Category Archives: Democratic vs. Republican Presidents

In this election, forget your fears, and show your signs

Harris Walz yard sign

There have been many anecdotes, as well as reporting, in recent months stating that Democrats are afraid to put up signs or wear merchandise (shirts, hats, pins, etc.) representing their political choices in the 2024 elections. In other cases, Democrats are reporting that their Kamala Harris/Tim Walz and other pro-Democratic or anti-Republican signs are being stolen or destroyed. Similarly, a man was recently arrested for firing shots on three separate occasions at the Democratic Party headquarters in Tempe, Arizona. And last month in Portage County, Ohio, “Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski seemed to encourage his friends and supporters to write down the addresses of people with Democratic yard signs, sparking accusations of voter intimidation.”

Note that there have been very few reports of Democrats destroying or stealing Republican signs or committing other acts of vandalism. It’s almost always the other way around. This is all part of the Republicans’ pattern of thuggery and bullying, even terrorism. We have seen a steady increase in this behavior since the beginning of Donald Trump‘s years in the White House. Recall, for example, the deadly 2017 Charlottesville, VA Nazi march, where “Neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen and other white supremacists marched through the University of Virginia campus bearing torches and terrorizing students with chants of ‘Blood and soil’ and ‘Jews will not replace us.'”

Did Kamala Harris just top her “Freedom” theme?

Vice President Kamala Harris

During their abbreviated presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, have used the “freedom” theme very effectively. In particular, they built on the prior work of President Joe Biden and other leading Democrats, and took “freedom” away from the Republicans. Harris, Walz and other Democrats thus have applied “freedom” to government interference in reproductive rights, gun violence against children in schools, voting rights, and more. The theme worked so well that we didn’t think it could be topped.

But now, weeks before the 2024 elections, Vice President Harris has been leveling a new attack against her opponent, Donald Trump, and it may be even more effective than the “freedom” theme. As was the case with “freedom,” this new attack goes right at a point that Republicans, specifically Donald Trump, have been making for years.

The Trump – Harris presidential debate expectations game

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump to appear together

Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are holding their first presidential debate tomorrow night on ABC. A number of Democrats are saying that Harris will “wipe the floor” with Trump. Likewise, The New York Times recently published an article entitled “Fear of a ‘mean, bully Trump’ showing up at Harris debate has his advisers on edge.” That is a mistake for a couple of reasons.

First, the proper way to play the debate expectations game is to play down your candidate’s abilities and chances, and play up those of your opponent. Similar to what many sales people will tell you, it’s better to under promise and over deliver than to do the opposite.

Second, while Trump has been increasingly rambling and incoherent at speeches and rallies, there is little wrong with his debate record. In 2016, Trump cleared a large Republican primary field, in large part by dominating the debates, and went on to beat Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College. In 2024, just over six weeks ago, Trump debated President Joe Biden, and the result was Biden leaving the presidential race. Trump’s tactics, which include interruptions, intimidation, lies, childish outbursts, and other breaches of tradition and decorum, arguably work well for him. Indeed, the framing of the above-cited New York Times article raises legitimate questions of whether the paper is trying to game the debate in favor of Trump in advance by lowering expectations for him.

On the flip side, Harris was knocked out of the 2020 Democratic Party primaries early on after several debates. Thus it’s fair to say that those debates did not make her the standout or catapult her into the lead. One could therefore argue that Trump has the debate advantage over Harris.

At best, predicting what will happen in a presidential debate is too speculative. As in war, we really don’t know ahead of time how it might turn out.

Photo by FolsomNatural, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/HBzHpl

Kamala Harris is giving Donald Trump woman problems

Vice President Kamala Harris, engaging as always

After running scared for days, Donald Trump reportedly has agreed to the September 10 presidential debate against Vice President Kamala Harris in which Trump had previously agreed to participate against President Joe Biden. Trump’s initial reluctance to debate Harris is the latest indication that Trump does not know how to run against her. A large part of Trump’s problem is that Harris is a woman, and indeed, a very powerful, tough and accomplished woman.

As most people know, Trump was confident that he would beat Biden, who was showing signs of age when trying to campaign in addition to his very hectic presidential responsibilities, which include working hard to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a cease-fire in Gaza. Biden’s popularity was also low, despite achieving more in one term (rescuing America from the depths of the COVID pandemic, saving the economy from the Trump Recession, etc.) than any president in recent memory.

With Kamala Harris replacing Joe Biden, Trump is stuck

Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden

Donald Trump has had a bad month. Ever since July 21, when President Joe Biden announced that he would not seek re-election and that he was endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, Trump has been flummoxed at every turn, and is losing support.

For most of this year, it was the other way around. President Biden received negative coverage from the “news” media, even after many successes. Biden was singled out as “old,” even though Trump is nearly the same age. Trump was leading in most polls, especially in the “battleground” or “swing” states — Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin — where most analysts think the election will be decided.

Then came the first Trump/Biden presidential debate on June 27. Biden, after criss-crossing the western hemisphere from Normandy to Hollywood, having been over-prepared by his staff, and with a cold (followed by a COVID diagnosis), had a rough night. Republicans and the press pounced, Democrats panicked, and the “Biden is old” meme sunk in. After several weeks of one prominent Democrat after another saying that Biden should drop out of the campaign, the President finally did.

Since then, however, the 2024 election has been upended. Harris has been crushing Trump in fundraising, voter enthusiasm,  crowds, and endorsements by big unions and others. Harris’s choice of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate has also added tremendous energy to the Democratic ticket. Walz has proven to be immensely popular and is one of the most dynamic running mates in recent memory. Walz’s resume as farmer, teacher (and union member), winning football coach, Army National Guard veteran, Congressman and Governor, as well as his plain-spoken, decent manner, are motivating the Democratic base and attracting Midwestern voters and others who might not usually be part of the base.

Kamala Harris presidential campaign goes all in on the “Freedom” theme

Vice President Kamala Harris, taking freedom back

As far back as 2013, we stressed the importance of Democrats framing their arguments in terms of promoting “freedom.” Specifically, we wanted to take that term back from the Republicans, because freedom is a deeply held American value, and we know that Democrats, not Republicans, are the ones who truly believe in it. The great news is that, in recent years, leading Democrats, including President Joe Biden, have been promoting the idea of “freedom.” While this trend might not have been too noticeable other than to folks who were specifically looking at Democratic messaging, Vice President and presumptive 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has amped up the “freedom” theme to the point where it is now on the radar of many voters and journalists. We couldn’t be more pleased with these developments.

Just in the past week, since Harris began her 2024 presidential campaign after being endorsed by President Biden, her first speech in Wisconsin strongly laid out the “freedom” theme. Initially, Harris stated that “we believe in a future … where every worker has the freedom to join a union.” Harris went on:

Ours is a fight for the future. And it is a fight for freedom. Generations of Americans before us led the fight for freedom. And now, Wisconsin, the baton is in our hands. We who believe in the sacred freedom to vote will make sure every American has the ability to cast their ballot and have it counted. We who believe that every person in our nation should have the freedom to live safe from the terror of gun violence will finally pass red flag laws, universal background checks and an Assault Weapons Ban. And we who believe in reproductive freedom will stop Donald Trump‘s extreme abortion bans because we trust women to make decisions about their own bodies, and not have their government tell them what to do. And when Congress passes a law to restore reproductive freedoms, as President of the United States, I will sign it into law. So Wisconsin, ultimately in this election, we each face a question: what kind of country do we want to live in? Do we want to live in a country of freedom, compassion and rule of law, or a country of chaos, fear and hate? …. Do we believe in freedom? …. And are we ready to fight for it?

30 minutes of grief, then a pivot from Biden to Harris

The new 2024 election optics

We are big supporters of President Joe Biden. There have been many posts here outlining his accomplishments and tremendous successes, including:

–strengthening America’s economy and creating a record number of jobs;

–leadership and respect around the world, as well as expanding NATO;

–protecting the rights of women and minorities;

–successfully placing hundreds of federal judges on the bench, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson;

–forgiving over one hundred billions of dollars in student loans (despite Republican efforts to stop it); and more.

Likewise, we have laid out the reasons why President Biden deserved Democratic support for his presidential re-election efforts, such as the fact that he is the incumbent president who decided to seek another term, and that he won the 2024 primaries (with over 14 million Democratic votes) very handily.

But reality has taken a different turn. Whether events of the past few weeks are fair or not, President Biden has announced that he will no longer seek the nomination for president in 2024. Instead, Biden has fully endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the job.

Normally, we would want to spend days grieving over and processing what happened. However, with the 2024 elections just 105 days away, and the Democratic National Convention (where the presidential and vice presidential candidates are formally nominated) only 27 days from now, there is no time for that. Instead, we grieved for about half an hour, and then pivoted to Vice President Harris.

Now let’s talk about Trump

Donald Trump, convicted of 34 felonies

The mainstream “news” media threw themselves a big party over the last two weeks. Ever since President Joe Biden, with a cold, a lifelong stuttering problem, and after crisscrossing the western hemisphere from Normandy to Los Angeles, had a bad performance at the presidential debate on June 27 (arguably only for the first 20 minutes), the “news” outlets have run stories about him nearly 24/7. The coverage has been relentless and unfair, for example, focusing on the few people in Congress who say Biden should withdraw from the election (or who are wishy-washy), rather than the overwhelming majority who support him to beat Donald Trump. While President Biden just gave a forceful speech at the NATO Summit, the coverage instead focuses on “Biden’s Fitness Under a Microscope.”

What do these media outlets want? One answer is: eyeballs and money. The Guardian revealed their media business plan with this headline yesterday: “‘Blitz primary’: the scenario that could turn replacing Biden into a ‘riveting spectacle.'” The other thing many such outlets want is to defeat President Biden and the Democratic Party. These big media corporations increasingly skew Republican. For example, David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery (which owns CNN) just tried to play coy about not favoring one presidential candidate over the other. However, he gave away the game by saying that:

We just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to be even better.

Of course, Zaslav and everyone else knows that such talk of “deregulation” is the classic language of the Republican Party.

What these media outlets are not talking much about during their anti-Biden celebration is Donald Trump. Trump has reportedly been mostly in hiding since the debate, recognizing that the media are doing a better job of bashing Biden than he, Trump, could ever do. When Trump does emerge briefly from the golf course, it’s to tell lies and spout bizarre “false grievances” such as “we don’t eat bacon anymore.”

Five historic reasons why Biden is the one to beat Trump

An “impaired” president and his wife

Since President Joe Biden‘s debate against Donald Trump on June 27, there has been a media feeding frenzy about Biden’s “performance” on TV. First, that kind of framing turns the position of president into something superficial, and leads to having actors and reality TV hosts vault to the top of voter preferences. No wonder Trump got himself elected once.

Fortunately, in the current presidential election, we have actual experience from history indicating that Joe Biden, who is not only the incumbent president but also the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, is once again the best choice to beat Trump again. That experience can be boiled down here to five lessons from history. The first three such lessons  were mentioned in our post from a few days ago, and we can simply repeat them here:

Moreover, changing presidential nominees — or worse yet, presidents — in the middle of an election is a prescription for disaster. In March 1968, for example, with the country in turmoil over the Vietnam War and amid harsh criticism from Democrats, incumbent President Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not run for re-election. The result was Republican President Richard Nixon. Likewise, in 1972, a lack of vetting of the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Sen. Thomas Eagleton, led to surprise revelations about his mental health. After a tumultuous period, Eagleton was forced off the ticket and hastily replaced. The result was a massive Republican landslide, and the re-election of Republican President Richard Nixon. Then in 1980, Sen. Ted Kennedy launched a vicious primary challenge to incumbent Democratic President Jimmy Carter. The Democrats lost to Republican Ronald Reagan in another landslide. While the mainstream media may love political instability, American voters do not.

These three lessons can be considered cautionary tales, i.e., reasons not to dump incumbent President Joe Biden just four months before the election. Biden was subject to primaries during the first half of this year, and obviously, that would have been the time to challenge his fitness to serve another term. President Biden won those primaries, and more than enough delegates to capture the Democratic presidential nomination, easily.

Joe Biden and Mark Cavendish — a tale of two old warriors

Bike racer Mark Cavendish, the Manx Missile

Right now, the Tour de France bicycle race is taking place. It is considered one of the most grueling of all sports events; essentially the equivalent of running several marathon races a day, every day, for 21 days straight. The terrain and conditions include mountains, cobblestones, headwinds, rain, and oppressive summer heat. Such a sport is, naturally, a young man’s game. Age 39 in the Tour is considered ancient.

Yet, one of the biggest stories of this year’s Tour de France is the return, out of retirement, of 39 year-old racer Mark Cavendish. A sprinter from the Isle of Man, known as the Manx Missile, Cavendish was tied for the record for most Tour de France stage wins (34), and desperately wanted to break that record. Last year, Cavendish entered the Tour with the hope of breaking the record, and announced that he would retire afterward. Unfortunately, he crashed and broke his collar bone during the early stages, without the win. Cavendish has had many bad days as a bike racer, including a number of serious crashes and injuries, but he has always gotten back up on his bike. He ended his retirement to come back this year, and, with strong team supporting him, he won the stage yesterday and broke the all-time record.

If the parallels to President Joe Biden are not apparent, let’s name them: