Democracy 2024: # 7

It is Presidents' Day weekend as the 46th readies to try to keep his job, the 45th tries to regain it, and many others, most of them Republicans, plan to try to become the 47th.

 

Today also brought the unfortunate news that the 39th President, Jimmy Carter, whom at age 98 is the oldest living President ever, is seemingly towards the end of his life. Respect and admiration for President Carter should transcend political or ideological differences. His actions and convictions in a very long post-Presidency will be considered more of an enduring legacy than the four years he spent in office.

The main event in regards to Campaign 2024 was the official announcement of Nikki Haley, the former Governor of South Carolina and United States Ambassador to the United Nations. She seeks, as several others have before her in recent cycles, to become America's first woman President. Additionally, she would be the first Asian-American President, as the daughter of Indian immigrants. If I am not mistaken, Haley is the first female Governor ever to seek the Presidency, which might seek to give her a bit of an edge. She is going to have a hard time though competing for the Republican nomination. She has waffled back and forth over the course of seven years over her support of now opponent Donald Trump and the mostly aspirational message she unveiled this week stands in contract to the politics of grievance perfected by Trump and imitated by others in the party. Nonetheless, if things fall perfectly into place, and Trump and Ron DeSantis manage to knock each other out, Haley could benefit as the fallback choice. That is something I thought about a couple of years ago as I considered her to be perhaps a strong contender. That was before it was clear Trump would run again though and it seems like the eventual Republican nominee will either be someone who embraces the ethos of Trumpism full on or who actively calls on the party and the country to go in another direction. She will have to pick a lane. Even in her home state of South Carolina, she will have to compete with Trump, possibly DeSantis, and perhaps others,  including Tim Scott, the man she herself appointed to the U.S. Senate.

The main headline of the Haley announcement was that she called for mandatory mental competency exams for politicians over 75. First of all, that is nothing more than political rhetoric designed to get people talking, There is no way to enforce such a thing obviously. Ultimately, such judgment should be left to the voters. In saying this though. Haley managed to call out both Joe Biden and Donald Trump, as she embarks on a message that fully embraces her status as a younger candidate, a woman, and someone who can bridge racial and ethnic divides. She obviously meant to include Trump in this because she could have easily said "over 80" and left people to think it was just a smack at Biden whom many think is someone who has lost several steps. (Personally, I think Biden has always been a bit goofy.)

Before she can take out Trump and Biden though, she may have dealt a major blow to the career of embattled CNN personality Don Lemon. Already in the news for his tenuous relationship with female co-anchors on CNN's low rated morning show (after having basically been demoted out of a prime time solo hosting deal), Lemon took issue with Haley's statement on this matter. That might be fine, but he said that as a woman, she is also "past her prime." Lemon was seriously comparing apples and oranges on the cable breakfast fruit platter. This was an extremely dumb thing to say. He seemed to conflate the concerns that some have about geriatric politicians and their mental abilities with that of Haley at age 51 being past the age of giving birth or being way beyond Leonardo DiCaprio's dating cutoff. One of Lemon's co-anchors immediately called him out on this and he eventually issued a bit of an apology for his remarks via Twitter. It will be interesting to see what he says on the air.

The year of 2023 seems to continue to bring bad headlines in America and around the world, including massively tragic earthquakes in Turkey and Syria that have taken tens of thousands of lives. Mass shootings are also continuing, during the same month of February that has seen them happen before in recent memory. This past week, three people were killed at Michigan State University by a gunman with a still unknown motive, who later took his life when cornered by police. He did not use an "assault rife" but the predictable calls for gun control emerged as they usually do. It is part of the left's playbook, even though they do not admit that if they had their way, they would ban the ownership of all guns. There is something far deeper going on in America these days though that lead people to take the lives of others. There are no easy answers.

So, as Democrats demagogue issues, Republicans also do the same for media headlines and the possibility of raising money from their donors. The upcoming campaign is probably going to put forth some major divides as candidates will seek to appeal to the parts of the party base that hate the fact that the U.S. has been aiding Ukraine financially, militarily, and politically. These people also seem to have the Covid 19 vaccine and blame it for people dying. Trump and DeSantis are likely to battle it out over these matters, even as Trump's Administration had great success in developing the vaccine. He might toss it aside and go full in on DeSantis for closures in Florida during the early days of the pandemic, even as most Governors have more strident lockdowns. Stay tuned to see if "Meatball Ron" will stick as the new anti-DeSantis nickname and if it will be seen as having anti-Italian connotations.

Another big story this week is the fallout over a train derailment in Ohio that happened earlier in February. Residents of East Palestine are understandably concerned about health risks both in the short and long term from the toxic emissions. They also probably have a point that the Biden Administration has not been very vocal in talking about this disaster. Criticism is especially directed at Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg,a Presidential candidate himself the last time around, and someone seen as still holding future White House ambitions. Criticism of "Secretary Pete" probably exists for other reasons, but the fact that he seemed to avoid talking about this situation publicly leads to the concerns that "Washington elites" may not really care enough much about a small, working class town and the kind of place where heavily white blue collar voters, once reliably Democrat are now heavily Republican.

Whether this perception is fair or not, it exists and explains a large part of the appeal of Trump and those who talk like him. The same perception exists towards the Biden Administration's approach to the southern border. No wonder, the Presidential candidate is headed to East Palestine for a public visit.