Pay attention, Mr. POTUS!

I have a friend with whom I share an interest in politics and public policy. She is well-read and is a student of the process that delivers policy decisions to us … for better or worse.

She believes President Biden is trailing the presumptive GOP presidential nominee because he has become tone-deaf to the current reality. Which is that not all Americans are feeling as good about the economy as the president thinks they are.

Thus, my friend surmises, he should stop crowing about the economy and appeal directly to the fear that many of us have about the possibility that the former Sexual Assailant in Chief just might win the presidency once again. 

Biden needs to talk directly and incessantly about the threat to our democratic system that the wannabe dictator poses to our system. 

Americans are historically proud of the liberty we enjoy. The GOP nominee-to-be has stated categorically that he intends to impose a dictatorship “for one day only” if he becomes POTUS. One day? Really? Do you think the former Liar in Chief then will reinstate all our democratic norms?

He has boasted about his placing three justices on the Supreme Court, and their hand in revoking women’s right to terminate pregnancies. Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 SCOTUS decision is now history. Biden vows to restore it if he’s re-elected. His opponent promises to tighten the screws to women’s reproductive rights.

Democratic political guru James Carville, no slouch on these matters, said recently that the Republican message has gained traction. The GOP nominee’s hush money trial isn’t making a dent in the lead Carville says he enjoys. Democrats are blowing it, Carville declared. Remember, this is the guy who coined the phrase in 1992 that “It’s the economy, stupid.” It worked for Bill Clinton. 

Well, my friend is on board with the likes of Carville. She, too, wants Biden to crystallize his message, harden it to drive home the point that our democracy is in dire peril if Americans make the wrong choice at the ballot box this fall.

Listen to these people, Mr. President! They’re all pulling for you!

We have dumbed down our standards

You are welcome to conclude whatever you wish about the statement that will follow in this blog … such as that I am the “master of the obvious.”

I don’t mind. Nor do I care.

The trial in New York on the hush money payment POTUS No. 45 made to Stormy Daniels — aka Stephanie Clifford — is revealing in the starkest terms possible how our political climate has dumbed down voters’ concern about character in the candidates who seek public office.

I haven’t been following the trial too closely, but I have gleaned enough from it to realize many things about the support that the one-time Philanderer in Chief is able to claim among the MAGA cultists around the country.

We have learned in graphic detail about Clifford’s assertion over what happened in the hotel room that night in 2006. The future POTUS’s wife had just given birth to his fifth child, yet there he was in the room dressing down to his silk skivvies asking the adult film actress to take a tumble with him.

Do you remember the day — I sure do! — when that kind of conduct was considered a deal-breaker? How about the sickening “Access Hollywood” recording in which the Groper in Chief boasted how he would grab women by their private parts? And that they enjoyed it because he was “famous”?

I do not get any of this! So help me, I do not understand how an individual who once held the office of POTUS, who wants it once again, continues to receive the level of support from American voters who do not now seem to give a sh** about the acknowledged behavior of the man who seeks their vote.

This drama will play out in due course. I am left to wonder: Are we really ready to toss aside the standards we once set for the people from whom we choose to lead this great country?

God help us if we take that perilous path.

So many issues …

So many issues from which to choose that will define this upcoming presidential election … so little time to decide which one matters the most.

If you were to ask me the one issue that resonates the most clearly with voters, I would go with “reproductive rights.”

Call it “abortion rights” as well. Whichever term you prefer, I believe this single issue could help decide who wins the presidential election. At least as importantly, maybe more so, it could decide which party controls Congress. Democrats at this moment hold a slim majority of Senate seats; Republicans, meanwhile, hold an equally slim majority in the House of Representatives.

You know my preference, but I’ll repeat it here: I want Democrats to tighten their Senate grip and want Democrats to wrest control of the House from the GOP.

Republicans are hellbent to make abortion illegal nationwide. They would deprive women the right to make this profoundly personal choice on their own. The 45th POTUS managed to get three Supreme Court justices seated in his term in office.

He is taking personal credit for “killing” Roe v. Wade. Let us hope the boast bites him in his overfed backside as he seeks the presidency yet again.

Abortion is far from the only linchpin issue that could swing this election. We also have democracy vs. autocracy, support for Ukraine in its war with Russia and the ongoing crisis on our southern border.

The fight over whether women should control their own bodies, though, resonates with me as the one issue that could propel women to vote en masse to protect those rights against the mostly male governing bodies wanting to dictate to them.

Cheney ouster remains a mystery

It’s going to take a few more decades — probably more than I have left on this Earth — for historians to sort out what the hell happened to former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney in the 2022 Republican Party primary.

Cheney was as conservative a member of Congress as one could find. Yet she revealed a so-called open wound when she argued that the 45th POTUS was unfit for the office he once held.

Her punishment was to be voted out of office overwhelmingly in the 2022 GOP primary. 

Cheney voted with POTUS 45 about 93 % of the time. She opposed gun control legislation, she was adamantly pro-life on abortion, she favored low taxes, opposed burgeoning budget deficits, favored deportation of undocumented immigrants. 

Cheney was the embodiment of the MAGA movement.

Then came No. 45’s behavior on 1/6. It appalled Cheney.

The MAGA cultists just couldn’t let her anti-45 view go.

Do you want a primer on why the upcoming election is so important? You need look no further than Wyoming, where Republican voters ousted a solidly conservative lawmaker who did her constituents’ bidding.

Except for that one matter involving a lawless president.

What happens if … ?

So help me I don’t like even thinking about this possibility, but the reality of the moment requires me to do so.

Here goes: What will happen if Joe Biden actually loses the election this November to the Republican presidential nominee, who at this moment looks as though it will be the dipsh** Biden defeated in 2020?

Specifically, will the president extend an olive branch to the man who has refused to acknowledge his own loss to Biden four years ago?

My gut and my trick knee tell me President Biden likely will do the proper thing. He would place the obligatory phone call; he then will invite the president-elect and his wife to the White House; he will smile and speak about how he will be “working with” the new president. 

Given all the bad blood, the recrimination, the Big Lie, and all the things that POTUS 45 has said about POTUS 46, I wouldn’t be surprised to see No. 46 stick it in No. 45’s ear. 

But then again, President Biden understands the process better than practically any of us. He also is a man who adheres to tradition.

Will the president’s adherence to custom force him to behave like the pro that he is? Probably.

However, if he falls victim to the hurtful blather of POTUS 45, well … I wouldn’t blame him one little bit if he told him to fu** off.

What is MTG trying to do?

No need to answer the question I have posed in the headline … I believe I know what she is up to.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is trying to make as much noise as possible, to disrupt the legislative flow in the People’s House and to prevent Congress from actually governing, which the Constitution allows it to do as a co-equal partner in the federal government.

MTG is a two-term congresswoman from Georgia who has managed to elbow her way to Americans’ attention simply because she is a certifiable nut job. I am left to wonder: How in the world did she get elected in the first place and then re-elected two years later? 

She is calling for a motion to vacate the speakership held by fellow Republican Mike Johnson. Greene isn’t likely to succeed in the motion. It’s not that I really give a damn about Johnson. He is a MAGA cultist, just like Greene. His “sin” is that he has shown a desire to work with Democrats to actually legislate.

MTG will keep yammering, bellowing and carrying on. She will continue to obstruct in that bellicose manner she employs.

She also will continue to garner attention from folks like me who wonder: How does the House fulfill its constitutional duty to govern when it contains wackos like this?

This is far from a normal year

If only this were a normal presidential election year, but it is far from normal.

We have two major-party candidates who reportedly are the two most unpopular public figures since, oh, The Flood. We also have a third-party goofball, who happens to be a scion of one of the 20th century’s great political families.

Does all this portend a dismally low voter turnout? Not so fast.

We had the same two major-party guys running in 2020. When all the ballots were counted, 158 million Americans voted, a record. Joe Biden was elected president. The other guy called the election “rigged” and said it was “fake.” Never mind that the Republican Party presidential nominee tried like hell to rig the election in his favor.

Oh, and he hasn’t conceded that he lost to President Biden.

In steps Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the former U.S. attorney general and former U.S. senator from New York. RFK sought the presidency in 1968 and well might have been elected … except for the assassin who gunned him down in the Los Angeles hotel kitchen.

This isn’t a normal election any more than the previous one, or the one before that when the former Liar in Chief got elected.

Joe Biden promised a return to normal presidential behavior. He has behaved like the adult in the room. Unlike the guy he defeated,

Now they’re preparing to square off again. I get that they’re bold old men. Allow me this bit of candor: Time is on neither man’s side, although the chatter almost always seems to focus on Joe Biden’s alleged decline in acuity. I am prepared to argue that the GOP nominee in waiting is exhibiting even more frightening examples of unhinged behavior.

Does any of this mean a dismal turnout in this fall’s election? Hardly.

Both sides are going to gin up their respective bases. My fervent hope is that President Biden wins the day, the election and continues to restore our national soul.

Tough to resist hating this guy

My dear mother taught me to avoid saying I “hate” someone. Mom wasn’t a particularly religious person, but surely she must have known what Scripture teaches us about Jesus “loving” his enemies.

Still, as I survey the Republican Party presidential nominee-in-waiting, I find myself wondering if the ex-POTUS knows a damn thing about what’s inside the Bible. Thus, I wonder if he refrains from telling those closest to him not to “hate” those who oppose him. If he is as ignorant of what the Bible tells us as I suspect he is, then he hasn’t exercised a moment of faithful restraint.

This is the kind of supposition that gives me grief as I wrestle with what I feel viscerally about the GOP nominee-to-be. If he has never sought forgiveness, as he once said, then should those of us who do follow Jesus’s teachings actually care about this guy?

At some level, I do care about him. “Care,” though, is as far as I go. 

I’m going to continue to avoid saying I “hate” this clown. Jesus wouldn’t stand for a public declaration of hating this guy. More importantly, neither would Mom.

POTUS to debate … him?

Joe Biden kinda/sorta put it on the record, which is that he will debate the likely Republican Party presidential nominee before we cast ballots this coming November.

No date, place or format has been decided, President Biden told Howard Stern. OK. Fine.

Work it out. Do I want the president to debate POTUS No. 45? I guess so, but I am not thrilled about it.

It’s not so much that I worry about the president’s ability to exchange views with the ex-Liar in Chief. It’s that Americans aren’t likely to learn anything new about (a) why POTUS 45 is unqualified and unfit for office or (b) what policies Biden will articulate.

Joe Biden is making the case for his re-election. His immediate predecessor, though, is making the case that he shouldn’t be found anywhere near the Oval Office ever again.

I fear that a one-on-one debate between these men will be an exercise in futility.

Why delay, SCOTUS?

Many details soar over my occasionally pointed head, such as the apparent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on whether the 45th POTUS deserves presidential immunity.

The high court heard oral arguments this week from the ex-POTUS’s legal team and the legal eagles assembled by special counsel Jack Smith. At stake is the pending trial on the Jan. 6 assault on the government that took place at the former Liar in Chief’s urging. 

I heard reports yesterday that justices appear inclined to deny the ex-POTUS’s claim of immunity from prosecution, but are going to drag their feet in issuing their decision. 

Why wait? Why delay this matter any longer than necessary? Why not issue a ruling and if it’s the way media have speculated, then let’s get on with the trial post haste?

SCOTUS can move quickly on these matters. Look at what they did in 2000 when given the case involving the recount of Florida ballots in that year’s presidential election. They heard oral arguments and then — boom! — stopped the recount with Texas Gov. George W. Bush ahead in Florida by 527 votes, giving him the state’s electoral votes … and thus, the presidency over Vice President Al Gore.

It was done in a matter of days.

The current SCOTUS is equally capable of delivering a timely decision of monumental importance.