Democracy 2024: # 24

Last week, there was much information to be detailed regarding the week in Presidential politics and I missed out on including several things that I could have.

This week, we are basically at the same point we have been for eight years now. A week and a day ago, Donald Trump came down a gold escalator and has seemingly dominated political discussion ever since. At the time, most, myself included, thought he was running a vanity campaign that would not go anywhere except give him some short-term attention. I also had theories,which I still believe are quite possible, that he initially entered the 2016 campaign at behest of the Clintons in order to harm the other Republicans they were more worried about facing. Instead, Trump beat all those Republicans, and Hillary Clinton, and served a tumultuous term as President.

Now, nearly two and a half years after leaving office, he is still the central political figure in the country. People either love him or hate him. The numbers show that far more hate him than love him, but those who make up the latter are seemingly with him no matter what, as he once again seeks the White House. The first President to ever be charged with a state crime quickly became the first President to be charged with a federal crime, adding to his increasing record of new shameful firsts.

Many other Republicans are running for President, either believing they can be the ones to stop Trump, or will benefit from Trump being stopped via other means, or that they have something else to gain down the road, either political or financial,by making themselves liked by the MAGA base.

The last of the candidates who are likely to announce, at least for the next several months, formally entered the race. He is Miami Mayor Francis Suarez. It has been a busy week for his city (or the nearby suburban area) as South Florida's NBA and NHL teams, bother underdogs at the start of their respective playoffs, were eliminated in the Finals on consecutive nights this past week. Of course the week also saw Trump in a Miami federal court pleading "not guilty" to 37 counts. Thankfully, there was no unrest or anything in the realm of large protests during this event featuring the Presidential candidate in the state governed by one of his primary opponents and the city governed by now another.

 

After his arrest, booking, and plea, Trump and his body/boxes man, currently indicted alongside of him, drove off to a famous Cuban-American bakery in Miami, stayed for a few minutes, while the invited crowd sang "Happy Birthday" to the ex-President/defendant. He then promised food for everyone, and then drove off without paying for anything.

Suarez is an unorthodox candidate in many ways. A former Democrat turned Republican, he supported Hillary Clinton over Trump and apparently did not vote for Trump the second time either. (I mean even I did not vote for Hillary.) Furthermore, he supported the very liberal Democrat (who later faced his own personal and legal scandals) in the 2018 race for Governor of Florida against Ron DeSantis.Based on these things, the 45 year old Cuban-American Mayor might be somewhat of a dream for the "Never Trump" folks. Nonetheless, Suarez now seems to trying to play up to the MAGA crowd, refusing to be too critical of Trump in the wake of the indictments and talking about a two-tiered system of justice in which Democrats get away with too much.. and in the case of Hillary, he would have voted for one of them. Based some television interviews, I have seen, I have not at all been impressed with Suarez and find him very conniving. I had forgotten that he had such a recent history of supporting Democrats. Additionally, there are questions about his own ethics as Mayor that might have him under FBI investigation itself. I think Mayors of all stripes who seek higher office have a lot of murky things in their record they do not want to be looked too closely by the nature of the what being a Mayor often entails.

 

 It has to be said though that this is the first truly multi-ethnic GOP field ever featuring male and female candidates that are Asian-American, Latino-American, African-American, and white (plus orange I suppose.) The only group missing are the Native Americans. The highest serving Native American Republican today is Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt,who had talked in the past about maybe running himself. Recently, he endorsed Ron DeSantis though and was promptly attacked on social media by Donald Trump. He is part of a bevy of former Trump allies and appointees whom the former President has railed about on social media recently for a variety of reasons. Also, there is not an openly LGBT Republican in the Presidential field,although Trump might very well accuse one of his opponents of being so before too long.

Basically, many of the Republican candidates continue to try to dance around what to say about Trump and the federal indictments. Some have pulled back a bit on their intitial defense of him in the past week while others keep open the prospect of granting him a pardon if elected. Clearly, the legal troubles of Trump, most prominently related to the classified documents,are going to continue to dominate the 2024 narrative.

The first Republican Presidential debate is scheduled for this summer on Fox News. The RNC is insisting that to be on the debate stage, all candidates must sign a pledge that they will support the eventual nominee. Will they hold Trump to the same standard? He signed such a piece of paper in 2015 and then openly said onstage he would make no such pledge.

Asa Hutchinson has been trying to get the RNC to grant an exception that would prevent such a promise to applying to a convicted felon, but the RNC is saying no to that. The convicted felon must be supported, if it comes to that. The former Arkansas Governor is in a position to say he does not want to sign a pledge in bad faith. On the other hand, Chris Christie seems to shrug off the whole thing by saying he would sign it but not mean it. On Monday, Christie appeared on a CNN Town Hall, (from New York City) hosted by Anderson Cooper and featuring Republican voters from the early states and some surrounding states. Christie got high marks for this television performance. I did not agree with everything he had to say, but I was glad to see a candidate speak so harshly of Trump. There is some early evidence that New Hampshire, which probably has the largest pool of anti-Trump GOP primary voters (which can include Independents and Democrats) might have a lot of people now voicing support for Christie.

Based on internal Democrat primary season politics, Joe Biden is apparently not going to be running in Iowa and New Hampshire, and the delegates from those states will be considered invalid. This will still not prevent media stories from being quite prevalent if Robert Kennedy Jr takes one or both of those states over the incumbent President. Today, Biden held his first official 2024 campaign event in Pennsylvania where the AFL-CIO formally endorsed him for reelection. Not a huge surprise there, but many Democrats are probably happy to see that he is actively campaigning in some sense. This comes a day after Biden ended a gun-control event by oddly proclaiming "G-d Save the Queen, man" at the end of his remarks. I think I know what he was trying to convey wit the message and I would consider it a gaffe and not a sign of senility. Still, there is more proof that Biden is as he has always been, apt to say dumb things in front of a microphone or camera. If nothing else, the flippant remark was pretty disrespectful to the UK and the memory of Queen Elizabeth II, who died less than a year ago.In the past, Biden has shared that his late Irish-American mother disliked the Queen.

 

Many Republicans continue to talk very insistently that there is proof positive out there that Biden is corrupt and needs to be charged himself with taking bribes from Ukraine or things of that nature. Now, some are admitting that these supposed "tapes" of him taking bribes may not even really exist. Gee, I think it is an important detail if they actually exist or not. The same people who yell, perhaps with good reason, about the "Steele Dossier" and how Trump haters believed all of it, including claims of Russian hookers and "golden showers", now seem to want to believe anything said about Biden, even if potentially fabricated.

(I never fully believed the bit about golden showers, but now we have seen actual evidence that Trump kept classified documents next to the shower in a gold accented bathroom.)

The prospect of facing Trump aside, Biden does have a lot of political weaknesses, and thus, Democrats are said to be very concerned that West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin or someone else could emerge as an Independent candidate backed by the "No Labels" group. I think I can get into that discussion in more detail down the road, when we see, who, if anyone, might try to take this route. I am on record in saying that I very much hope a centrist alternative to Trump or Biden can present itself. In these unpredictable times, they might even win.

For now though, Biden and the Democrats should perhaps be concerned, at least slightly, about the new third party candidacy of famed professor Cornel West, who now joins the nutcase formerly known as Kanye West, as declared African-American third party candidates for President named West. Cornel West is very liberal and was a prominent supporter of Bernie Sanders in recent cycles. It is unknown whether he would be able to get on the ballot anywhere, but disaffected liberals or black voters supporting West (Cornel not Kanye) would not be good for Biden.

I remember going to see Cornel West speak at my University when he came to visit some time ago now. He was greeted like a rock star by many African-American students and by left-wing white professors. I believe my friend and I were the only one in the auditorium to not applaud his every statement. Of course, we were both College Republicans.

 

These days, both political parties have become different, more so for Republicans, as the ninth season of the "Trump Show" begins. Will it finally be off the air for good after Season 10 (if not before?)

For now, we await all the latest developments on the campaign trail and the Trump legal beat.I can only hope his former Chief of Staff, General John Kelly is correct when he says that the former President is currently "scared shitless" about what awaits him.