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A Candidate Who Can Kick Donald Trump Out of the White House in November
Parikia, Paros Island, Greece, February 18th, 2020
Salaroche
A few days ago, I saw and heard James Carville on Morning Joe describing the present reality of our country in no uncertain terms, exactly like it is: “The only thing standing between the United States and the abyss is the Democratic Party”, he said, the abyss being four more years of the present Republican administration.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is not a joke in any sense. That is exactly the political situation prevalent in the United States today. Just picture how emboldened Donald Trump and his minions in the Senate and in his Administration would feel when realizing that the American people have chosen them to lead the country for another term.
No doubt granting Trump four more years at the Oval Office would be like handing him license to shoot anyone in the middle of 5th Avenue. Worse still, once back in office, who knows what kinds of tricks the Republicans might try to concoct. Given their shameless support of Trump's general authoritarian behavior, they might even try to pass legislations to keep him in power for a third term or for the rest of his days if possible.
Carville is absolutely right. Either we derail the campaign of that corrupt would-be dictator before he gets anointed in November or the country will get mired in deep trouble for the rest of its foreseeable days.
So, who is the great Democratic hope that may save the country? What Democrat candidate could be up to the urgent task of kicking Donald Trump for good out of the Oval Office? Who has what it takes to send that amoral, foul-mouthed bully back to wander around in his dubiously-gotten properties for the rest of his life? Certainly NOT Joe Biden.
From the day Biden entered the race some of us were the first to say he was just an empty shell. Not much content there. No passion, no fire, no punch. And thus far the electorate in Iowa and New Hampshire seems to have largely agreed with that assessment and very likely that of the rest of the country agrees with it too.
So, if our guy is not Biden, who is? Elizabeth Warren? Not really. Her chances of winning the nomination have been dwindling over the past few months and for the moment there doesn’t seem to be a viable path to retrieve her momentum.
Pete Buttigieg? He looks and sounds pretty much like a good guy and has some very good answers to most of the questions presented to him, but he looks much younger than he really is (he is 38) and he is gay, factors that I personally couldn’t care less about, however, for those two reasons combined, I’m not sure whether a majority of Americans would be willing to elect him president.
That would leave us with a choice between Bernie Sanders and Mike Bloomberg, both of whom are standing on somewhat similar progressive political platforms, although Sanders’ is considered radical, even socialist, while Bloomberg’s appears moderate in contrast.
Some of Sanders’ policy proposals that attract me the most include the following:
(To see Sander’s policy proposals in more detail please click here: https://berniesanders.com/issues/ )
Of Sander’s proposals, numbers 1, 5 and 6 look like the more feasible, although passing legislation on them wouldn’t be like a walk in the park, particularly if the Senate remains in Republican hands. All the others would be very difficult to implement, even if all of Congress fell into the Democrat’s hands, as some or even many of those elected Democrats often behave like Republicans in disguise.
Some of Bloomberg’s policy proposals that I like the most include the following:
(To see Bloomberg’s detailed policy proposals please click here: https://www.mikebloomberg.com/getting-it-done )
Of Bloomberg’s proposals, numbers 1, 2, 3 and 7 seem like the more feasible. The rest of them would be very difficult to implement, even if all of Congress were on Bloomberg’s side. However, Bloomberg’s point No. 5 looks easier to implement than Sander’s point No. 6. The same goes for Bloomberg’s point No. 6 as opposed to Sander’s No. 4.
Overall, both groups of policy proposals look progressive enough, although Bloomberg’s appear quite moderate compared to those of Sanders. So, with all of the above in mind, which of these two candidates may stand a better chance of sending Donald Trump out to vegetate in Mar a Lago for the rest of his days?
Knowing Donald Trump as well as we do now, there can be no doubt that, if Sanders became the Democratic candidate, Trump would pin the “socialist” tag on his lapel from the very moment Sanders won the nomination.
Worse still, can you imagine the likes of Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and their rabid ilk at Fox News and elsewhere, clamoring day and night that the Democrats have now become socialists and that if Sanders won the presidency the American way of life would be in danger of disappearing?
Just recall how effective Republicans were in 2004 in smearing John Kerry’s Vietnam-war reputation with the Swift Boat controversy they unleashed on him. So effective they were in throwing shadows of doubt on his credibility that he lost the election to the incumbent, George W. Bush.
Now, can you picture the well-orchestrated fear-mongering campaign the Republicans would unleash on Sanders across all possible social media and whatever other means they may have at their disposal? Can you picture the contempt Trump would be able to unload on Sanders during the debates?
And if to this we add the American electorate’s poor understanding of what socialism really is (a large number of them don’t even know that socialism and communism are not synonyms) we have a situation in which, out of sheer fear, even a considerable number of Democrats might choose to vote for Trump or, as a minimum, abstain from voting altogether.
Sander’s candidacy, therefore, may well result in a repeat of the electoral college beating the Democrats got in 2016, which would send a super-emboldened Trump back to the White House.
Bloomberg’s case is a totally different story. His shortcomings are not of the ideological kind. For the moment, his main obstacle to the nomination seems to be the terrible impression he left on the African American community with the policy of stop and frisk he implemented in New York during his three-term-long function as Mayor of that city.
A clear example of that deep African American resentment was evident in an opinion piece that appeared yesterday in the New York Times, written by the columnist Charles M. Blow, an African American writer whose pieces I regularly read.
In his piece, Blow basically warns his readers not to fall for Bloomberg’s rhetoric, as he believes Bloomberg is just another rogue politician not much different from Donald Trump (to read Blow’s piece please click here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/16/opinion/michael-bloomberg-2020.html )
Blow’s warning is well taken and his fact-based, measured animosity is quite understandable too. However, in his piece Blow also mentions the “admirable work” Bloomberg has done as a private citizen and it is precisely that work which, according to some of us, counterbalances the stop-and-frisk blunder Bloomberg made as Mayor of New York.
The admirable work in question refers to the billions of dollars of his own personal fortune Bloomberg has contributed to initiatives that include the environment, the arts, public health, education and government innovation (to see details of Bloomberg’s contributions, please click here: https://www.bloomberg.org/about/patricia-e-harris/ )
In other words, placing Donald Trump on an equal moral footing with Mike Bloomberg seems to have been a momentary failure of judgement from the part of Charles M. Blow. While Trump has been ripping people off with his University scam, his corrupt charities and other similar immoral and deceiving businesses, Bloomberg has been playing his financial game out in the open and contributing considerable amounts of his own money to causes that may benefit the nation as a whole.
There is really not much comparison between those two characters. While Trump has declared before the TV cameras that he has never apologized to anyone for anything, Bloomberg has acknowledged his error in implementing the stop and frisk policy and has repeatedly apologized for it. The former is an avowed shameless arrogant individual, the latter has not feared to show his own levels of imperfection and, in apologizing, has shown at least some degree of moral affinity with the rest of us.
Yes, Bloomberg is financing his own campaign, but from there to claiming that he is trying to buy the presidency there is a long stretch. Yes, he is buying exposure to the public, but it is the public who will ultimately have to decide whether to choose him, first as their candidate and then as their president.
No doubt some people are predisposed to asses a rich person’s behavior in a harsher manner than they would asses that of a middle-class individual or anyone else. Elizabeth Warren, for one, shot a straight arrow at Bloomberg last December when she said she “didn’t believe that elections ought to be for sale”. Well, personally, I don’t believe elections should be for sale either, but I also don’t believe that is what Mike Bloomberg is doing in financing his own presidential campaign.
What I do know for sure, and there is no single doubt about it in my mind, is that if this coming November 3rd the Democratic candidate for the presidency is not competent enough to throw Donald Trump out of the White House, the country will most surely plunge into the abyss that James Carville so clearly warned us about on Morning Joe just a few days ago.
There are still a few things that need to be clarified pertaining to the character and the electability of the remaining Democratic candidates, including matters pertaining to whatever Bloomberg may or may not have done or said in the past but, for the moment, in the view of some of us, he is the one looking like the best qualified candidate to rescue the nation from the destructive, anti-Democracy, anti-Republic hands of Donald Trump and his unethical Republican cronies, while at the same time presenting the American people with a good set of progressive policies that may keep the whole of the American society moving forward.
May the Universal forces protect the Democratic Republic of the United States of America from her enemies, foreign and domestic, but mostly from her domestic ones.
Salaroche
