[ Posted Friday, July 17th, 2020 – 17:58 UTC ]
At this point, one has to wonder: is President Donald Trump intentionally trying to commit political suicide?
This would certainly make a lot of sense, given his recent actions. Perhaps he's tired of attempting to do a job he is so obviously underqualified for, and perhaps he just wants to return to private life. To do so, Joe Biden has to win, meaning Trump has to guarantee this outcome. So he goes about actively destroying any possibility that he'll win re-election.
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[ Posted Thursday, July 16th, 2020 – 16:36 UTC ]
That headline is meant in an ironic way, not a literal one -- since Donald Trump literally "getting schooled" on anything would be impossible, considering his almost-complete lack of the ability to learn new things. Instead, I refer to the president deciding to pick a battle on yet another losing field for him, this time fighting to force school districts to open up in-person classes in a few weeks. Trump would like to get all America's schools back to normal. That's a goal shared by just about everyone, but the problem with Trump's approach is that it comes with a rather large disclaimer at the end: "...whether it is safe to do so or not." This is the bridge that is proving to be too far for America's mothers and fathers.
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[ Posted Wednesday, July 15th, 2020 – 15:55 UTC ]
Today I am going to spike a football in the end zone. That's as appropriate as a sports metaphor gets, really, because I am celebrating the fact that the Washington Ethnic Slurs football team has finally decided to retire their official team name. They seem to be in some sort of discussions (variously reported as being with Native American groups, the military, or possibly someone who already owns the trademark and/or copyright) about what the new team name will be, but as of Monday they will never be called the "Washington Redskins" ever again. And that is indeed a reason for an end-zone celebration.
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[ Posted Tuesday, July 14th, 2020 – 16:30 UTC ]
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has announced that the House will soon be moving forward on a bill to rein in the presidential pardon powers, to avoid any future president being allowed to do what Donald Trump just did -- abuse this power to grant clemency for a person convicted of lying and witness tampering to protect Donald Trump. A clearer abuse of power would indeed be hard to imagine, unless it was Trump attempting to proactively pardon himself for any and all federal crimes he's ever committed. Which, at this point, isn't outside the realm of possibilities, for Trump. But while Pelosi will be making a little political hay out of the issue, she is actually aiming too low. Because what is really needed is a constitutional amendment.
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[ Posted Monday, July 13th, 2020 – 18:58 UTC ]
Welcome to the first 2020 installment of our quadrennial series tracking the electoral math in the presidential race. We've done this three times previously, and (like pretty much everyone else in the political prediction game) failed miserably the last time around. Hey, two out of three ain't bad, right?
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[ Posted Friday, July 10th, 2020 – 17:02 UTC ]
The campaign to re-elect Donald Trump president has gone all-in on a remarkable strategy: they're going to double down on the stupid. Call it the greatest attempt at gaslighting ever, we suppose. The idea is to just pretend the coronavirus pandemic doesn't exist and continue to ignore any evidence to the contrary. And they actually expect this to be a big winner for them with the voters.
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[ Posted Thursday, July 9th, 2020 – 17:51 UTC ]
Once again, I am throwing in the towel and there will be no new column today. I have no excuse for doing so, I am flat-out just taking a vacation day.
There is a silver lining in all of this for my readers, though, because I will not be taking any big summer trip this [...]
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[ Posted Wednesday, July 8th, 2020 – 16:57 UTC ]
You can call it many things. Shooting one's self in the foot. Being hoist on your own petard. A European might call it an "own goal." But whatever metaphor you choose, it seems Donald Trump is actively sabotaging his own chances of re-election. Trump, in classic Trumpian style, has chosen to make a political statement about an issue that really has nothing to do with politics at all. And it's beginning to work among his most fervent followers. The only problem for Trump is that this means it is also working against his chances of re-election.
Even though both Donald Trump and Mike Pence have been casting their ballots by mail for the past few elections, Trump decided it would be a dandy idea to demonize voting by mail. But due to the overwhelming likelihood that this November's elections are going to be radically different in nature than previous elections due to the coronavirus pandemic, this means that the Republican Party is being hamstrung in its efforts to get its voters to safely vote by mail. Trump may not just be killing his own chances of being re-elected, but he may also bring a whole bunch of other Republicans down with him as well.
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[ Posted Tuesday, July 7th, 2020 – 16:58 UTC ]
A generational change is now sweeping America. All of a sudden -- even in the Deep South -- it is no longer politically acceptable -- even for Republicans -- to defend the Confederacy. Mississippi has now become the last state to remove the Confederate battle flag from their own state flag. The Republican Senate voted to force the Pentagon to remove Confederate generals' names from their bases. Even more astonishing, perhaps, was the news that NASCAR has banned the Confederate battle flag from being displayed at their events. But what's most astonishing about all this is that there seem to be few defenders of the Confederate flag left in the political sphere (on the national level, at least). Other than President Donald Trump, that is.
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[ Posted Monday, July 6th, 2020 – 16:51 UTC ]
The Trump campaign is setting itself up for a rather large tactical failure. Whether the campaign fails overall in November is a bigger question, of course, but they seem to already be failing in one crucial aspect of any successful presidential campaign, and that is to define your opponent early. This worked wonders for Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney, and it also did the trick for George W. Bush against John Kerry. Throughout the spring and summer, the incumbent president successfully defined their challenger in a very negative way with the public.
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