, who had revealed that she was a rape victim some time ago, why she supports Donald Trump, who has been convicted by a civil jury of having committed rape, although not directly.  She never could really answer the question, essentially conceding that she's supporting somebody icky for political expediency, while trying to accuse the questioner of shaming her for being a rape victim.

She looked like a complete political hack.

She actually had a point, however, and never really made it.  Trump wasn't convicted by a civil jury of rape, but rather sexual abuse.  What Carroll claimed Trump did was to force himself on her as he shoved his mouth on hers, yanked her tights down, and penetrated her with his hand and then his penis. That would definitely be rape.  The verdict, however, would indicate that the jury thought Trump did something unwelcome, but not necessarily the penetration aspects.

That leaves enough room for those who support Trump to state that in actuality he wasn't found liable in a civil trial for rape itself, as commonly understood.  Mace stumbled into trying to say it, but saying "he didn't rape her he instead forced himself upon her and conducted force groping or something, according to a New York jury" is a pretty poor defense.

So, in the end, Mace did the very thing she supposedly spoke against, excused a man of a type of sexual violation of a woman and shamed her, at least vicariously, for which she should be ashamed.

March 14, 2024

No Labels Co-Chairman former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, region from that position, using the classic "more time with his family" excuse.

Colorado Republican Ken Buck is resigning his office this month, which means that Colorado will have to hold a special election to replace him.  He was from the Freedom Caucus right but took shots at the expired GOP for conducting unconstitutional impeachment efforts and made it clear that his resignation is due to discuss.

Lauren Boebert had moved into his district in hopes of keeping her political carpetbaggery going and is upset about the whole thing.

March 15, 2024

Donald Trump endorsed Barrasso for GOP Senate whip.

Boebert's problems may be much more complicated than originally thought, according to a Colorado newspaper.  She's an incumbent but carpetbagging her way to a new district, Ken Buck's, in hopes of retaining a seat. Colorado's law provides that an election has to be held to fill Buck's seat, which is now scheduled for the same day as Colorado's primary.  The party has to pick the candidate and there's rumors that Boebert might not be it.

Moreover, if she is it, she'll have to resign her current seat in Congress as Colorado's law doesn't allow a person to run for one seat while holding another, apparently.

Or so some say.

In the Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Führer category, Nancy Mace, running for a seat from South Carolina, who last week couldn't explain why a woman who is a rape victim is supportering somebody found liable for sexual abuse, took the positio that her primary rival Catherine Templeton should drop out of race now that Trump has endorsed Mace's re-election.

"To do otherwise would be to oppose the direction our party leader, Donald Trump, has set for us,” Campaign Manager John Mason Long stated.

An interesting article was published in the Cowboy State Daily by former Wyoming Speaker of the House Tom Lubnau:

Tom Lubnau: Analyzing The Anonymous Mailers Attacking Chuck Gray

The dollar figure aspect of this is a little shocking.

March 16, 2024.

Mike Pence will not endorse Donald Trump, which is to Pence's credit.  He's one of the few Republicans whith a backbone.

The WEA is mounting a campaign against far right Casper Republican Jeanette Ward.

March 13, 2024

Ward was the subject of a second major ad in the Trib.


Ward also drew a lengthy letter to the Editor in the Trib.  Usually I don't post those, but I will here as this is interesting.

Ward wasting time with culture wars

Representative Jeanette Ward,

House District 57, has been doing a poor job of representing her constituents and listening to their needs. She has voted against numerous bills that would have helped Wyoming citizens and instead wasted valuable time during the legislative session touting culture war issues. House Bill 50, the “What is a Woman” act, is a prime example of this. During a budget session the legislature has 20 days to pass a budget. That is literally the only job that legislators have during the budget session. It takes a 2/3 majority to get a non-budget bill to the floor for debate. Knowing this, Representative Ward introduced a bill that wasted time and resources and was completely unnecessary. That bill rightly died because it failed introduction.

This session, she also voted against bills that committees had spent many hours considering during the interim period, which was disrespectful to their work and slowed down the legislative process. She voted against funding the 988 suicide hotline even though Wyoming has one of the highest suicide rates in the nation, literally voting against saving lives. Last session she voted against most of the bills that would have helped families and disadvantaged Wyoming citizens, including Medicare for Moms, which helps low-income women provide for their babies. Fortunately, other legislators understood the issue and the bill passed. Representative Ward is not interested in helping Wyoming’s most vulnerable citizens, she would rather propose bills that are solutions looking for problems.

This is not acceptable. House District 57 deserves a legislator who listens to constituents, focuses her time on the budget during a budget session, and understands what genuine issues matter to Wyoming. She is not it. We need someone who has solutions to Wyoming problems, not someone who fans the flames of culture wars. Voters need to remember this on election day.

Judy Trohkimoinen,

Casper

This would suggest that perhaps there's a rising effort against Ward, who was endorsed by her predecessor, now Secretary of State Gray, because of her far right views, even though she had next to no connection with the state when she arrived, or people are getting tired of her.  

In some ways, this reflects a rising feature of Wyoming's politics in which the old Party is beginning to react more strongly to the Trump Party.


March 16, 2024

After a break of one day, the WEA resumbed its advertisements on Jeanette Ward.

I don'tt know of anyone running against Ward, but given the persistence of the campaign, somebody must be lined up that the WEA, the largest union in the state, supports.

Columnsit Rod Miller of the extremely conservative Cowboy State Daily, even though he's a traditional Wyoming Republican, wrote on the invasion of out of state carpetbagging Republicans.


Miller isn't the only one concerned:


Schuler expressed concern that this was in part due to the recent arrivals.

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