A great many Democrats and liberals are preoccupied with unseating (or defeating, if that’s the preferred word) our current president. His policies reflect those of the Republican Party, oddly enough—I would have imagined that the president’s personal imperatives would have trumped those of the party—but almost everyone finds that the tone he adopts is jarring. Even some Republicans, or former republicans, anyway, do not like the tone he adopts. There are many crude and jarring actions he takes, which undermines the values that the party has stated that it stood for for many decades. There is a great deal of the equivalent of elementary school playground brawling, of locker-room boasting, the sorts of white lies that get bandied about, moving into grey lies, and blue lies, contradictory statements that first assert some fact, and then deny it; all of which would get in the way of hiring the president as, for instance, an executive of a large company. But he does not need to behave with any sort of decorum, since he has his own company. And because ethics are not considered of much importance by our president, members of his party have mostly abandoned being concerned with ethics. It is as if they’re saying: if we were an established party, we could be concerned with ethics; but this is the battle of our lives; if we don’t keep this president for a second term (in which he can attempt to make it impossible for the Democrats to ever win an election, and impossible for any person of ordinary means to ever win a case in court) we may as well all get out of politics.
Both parties are fighting like cornered rats. They’re both acting as if their backs are against the wall.
Part of the problem is that the Republican strategy of taking the gloves off has backfired. They’ve provided all the excuses that (they think) the Democrats could need, to equal or exceed the level of crudeness the Republicans have shown this presidential term. As most criminals do, they expect their opponents to think like them, though it is likely the Democrats will not stoop to some of those depths. The Democrats that we have grown up with would never try to disenfranchise people; nobody would be turned away from the polls. But there is a new breed of Democrat—several new breeds, and I do not view all of them with dislike, but nor do I embrace any of them who consider with favor some of the more unethical ploys that the Republicans have adopted—and we have to suspend judgement until we know how these folks will roll.
The most important problem Congress, the Senate, the President, the Supreme Court, the Press, the Justice Department, and the Security Forces face now and in the future, is corruption. Part of this problem is, indirectly, money in politics. Warren and Sanders, and several of the other candidates and former candidates have signaled this by not accepting large donations to their campaign funds (their so-called War Chests).
As long as campaign finance plays such an enormous role in how the elections go (and my cynical friends assure me that it is unreasonable to expect that it will not; think how many people TV stations, and advertising companies, and private advertising agencies, the people who create the ads that the candidates use, how many people these companies employ! Do we want to throw these people out on the street without a job? Yes.) money is going to distort how these choices are made. I have made up my mind that Michael Bloomberg should not win the nomination of the Democrats. This is sad, but it is necessary. I’m thankful that this is a good excuse for not considering Tom Steyer either, because I think anyway that he just isn’t photogenic enough to win the presidency, though we have to bear in mind that Nixon won, despite being not an attractive man!
I am privately alarmed at the fact that at least four of the candidates are in their seventies. Though youth alone is not a liability, I feel sorry that this election might take a great toll on the health of these people, who could be such a fabulous resource for our nation, even if not in the White House. Age alone is no guarantee of sanity, as we have seen in the elections of 2016.
I really liked Congressman Swalwell, who dropped out of the race very early on. I miss Kamala Harris, Michael Bennett, and to a lesser extent, Beto O’Rourke and Cory Booker, and even Marianne Williamson. Some of these dropped out because of their lackluster poll results, and some dropped out because of fundraising weaknesses. See? Even the poor poll results are due to problems with money. Evidently history is trying to teach us something: Don’t try anything in modern America if you don’t have money. Does this mean we can’t be critical of Bloomberg and Steyer trying to buy elections?
It won’t stop me. I will continue to support those candidates who only accept small donations, until the campaign is over. But People’s United has to be overturned, and then some public financing of federal campaigns will have to become law.
I did not mean to omit Ms. Tulsi Gabbard from the discussion. Hillary Clinton has written that Tulsi Gabbard appeared to be someone the Russians would select to be the focus of a third party ploy to disrupt the elections. This is not, on the face of it, a criticism of Ms. Gabbard, but it does seem like a veiled criticism of her. I’m beginning to think that Ms. Gabbard is not bent on winning this nomination, but hopes that this run will give her a diving board for a future run for president. I wish her all the best, no matter what her legitimate objectives are! And the same goes for all the other candidates, including those who have dropped out.
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