Race for the White House- Volume 87

72 Days Until Election Day

I find it much easier to compose the Race of the Day entries than these weekly updates on the Presidential race. I cannot wait for this disaster of an election to be over, unless, somehow, someway, we can get a different Republican nominee. If that were to happen, the party would actually have a chance Absent then, there should be no expectation of victory from those who rightfully do not believe Hillary Clinton should be elected President, and as it comes to the current Republican Presidential nominee, absolutely no deserving of it either.

This week, Donald Trump basically morphed into Jeb Bush on illegal immigration. That would be a good thing if he actually meant it and was not anything other than a complete con-artist. In actuality, the things he has said this week, in which he completely contradicted the entire policy plan he ran on in the primaries, only to give incredibly mixed messages in the days after are nothing other than a disaster. We should have just nominated Bush or Marco Rubio. Instead, Trump and his denizens online and on talk radio spent months hammering the candidates who believed that it would not be possible or a good idea to round up and deport the millions and millions of illegal immigrants in the country. Trump said repeatedly he would do so, winning the votes of the poorly educated and the truly bigoted in the process, and called anybody who questioned his view, "weak" and "pro-amnesty." Now, as Trump struggles mightily in the polls among Hispanics, but even more importantly college-educated white voters, he is saying maybe we will not have mass deportations after all. On Fox News he said his new view was a "softening", which of course it is, and then a day later on CNN tried to say it was a "hardening." More recently, he seems to be advocating the Mitt Romney perspective on "self-deportation" which of course Trump called diabolical before he surfaced as an anti-immigration hardliner.

Ann Coulter, who truly turned out to be a despicable person, has a new book called, blasphemously called "In Trump We Trust", and was embarking on a book tour at the very time Trump went public with his extreme reversal. As she put it is, it was almost the "shortest book tour ever." In the very book, she said there was nothing Trump could ever do that should not be forgiven except change his policy on illegal immigration. And then.... She has tried to gamely soldier on, comparing her loyalty to Trump like that of North Koreans to their dictator, but others on the right are downright confused and not very happy about what Trump has done this week. They are likely still to stick with him though, "binary choices" and whatnot, and it is doubtful that Trump is going to win over any Hispanics with this new tact or white voters, including conservatives such as myself, who have been horrified by the way he has run for President on this issue. Oh, and by the way, general Trump incompetence may prevent him from even being on the ballot in Minnesota this November. "Sad."

What else did he do this week? Just right after there was talk about how he was going to be kinder and gentler, he went off on a Twitter rant against the Morning Joe hosts from MSNBC. That has to be a huge priority. He called Hillary Clinton a "bigot" because of policy differences and his campaign is running a web-ad featuring the then First Lady in 1994 using the term "superpredators" to describe criminals who kill innocent people without any regard for human life. The Democrat Party has moved so far to the left in the past few years, that Clinton herself had to apologize for once saying this, but she was wrong to do so. It does not make one a racist for recognizing the need to stomp out the worst of the worst in society , who prey on the innocent in inner cities, who almost always happen to be minorities themselves. It is disgraceful that the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democrat Party cannot speak this truth, and it is even worse that Donald Trump, who typically describes America as an urban crime zone that only he can fix, can so cynically adopt this Black Lives Matter rhetoric, not because he really believes it, but because it is simply something to try to  use against Hillary Clinton.

By the way, with each week, the news for Clinton gets worse in regards to news about her email problem and conflicts of interest with the Clinton Foundation, but it's hardly worth writing about, because it's not going to be the main factor of the election. The contest will be decided as an ultimatum on Trump, and that is why he gets the bulk of the attention in the media and on here. With that in mind, Clinton made a major speech this week in which she talked about the influence of the "alt-right", a relatively new term in the political dictionary, on the Trump campaign. He certainly does have one of the chief voices of that movement, the head of Brietbart News, as the CEO of his campaign. In doing so, Clinton made some minor outreach to mainstream Republicans, but mostly this was just to get media attention and was designed to tie Trump to the Ku Klux Klan and other fringe hate groups. For generations, the left has overreached in trying to paint the right and its candidates as bigots, and people like me have long resented it. This year though, with Trump, it's really hard to muster any defense. He simply is trafficking in hate, conspiracy theories, and craziness. That is what makes this election cycle even more frustrating for us, but more motivation to see Trumpism wiped out.

After all these months, there are not many things that Donald Trump could Tweet to really surprise me, but this morning I saw he said the following:  "Dwyane Wade's cousin was just shot and killed walking her baby in Chicago. Just what I have been saying. African-Americans will VOTE TRUMP!"

Initially, he spelled Wade's first name wrong, but that's not really a big deal, I might have done that myself, but this Tweet is just so tacky and so classless and so emblematic of a complete meglomaniac who is lacking in all compassion.

Dwyane Wade is a future NBA Hall of Famer, and a Chicago native, who recently signed a contract with the Chicago Bulls. Yesterday, his cousin, Nykea Aldridge, a mother of four, was indeed shot and killed on the streets of Chicago, in an act of violence that authorities believe simply had her in the wrong place at the wrong time. Tragically, this happens all too often in Chicago, and while many of my fellow suburbanites are numb to it, I never fail to feel horribly about the fact that life could end at an instant for innocent black people, not that far from where I have lived my whole life, because of urban terrorism conducted by gangbangers, the very same people that Clinton Democrats once rightly saw for what they were.

Many citizens and many politicians have their own thoughts about how to deal with this scourge of violence, and it is worth debating everything, including gun control. Donald Trump though hears about an incident in the news about a relative of a celebrity, and makes it all about himself. He has done similar things after terrorist attacks overseas and in Florida. His first instinct is to congratulate himself. No words of condolence or sympathy, just a pat on his own back and a ridiculous assertion that any sizable amount of African-Americans will vote for him because of urban violence.

We can have long discussions about the failures of the left and how it has led to despair and hopelessness in the inner cities and with it, the derogation of human life, and how that leads people to not think twice about literally killing someone over a petty grievance, or not caring if they happen to get the wrong person.

These issues of values, morality, and the sanctity of human life are crucial and with it, I have always believed that all Americans, including those in poverty or in the inner cities would be better off giving the Republican Party a chance instead of blind loyalty to the liberal policies that have contributed to so many society problems.

Then though, the Party of Lincoln goes and nominates Donald J. Trump who tweets out utter garbage at the worst possible time, and I have to wonder after this election, how long it will take, and what we will have to do, to convince African-Americans and other minorities that not all conservatives and Republicans are trash like Trump.