Who's Left Running For President?

Last year, I did some posts under the title “There Are Too Many People Running For President”.  In those posts, I made some guesses about who should drop out of the race or would eventually have to cede their dreams for the Democratic nomination to another candidate.

 

I thought early on that Amy Klobuchar needed to go. Every time I hear her speak, I am impressed by how smart and tough she is and I have no doubt she would be a fine President. But Amy never seemed to catch fire in the more crowded field of candidates and by the time she did when the field narrowed, it was too little too late. It was kind of sad that after dropping out of the race and endorsing Joe Biden, Amy’s campaign ads were still running here in North Carolina.  

 

Sooner or later, I knew Pete Buttigieg would have to call it a day. There is no doubt as to Pete’s intelligence and to his empathy. Yes, he’s too young and seemed uncertain in situations where greater experience may have guided him. But still, if Pete Buttigieg was to make it to the Oval Office as our Commander In Chief, I think we would still be in good hands. Unfortunately, those hands hold the hands of his husband and if you thought the evangelical right were in a tizzy to support Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, imagine the depths of support Li’l Donnie would get if the Democrats put an openly gay man on top of the ticket. I hate to say it because Pete Buttigieg’s sexuality should not matter one damn bit towards if he would be a good President (and he would be) but up against a candidate whose whole reason for having any power is a fanatical devotion from right wing alleged Christians, now was just not the time for Pete Buttigieg. 

 

So Amy and Pete are out of the race, as I predicted.  So I must be some kind of wizard political prognosticator. 

 

Well, maybe not. I really thought by now Joe Biden would be burned out and Bernie Sanders would be floundering while Elizabeth Warren continued her march towards the nomination while poking at Mike Bloomberg with a sharp stick every chance she got. 

 

So, what do I know?

 

On Super Tuesday, Joe Biden staged the biggest comeback in American political history. 

 

Bernie Sanders, the de facto front runner heading into the South Carolina primary last week, is holding on to a strong second but watching the momentum swing towards Joe Biden.

 

Mike Bloomberg spent nearly half of a billion dollars to win only 4 delegates. Yes, that comes to $100 million a delegate. Mike knows a bad bargain when he sees one and bowed out of the race on Wednesday. 

 

And Elizabeth Warren is wondering what the hell happened. 

 

What happened, Sen. Warren, is you’re a woman.

 

Let’s be blunt. If Warren was a man but still had the same forthright way of speaking to Americans with strength, intelligence and empathy, Joe and Bernie would be way off in the distance in the rear view mirror by now. 

 

OK, to be fair, some of Warren’s issues as a candidate can also be attributed to factors beyond her gender. While Warren has a strong, forceful appeal for working class voters more concerned with what are called “kitchen table issues”, her pivot towards more aggressively progressive positions, trying to take ground from Bernie Sanders, undermined that appeal.  Also her efforts to tone down her aggressive nature and cast herself as a party uniter worked against her key attributes.

 

As I write this, Sen. Warren has not made a formal decision about the future of her campaign. But the writing is on the wall: at some point, she will need to call it a day.

 

Instead the battle has come down to two old white men who think they can save us from Donald Trump. 

 

I’m not feeling too good about either of them.

 

Again, I trust either Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders with the Presidency a damn sight more than I trust the man who is there now.

 

But Donald Trump will hammer at either of these men at both their real and imagined flaws.

 

Trump and the GOP are already talking up “socialism” as a scourge to be feared and avoided at all costs, equating it with the communism that scared us all back in the 1950s. Bernie Sanders’ threading the needle to classify himself as a “Democratic socialist” will not matter one damn bit. Every utterance of the word “socialist” will be fired back at the Fox News audience on an hourly basis as damning testimony of how much Sanders hates America, Christians and white people. 

 

As for Joe Biden, Trump’s already been priming that pump since last summer. What should be a bug will be a feature as Trump uses his own impeachment and subsequent acquittal by the Senate as proof of the rightness of his cause, that Joe Biden and his family are ethically compromised and are not to be trusted. And Trump is also opening up another track, using every flub by Joe Biden as proof that Biden is mentally unfit. Yes, this coming from a man whose every public utterance sounds like a man in the throes of a stroke wants to accuse someone else of being mentally unfit. Hypocrisy has never been a problem for Trump’s GOP and every single time Biden so much as mispronounces a word, the knives will be out.

 

Of the two, I guess Joe Biden is the less scary.

 

But my biggest fear will not be assuaged until election day November 2020 is safely in the past and Donald Trump has been voted out of office.

 

Because I’m scared deep down to my bones as to what 4 more years of that son of a bitch will mean for this country, for the world and my own mental health.