WTF 8/22/2024

 

Biden’s past; Harris’ future… 

With the Democrats officially meeting in Chicago this week to anoint Kamala Harris as their candidate in the upcoming presidential election I am taking this time to elucidate why I know to my personal satisfaction Joe Biden… despite the fact that I’ve had some real problems with all too many of his political choices during his career, including being behind one of the country’s worst ever crime bills… is a better man, in every sense of the word, than Donald Trump will ever was or will be.

Biden’s presidency is, and always was a bridge to the next generation, in a way, to a new beginning for the country… a renewal of America’s striving to the achievement of the full meaning of the words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” that the founders considered so critically important when they decided the time had come to separate from the British Empire and become the United States of America. He may have forgotten that that was what his presidency was and got swept up with the power of the office, the egoism of being “the leader of the free world” and wanted four more years but in the final result… with a not so minor assist from what is probably an oncoming battle with some form of age-related malady… he got it. He relinquished his candidacy to be re-elected for the betterment of the Democratic Party as well as… and more importantly… we the people. And in the process essentially gave the keys to the bus to Vice-President Kamala Harris. Whether Harris wins in November is up in the air but she is a damn more electable candidate than Joe Biden was this turn around the polls.

And it was time to cross the bridge and pass the torch to, what in Kamala Harris, is the younger generation within the Democratic Party who might just have some creative and innovative ideas about who to manage this country for the best of us folks who struggle hard every damn week to make our basic needs are taken care of and secured.

Trump’s presidency was a bridge to nowhere, at least nowhere good for the overwhelming majority of we the people. And… a reminder that if he is elected in November what he would that he offer is not one damn good thing for any person in America, excepting for corporate elites or deep pocket donors to contribute large sums to his side of the financial ledger.

As much as Trump likes to toot his own horn that he is friend of the working man… that is a distinct and abject lie.

He is as anti-worker/labor politician and out here today as there can be.   

And when Trump was recently “interviewed” by Elon Musk on a live X event he more or less admitted how anti-labor he really is. What some people (in particular liberal and progressive leaning folks) might see as the highlight of the powder-puff Q&A meet was  when Trump praised Musk for firing striking workers. 

President Joe Biden President walked a picket line with striking Michigan auto workers where he told those workers, “You deserve what you earned, and you’ve earned a hell of a lot more than you’re getting paid now.”

And as far as those issues I’ve had with some of Biden’s not very friendly decisions for middle and working class Americans…

During the opening ceremonies of the Democratic National Convention he pretty much (in my eyes) offered up an apology to sometimes being on the wrong side of the best interests of we the people when he announced to the world, “America, America, I gave my best to you. I made a lot of mistakes in my career. But I gave my best to you for 50 years.”

So in a sense I can accept that. It’s as close as I’ve ever heard him come to making any admission, albeit in a very generalized fashion, that he at times supported political policy that was not in the best interests of we the people, especially we the poor and we the not very white or very rich or very powerful.

Regardless of his “mistakes” in judgment… his lapses of who he was in office for and who he should be working for… in the end he did the right thing… admittedly with a big kick in the ass from some extreme outside and internal pressures… and passed the torch over to Harris.

To a person… a woman of mixed racial heritage…  who will run a campaign on real issues and present real solutions to resolve those issues…

To a person who will lead we the people into a period of progressive activist policies that are aimed at helping the middle and working classes along with a heightened consciousness in confronting whatever domestic and foreign threats that  exist (or may come to exist down the road) that threatens the basic tenets of American democracy.  

To a person who will address the issue of crime in America by talking about her record as a prosecutor as well as heralding we the voters with the fact that during the Biden/Harris administration major crime was reduced to near 50-year lows.

Harris can also tell we the voters that America had a tough but reasonable approach to the issue of immigration on the country’s southern border by virtue of a bipartisan negotiated bill but due to Trump’s interference and his influence on House Republican members it was voted down.  

Her campaign emails are now coming…. and rightfully so… with titles that tell her constituents that: “Crime Down, Border Crossings Down.”

And not the lies about how rampant America is with crime that Trump tends to spout such as the various false accusations regarding Harris’s record on crime when he recently appeared before a group of deputies from the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office in the battleground state of Michigan… including blaming Harris for a 2014 ballot initiative that reclassified theft of less than $950 as a misdemeanor and of reclassifying other crime as nonviolent.

At that same meeting Trump also accused Harris of orchestrating a “vicious, violent overthrow” by replacing President Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket.

Which is an irony above all other ironies due to the fact that it was Trump who attempted to orchestra a coup of the American government when he lied about that the theft of the 2020 election that ultimately wound up riling up his supporters to the point that they attacked a sitting session of Congress in an effort to invalidate the election as well as overthrow the U.S. government.

What Joe Biden did… and by extension the Democratic Party did… in withdrawing from the presidential race and then endorsing Kamala Harris may have been unusual, but it was not illegal in any manner whatsoever… and nowhere near being violent in any sense of the word.

Without a doubt not as violent as the January 6 attempted coup at the Capitol that was instigated by Trump’s lies where people actually died because of what went down that day. 

Furthermore the Republicans failure to allow responsible gun laws to be enacted have led higher homicide rates in red states that have gun laws that are lax to almost being nonexistent.

And where once upon a time the Republican Party called themselves the party of law and order today they hold the country’s legal process contemptible and call out the FBI and judicial system as a whole mere pawns of a biased and illegally seated Democratic administration.

On the international stage Harris should go to great lengths to point out that Trump  grovels before, and loves to kiss ass with, dictators.

Trump’s narcissistic personality makes him a mark for the most regressive and repressive despots of the world.

Harris, on the other hand, with her prosecutorial street-savvy ways and appreciation for diplomacy will be a respected leader on the international stage, and not somebody who is ridiculed by those who are supposed to be our allies.

Where Trump encourages Russia’s Putin to attack NATO countries that haven’t “paid up,” Harris is an unabashed internationalist. At one point, as vice-president, Harris went on 17 trips to 21 countries and met with over 150 leaders to discuss foreign policy. 

Trump if elected will do everything he can to enact the basic ultra conservative principles of the draconian Project 2025 that will result in a much harder and tougher life for almost all of we the people in America. In effect Project 2025 would essentially destroy government programs that help working families and put in place Trump appointed wonks to make decisions on people’s health and safety concerns and issues. Funding for everything from education to Medicaid would slashed to their bare minimums. Republican vice-presidential nominee Vance is already on record as saying that the Affordable Care Act is still on the table to be repealed.   

It comes down to this…

With Trump the government will doubled down on trickle-down tax policies, deprive women of bodily autonomy, enact restrictive and discriminatory LGBTQ+ laws and policies, censor teachers, ban books, refuse to teach the truth about racism in America including the near genocide of the entire native American tribal communities, allow Christianity to be openly promoted in the classroom, and ultimately attempt to Christianize the American government.

With Harris the government will enact progressive domestic policies to with a strong stance against criminal activity, illegal immigration and foreign threats that were at one time the hallmarks of the Republican Party.

Harris will work to enact laws that reduce income inequality, aid and working-class families and advance social justice programs through better law enforcement practices as well equal and fair enforcement of the anti-discriminatory laws that are already laws.   

Harris will also do everything in her power as the president to restore nationwide a woman’s freedom to make he own health care decisions as well as her right to choose. Or Tim Walz, her running mate on the Democratic ticket, so smartly and aptly put it… “Kids are eating and having full bellies so they can go learn, and women are making their own health-care decisions.”

Harris/Walz being elected means America will be back on the road to attaining what the founding fathers envisioned for the country’s ultimate future… a land where people of all races and ethnicities could live in peace and freedom from want or need and have justice for one and for all.

Republicans practically beg Trump to change it up. He’s not listening.

Recently a menagerie of Trump’s biggest allies have taken to various outlets with the goal to send a message to Trump that talking about crowd sizes and personal attacks on Kamala Harris aren’t going to win him votes, especially in key battleground states.

• Former Trump primary opponent Nikki Haley is publicly saying that Trump is “not going to win” by talking about things like crowd sizes or Harris’s race and intelligence.
• Vivek Ramaswamy, another former Trump primary opponent, said Trump needs to rest his campaign and have a “stronger focus on policy.”
• Former House speaker Kevin McCarthy has urged trump to “stop questioning the size of her crowds” and focus on Harris’s record instead.
• Fox News host Sean Hannity has gone on the air and proclaimed that “we don’t have time for” Trump’s attacks on Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp.
• Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly has said that Trump’s focus on crowd sizes is “So stupid. Just focus on the damn border.”

So far, despite many prominent Republicans and Trump allies urging him to focus more intently on Harris’s record, Trump has ignored that advice and in general has spoken about how Harris is just plain old bad.

In fact, for whatever reason, Trump more times than not seems to be more focused on his former opponent in Biden than on his current opponent in Harris. In a transcript of Trump’s X event Monday with Elon Musk, Trump referenced Biden by name 21 times and Harris by name only 8 times.

GOP vice-presidential nominee JD Vance was at his most defiant best when he recently said, “To the people who say that Donald Trump should do something different, they had an opportunity to make Donald Trump do something different by challenging him over three separate primaries — every single one of which he won. So I think that Donald Trump has earned the right to run the campaign that he wants to run.”

Vance also added, “we’d much rather have an American president who is who he is” and “who’s willing to offend us” and “lets the American people see exactly who he is.”

And good… keep it up… right into the next debates.

Because I’ll bet my last dollar that Kamala Harris will call out Trump on every one of his damnable lies and purposeful misrepresentations with the tenacity she once held as a San Francisco District Attorney and the California Attorney General.

Another thousand words…