Tag Archives: Democrats

The end of Trump

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It’s possible that the 2022 midterm election will lead to the end of Donald J. Trump in American politics.  

Yes, he’s still the leader of the Republican party and he still has huge and vocal support in the party, but it’s clear that although vote counting is still ongoing in a number of races around the country, the election has changed Trump’s fortunes. 

Simply, the election was a disaster for Trump and the Republican party. The widely expected “red wave” never materialized for the Republicans. Instead, the Democrats are likely to keep their majority in the Senate, and possibly even in the House of Representatives, which would be a stunning, and completely unexpected, election result. President Joe Biden can point to the fact that few previous presidents have had similar success in a midterm election, making this year’s election an historical anomaly. 

A jubilant, surprised, and united, Democratic party today stands in sharp contrast to a Republican party in chock, wondering what happened and questioning the strategy and its leadership, including Donald Trump. 

There is no question that the Republican party is still led by Trump, “a con man who incited a putsch on the U.S. Capitol,” as J. Patrick Coolican, editor of the Minnesota Reformer, recently put it. And on Tuesday next week, Trump is expected to announce his candidacy for President in 2024.  That announcement is not welcomed by everyone in the Republican party, although congressional leaders such as Senator Mitch McConnell and Representative Kevin McCarthy have so far stayed silent and there is no big wave of criticism of Trump among Republicans, at least not yet, for his role in the election. Coolican asks:

“Under Trump’s tutelage, Republicans have (more or less) lost three consecutive election cycles (2018, 2020, 2022). Like his customers, lenders, suppliers, wives, employees — they’re left holding the bag. What more evidence do they need?”

Murdoch-owned media outlets, long strong supporters of Trump, do not seem to need more. A  Wall Street Journal  editorial on Thursday this week was headlined “Trump is the Republican party’s biggest loser” as Trump had “flopped in 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2022.” And New Post Post depicted Trump as Humpty Dumpty, who had a great fall, and asked, “can all the GOP’s med put the party together again?” 

Will Republicans finally say no to the “self-described MAGA-king? asks Jackie Calmes in her column in the Los Angeles Times:

“Will they publicly disavow his inevitable and dangerous conspiracy mongering about election fraud to explain away the losses among MAGA candidates? The initial signs are not good.”

This silence, she writes, enables Trump. It also keeps “Trumpism” alive, although no one can say for how long if the “Chief Trumpist” should vanish from the scene. 

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America is still not ready for a woman President

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It is now, officially, a two-man race for the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, and it is clear that America is still not ready for a woman president.

As Massachusetts Senator, Elizabeth Warren, today dropped out of the presidential race, she joined her Senate colleagues, New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand, California’s Kamala Harris, and Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar, who all had bowed out earlier. They were white, black; experienced; well-qualified; progressive; moderate; articulate, tough, energetic.

It did not help.

Four years after Hillary Clinton came so close to victory and lost in spite of getting almost three million more votes than Trump, writes Paul Waldman in the Washington Post, “we had a presidential field full of talented and accomplished women, and surely, so many of us thought, one of them might prevail. Yet they fell, one after another, until only the most talented and accomplished (Warren) among them was left. And in the end, she too was judged inadequate.  So, our more than 200-year-long streak of electing only men to the presidency will continue. Perhaps we shouldn’t have expected anything different.”

Left now are Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, two white men, one of whom will face Donald Trump, another white man, in November. What does that say about gender equality in America? Well, that it is still a much more conservative country than the democracies of Europe and that gender equality lags far behind those European allies, where women for years have served as their countries’ political leaders.

Back in 1984, and way ahead of his time, Minnesota’s Walter Mondale became the Democratic party’s presidential nominee and chose a woman, Geraldine Ferraro, as his vice-presidential running mate. They lost, and lost big, to Ronald Reagan, who was reelected by winning every state except Minnesota and the District of Columbia. It took until 2016 for another woman, Hillary Clinton, to once again be part of presidential ticket, and that did not end well, either, which Washington Post’s columnist, Jennifer Rubin, touches upon when she writes how  “commentary posited from the get-go that Hillary Clinton lost; ergo, women are too risky. The country is not ready. The race is too important to risk the nomination on a woman. There was zero evidence for the proposition that gender alone explained Clinton’s loss…To the contrary, women had won in overwhelming numbers in 2018, in large part by attracting female voters. Nevertheless, the narrative persisted, fueled by the mainstream media insistence that the failure to win white, working-class men in 2016 meant Democrats needed a white man to attract those voters this time around.”

Still, many believe that whoever finally wins the nomination – Biden or Sanders – there has to be a woman on the ticket. Biden is now the overwhelming favorite to win and Minnesota’s Klobuchar is politically closest to Biden. She is also from the Midwest, an important part of the country to capture for the Democrats. But Biden could also choose Warren to build the important bridge to the party’s progressive wing and keep the party united, or Harris, thereby having both a woman and an African American on the ticket.

So, November’s election could still be historic, although not quite to the degree it would have been with a woman at the top of the ticket. And that still seems a long way off.

 

With dizzying speed, Joe Biden races to the front

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Events in the American presidential election campaign are overtaking each other with dizzying speed. What was conventional wisdom just a week ago – before the South Carolina primary on February 29 – has after Super Tuesday been completely trashed.

Almost counted out, Joe Biden is now in the lead. The front runner, Bernie Sanders, stumbled badly, and the field got thinner, a lot thinner — out is Tom Steyer; out is Pete Buttigieg; out is Amy Klobuchar; and out is Michael Bloomberg.

Only Elizabeth Warren remains, but her days are clearly numbered. After a series of third and even worse finishes, she did not even manage yesterday to win her home state, Massachusetts, coming in third after Biden 33 percent, Sanders 26, Warren 21, and Bloomberg 11. In my hometown, Great Barrington, in the western part of the state, with a population of a little over seven thousand, Sanders won with 691 votes, followed by Biden 606, Warren 515, and Bloomberg 180.

Biden surprised all evening as the results came in, from east to west, and ended up winning ten of the fourteen states. His huge victory in Virginia stunned observers and set the tone for the evening. And what followed surprised even more, when, in the North, he captured Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Maine. And his victory in Texas was truly mind-boggling – no one saw that coming. His support, just like in South Carolina, among the African American voters, continued to be solid, 60 to 70 percent. But he also made big inroads among white suburban voters, who, in many places, went to the polls in larger numbers than 2016 and even than 2008, when Barack Obama captured the presidency. That bodes well for November.

Sanders, on the other hand, failed to expand his support, and, writes professor Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia, “it’s clearer than ever now that at least some of his support in 2016 was simply a function of being the alternative to Hillary Clinton. Matched up with Biden more directly now, it’s unclear whether he’ll be able to match his 2016 achievements.” Momentum is now with Biden. Still, Sabato adds, the race for the Democratic party’s presidential nominee might change again. “Certainly, Biden is going to be under renewed scrutiny, and his campaign performances have been shaky at best.”

The consequences of Biden’s weaknesses, when the Democrats do not have “an awesome” candidate, as Tom Friedman writes in today’s New York Times. the party needs to have an “awesome coalition.”  “That means a party that is united as much as possible – from left to center to right – so it can bolster the nominee against what will be a vicious, united and well-funded Trump/GOP campaign.”

Right now, that unity does not exist, although it took a big step forward with Biden’s former rivals, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Bloomberg, with his billions, all endorsing Biden and, thereby, the moderate wing of the party against Sanders’ left-wing progressivism, his “democratic socialism.” Biden, should he win the nomination, needs Sanders and his young supporters to win in November. On the day after Super Tuesday, Sanders showed no indications that he is ready to play ball, at least not yet.  And, so, the race goes on, to the next Tuesday and maybe the Tuesdays after that, all the way to June and then the convention in Milwaukee in July. For the Democrats that is a dark scenario indeed.

 

It’s Trump, stupid!

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To defeat Donald Trump is the primary, no, the only, goal of the Democrats come November.  They forgot that at last Wednesday’s debate in Las Vegas.

“If you’re someone who thinks Donald Trump needs to be sent packing, watching the Democrats attack one another like 14-year-olds fighting over the remote was depressing indeed, wrote Boston Globe columnist Kevin Cullen, who came away from the evening liking all the candidates less.

I, sadly, agree.

The six up on the debate stage lost their focus, they turned inwards, and the whole event turned into a vicious food fight, between…everybody! There was no serious policy debate, on any of the major issues, and foreign policy, the one area where the President truly has power, was completely absent.

Elizabeth Warren came to play a central role by fiercely attacking former New York mayor, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, and discarding her earlier calls for unity in the party. Her attacks seemed to equate Bloomberg with Trump – just another awful billionaire –  without a word about Bloomberg’s solid political experience after twelve years as New York City’s mayor and his many years of political and financial support for Democratic, and liberal, causes like gun control and climate change.

It was a harsh and negative message. I have admired Warren for her policy focus, for her ideas and plans on a number of important issues: Medicare for All, wealth tax, childcare, college costs, consumer protection. All that was lost in Las Vegas. It reminded me of another debate, earlier in the campaign, when Kamala Harris harshly attacked Joe Biden. Afterwards, Harris also profited, both in the polls and in campaign funds, but the gains turned out to be short-lived. It remains to be seen if Elizabeth Warren now meets the same destiny.

The rest? Bernie Sanders yelled, as usual, but he largely got a free ride, in spite of being the front runner in the polls. Joe Biden did ok, but, as one commentator accurately described it, every time he opens his mouth, “you hold your breath.” This time, he avoided any major gaffe. That left Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, who obviously do not like each other, free to go at each other, with abandon. They both lost.

And Bloomberg? Cool, but lame, and strangely unprepared. He failed in his first debate appearance — bombed, said many. But he is not on the ballot in Nevada today nor in South Carolina on February 29. His moment of truth comes on Super Tuesday, March 3, when he is on the ballot for the first time. Prior to that, in next week’s debate, he needs to step up his  game considerably to have a chance.  If he fails, he will not be saved by his billions.

One is gone, but we still need many fewer Democratic candidates

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Democratic California congressman Eric Swalwell never had a chance, so his decision this week to end his presidential dreams was not a surprise. What was a surprise, and what should be lauded, was the fact that he did not drag this out, that he decided quickly and after only one debate that this was, indeed, a dream and that he should continue his political career by being re-elected to Congress next year, which he will certainly be.

So, one is gone, but the Democrats still need fewer not more presidential candidates, and California billionaire Tom Steyer should be strenuously discouraged as he enters the field. No, we don’t need another candidate and we don’t need another billionaire…

Instead, more in the present crowd of Democratic hopefuls, should follow Swalwell’s good example, particularly the two political novices, Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang. For me, solid political experience is so important in someone running for President, and they both totally lack it. But also others, many with slim such experience and with campaigns seemingly going nowhere, should seriously consider leaving, and soon: John Delaney, Tim Ryan, Tulsi Gabbard, Bill de Blasio, Seth Moulton, and Steve Bullock. The two Coloradoans, John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet, and Washington State Governor, Jay Inslee, could also be included in this group, even though Inslee’s emphasis on climate change and the environment should be lauded and should be a central part of the Democratic Party’s platform. New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, whose campaign has generated weak support, could also be part of this group.

“The sooner the nonviable candidates leave, the sooner voters can size up the competitive contenders and the sooner the party can begin serious debate about what the candidates are actually proposing,” Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin wrote recently. I totally agree.

While I am at it, I also want make a pitch for party membership when running for President in the Democratic primaries. Bernie Sanders is not a member, so…But maybe this will sort out itself eventually, as Sanders’ star power from 2016 is fading, although he is presently in second place with a polling average of 18.6 percent during the first six months of this year, according to FiveThirtyEight.com. However, he is far behind Joe Biden at 31.6 percent and not much ahead of Kamala Harris at 14.6, Elizabeth Warren at 11.9, and Pete Buttigieg at 11.4 percent. The rest are in single digits and many have less than one percent support.

As I wrote after the first two Democratic debates, none of the candidates has my vote. Not yet. Undoubtedly, and eventually, one of them will, as I will never vote for Donald Trump. Defeating him is not only the main goal in next year’s elections but the only goal. So I am eagerly looking forward to the two debates in Detroit at the end of July, and that, by then, we are left with a handful of serious Democratic candidates to challenge Donald Trump.

After two debates, none of them has my vote

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Twenty Democratic hopefuls, on two nights, recently tried to show the record large television audience that they were presidential material, that they could lead the United States of America.

They all failed. None of them secured my future vote. Who, of them, can beat Trump? That’s the goal. That’s the only goal. No other matters. But, at this point, I am not sure.

Instead, I asked, why they were even there on the stage? And why this spectacle a year and a half before next year’s November elections? The length of this campaign is ridiculous and so are many of the candidates, these Presidential “wannabes,” as the veteran Washington Post columnist Colbert I. King recently wrote, who are wasting our time. This election “is no time for start-ups.” Indeed!

Two women won the first and then the second debate. Elizabeth Warren must be admired for her energy and intellectual power and for the fact that she has presented proposal after proposal to solve America’s problem. I agree with her. But can she beat Trump? Kamala Harris won the second debate, based on her attack on Joe Biden, but did she go too far and will it come back and haunt her? Joe Biden bombed. Bernie Sanders’s message was old and tiresome. Pete Buttigieg was eloquent, but a mayor of South Bend, Indiana just won’t do.

Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Amy Klobuchar and the two Texans, Beto O’Rourke and Julian Castro, all have some political experience. But why are they running? And who are the rest, Williamson, Yang, Gabbard, Stalwell, Ryan, etc? Why do they think they think can run the largest and most important country in the world with little or no political experience? Should there be no limit to a person’s ego? Why don’t they run for governor, or the senate, or the House, or for some local office.

This is ridiculous. I have said it before, but it bears repeating: amateurs – stay away from politics. Look at Donald Trump – enough said!

Still, more debates will take place, possibly with some even more unknown and unproven presidential hopefuls. This can’t be the way to choose the Democratic Party’s nominee for President of the United States. The primary system is broken, and Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen blames the Democratic Party, which has “opted for increased chaos,” as he wrote in a recent column and concluded:

“For too many candidates, running for the nomination is a no-cost exercise in brand enhancement. It’s ridiculous that almost anyone can be a celebrity . . . or run for president. There ought to be a difference.”

The only hopeful result of the two debates was the record breaking television audience, fifteen and eighteen million viewers, respectively. That points to, hopefully, a large, maybe record breaking, voter turnout next year, which is needed to beat Trump.

 

 

No respite from “Circus Trump” out here in California…

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At lunch yesterday at Los Angeles’ classic Greenblatt’s Deli from the 1920s when Sunset Boulevard was still a dirt road, “Circus Trump” in Washington, DC was all that my fellow patrons at the other tables talked about: the scandalous speech earlier in the day by the president on Long Island in front of police officers, basically encouraging them to use force when they arrested people; the firing of White House chief of staff Reince Priebus; and, of course, the disastrous outcome in the Senate for the Republicans as they failed to kill Obamacare that they had vowed to do for seven years.

And that’s just in the last twenty-four hours…

The fall of Priebus was no surprise. He is yet another name in a long line of people fired or forced to resign in an administration that is still, remarkably, only six months old, but feels much older. But it is another ominous sign of a deeply dysfunctional White House. The fall of Priebus came shortly after his prime nemesis, Anthony Scaramucci, had taken him apart, using language full of expletives that chocked many. e is the new face of the Trump administ

As the new face of the Trump administration, “Little Donald” seems to want to be more Trump than Trump himself and, like his boss, he has no background and no expertise for his new role as the White House’s new communications director.  How long will “Little Donald” stay after the new chief of staff, John Kelly, walks into the White House on Monday?

In all, this has probably been Trump’s worst week since he became president, although it is really hard to say, because there have been so many disastrous weeks in this toxic and scandalous political environment that has followed the election of Donald Trump. The chaos in the White House has produced a crisis in American leadership as a whole.

Here is Peggy Noonan’s latest column in conservative Wall Street Journal:

“The president’s primary problem as a leader is not that he is impetuous, brash or naive. It’s not that he is inexperienced, crude, an outsider. It is that he is weak and sniveling. It is that he undermines himself almost daily by ignoring traditional norms and forms of American masculinity, skinny.”

Where is America heading and how long will America, and in particular the Republic Party and its leaders, tolerate this completely incompetent leadership of the world’s superpower? These questions have been posed for a while, but there is a new urgency in the comments as each week passes.

Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post:

“The Court of Mad King Donald is not a presidency. It is an affliction, one that saps the life out of our democratic institutions, and it must be fiercely resisted if the nation as we know it is to survive.”

I recently, and temporarily, moved to Los Angeles. It’s not the first time I have gone west, but it still holds a special allure, in part because it is so far away from the rest of America, particularly from the Washington I had left. I looked forward to a bit of respite from the Trump circus.

If you follow the news, that has turned out to be impossible. Still, the political climate here is different. California, of course, is a Democratic stronghold, where the governor, Jerry Brown, is a Democrat working with large Democratic majorities in both the State Senate and Assembly. California is where Hillary Clinton captured 61.7 percent of the vote, or 8.75 million votes to Trump’s 4.83 million, in last year’s presidential election. No wonder President Trump has not visited California since his victory last November.

With its nearly 40 million inhabitants and a top-ten economy in the world, California is closer to a nation-state than any other U.S. state, and more and more you can hear talk about going it alone. There are also deep policy disagreements between California and the Trump administration, foremost of which is global warming. Trump’s decision to walk away from the Paris Accord on climate change has met with fierce resistance here, led by Governor Brown, but with solid support from California’s residents, from both parties, as a new poll from the Public Policy Institute of California clearly shows.

While over half of California voters approve of Brown and his agenda to fight global warming, only 25 percent approve of Trump, in general, and over 70 percent in the poll disapprove of is environmental policies as well as his withdrawal from the Paris accord on climate change. Here in California, over 80 percent of its residents think global warming is a serious or somewhat serious threat to California future economy and quality of life, and a clear majority wants the state to take the lad on this issue, regardless of what the federal government — in this case, the Trump administrations and the Republican majorities in the U.S. Congress, does or, rather, does not do.

So they favor more wind and solar power, more desalination plants, and they oppose more oil drilling oil off California’s coast. And over half in the poll states that they are willing to pay more for electricity and gasoline to help reduce global warming.

Remarkable numbers. No wonder Trump has stayed away.

 

 

Uncertainty before Iowa, no matter what the polls say

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Whatever the polls might say, the outcome of the Iowa caucuses next Monday is far from certain among both Republicans and Democrats.

In the Republican so-called establishment the nervousness is growing as a Trump victory or a Cruz victory seems ever more likely. But it’s too late to do anything about it now or even before the New Hampshire primary on February 9. The Republican Party is reaping what they have sown. Later, possibly, as the primary campaign goes on to bigger and ethnically more diverse states, the Republican voters might come to their senses as they realize that the course the party is taking is a suicide mission. Or at least, that is what many establishment Republicans are wishing, for a Republican Party with Trump or Cruz as its presidential nominee cannot win the general election in November.

On the Democratic side, the race is even, surprisingly so. A Town Hall last night from Iowa with the three candidates, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley and broadcast on CNN, was forceful, energetic, positive, and informative. The issues of America were discussed seriously and the negative attacks on the opponents were largely absent.

A confident, relaxed, articulate Hillary Clinton made a strong case for herself as the most knowledgeable and experienced of the three, yes, of all the candidates, including the Republicans. Her knowledge of foreign policy, in particular, impressed, and should impress the voters, in these times of upheaval and uncertainty around the world. I think this is the Hillary Clinton that the voters want, and should, see, and staying positive and upbeat. She needs to make sure the voters know of and understand what she stands for. Attacking Bernie Sanders is not what she should be doing. Sanders is running his race and he is doing it well, talking about the serious issues facing America. It might pay off handsomely in Iowa and New Hampshire. But…beyond that? He is no threat.

Sanders, the senator from Vermont and the self-proclaimed democratic socialist, whose campaign has developed into a popular movement that no one predicted, including Sanders himself. He, also, did well, as he continued to hammer forcefully on his main themes of economic inequality, healthcare for all Americans, and reigning in Wall Street’s excesses. As a progressive, born and raised in Europe, I agree with much of what he says. The political revolution that Sanders urges might be a revolution for America, but not in my old home country of Sweden, or in Europe as a whole. It is far out to the left for America, and although Sanders certainly has many Americans supporting him, they are not enough for him to win in November. America is not ready for a political revolution.

Martin O’Malley, finally, the former governor of my home state of Maryland, has strong progressive credentials, and in another year, without Sanders, he might have had a chance. Not this year.

In all, the Democrats are in better shape than the Republicans, keeping the big picture in mind — the general election in November — regardless of what happens in Iowa and New Hampshire. Hillary Clinton will be the nominee, and whoever the Republicans choose, they will have a formidable opponent.

The sad state of affairs of the Republican primary campaign

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”The best advice may be to deal with him (Donald Trump) the same way we’re told to deal with bees, small children throwing tantrums and Internet trolls: Just ignore him.”

That’s Boston College professor Emily Thorson in yesterday’s Washington Post, and that’s what I have been trying to do all of last year, staying away, on this blog, in disgust and frustration over a Republican primary election campaign that not only has been ridiculously long but also utterly depressing.

Now, the year of the elections has arrived but the Republican primary campaign, “that (has) disqualified the qualified,” as the headline reads in Robert Draper’s recent article in the New York Times Magazine, is even more depressing, if that’s possible. It’s become a campaign of two factions, the outsiders without political experience – amateurs, in plain speak — vs. the establishment. I have never been in favor of amateur politicians, like Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina. What makes them think, other than their enormous egos, that they can lead the United States, even in the best of times, and these are not the best of times, just because they can earn billions on real estate like Trump, operate on brains like Carson, or sink Hewlett Packard like Fiorina. Politics is a more complicated than that and should get more respect than that.

So why is this kind of presidential candidates taken seriously? Why don’t we all just ignore them? The media, seemingly, won’t let that happen and it’s not the first time this happens. We just have to go back one election cycle, to 2012, to remember the pizza man, Herman Cain, who was treated far too long as a serious candidate, although he was sorely lacking in both knowledge and political experience. Such candidates are not the answer to who should lead this country.

Still, Republican polls show substantial support for not only Trump but also for Carson, and only a few weeks before the voters have their first say, Trump victories in Iowa or New Hampshire do not seem implausible. David Brooks, the conservative New York Times columnist, wrote in early December that Trump won’t win the Republican nomination, and he cited a “mental shift” among voters taking place as the actual caucuses and primaries get closer. The voting booth focuses the mind, Brooks wrote, and, he added, “I doubt Republican voters will take a flyer on their party’s future – or their country’s future.”

Today, a few weeks before Iowa, those words seem to be wishful thinking. Nothing, at least not yet, point to that the Republican voters are less angry now or have come to their senses, whatever that means. Most of them still want Trump — the “chief birther,” the man responsible for one the saddest and most humiliating chapters in recent American politics, who is now trying to lie and demagogue his way into the White House — to lead them.

Doyle McManus, columnist at the Los Angeles Times, also in early December, wanted us to make sure to remember that polls at least until about a month before the Iowa caucuses are largely meaningless. Well, Iowa is only a couple of weeks away now and Trump is far ahead in New Hampshire and a close second in Iowa. His support is strongest among those Republicans who are less affluent, less educated and less likely to vote. Will they continue to back him at the voting booths? We will see.

I believe in the political process in the sense that those in the party who have been tested in that process have also earned a chance to seek the highest office in the land. That’s what political parties are for. Otherwise, we will have the circus, the chaos, just like we now have.

Now, I am sure many will argue that the so-called establishment candidates, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, or for that matter Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, are not much better. That’s not the point. Although a President Ted Cruz, for example, is truly a frightening thought, he and the others are men of the party, battle-tested and they have been elected, and so they have earned a place at the table, or as the campaign now unfolds, a spot on the debate panels. Trump, Carson and Fiorina have not.

And I am sure many will argue that the three Democratic candidates are not much better. Although I don’t agree, it is a sign of weakness that the party cannot come up with more candidates, and, most of all, younger candidates, than a tainted Hillary Clinton, an angry, old socialist like Bernie Sanders, or a former governor, who could not get his successor elected.

Half a year ago or something, I said that I thought the fight for the White House was going to come down to Hillary Clinton vs. Jeb Bush. Now, with Bush sinking like stone in the polls, such a race seems much more unlikely. Will he sink to the bottom in Iowa and New Hampshire? If so, his dream of becoming a third Bush in the White House is dead and his place could be taken by Donald Trump. Is that really what the Republican Party wants? It is certainly not what America needs.

 

 

 

Yes, it was a remarkable week for Obama — and now on to gun control!

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It was a remarkable week for President Obama, as the New Yorker’s David Remnick writes so eloquently: “What a series of days in American life, full of savage mayhem, uncommon forgiveness, resistance to forgiveness, furious debate, mourning, and, finally, justice and grace.”

Indeed, it was a remarkable week for America, capped by Obama’s eulogy over the victims at the AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. It’s a must to see and to listen to, for all American. So go ahead!

Now, let’s now hope the Confederate flag really does come down from the South Carolina State House, and everywhere else where it might fly. And let’s hope the discussion about the Affordable Care Act and same-sex marriage is over. Because it is done. Finished. Let’s move on!

Sadly, however, most Republicans, including the “clown bus” of presidential candidates, seem reluctant to do so, holding on to something that has passed them by. That doesn’t seem to be a  winning strategy, and it is disappointing.

And let’s hope the Democrats, going against their own President on the Asian trade bill, will come to their senses. I come from a country ruled by Social Democracy for decades and where everyone belongs to a union. Still, it is a country that firmly believes in international trade, in an open world, in the globalization that we are all experiencing. There is no going back here either, so how could Nancy Pelosi and the great majority of the other Democrats go so wrong? It is not a winning strategy for America, and it is, also, disappointing.

Remnick’s article talks about Obama’s “resolve.” He is still the President for another year and half, so let’s hope he uses that remaining time to move forward on gun control. The curse of guns in this country must come to an end. Let’s hope.