Democracy 2024: # 23

This has truly been a busy and momentous week in terms of current events in the United States and specifically those that relate to next year's Presidential election. I feel like I could have written several paragraphs for each day of the past week including both a run-down of events and providing my own opinions. I simply have to limit the time and brain-power I will devote to this post this week. Doing these weekly feels very much like a chore or assignment, but I think putting this stuff down on internet "paper" will be valuable one day historically, perhaps at least to myself. After all, I am coming up on 17 years at this space.

For this week, my best effort at organizing will be a summary of events by day for the past week.

Sunday- 

What I most recall in regards to politics was watching (minus a bit of channel surfing over to the NBA Finals), the CNN Nikki Haley Town Hall in Iowa, moderated by a hoarse Jake Tapper. I have been spending several of the past Sunday nights over the past few years watching American Idol with my parents, and tonight they were surprisingly interested in watching this political show on television. By and large, they were impressed by Haley and wanted to know more information about her and her background. I told them she did not have much of a chance of winning the Republican Presidential nomination. Some cynically believe the best she can hope to be is Donald Trump's next running-mate, but I do not see him ever picking her.

I thought Haley had a strong performance in this event with some weak moments. She was extremely effective in staying on message and being folksy and not seeming overly rehearsed. I definitely liked most of what she said a whole lot more than the recent Trump Town Hall event (which wound up getting the boss of CNN fired for what was a completely acceptable journalistic decision to host him in that format... and incidentally some of what Trump said on that stage will probably be used against him in a court of law, so perhaps liberals should keep their outrage in perspective.)

Personally, I thought Haley was incredibly strong in her answers on Ukraine and foreign policy matters. Her nuanced response on abortion policy was also quite effective. I thought she was good in describing her role in the overdue removal of the Confederate flag at the South Carolina Statehouse during her time as Governor. However, she also pandered a good deal and that is not likely to win her many converts. The positions she took regarding coming out against red flag laws for gun purchases and claiming that the so-called "Don't Say Gay Law" in Florida did not go far enough were not the kind of stances that will do Republicans any favors in the next general election. The Republican Party has also ridiculously become obsessed with using the transgender issue as a means of rallying political support. While I think there are very legitimate matters at hand regarding biological males in female sports and in girls' locker rooms, Haley calling those things the "womens' rights issue of our time" was a ridiculous overreach. The same can be said when she inferred that transgender females in sports or locker rooms are leading young girls to commit suicide. I would be far more concerned about the rate of suicide among transgender youth. Perhaps that makes me a "liberal" to many these days. I think it just means I am Pro-Life.

So, while Haley would clearly be a stronger general election option for the Republican Party than some, I do not see her catching fire in the primaries anytime soon. The idea of what she represents (a break with Trumpism but without being overtly anti-Trump) will have the very people she needs gravitating more towards the man she put in the U.S. Senate, Tim Scott.

Monday-

As I had been predicting, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu announced he would not seek the Republican Presidential nomination. At least he did not drag out the speculation anymore. In doing so, Sununu made it clear that Republicans needed to pick someone other than Donald Trump if they wanted to win next year and while he does not yet know whom that should be, he felt his presence in the race would make it more difficult for anyone to coalesce support against Trump. Had Sununu run, he would have been the only pro-choice Republican candidate.

Tuesday-

Late in the day at a New Hampshire event, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie formally entered the Presidential race. At one point, many Republicans were pining for him to enter the 2012 contest but he did not. Christie did run in 2016, and based on name recognition, was considered one of the early front-runners, but despite his combative debate barbs against Marco Rubio, failed to win many votes for himself. He quickly dropped out and endorsed Donald Trump, hoping to get something out of the deal.

Times have changed though. Christie says he saw the need to walk away from Trump forever on Election Night 2020 when the defeated President refused to admit he lost. Now, Christie is calling for America to go to "big" and abandon the "smallness" of Trump. This is unlikely to win Christie many delegates, but someone has to take the case to Trump in a loud voice. I happen to trust Asa Hutchinson more than Christie for a variety of reasons, but Asa is probably too soft spoken and too nice of a guy to do what Christie will do, especially if debates are ever held. Christie admits he will lie on a signed pledge to support the eventual nominee just to get on a stage with Trump. I suppose one has to do what one has to do in that regard.

Of course, Trump responded to Christie with a variety of fat jokes. Christie called this childish, I happen to think Christie should get over his sensitivity on this matter and that he might as well embrace his fatness (he used to be even larger) lean into an insult battle with Trump. It is not like he has anything else to lose.

So, allow me to ask

Q. What does Chris Christie bring to the table?

A. A knife and a fork

Wednesday-

Two more Republicans jumped in the fray on this day. One was North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum. I did not catch much of his speech, but I believe he sounded pretty much like a normal sane Republican. He easily has the most distinctive eyebrows of any candidate to run for President in modern history, at least on the Republican side.

Shortly after that North Dakota event, former Vice President Mike Pence spoke at length on his 64th birthday to a crowd in Iowa to announce his candidacy.

I saw much of this speech while eating lunch and while I did not agree with all of it (such as how great the Trump-Pence Administration was), I was pleasantly surprised. Pence really went after Trump, perhaps most than any candidate has thus far. Most of this was regarding January 6th, when some in a a pro-Trump crowd was chanting "Hang Mike Pence." He also though said Trump was willing to abandon conservative principles.  I definitely liked what he said on Ukraine and other foreign policy matters and the former Vice President made it seem pretty clear, that Donald Trump must never be President again and that voters needed to chose the Constitution over Trump. Pence went further than I expected him to, and at that moment, I was willing to salute him for it.

Later on that nice, Pence took part in his CNN Town Hall event from Iowa, moderated by Dana Bash. I was a lot less impressed with what Pence presented in this format. There is no doubt he can memorize statements and recite them at will and does his best to stay on message, but I thought he got tripped up towards the end of the event by Bash's questioning. Before that though, Pence, recently cleared himself when it came to possessing classified material, seemed to hope that Trump would not be charged with any crime, regardless of facts, despite having said that nobody is above the law.The arguing is that such a thing would divide the country. Hello Mike, you signed up to Trump dividing the country the day you agreed to run with him. Despite all the talk earlier that day about how Trump must never be President and that one must put the Constitution above all else, and years of saying he was a "Christian, conservative, and Republican in that order", Pence made it clear that sure he would support Trump if he becomes the nominee. The former Veep also awkwardly refused to admit it was possible that Trump could be nominated. That is pretty short-sighted. It is very much a possibility. Pence's robotic rehearsed talking points reminded me much of Al Gore, another Vice President who had trouble when seeking the highest office.

Also, just briefly, I want to recognize the extreme hypocrisy on behalf of Pence and many other conservatives who rightfully call for parental rights against government overreach, but will pander to the lowest political common denominator on the transgender issue. The overall matter is very complex and worthy of a general societal discussion. However, the concept of claiming the government knows better than parents when it comes to various medical care for their children is about as hypocritical as it gets.

To be clear, I do not believe anybody under 18 should ever undergo "bottom surgery" and I do not believe any reasonable doctor would ever sign off on such a surgery for anyone under 18, There are a lot of other medical matters though that relate to children under 18 that is pretty rare and in which patients, parents, and doctors must all agree as to the course of treatment. Claiming that it is appropriate for the government to ban all procedures without thinking about the implications and specifications of such a blanket ban is based on emotion and not reason and that is precisely what conservatism is not supposed to be about. I say the same thing in regards to the people who want to ban all AR-15s, thinking that will stop gun violence. These calls are cheap and exploitive meant to gain applause and campaign dollars but not solve any actual problems. Pence claims that kids are not allowed to get tattoos. Where has he been? Tons of underage teenagers (sadly in my view) have tattoos these days, legally with parental permission. I happen not to not like this trend, but that is what freedom is all about. If we are going to ban all sorts of medical procedures for people under 18, what about biological girls who get breast implants or breast reductions paid for by their parents?  My fellow conservatives really need to grow up on this. The truth of the matter is that most of them care far less about the well-being on transgendered kids than they do in "owning the libs" and trying to win an anti-LGBT culture battle.

Thursday-

We knew it was coming, but Donald Trump announced early in the evening that he had been informed he was indicted and would be appearing at the federal courthouse in Miami next Tuesday. The day after is the 77th birthday for the Republican front-runner.

The typical Republican defenders rallied around him. Tim Scott was on television saying how bad this made America look especially because Democrats do not get charged with these sort of things. That is crazy to me on so many levels, not worth getting into here. In regards to Senator Scott, he is hoping Donald Trump goes down and goes down hard, despite what he will be willing to say publicly, because Scott knows Trump did something very illegal, and he knew he will benefit politically if Trump goes away.

The statement from Speaker Kevin McCarthy saying "Joe Biden indicted Donald Trump" in order to eliminate a political rival was pathetic and factually ludicrous. For much of the week, Republicans have kept insisting they have seen documents that prove that Joe Biden took bribes as Vice President from Ukraine in order to effect policy. If that happened, America has a right to know, and Biden would belong behind bars,  but clearly, the Republicans saying this are not able to provide anything that could reasonably be seen as proof. So, they will just say it and hope the narrative alone serves the purpose of muddying the waters in regards to Trump.

In the meantime,it was unclear at this point just what would actually be in the indictment. The conventional wisdom was that Special Counsel Jack Smith would basically remain silent on the matter and just let it all play out in court. Pence and others engaged in dumb arguments saying that Attorney General Merrick Garland was hiding behind the Special Counsel and that he needed to take personal responsibility for this case. Had that been the case,they would have been screaming from the rooftops (with somewhat good reason), that a Biden nominated AG had a conflict of interest when it comes to candidate Trump and that a Special Counsel needed to run this show.

Also, is Joe Biden a doddering senile old fool who does not even know where he is half the time, or is he the shrewd mastermind behind a Deep State plot to take out his chief political rival? It cannot be both. Democrats used to run into these same sort of issues when they attacked Ronald Reagan. Personally, I need to point out that Joe Biden is no Ronald Reagan. Sadly.

Friday-

Well, look at that. The indictment was unsealed and Smith made a brief appearance before cameras to formally announce the charges. He could have taken the opportunity to say to Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, "hold my beer."

As underwhelmed as I admitted I was in regards to the charges in New York State against Trump over the porn star hush money, I was conversely whelmed to the max by what this indictment alleged. Almost all of these findings did not leak out either over the past several months.

Trump is in serious, serious trouble. I could go on and on but will try to keep this brief. He is on audio tape basically saying to people. "I should have classified this stuff when I could but did not. This is really secret so don't get too close, but look at this!" There are photos of boxes piled up next to a Mar A Lago toilet and on the white and gold stage and various other places. Everywhere but the garage when Joe Biden was found to have his own classified documents.

Let me briefly remind everyone that Biden has his own investigation ongoing. He definitely should not have had those documents and there are many questions about that which deserve to be answered but unlike Trump who personally was packing boxes with these documents at the White House, Biden probably had no idea he had them. When it was discovered, he cooperated fully with the FBI (beyond being less than transparent before the midterms with the public.) Trump is charged with conspiring to cover this up. There are huge differences in the circumstances.

Trump also had his top lawyer and another part ways with him on Friday morning, just hours after Jim Trusty had defended Trump on television. He is in massive legal jeopardy and may have to battle with a subpar legal team on his side. It is unclear when this case will actually ever go to trial (probably after the 2024 general election), but a smart lawyer would try to urge Trump to seek out a plea deal which would include not running for office. Needless to say, he is unlikely to do that. His only hope is that he can somehow become President and pardon himself before this case goes to trial (or maybe even afterwards.)

 

Trump defenders might be reluctant to say so publicly, but they recognized on Friday just how bad this was for him. It was even worse than expected regarding the risk to national security. Many Congressional Republicans have now gone silent on Trump, while other crazy ones are Tweeting about "war" and incredibly inflammatory stuff like that.

 

All they really have to go on is to claim that since Hillary Clinton was not charged over her server, Trump should not be. I have for years said that Hillary was extremely lucky to not have been charged. By not having gotten charged and thus staying in the race, she cost her party the Presidency for four years (plus the end of Roe vs Wade)  Does that excuse Trump though? The facts are that what he did was even worse. He was the one saying "lock her up" in regards to Hillary and that as President he would set up rules that would be better on guarding classified information than anyone else.

Then, there are those on the right saying, "look, this proves he had these secrets and he never sold them to anyone. He never gave them to our enemies. He could have done so easily but did not. And this is how we thank him?" That argument might be the goofiest thing I have ever heard in my life. Let us also not forget that virtually every woman in America has never been sexually assaulted by Donald Trump.

Constitutionally, Trump is innocent until proven guilty. Of course. By all means, he deserves a fair trial. Then, if convicted, Lock Him Up, and lock him up for good.

Saturday-

Trump gave rambling speeches today before mostly cheering Republican crowds at party gatherings in Georgia and North Carolina. He of course claimed he was totally innocent, Joe Biden is totally corrupt, the 2020 election was totally stolen from him, and now is alluding that the Republican primary candidates he endorsed in Georgia in 2022 who got their asses handed to them in those primaries, somehow had those election stolen from them too. I cannot decide if the man just continues to lie at new world record paces or if he is just a complete and total sociopath. It is probably both.

I am glad to know I live in a country where nobody is above the law and that such a horrific person like Trump might finally get his just due. This is also a sad time though for the country and the Republican Party I was once proud to belong to. People like Mitt Romney, Asa Hutchinson, and Chris Christie will speak truthfully about Trump while pandering clowns such as Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy promise pardons. (This is despite the fact that reportedly Trump might soon introduce "Tiny D" as his preferred nickname for DeSantis.) Other Republicans like Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, and a host of others, will equivocate on this very important matter in regards to if someone as dangerous as Trump could ever possibly be President or hold any office. They know better of course, but they are looking out for themselves and their own political careers above all else.

It was one year ago this week at the first public January 6 Committee hearings that GOP Congresswoman Liz Cheney said what needs repeating again now:

"Tonight I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: 

 

 There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain."