Some observations regarding our
recent national elections; with the caveat that it is a relatively fluid situation
and my assumptions may prove incorrect.
Though it is frankly not my preferred outcome, I have to believe that
Joe Biden will be our next President. On
Thursday (11/5), I thought that Trump would have to draw an inside straight to
win and you know…sometimes that hits.
Today (11/8), I believe he is looking across the table at four aces and
needs to draw a royal flush. I don’t
know about you, but that has never worked for me:
Credit where credit is due. For all the unfair criticism and resistance
that the Trump Administration has dealt with; Joe Biden has had his fair share
of ridicule and lampooning by the Right.
To his credit, Joe Biden did not boisterously or preemptively claim
outright victory following the election.
As of the writing date of this piece, he has performed no end zone dance.
Regardless of all the fraud and impropriety accusations flying about;
the obvious electoral math clearly provided an opportunity for Biden to declare
imminent victory far sooner than he did.
His restraint in claiming success is commendable. His low-key campaign was roundly criticized
by his fellow Democrats and openly caricatured by Republicans. The simple fact is that it apparently worked. To the winner go the spoils.
Republican’s talk about “no blue wave” or “despair among the Dems” is bull. There is no moral victory here. Whether Biden wins by 1 electoral vote or 50
electoral votes, he is the winner. He
will be President and Harris will be Vice-President. If
the Georgia results allow the Republicans to hold the Senate, that will be a
victory of sorts and provide an effective legislative firewall between common
sense and liberal lunacy. The Republican
gains in the House should humble
Speaker Pelosi; but it won’t. In the House, simple majority rules and she
will continue to have the majority. And
for what it’s worth, I wouldn’t bet the rent on her being replaced as Speaker.
The
main prize is the presidency and the Democrats take it. Even with far left legislation off the table,
the Biden Administration will be given free rein to sow the seeds of the
liberal nanny state, societal group think, entrepreneurial disincentives, government
bloat, hyper over-regulation, hypocritical tolerance under the guise of
heavy-handed intolerance and censorship, and a very pronounced national civic
tilt towards a dumbed-down culture where those who work hard will be expected
to prop up those who refuse to work at all.
At every level of government, those individuals who subscribe to these
values will be placed in positions of authority and will have an overwhelming
impact on the lives of every American citizen.
These are the wages of Election Day.
Will the other side of the Resistance Coin be resistance? From the day he took
office, President Trump (yes, he is still
President for a few more weeks) has been hounded by dogged resistance from
the Democrats both in and out of government, from the mainstream media, and
from a significant number of never-Trump Republicans. Nancy Pelosi has taken pride in being the oil in Trump’s water. Because of this
protracted belligerence on the part of Democrats, there are many in the
Republican Party who will push very hard for Senate Majority Leader McConnell (assumption) and his cohorts to play the
role previously occupied by the House Democrats. With Cabinet Official nominations, a myriad
of patronage appointments, and inevitable federal judgeship vacancies coming up
with the change in parties; it will be most interesting to see how the dynamic
between President Biden and the Republican Senate plays out. Chickens do have a tendency to return to
their domiciles at nesting time.
Who will be the power behind the
throne? The
post-game analysis is already well underway in an effort to determine who
helped Joe Biden gain the presidency and who hindered his efforts. Obama-camp personnel were never very good at
down ticket campaigning and indications are that he was no real help to Biden’s
campaign. The lack of any seismic shift
in the Senate and House surely marginalizes the influence of the liberal left
headed by Sanders and AOC. And even
though Hillary was clearly avoided as the campaign neared crunch time; it would
be a huge mistake to underestimate the influence she retains through the deep
state holdovers and the Democratic establishment.
There
will be a three-way power struggle that will surely test the political will and
strength of President Biden early on and it is anyone’s guess exactly who will be the prevailing dominant
force; that is, if it is ever settled
at all. Hopefully, Biden will surprise
us all with some newfound independence and swing towards a moderate approach in
his governing.
Facing
the blitz
is far more difficult than Monday morning
quarterbacking. Regardless
of who is in power, it is always easier to criticize from without than make the
hard decisions from within. Biden’s
central campaign theme was never a pro-active agenda of policy
initiatives. Rather, it was a monotonous
repetition of generic criticisms about President Trump, his personality, and
all the many things that he supposedly did wrong. It will soon be time for President Biden to
make decisions regarding a national pandemic; a recovering economy; a dysfunctional
healthcare industry; a complicated planet full of terrorists, anarchy, and
miniature Napoleons; and a nation where many states will be on the verge of
financial insolvency due to withering tax revenues and monstrous emergency
spending. President Biden had better
have a really solid offensive line if he is going to gain the time required to
make some extremely difficult and consequential decisions. He had better be good at reading defenses.
How quickly the “Mighty” can fall. How
long will the honeymoon last between the mainstream media and President
Biden? During the recent campaign, how
much of the media support was based on affection
for Biden and the Democrats and how much was based on disaffection for Donald Trump?
Will the media be held accountable for the standards they used to judge
the Trump Administration and now be required to apply those same standards to
the Biden Administration? Exactly how
much sweetness and light will the
media be able to tolerate before they begin to yearn for a little bit of that old, sweet, political bloodletting? Doesn’t this
pretty well show them for what they really are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju_GLKaH4vM
.
Looking over your shoulder,
Joe? In spite of
their sizeable efforts at such, the Republicans were never fully able to paint
Joe Biden as a screaming liberal. No
matter how he waivered on his policy positions and shifted from here to there
on his agenda priorities; the notion remained that he did not really buy into
all of that left-wing lunacy and was really, deep down in his heart, a
moderate. Time will reveal the truth of
this matter, but there is one thing that is beyond dispute; his Vice-President
is a politically-ambitious, opportunistic, self-serving individual who has
designs on the very seat in which Joe Biden will sit. She earned
her reputation as the most liberal Senator in WDC and many, many of her
acquaintances bear scars up their backs where she climbed over them on her way
up the ladder. VP-elect Harris has a
Clintonesque affection for power and President-elect Biden had better master
the art of keeping his head on a swivel.
We should all fervently pray for
President Biden’s good health.
Where do investigations go to
die? How bright the
prosecutorial light shines on WDC misbehavior has a great deal to do with who holds the lamp. AG Barr and Mr. Durham will have a very small
window of opportunity to dish the goods they may have acquired on the
four-year-plus scandal involving Obama holdovers, Deep State ideologues, and
renegade special counsel team members.
But as quickly as we will likely see the consequences of what was quite
likely the worst political scandal in our nation’s history disappear; we may
very well see a rise of investigative enthusiasm in a Republican Senate that
has an insatiable interest in Biden
family business matters.
The
big difference that I see between the Trump v. Dem House storyline and the Biden
v. Rep Senate possibility is the fact that the Republican Senate will not have
a Republican Deep State presence and
a compliant mainstream media to
partner with. Unlike what we witnessed
from the incoming novice Donald Trump, you can count on the Biden Administration
to flush out all of the opposing party
holdovers in key positions and install a new bunch of political soldiers. The Deep
State enclave that so bedeviled the Trump Administration for his full term
will not only survive; but will likely be invigorated and enlarged under
President Biden.
Literal
scoundrels who took oaths to serve this nation and then proceeded to abuse
their power and position for personal reasons will escape their transgressions
with no consequence whatsoever. Many of
them will, in fact, likely be rewarded for their despicable efforts. This is very possibly the single worst result
of a Joe Biden victory.
The Executive Order mantra marches on.
While it is reassuring to many that a Republican
Senate insurance policy may exist to prevent a liberal legislative celebration;
it is regrettable that the inevitable gridlock between the President, the
House, and the Senate will no doubt result in a continued abuse of the
Executive Order. The executive power
abuse that arose so prominently in the Obama Administrations and carried over
into the Trump Administration will no doubt be extended into the Biden
Administration as a result of this legislative stalemate. Whether it be a Democrat or a Republican President
and no matter the worthiness of the cause; the executive order abuse of power that we have witnessed over the last
decade is a perversion of our constitutional design.
Congress
must somehow find a way to once again conduct its affairs in a civil,
effective, and efficient fashion. It
must begin to reclaim its constitutional authority that has been incrementally
surrendered to the executive branch and begin to take care of its own business. The paralysis and dysfunction of Congress has
opened the door to this rash of executive abuse and if it will simply fulfill
its duties and obligations, that invitation to the sitting President will be
effectively rescinded. Hey…we can dream, can’t we?
That is going to leave a mark. Nothing that has been
politically accomplished in the last four years can even come close to being as
critically important to the long-term welfare of our nation as the excellent
record of Senate Majority Leader McConnell and President Trump in their
placement of federal judgeships. The
overall quantity and quality of these success stories will continue to pay
dividends for generations to come, regardless of what WDC manifests. And with a relatively-reliable 5.5 person (looking at you, John) conservative
majority on the Supreme Court, citizens can take solace in the fact that the
fate of our nation’s constitutional allegiance is in good hands indeed.
Given
the state of play today, we can now fully realize how critical the Senate
approval of Amy Coney Barrett’s SCOTUS nomination was. Being from Kentucky, I have a greater
appreciation than most of the very real
personal risk that Mitch McConnell took when he made the fateful decision
to push Barrett’s approval through prior to Election Day. The Democratic Party broke the bank and tried
every trick in the book to defeat McConnell’s successful re-election effort and
once again, they were left with egg on their face.
Don’t
miss the next post….Just
Google centerlineright
The Town Mouse and the Country
Mouse. Aesop
wrote about the significant differences between living in the country and
living in the city in this famous fable:
http://read.gov/aesop/004.html
. Look at this county-by-county map to
see the incredible delineation between where Democratic voters live in America
and where Republican voters live: https://inthesetimes.com/article/2020-election-progressive-populism-peoples-action-win-rural-america-report
.
Two
very important points should leap off the screen when you view this map. The first one is a very convincing pictorial
argument for the Electoral College. In
its absence, it is abundantly clear that this nation would be ruled almost
exclusively by urban areas. Rural
America would essentially have no representation whatsoever in our government.
Secondly, the clear majority of elected officials in our Congress must be sufficiently diverse and, more
importantly, sufficiently tolerant in order to guarantee legislative input from
rural representatives. By capturing the
presidency, Joe Biden and the Democrats have earned the right to shape the
government of this country; they have not
earned the right to dictate how people think and conduct their private lives.
Any
recipe that foists an urban lifestyle and value system on rural people will
inevitably result in a tension that will ultimately find release; and that
release will not likely be civil. We
must never forget our federalist principles found in the Constitution that
guarantees representation, rights, and liberties for all Americans, regardless
of where they live in our great country.
This challenge is becoming increasingly difficult to meet and each
subsequent national election is ratcheting up the pressure. Can our
Judiciary, Senators, Representatives, and President pass this test?
We MUST HAVE fair and credible elections. The weakest link in the
“Russia election interference”
argument is and has always been the fact that we do not have one single national election in America;
we actually have 51 individual elections (remember
District of Columbia) participating in the Electoral College system.
The good news is that this is an ingenious design found in our
Constitution that guarantees the vibrancy and maintenance of our
democracy. The bad news is that we have
51 different entities coming up with their own unique system of conducting
elections and those differences often make you wonder if we are all playing the
same game.
The
federalist nature of our electoral college makes it nigh on impossible for a
foreign entity to effectively meddle
in our elections; but it is also an invitation to the possibility of fraud and impropriety in how states conduct their
own elections. Following the 2016 elections, Republicans
controlled 34 state legislatures and the Democrats controlled 13: https://www.quorum.us/data-driven-insights/republicans-now-control-more-state-legislatures-than-any-point-in-u-s-history/
. Now it true that sometimes the federal
courts will become involved in state election laws in a fashion that is clearly
biased and improper. But by and large,
the way a state conducts its elections is determined by the laws passed by that
state’s elected legislature.
The
reality is that the pandemic changed the nature of the 2020 elections by
emphasizing the issues of delayed ballot eligibility, massive mail-in
balloting, and the prospects of successful ballot harvesting. And it also true that much of the impetus
that drove the implementation of these policies came from the meddling of
federal judges. But at the end of the
day, complaints about improper elections are largely hollow because the rules
are made prior to the election by the
people who are conducting the election. The
time to reduce the possibility of cheating is before the game starts; not after
the game is over.
This
clearly does not excuse blatantly illegal activity. But in order to make it
indictable, illegal election activity must
be proven and it must be quantified. These are hurdles that are extremely high and
difficult to clear. In the aftermath of
this 2020 election cycle, our nation needs to transparently and deliberately rethink how they conduct
elections. While preserving the
federalist nature of states’ rights in the process, we need to get more
uniformity across the country and simplify the process so that compliance can be more easily enforced.
Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell summed it up properly when he stated: “Here’s how this must work in our great
country: Every legal vote should be counted.
Any illegally-submitted ballots must not. All sides must get to observe the
process. And the courts are here to
apply the laws and resolve disputes.
That’s how Americans’ votes decide results.” I would add that it must be done in the
most deliberate, yet expeditious, fashion possible; because the longer it
takes, the less credible it appears.
The proper time to quit. By any measure, this
was a historically-close election. The
margins of victory in a handful of critical states were extremely small. Notwithstanding
the statistical and numerical significance of it, there can be little doubt
that a certain amount of fraud and illegality did occur in the course of this
election. We should all remember
that it was December 13, 2000 before Al Gore conceded defeat to George W. Bush:
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/al-gore-concedes-presidential-election
.
While
it would likely be appropriate for Trump to concede the current statistical
reality of the Electoral College count; there is nothing inappropriate about
waiting for a final resolution of all outstanding improprieties before issuing
a final and formal concession. After
all, this was one of the most bitterly contested elections ever and the
ideological divide between the two candidates is monumental.
It
would seem that the primary concern now is to maintain a calm and reserved tone
about the pending resolution of this election and for the process to resolve
itself in an efficient and credible fashion.
I would venture to say that far more important than the timing of Trump’s concession will be the
content of Trump’s concession.
Donald…We hardly knew thee. I will not miss the
crude, vulgar, arrogant, bombastic, and confrontational attributes of President
Trump. I will not miss his tendency to
exaggerate facts, twist the truth, and sometimes literally espouse versions
that he knew to be false. I will not
miss his hateful and spiteful attacks on those who happened to draw his ire;
some deservedly so and some not so much.
I will not miss his routine hyperbole and the daily drama show that
emanated from the White House during his tenure as President. And I certainly will not miss Donald Trump’s
always reliable trait of making every…single…thing
all about himself. These things help to
ease the reality of his demise.
I
will miss the appreciation that Donald Trump brought to the presidency for the
free market, entrepreneurial spirit in which he was raised and clearly valued. I will miss his outsider approach to WDC politics and his unconventional methods in
trying to shape a government that creates a better country for all people. And as difficult as it sometimes was to hear
him proclaim it, I will miss his bold and truthful statements regarding the sometimes
ridiculous nature of our democracy and how our government revels in the darker
regions of that network (otherwise known
as the swamp). I will miss his
vision and courage in addressing the futility and precious loss associated with
America’s unending wars around the globe.
I will miss his frank acknowledgement of how our international allies
take us for granted and hold us in contempt with their superior attitudes. I will miss his unabashed support for
America’s military and their vital role in preserving our freedom and
independence. I will miss his open and
honest support for Israel and the constant battle for survival that they so
bravely fight alone. I will miss his matter of fact recognition regarding
illegal immigration inequities and how we desperately need to revamp our entire
immigration system. And perhaps most of
all, I will miss Donald Trump’s clear understanding that the greatest social
program that can be delivered by this government is the creation and support of
an economy that offers good-paying jobs to those who are willing to work; poses
opportunities to gain from one’s personal sacrifice and effort an increase in
wealth and achievement; and formulates a fiscal environment that limits
taxation on individuals and companies while emphasizing the benefits of full
employment to all who are willing to participate.
Donald
Trump came in like a lion and he goes out like a lion. His bluster was never blunted; his contempt
was never couched; his excesses were always celebrated; and his rhetoric was
never filtered. His term as President
shook the very foundations of Washington, DC and forced many of us to rethink
how our government works. As an
imperfect creature myself, I choose to remember President Trump for the good things he did for our nation and
the world. I choose not to dwell on his faults. With the passage of time, I fervently hope
that even those who so bitterly opposed this man will reflect on his
achievements and not cling doggedly to condemning his shortcomings. President Donald J. Trump celebrated his
gloriously unconventional approach to the presidency. He flew in the face of political correctness
and expected norms. He was one of only
forty-four individuals to have served this nation as President and for that he will deservedly be honored. Joe Biden will now be the forty-fifth.
Bonus. If you made it this
far, here is your reward…one of the great songwriters and performers. There have been so many wonderful tunes from
him and his groups over the years. This
is a great live version from one of his best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeDMnyQzS88
. I can still remember the scene from
the original Miami Vice show where Crockett and Tubbs were cruising in their
pastels down the street bathed in the neon….so very cool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1o-NWNmQLM
.
No doubt, there is something in the
air tonight. Hold on loosely while we
all discover together exactly what that something is.
