Will Biden or Trump Be Target at Dem Debates?

Chum is filling the waters surrounding Joe Biden, bringing in political sharks eager to rip his candidacy to shreds. At times, inadvertently, Biden himself contributes to the bloody waters. All the while his Democratic rivals are doing Donald Trumps’ unspoken bidding in weakening his appeal. 

With each passing day, each revelatory past and present quote or vote, Biden is discovering for the first time that being a campaign frontrunner means the dissection of the corners, sometimes the dark, obscure corners, of his public life and his family’s private lives is fair game (https://mol.im/a/7167911).

Biden can take small comfort that other candidates are under intense scrutiny. For Bernie Sanders it has meant explaining how a self-proclaimed socialist became a millionaire (a book contract and book sales). Bernie’s wife also has had to answer questions about her business conduct. 

Elizabeth Warren has earned veteran status answering queries about her heritage. Native American or not? Who really cares? Only those, including Trump, who care more about appearances and less about the substance of a campaign to ease the economic burden of struggling families. 

Mayor Pete Buttigieg is finding out how one nationally reported incident involving the shooting of an unarmed black man by a white policeman can dispel the tranquility and image of a well-run city. 

But it is Biden who has the most baggage from four and a half decades of public life in Washington. Votes he is proud of. Votes he regrets. Votes he once was proud of but now regrets. The press is eager to cite his shortcomings either through its own investigations or through “oppo” research provided by Democratic and Republican detractors. 

Regardless of who wins the Democratic nomination—the first debates are Wednesday and Thursday nights in Miami—he or she will face an incumbent whose integrity and character are shameful but irrelevant to much of the electorate. Yet, he or she will be held to a higher standard. 

Not fair, but surely true. Which leads us back to Biden. How should the acknowledged-by-all-frontrunner deal with the Chinese-water-torture drip of negative stories? Should he explain those were different times? Should he apologize? Should he recant and state new positions as he did with the Hyde Amendment restriction on federal financing of abortion (he’s now against any restriction)?

Or should he let the voters decide if he is Trump-challenger worthy? I’m inclined to pick that course, combined with selective usage of the recant and restate option. 

No candidate will emerge perfect and unscathed during this looooong nomination process. The media will do its share of nitpicking and hole punching. Other Democrats, on the other hand, must refrain from poisoning their brethren. They must remember the real objective is unseating Trump. It means nothing to secure the nomination if the prize eludes the nation because of party fratricide. 

They also must keep in mind that national elections are won by appealing to the broadest section of the electorate. Most Democrats and Independents are centrists, not radicals. The country is tiring of Trump’s extremism. It is not looking for a pendulum swing all the way to the left. Voters are seeking equilibrium with traditional American values. Democrats would be wise to heed the words of Charles Sykes, a conservative Wisconsin-based political commentator on how not to blow the election (https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/06/25/democrats-trump-election-2020-227215?cid=apn).

“She’s not my type.”: In other words, if she was, then, yeah, maybe I would have done it. 

That, in essence, is Trump’s latest defense against a claim of sexual assault in his pre-presidency days. Pictures at the time repudiated his alibi of never having met E. Jean Carroll. So he falls back on a frat house response to date rape. Nah, I wouldn’t touch her ’cause she’s not my type. 

As if that ever mattered to an oversexed, entitled-believing misogynist who has been outed for cheating on his two previous wives and on his current spouse just days after she delivered his fifth child. He at first denied the Stormy Daniels tryst but her version of their encounter apparently is the factual one. 

Undeniably Unreliable: I was amused by this AP headline above an article on fallout from Trump’s last minute decisions not to strike Iran for shooting down an unarmed American surveillance drone and for postponing the start of an ICE roundup of illegal aliens:

“AP Analysis: Trump moves show him to be unreliable partner” (https://apnews.com/a47ecf2848ee4df5a6cf62e84c35bed8)

I was amused because Trump’s personal history has time and again shown him to be an unreliable partner. He has cheated on all three of his wives. He has stiffed numerous contractors for work they have done on his properties. He has defaulted on loans. His businesses have declared bankruptcy six times. He has bilked thousands of customers who enrolled in his “university.” He has reneged on deals he made with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. 

People! Hello! What more proof do you need before realizing he is not to be trusted?

Walled In: What Emergency Powers Could Bring

In my living room and on a plaque on the wall next to my home office desk are two large chunks from the Berlin Wall. I would like to say I chiseled them out from the notorious reinforced concrete edifice, but that would be a lie. My meager efforts February 16, 1990, produced paltry chips the size, perhaps, of dominoes pieces. I came by those two impressive rocks courtesy of a much more adept chiseler who shared his excavation work with me that fateful afternoon just three months after East Germany opened the floodgates on its repressive regime. 

The fearmonger-in-chief prophesied what would happen absent a similar concrete wall spanning our southern border with Mexico. “You’ll have crime in Iowa, you’ll have crime in New Hampshire, you’ll have crime in New York” without a wall, Trump warned during a trip to McAllen, Texas, Thursday. 

ABC News asked the mayor of McAllen what the murder rate in his city with no wall was. Zero, he said, asserting McAllen was among the safest in America. Statistics corroborate his belief. 

Why are Democrats so stridently against funding a wall? After all, friends have asked, $5.7 billion is sooooo small compared to the trillion dollar-plus federal budget fattened by the billions wasted on military and social aid programs every year. 

My response is that the debate over the wall far transcends the dollar amount. The wall, the barrier, the what-have-you, represents a good old-fashioned horse trading negotiation. 

Regardless of its efficacy, Trump wants to show his base he can fulfill a campaign pledge to build a wall, though he has admitted the second part of his pledge to have Mexico pay for it is not going to happen as promised. His dissembling on how the wall will be funded and by whom just adds to Trump’s portrait as a grifter and con artist. 

What Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer want is a commitment from Trump to extend safety to DACA children brought to America by their parents. Every time Trump seems ready to commit to shielding the so-called Dreamers, he turns into the reneger-in-chief when he hears howls from Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and their compatriots on the right. 

Behind the scenes efforts to parlay DACA safety for wall funding have been rejected by Trump. It would take a revolt by Senate Republicans to force Trump’s hand to accept a quid pro quo.

Instead, before the weekend is out our would-be king might invoke national emergency powers to funnel funds into wall construction. Should such a move survive a court challenge, Republicans might rue the precedent. 

Imagine the next time a Democrat is president and a mass shooting occurs. Considering that firearms are used in tens of thousands of homicides every year, far greater than the number of deaths perpetrated by undocumented immigrants, a president could declare a national emergency to ban gun sales and confiscate all assault rifles. 

Now that is an extreme hypothetical (and I doubt any president would do it) but for years the National Rifle Association has fearmongered such a possibility every time a Democrat won the presidency. 

If Trump opens the Pandora’s Box of emergency powers, there is no telling what a president could try to implement.

To stem a measles or flu epidemic turning into a pandemic, a president could declare a national emergency and order the vaccination of all residents. If anyone refuses, he could isolate them in internment camps so they would not spread any infection. To reduce damage and deaths from coastal flooding, a president could order the permanent evacuation of the shoreline. 

Too far-fetched? Perhaps. But it all hinges on how the Supreme Court views presidential power. Given that the Republican majority on the court is believed to endorse almost unlimited presidential power, Trump could win a challenge to the emergency powers question. But such a win could plunge the country into uncharted waters for all subsequent presidents, not to mention Trump’ own crazed view of what a president may do with unchecked power.

Trump said Friday afternoon he wasn’t ready to pull the emergency powers lever. Which to me signals he is about to this weekend, as he constantly contradicts himself.

As I’m writing this a friend related an irony—his community in Palm Beach County, Florida, has many wealthy retired New York City teachers who “want immigration laws enforced.” 

To which I replied, “Maybe the sun fried their brains and they forgot the immigrant history of their families. Sure, they would tell you they came legally but how many of them thought the quota system from 1920 on was a good thing, how many of them thought restricting access to Jews fleeing Nazi persecution was acceptable, how many of them see any comparability to those Hondurans seeking safety from violence in their homeland, how many of them think a wall is a better symbol of America than the Statue of Liberty?”

Walls can and do serve a purpose. The Berlin Wall kept East Germans inside their living hell. Many who tried to seek freedom lost their lives trying to pierce their enclosure. But some succeeded. No wall is impenetrable. 

All objective evidence affirms that most illegal drugs enter the United States at ports of entry, not by human “mules” infiltrating illegally across the border. Most undocumented aliens enter legally, arriving here by plane and overstaying their visas. Though Trump trumpets their egregious murders, rapes and other violent deeds in his bid to instill fear, statistics show the undocumented commit far fewer crimes than the American population at large. 

Bottom line: Some type of restraint along the border will be built. Dreamers will have their dreams fulfilled. Some federal workers will lose their homes, have their credit ratings marred, have their trust in government employment shattered by the partial government shutdown now entering its fourth week because of the inability of the artless-negotiator-in-chief to reach an agreement with the newly emboldened Democrats who control the House and who still maintain sufficient numbers in the Senate to withstand cloture calls on most legislation.

It won’t be pretty, but it will happen. As Trump says, trust me.