Tag Archives: Election

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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American democracy in crisis

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Where is America heading? 

No one knows, no one has a definitive answer, as uncertainty dominates sentiments on the day before the mid-term elections on Tuesday, November 8. 

This uncertainty pertains not only to who will win tomorrow, as all the polls point to very close races, but to the state of American democracy itself. There is fundamental doubt about the future, a crisis of democracy, and, like most Americans, it’s something that I have never before experienced during all my years in this country.

Here in California, the nation’s largest state with almost 40 million inhabitants, there is no uncertainty as to who will win tomorrow, as the Democrats will continue to dominate and elect or re-elect all their  leading candidates in the state. Of the 22 million registered voters, or 82 percent of the eligible population – the highest percentage in over 70 years – 47 percent are registered Democrats, 24 percent Republicans and 23 percent with no party preference. But regardless of party affiliation, 78 percent of these California voters in a new poll by Berkeley IGS, the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, agreed that “American democracy is in a crisis and is at risk of failing.” 

Democrats were only slightly more worried than Republicans, 83 percent to 73, but this crisis has different causes, depending on party affiliation. 81 percent of Democrats consider political violence and efforts to make it more difficult to vote as major threats, while 69 percent of Republicans rate illegal voting as a major threat. The “Big Lie,” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from the former president, Donald Trump, its leading voice, has completely taken over the Republican party. 61 percent of Republicans now think that Joe Biden won in 2020 only because of fraud, and tomorrow, scores and scores of Republican election deniers are running for office, all across the country. Some of them will likely win, deepening even further the crisis of American democracy. 

President Biden has twice spoken about this threat to democracy, stating that Trump and “the MAGA (Make American Great Again) Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” He’s right, and Americans are deeply worried, as a recent, eye-popping opinion survey by UC Davis pointed out: 67 percent perceived of “a serious threat to our democracy;” 50 percent foresaw a civil war in America in the next several years; 42 percent said that it’s more important to have a strong leader than having democracy; and 18.7 percent agreed strongly or very strongly that violence is needed to protect American democracy when elected leaders will not.

A total of 8,620 adults nationwide participated in the survey, whose alarming results, according to the researchers, “exceeded our worst expectations.”

Indeed, where is America heading?

Say no to recalling Gov. Newsom — for the sake of democracy

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I have voted, just mailed my ballot, in. an absolutely ridiculous election, the California recall whose goal is to recall, unseat, fire Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom.

The election on September 14, comes a year before the regular elections when Newsom is expected to seek re-election. Why not wait until then? Well, California’s Republicans, only 24 percent of all registered voters, did not want to wait for an almost certain defeat next year and a repeat of Newsom’s overwhelming victory from 2020, so they forced the recall vote by gathering the required 1,5 million signatures, only 12 percent of the 22 million voters here, to trigger the recall, at a cost to the state’s tax payers of around $275 million.

“It is hard to conceive of a more cynical plan from extreme conservatives trying to control Sacramento, or a scheme more damaging to the premises on which democracy stands,” wrote Nathan Heller in the New Yorker recently. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/06/californias-recall-is-a-blow-to-democratic-change

I voted no to the recall, of course, and I chose not to vote for any of the 46 candidates for governor, who hope to replace Newsom should he not receive a majority of the vote. Those 46 are mostly Republicans, with no political experience, never having held elective office. They are a bunch of political amateurs, in other words, hoping to lead America’s most populous state and the world’s fifth largest economy. All it took for them to run was signatures from 65 registered voters and a filing fee of $4,195. That means, basically, that anyone can run. And, it seems, they do. 

In the polls with around 27 percent support, they are led by Larry Elder, a Black, libertarian radio talk show host, without political experience, supported by white supremacists. There is Caitlyn Jenner, former Olympic decathlete and now transgender TV reality star, and there is Kevin Faulconer, former mayor of San Diego and the only politically experienced in the field. But he voted for Trump in 2020, so he was out, too, in my book. But, should Newsom fail to win a majority of the vote and be recalled, one of these Republicans will be elected governor, even after, say, winning only 25 or 30 percent of the vote – a truly frightening scenario.

Direct democracy, including removing officials from office, is a reform from the Progressive era over one hundred years ago that became part of the California constitution.  Since then, 179 recall attempts have been made but only one governor has actually been recalled, in 2003, when Democrat Gray Davis was recalled and Republican actor and body builder Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor. Crazy, right! 

This election is beneath California and its 40 million citizens, a “farce”, as Ezra Klein called it recently in the New York Times, but it demands voter participation to defeat the recall. It also demands serious reforms, which did not occur after the 2003 recall, if it is to be taken seriously, such as requiring many more signatures to trigger a recall as well as financial malfeasance or criminality on the part of the official. It should not be possible to circumvent regular elections just because you don’t like a guy. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/08/opinion/california-gavin-newsom-recall.html?searchResultPosition=22

Gavin Newsom has generally done a good job as governor during some very difficult years, and he still has some important things on his plate: Covid is still here; fires up north are still burning; we have a serious drought; real estate is unaffordable and homelessness is truly a gigantic problem. So, I say, let Newsom continue to run California, at least until next year when his four-year term ends, and then you will get your say. That’s what elections and democracy are all about. 

So vote, and vote no!

We hope for the best, for America’s sake

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And so, I have voted, early, with just a couple of people in line at the town hall in my little hometown, blue all the way, as if my life depended on it.

And, in a way it does, as, tomorrow, we will hope for the best but prepare for the worst, to paraphrase the Boston Globe editorial today, with Trump refusing to respect the election result and guaranteeing a peaceful transition of power, should he lose, which he seems to be doing, which he MUST do, for America’s sake, for the future of democracy in this country.

The divisions in this country are stark, starker than I can ever remember, maybe even starker than during other crises in modern America such as the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, to mention a few. America has had crooks (Richard Nixon) as presidents before Trump, but never a president who so openly disregards the rules of American democracy. It’s a dangerous time in America, whose citizens openly worry about possible post-election violence, with the president’s right-wing supporters heeding his call for resistance to an election result he might not like.

The unprecedented worry about post-election violence follows an election campaign where the Republican party has done everything to discourage and suppress voting. Nothing has made me sadder and more worried about America and its democracy than how difficult it has become for many people to vote. All over the country, legal battles are being fought about the right to vote. New York Times asks today in its main editorial what is behind this Republican strategy, which “has become a central pillar of the GOP platform.” The answer is simple: “When more people vote, Republicans lose.”  

More than 90 million Americans have already voted as the corona virus rages around the country with over one thousand deaths every day. But, ironically, the pandemic has also made it easier to vote, by mail and early in-person. Maybe we will see record-breaking voter participation this year? And maybe this will lead to the election reforms so urgently needed? 

I have said it before, but it bears repeating: Trump was lucky in 2016, losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly three million votes but winning narrowly in three key states, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, by a total of 70,000 votes out of more than 13 million votes and thereby winning the all-important Electoral College. Can Trump be so lucky again? I doubt it. 

All the polls favor Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris, like they did with Hillary Clinton in 2016, but more so this year. But because the same polls misled the voters in 2016 by undercounting the white, non-college votes, the present pollsters are met with a high degree of skepticism, and all blue voters are nervous, very nervous, although it’s highly likely that the pollsters have learned the lesson from 2016 and are more accurate than four years ago. That would favor Biden/Harris. 

Let’s hope so, let’s hope so… 

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.

 

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.

A tragedy, and an uncertain future, but not the end

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Well, I tried, as did over 59 million American voters, but Donald Trump was not to be stopped.

The New Yorker’s editor, David Remnick, one of my favorite American journalists, called the election, “An American tragedy” — a triumph for “nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism.”

Trump’s victory is a victory for the old America and a rejection of the past eight years under Barack Obama. It’s a big step backwards, away from the America of freedom, openness, and multiculturalism that had brought millions of immigrants, like me, to its shores.

Not only did Trump improbably win the White House, but the Republican Party held on to its majorities in the Senate and the House. The political results will come swiftly: Merrick Garland, nominated many months ago by Obama to the Supreme Court will never become a member of the Court, whose conservative majority is now guaranteed for years to come. The Affordable Care Act could be abolished and the fate of those twenty million with new health insurance is unknown. The future of the nuclear deal with Iran is highly uncertain. “Get ready for a rough ride,” writes Los Angeles Times’ Doyle McManus.

Still, this is not the end of America. The political forces, from Trump himself and other Republicans to President Obama and Hillary Clinton, have all quickly urged the coming together to ensure the peaceful transition of power. We are Americans first, patriots first, said Obama. “We all want what’s best for the country.” Tomorrow, he will receive Trump in the White House.

For the anti-Trump forces, for the losing side, there are some silver linings in the dark clouds. Hillary Clinton won the plurality of the vote, 59,679 million to 59,472 million for Trump. But she lost the all-important Electoral College vote, failing to reach the magical number of 270. And that’s really all that counts. That’s happened before, most recently in 2000, when Al Gore won the plurality of votes but still lost the election to George W. Bush. It’s time to do away with this antiquate election system and elect America’s president on the basis of how many votes he/she gets.

California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Vermont belong to the group of states where Clinton captured over 60 percent of the vote, followed by New York State with 59 percent, Washington State 56, and Illinois, New Jersey, and Rhode Island 55. In Washington, DC, almost 93 percent of the voters supported Clinton. For Trump, Wyoming gave him his largest victory margin with 70 percent of the vote, followed by West Virginia 69, Oklahoma, 65, North Dakota, 64, Alabama and Kentucky 63, and Tennessee 61 percent.

It was urban vs. rural, the two coasts vs. the heartland. The election shows a country split down the middle, more divided than anyone had realized.

The Democrats failed to capture the majority in the U.S. Senate but they had some success by electing three new, female, senators: Kamala Harris, California, Catherine Cortez Masto, Nevada, and Tammy Duckworth, Illinois, an Indian/African-American, a Latina, and a Thai-American. Maryland has a new U.S. Senator, Democrat Chris Van Hollen — my former Congressman — who, in turn, was succeeded by Jamie Raskin, also a progressive Democrat.

In Minnesota, which I have followed closely a few years, Clinton squeaked through with 46.8 percent of the vote, or 43,000 votes, but the Republicans increased their majority in the State House and captured the majority in the State Senate. Democratic governor Mark Dayton’s two remaining years in office will not be easy. Minnesota also elected the first Somali American to the State Legislature. 34-year-old Ilhan Omar, who came to America as a child after years in a refugee camp, captured 81 percent of the vote in her Minneapolis district and became not only the first Somali-American legislator in Minnesota, but in all of America. That’s not Trump’s America, but it is my America.

 

A happy Labor Day, after all…

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As an immigrant and a recent citizen, I will cast my first presidential vote in November. I have looked forward to this for quite a while although this sad, even depressing, campaign hasn’t been the kind of campaign that I had hoped for. And my choice is clear: Hillary Clinton — Trump’s America is not my America.

Today, on Labor Day, I realized that all is not doom and gloom. At the traditional Labor Day Parade in Kensington, the next town over from my home town of Silver Spring in the Maryland suburbs just north of Washington, DC, thousands had come out in the beautiful weather. There was excitement and optimism in the air; good people are running for office, among them my Congressman, Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat who is running for the U.S. Senate to succeed retiring Barbara Mikulski, and State Senator Jamie Raskin, also a Democrat, who is trying to succeed Van Hollen in the U.S. House of Representatives. Their campaigns are important parts of this year’s overall political campaign and their outcomes are almost as important as the race for the White House in determining what kind of America we will have after November.

Van Hollen and Raskin

Van Hollen and Raskin both handily won their respective Democratic primaries in April and their victories in November, although not guaranteed, of course, are highly likely in this Democratic state. Van Hollen, the son of a foreign service officer, was born in Karachi, Pakistan. A progressive with lots of foreign policy experience and knowledge, he has been in Congress since 2003 — the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, and part of the Democratic leadership team. Raskin, a law professor at the local American University, has been in the State Senate since 2006, where he has been a leading voice on many liberal issues: marriage equality, repeal of the death penalty, gun control, climate change, medical marijuana, campaign finance reform.

They are smart and hard-working and their hearts are in the right place. They will be great additions to the U.S. Congress, which, god knows, needs all the help it can get.

Why didn’t I know about The Tragically Hip?

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Sometimes I wonder what I have done and where I have been. It struck me again this morning, as I read articles in the New York Times and the Washington Post about the last concert in the farewell tour of The Tragically Hip, Canada’s premier band, led by the country’s “unofficial poet laureate,” Gord Downie.

Downie is dying of incurable brain cancer, and this was his and his band’s last concert, in their home town of Kingston, Ontario. “Dear World,” the Toronto police tweeted just before the last concert, “Please be advised that Canada will be closed tonight at 8:30 pm. Have a #Tragically Hip day.” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was there, because the band is “an inevitable and essential part of what we are and who we are as a country.”

The Tragically Hip has been around for 30 years and has come to define our northern neighbor’s cultural identity, but they never became big in the United States, and I had never heard of them until this morning. Although I consider myself well-informed and well-read, I am sure this says a lot about me, but it also says something about America, “one of the loudest neighbors in the world,” as one Canadian told the NYT, “the elephant in your bed,” as Justin Trudeau’s predecessor and father, Pierre Trudeau, once said about his big neighbor to the south.

America sucks you in, takes over, dominates, and although the leading newspapers are not without coverage of the rest of the world, including Canada, it all somehow becomes secondary in this often introvert super power. This seems particularly true during this year’s presidential election campaign. I am following it closely, although it has gone on too long and its end cannot come soon enough, and the choice is clear.  More later.

Meanwhile, I will dig into The Tragically Hip. I want to know more. I think I will like them.

Scalia’s death raises the stakes but also the question of reforms

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The presidential election campaign all of a sudden got more contentious, more exciting, and more important with the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the leading conservative on the Court.

The voters on November 8 will now decide not only who occupies the White House after President Obama, and who controls the U.S. Congress, but also who, conservatives or liberals, will control the third branch of the American political system, the Supreme Court.

With Scalia gone, the Court is tied, 4 – 4, between conservative and liberal justices. An Obama appointment would almost certainly swing the Court to a liberal majority and, for the first time since 1972, the justices appointed by Democratic presidents would outnumber those appointed by Republican presidents. The change would be monumental.

The Republicans in the Senate led by majority leader Mitch McConnell have instantly made it clear that they have no intention to consider an Obama nominee, no what who that is. The decision to appoint Scalia’s replacement should be made by the next president. But Obama is not elected to a three-year but to a four-year term. He has almost a year left in office and he has, rightly, declared that he intends to nominate a new justice. So we are in for a big fight, a complicating, new factor in an election campaign already fraught with uncertainty and tension.

McConnell, who famously said during Obama’s first term that his primary political goal was to make sure that Obama was not reelected now wants to deny the president, who has already appointed two new high court justices, the chance to appoint a third. McConnell’s stern “no” could have serious election implications for the Republicans and their goal to keep their Senate majority, as NYT’s Nate Cohn outlines. We’ll see how this plays out.

The death of Scalia is also an important reminder of how totally unpredictable the system of appointing Supreme Court justices is. It’s time to change what’s been, rightly, called an undemocratic system by doing away with life time appointments and create more orderly nomination procedures with term limits and a retirement age. In Minnesota, to which I presently spend a lot of attention, the retirement age for the state’s highest court is 70. That’s a bit young, maybe, but why not 75? And why not a 20-year term limit? Or both?

Sadly, such reforms are seldom part of the American political dialogue. They should be, particularly as the politicization of the Supreme Court shows no signs of abating.