Democratic vs. Republican Presidents

Donald Trump’s Constitutional crisis

Richard Nixon leaving White House grounds by helicopter after resignation.

In October 1973, President Richard Nixon committed the “Saturday Night Massacre,” in which he fired the Watergate Special Prosecutor who had been appointed at the behest of Congress, which caused the U.S. Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General to resign. Nixon also abolished the office of the special prosecutor. This Constitutional crisis, which occurred nearly five years into Nixon’s presidency, ultimately led to Nixon’s impeachment and his resignation.

Last night, after just 10 days in the White House, Donald Trump had a Saturday Night Massacre of his own. Trump fired Acting Attorney General Sally Yates after Yates wrote a letter to top Justice Department lawyers, directing them not to defend Trump’s Muslim immigration ban in federal court. Trump also fired Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Daniel Ragsdale, for reasons thus far unspecified. Several days earlier, Trump fired top career officers in the State Department.

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Tags: Dana Boente, Daniel Ragsdale, Donald Trump, ICE, Jeff Sessions, Merrick Garland, Muslim, Muslim ban, President Barack Obama, Richard Nixon, Sally Yates, Saturday Night Massacre, U.S. Supreme Court, Watergate

The best way to protest is to vote smart

Written on January 19, 2017 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging, Democratic vs. Republican Presidents

Anti-Trump protest, January 2017

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

–George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905

Massive protests are planned in Washington, D.C. and around the country against tomorrow’s inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States. Most of the people who will be protesting are on the political left. How many of these people voted against or publicly attacked Hillary Clinton when she was the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee? How many of them didn’t vote at all? If they did those things, they helped elect Trump. Protesting now is certainly in the American tradition, but voting smarter in the first place would have greatly reduced the number of things against which to protest, or even eliminated the need to protest at all.

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Tags: 2000 election, 2016 election, Al Gore, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Iraq War, Jill Stein, Ralph Nader, recession, Republican Party, Russia, Vladimir Putin

President Obama’s high-water mark

Written on January 5, 2017 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging, Democratic vs. Republican Presidents, Good Government

President Obama at the Tomb of the Unknowns, Nov. 11, 2016.

President Barack Obama is leaving office on a high note. Many people might not remember what it was like when Obama took office in January 2009. The Bush Recession was underway, and America was losing 779,000 jobs per month. Stores were closing. Restaurants were empty. And our treasury was also empty (in fact, trillions in debt) from Bush’s disastrous Iraq War. Obama, with no help from the Republicans, turned things around to the point where he will be turning over a country that, by most objective measures, is doing very well. Let’s take a look at some of those numbers, so that we will have a comparison for the future:

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Tags: clean energy, climate change, Donald Trump, economy, environment, Gas, GDP, George W. Bush, growth, healthcare, Iraq War, jobs, President Barack Obama, unemployment

Donald Trump’s dangerous endgame

Written on October 17, 2016 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging, Democratic vs. Republican Presidents, Fox "News" Watch, Media Watch, Republican Messaging

Anti-Trump protesters in Dallas, Texas

Not long ago, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders had a well-organized, unifying end to their Democratic Party primary battle. Both sides acted like adults, sat down and negotiated over the party platform and the Democratic National Convention. The result was a hugely successful convention and a more unified Democratic Party, after which Clinton took the general election lead from Donald Trump. As new revelations about Trump’s sexually predatory behavior pile up, Clinton’s lead has extended to the point where nearly no one, including Republicans, says that Trump can win. The question now becomes, how will Trump lose, and what will he do afterward? Unfortunately, the signs thus far point to an ugly and dangerous electoral withdrawal from Donald Trump.

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Tags: 2016 Democratic primaries, 2016 Elections, Bernie Sanders, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Republican Party, Trump TV

The Republican Party, lost in the wilderness

Written on October 12, 2016 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging, Democratic vs. Republican Presidents, Republican Messaging

Donald Trump behind Hillary Clinton at 2nd presidential debate.

Elections are about math, and, with about 27 days to go before the 2016 elections, the math is not looking good for Republicans. Donald Trump is not only losing the presidential election, he may be taking down the GOP with him, including its majority in the U.S. Senate, and even jeopardizing the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Trump is now engaged in a bloody battle with leading Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, the highest-ranking Republican in America, as well as GOP stalwarts such as John McCain. Panic is setting in among some Republican office holders and donors alike, and Hillary Clinton and the Democrats are exploiting this GOP Civil War. Where did things go so wrong?

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Tags: 2016 Elections, Autopsy Report, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, GOP Civil War, Hillary Clinton, House, Reince Priebus, Republican Party, RNC, Senate

The Hillary Clinton/Donald Trump fantasy love fest

Written on October 4, 2016 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging, Democratic vs. Republican Presidents, Republican Messaging

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump at their first presidential debate

The 2016 presidential campaign has been relentlessly negative. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and their campaign teams, surrogates and supporters, have been bashing each other with zeal. That may be electoral politics as usual, but it doesn’t bode well for governing the country, or having Americans united on important issues around the world, once the election is over. Accordingly, here is an admittedly fantasy scenario of how Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump could come together at their next debate over one simple question, without sacrificing their principles:

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Tags: 2016 Elections, 2016 presidential debates, 9/11, Donald Trump, gun violence, healthcare, Hillary Clinton, terrorism

Hillary Clinton beats Donald Trump in the debate and the expectations game

Written on September 27, 2016 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging, Democratic vs. Republican Presidents, Media Watch, Republican Messaging

“If you could vote for anyone” Clinton vs. Trump

In their first presidential debate last night, expectations were set unfairly high for Hillary Clinton and unfairly low for Donald Trump. Surprisingly, however, Clinton exceeded and Trump fell short of such expectations. In terms of substance, style and presidential temperament, the contrast between the two candidates was stark, and Clinton walked away with a decisive win.

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Tags: 2016 Elections, 2016 presidential debates, 2016 Republican primaries, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton

The presidential election now turns on bigotry

Written on September 23, 2016 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging, Democratic vs. Republican Presidents, Republican Messaging

“Will Trade Racists For Refugees” jacket, Santa Cruz, CA, July 2016

Last Friday, Donald Trump made a stunning announcement, wrapped in a live infomercial for him and his new hotel, that he believes President Barack Obama was born in the U.S. This was a complete flip-flop for Trump, who began his presidential campaign on the “birther” conspiracy, falsely questioning President Obama’s birthplace and his birth certificate. When did Trump change his mind? Did he always believe that Obama is a full-blooded American and just lie all along to attract right wing extremists, including white supremacists? Trump didn’t stick around to answer these and other questions from the press.

Trump’s birther announcement comes at a time when America is being racked by police killings of unarmed black citizens. Yesterday, Tulsa, Oklahoma white police officer Betty Shelby was charged with first degree manslaughter for killing a black man, Terence Crutcher, who was waiting for help after his car had become disabled. In Charlotte, North Carolina, police killed Keith Lamont Scott who was waiting for his son to leave school for the day. Protesters have taken to the streets in Charlotte, as they have done in Ferguson, Missouri and many other locations after previous police killings of black Americans. It doesn’t help that, even though the Charlotte police killing of Keith Lamont Scott was caught on one or more police videos, the police are refusing to release the video.

These events and others are overshadowing the 2016 presidential election, largely turning it into a referendum on bigotry in America.

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Tags: 2016 Elections, Betty Shelby, birtherism, Charlotte, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Keith Lamont Scott, Terence Crutcher, Tulsa

Avoiding Donald Trump’s pigsty

Written on September 12, 2016 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging, Democratic vs. Republican Presidents, Republican Messaging

Message to Clinton voters about Donald Trump

Playwright George Bernard Shaw is quoted as saying:

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

That’s good advice for Hillary Clinton. When she climbs into the mud with Donald Trump and his supporters, she gets dirty, and they seem to like it. For example, at a New York City fundraiser on Friday, Clinton said:

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it.

There’s plenty of evidence that a portion of Trump’s supporters really are deplorable. However, the problem with these remarks (which Clinton has since walked back a bit), isn’t their truth, it’s that Clinton shouldn’t be the one making them.

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Tags: 2016 Elections, 2016 Republican primaries, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz

U.S. political media on life support after NBC Matt Lauer forum

Written on September 9, 2016 by Messaging Matters in Democratic vs. Republican Presidents, Media Watch

NBC’s Matt Lauer with former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders

Wednesday night’s NBC News “Commander-in-Chief Forum” has been roundly criticized. In particular, moderator Matt Lauer is taking the heat for his biased, amateurish performance. However, the NBC forum is just one of many examples of the U.S. Beltway media tipping the scales against Hillary Clinton and for Donald Trump in this election, and failing to do their job. One Twitter user even started the hashtag “#LaueringTheBar” to describe this trend. With the first presidential debate just days away, time is quickly running out to cure the problem.

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