Day 849

Day 849 Sunday May 5, 2019

547 Days to the 2020 election and 625 Days to Inauguration Day

Let’s talk presidential candidates. There have been several that I’ve seen recently that I’ve liked, and several that worry me if they win. Most interestingly, there was a poll that showed a bunch of the leading Democratic candidates beating Trump, which is very encouraging. I do have to wonder why it is even close.

The two most worrisome candidates to me are Biden and Bernie. Both are old white men. I think the country is ready for a different look, like a younger white man! No, well yes, but how about a woman? Or a young gay white man? Biden seems to be running because it’s his last shot. He’s going to be savaged for being touchy feely and not that bright. Bernie is already being ripped for being a socialist, which is crap, but hey. Clips from an old show he did as mayor are being aired. Kind of wacky, but that’s the point of the clips, I guess. Imagine if we got Trump’s outtakes from the Apprentice? Bernie is also being ripped on his voting for gun rights. I don’t see Joe or Bernie doing well in the general election. They’ll do well enough to beat Trump, I hope, but so will a lot of candidates.

Moving on, we’ve got the senators who are running for president that questioned Barr. The star from that was Harris with second place to Klobuchar and Cory Booker finishing out of the money. Both women showed Barr to be a lying legal idiot, but in different ways. Harris would make a great AG, but she hasn’t defined herself as to what she would specifically do as president. Her rhetoric is very high minded. Klobuchar got Barr to say she should ask Mueller directly for Trump’s tax returns if Mueller did look at them as underlying evidence. Barr didn’t know. It’s hard to know if Barr read any of the Mueller Report, because on any specific item he didn’t know, other than when he twisted something for the president’s benefit.

Klobuchar, like Harris, hasn’t defined herself well enough yet. However, she does have a record in the Senate of accomplishment and I do like her comment that she “has grit.” She can back that up by her staying in her seat in the Senate until she got the I 35 bridge repair bill appropriated. 

Then we get to Michael Bennet. The senator from Colorado. He’s quiet. He’s a reader. He’s done a lot in his career in a short amount of time. His record shows he can take on a job that he has little background in and be very successful. He comes from a family with a long career in public service. His dad’s resume is off the charts in this respect and Michael’s isn’t shabby either. I first noticed Bennet when he rose to address the Senate floor after Ted Cruz, the great debater, tried to slime the Democrats with an “if only they (the Dems) would vote for this we could get something done” argument. Bennet rose to say first that he usually didn’t criticize his colleagues across the aisle, but he reminded everyone and Ted Cruz in particular that it was Cruz who shutdown the government while his state was underwater. Where people lost their lives, their homes, their businesses. This was not how Bennet saw they in the Senate should be working. 

What did Ted Cruz, the great college debater who couldn’t even handle a young boy telling him “You Suck!” on the campaign trail, have to say? Nothing. As far as I know, because there aren’t any clips of his response. I do want to point out that during the shutdown after Cruz led the effort to shutdown the government and then went out to the WWII Memorial where he and some of his supporters vandalized the police barriers by hauling them off to the White House to blame Obama that I personally called the Park Police, who at that point weren’t getting paid and reported the vandalism and trespassing. I still don’t know why he wasn’t arrested for that crime. (“Lock Him Up!”) 

Bennet was interviewed the other night and I liked what I heard. He’s quiet. He’s direct. He’s focused on what needs to be done and how to do it. He realizes that there is no point in trying to negotiate with the tea party or the Freedom Caucus, and that they have to be defeated at the polls and overwhelmed. He points out that Congress has done little in ten years and it is mainly due to these folks who are in the tea party, freedom caucus, and right wing Republicans who refuse to negotiate and say as Newt Gingrich did “my way or the highway.” It’s time for those folks to hit the highway. Bennet summarized all the accomplishments of Congress for the last ten years: Obamacare (good), Trump tax cuts (bad), and Dodd-Frank (didn’t specifically say but I assume “good”). That’s it. Boom. He has simple direct ways of solving some of our problems. He says the country faces two big challenges: increase economic mobility and opportunity for people and the other is restore integrity in government. He has the chops to do it.

Then we get to Buttigieg. I caught a little bit of him on Donnie Deutsch’s new show. Deutsch was trying to bait him. I’m not sure about what but, wow, what a response! Mayor Pete said (and I’m paraphrasing) “I’m not going to get into an argument with Donald Trump about who was serving their country better when I was packing my bags for Afghanistan and he was getting ready for the seventh season of The Apprentice. Nor, am I going to argue with him about who represents traditional marriage values better.” 

In two sentences Mayor Pete decimates Trump on military service and marriage.

I’m thinking that if we took all the Democratic candidates running for president and put them in the cabinet what a great team.

Preet Bharara was on Chuck Rosenberg’s new podcast “The Oath.” There were two things he said that really struck me. He spoke of people’s suspicion of experts and government. Both he and Chuck discussed the time they took the oath to defend the Constitution and they spoke of the effect it had on them. How privileged and special they felt. They spoke of the best job they each had – assistant prosecutor. In that job they get to try cases, higher up they go to meetings.

The sense I got from these two men talking was the great responsibility they felt to doing the best, most fair, job they could.

When I listened to Chuck and Preet, and when I listened to Michael Bennet talk about restoring dignity to government, I heard men talking genuinely and heartfelt. Men who cared about government, about people, about justice, and fairness, and responsibility. 

Unfortunately, none of these characteristics are the things that the current president and his flunkies care about.

547 Days to the 2020 election and 625 Days to Inauguration Day

PS The Apple Store like you’ve never seen it. Open and no one in it!