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.

Where are the signs?

BEAUMONT, Texas — Having just driven through what I suppose you could call “The Heart of Trump Country,” I am surprised by the lack of what I expected to see on my five-plus-hour trek through Deep East Texas.

I didn’t see a single banner, or yard sign on any residence or business. Indeed, I saw only one decal plastered on the back of a Tacoma pickup, and I had to squint to read it on the rear window.

What does this all mean? Beats the bejabbers out of me. 

I surely saw nothing extolling the candidacy of Joe Biden. I didn’t expect it, either. However, the presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee is supposed to be exhibiting “grassroots strength” in communities such as Jasper, Kountze, Lufkin, Rusk, Huntington and Jacksonville. 

Didn’t see a thing out there. Maybe I’ll see it on the way home, if I take a different route. My Ranger pickup GPS guided me through Greenville and then south along U.S. 69. The drive was gorgeous. The trees are lush, the grass is deep green. The pavement was dry. When I arrived at where I am staying overnight, though, I was greeted with that oh-so-typical Southeast Texas humidity.

I must be home. My family and I lived here for nearly 11 years. I came back to attend a funeral of a man I loved very much. Our friendship hit the skids a few years back over political differences, but it never negated the feeling I had for him and the friendship we forged during our time working together for the newspaper in Beaumont.

I just felt the need, though, to offer a bit of a surprise observation as I trekked south through the Piney Woods.

It’s a good thing, I suppose, that I didn’t have to grind me teeth for 275 miles.

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.

MAGA misdirects its pride

How in the name of all that is holy can the MAGA movement justify its political kinship with this nation’s most notorious adversary?

I cannot even begin to comprehend this love affair with Vladimir Putin, his henchmen, his alleged principles and the idea that the MAGA cult in Congress is willing to all but give him a pass on his illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine.

The MAGA cultists, of course, adhere to the blathering of the 45th POTUS, who has acknowledged that Putin “talks nice” about him and, therefore, is a good guy and a “strong leader.”

Let’s unpack briefly something about Russia that doesn’t get much play in the American media. 

For starters, Russia is a much more diverse society than what POTUS 45 envisions for this country. He bellows about how he wants this country to become a “Christian nation,” but Russia is home to a far greater percentage of non-Christians than the USA.

And did you know that abortion happens to be legal in Russia? The former Liar in Chief wouldn’t for a nanosecond blink at the notion of abortion becoming illegal in this country.

The MAGA minions continue to cling to the moronic notion that their hero in this country can make nice with a known killer and that their partnership somehow will solve all the world’s problems.

I do not get it. I will go to my grave never understanding how an iteration of Russia — the Soviet Union — was once called an Evil Empire but somehow has become the darling of the radical right wing of this nation.

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.

Craziness on the ballot

The political craziness that has infected the Texas Republican Party comes to a head tomorrow.

Several GOP politicians are facing runoffs as a result of challenges within their party. One of them happens to be a very powerful pol: Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan of Beaumont, who’s facing a MAGA challenger in the form of David Covey, a first-time candidate.

I am pulling for Phelan to hold onto his state House seat, even though it might not be worth keeping, particularly if House Republicans decide to boot him out of the speaker’s chair for the 2025 Texas Legislature.

It’s all part of the MAGA movement’s declaration of war against Republicans who have the temerity to stand up against their party leadership and work Democrats to actually govern.

Speaker Phelan shouldn’t have to pay the price for doing what is the right thing.

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.

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.

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.