One Week To Go

Joe Biden goes into the final week of the 2020 presidential campaign against Donald Trump about eight points ahead in the polls if you combine the two averages everyone goes by, FiveThirtyEight.com and RealClearPolitics.  If this were like any other year, I would predict a Biden victory next week with Biden winning the Presidency by six points, because winning presidential candidates usually win by two points less than what the polls the week before say they're going to win by.  In 1988, George H.W. Bush was up over Michael Dukakis by ten points going into the final week of the campaign; he won by eight.  Bill Clinton was up over President Bush in the polls by seven points going into the final week of the 1992 campaign; he won by five.

Thanks to the pandemic, Trump's dirty tricks, and the closeness of several swing-state polls, however, that standard doesn't apply.  Two thousand twenty has been like no other year, and hopefully we won't have another year like it again any time soon. But with everything that's happened so far in this crazy year, anything can happen in the days ahead, and Trump - now counting on rallies in the swing states to save his re-election campaign - could defy expectations once again.  And if the vote is close enough in states like Pennsylvania, Florida and Arizona, Trump can be expected to sue to prevent a proper ballot count.

Even Biden says he believes that Trump can still win; after what happened to Hillary Clinton in 2016, he's taking no chances.  That's why he's not taking any votes for granted and why he's remaining engaged right to the end.

Maybe he will win by six percentage points nationally.  After all, that standard of winning by two points less than what the polls from the week before say held in 2016.  Hillary Clinton was up by four points going into the 2016 presidential campaign; she won the popular vote by two.

The electoral vote, on the other hand . . .

Stay tuned, the 2020 presidential campaign is going to get even more interesting in its last seven days.

Trump Can Still Win

Donald Trump has done a lot to screw up his chances for re-lection in the 2020 fall campaign.  He's insulted Dr. Anthony Fauci, blown up on Lesley Stahl during a planned "60 Minutes" interview, and ridiculed Joe Biden without offering any substantive reasons for why should vote or him.  Yet many people will vote for him, and it might be enough in swing states to get him to 270. 

Trump is behind Biden by only a few points in polls in Florida and North Carolina, two states he won in 2016.  In Rust Belt states that Biden has actively been campaigning in to win them back for the Democrats after Trump bested Hillary Clinton in them, the Republicans have aggressively registered new voters.  They've particularly registered two new voters in Pennsylvania for every single new voter Democrats have registered in that state.   And despite the rush of early voters from Democrats in many states, there's always the chance that Republicans, with a superior ground game - it's superior primarily because they're campaigning on the ground in the middle of the pandemic and the Democrats are not - will vote in big numbers on November 3 and overwhelm those Biden-leaning voters who voted early in person or by mail.

The pandemic?  Yeah about that . . ..  Although the United States still has more COVID-19 cases and deaths than any other country, Trump no longer looks like a buffoon in how he's handled it - because cases are surging again in countries such as Germany, France, and Italy, countries that supposedly either had their act together and avoided mass infections or got their act together after an unspeakable surge of infections. Trump?  He's tired of the pandemic, and a large plurality of the 327 million Americans who haven't been infected with COVID-19 likely are tired of it too.  I am not saying that people who haven't been infected have a right to put the pandemic behind them before it is over; I am merely suggesting that those who do will likely vote for Trump no matter how much he screws up.

The one thing getting me through these final two weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign  is that Joe Biden, having run an effective campaign of his own, hasn't screwed up like Trump; he's been as steady as a rock even as Trump has been sinking like one. But anyone who counts Trump out entirely is making a grave mistake.  He's one of these celebrities who can commit egregious, outrageous acts that would end the careers of lesser individuals.  As he once said, he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.

Sometimes, I think he's so evil that he could have shot someone at the corner of West 72nd Street and Central Park West and gotten away with it.   

I wonder if you know what I'm talking about?  😠

The Continuing Story of COVID Donald

I wish Trump would just get into bed, take a few pills, get his treatments, and as Samuel L. Jackson might say, stay the f**k in the hospital!

Trump went on a joyride in a sport utility vehicle through the streets of Bethesda, Maryland outside Walter Reed Medical Center to wave to supporters who showed up to give him, well, support.  It was a stupid photo opportunity, an effort by Trump to show how devoted to his base he is even as he's convalescing with COVID-19.  He endangered a lot of Secret Service agents and even a few fellow patients at Walter Reed just to take his joyride.  It's yet another ploy to divert attention from his problems with the Presidency and the polls, but it might not work this time, considering how many Republicans (including former New jersey governor Chris Christie) caught COVID-19 from the Amy Coney Barrett introduction event at the White House that Trump hosted - no face coverings, no social distancing - as part of an effort to will the pandemic away.  Meanwhile, every time I go outside, I an constantly dodging people everywhere I go, whether I'm wearing my mask or not.

Also, it turns out that Joe Biden isn't free as a bird after all; he has to continue to be tested daily for the next several days because he was in an indoor space with Trump for the debate last week.  So far, so good.   The Biden campaign taken down his attack ads against Trump out of respect for the Donald's illness; the Trump campaign has responded by doubling down on the attack ads against Biden.  But the candidate is likely to have plenty to say about all that and the presidential campaign in an MSNBC town hall tonight.

I can't wait for this campaign to be over, and I hope Biden wins, and then I hope to return my full attention to a cause near and dear to my heart . . . bringing the base eighth-generation Volkswagen Golf to the United States.

Maybe a Biden administration's return to sane fuel economy standards will help my cause.  

The Ghost of Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton may no longer be an active politician, but her spirit haunts the nation.

I've heard a lot of grumblings about how the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg could have retired when Obama was President to allow him to choose a new justice before he left office.  And, even though Obama would have had a hard time getting a Ginsburg replacement through the Senate, especially in the last two years of his second term, Ginsburg didn't want to retire while Obama was in office anyway.  Seems she was so certain that Hillary Clinton would succeed him as President that she looked forward to retiring in 2017 so that the first female President could name another woman to replace her.

Now where would Justice Ginsburg get such an idea that Hillary's nomination for President and her  election to the Presidency were inevitable?  Seems that the good Justice, so right in many ways, was led astray by Hillary and by then-Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz into thinking there was no way any of those silly male Democrats running for their party's 2016 presidential nomination was going to get in Hillary's way and there was no way on God's not-so-green earth that she could be defeated by Donald Trump.  My guess is that HRC and DWS told RBG, "Don't worry - we got this!"

Seems Justice Ginsburg, like so many others, got played, and played in service of Debbie's Machiavellian methods and Hillary's massive ego.  Sure, she believed that Hillary would win in 2016 - heck, I did too, although I didn't vote for her - and so of course she thought Hillary would become the 45th U.S. President  and appoint a woman in her place, especially a woman as liberal as she was. 

And instead, we have Donald Trump, who now gets to replace Justice Ginsburg with a woman, and a right-wing one at that  - most likely an Irish Catholic jurist who will remind everyone why Americans hate Irish Catholics known for serving in public office.

Or just plain laugh at them.

I still can't get over the fact that no one, after all that's happened in the past three-and-a-half years, has written to me to apologize for laughing 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley out of the campaign.

Harris Nails It

Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris has a problem, guys, with Donald Trump insisting that Democratic policies will unleash a nightmarish future for America if she and Joe Biden are elected in November.  That's why, she took to a podium Thursday afternoon to offer a "prebuttal" against Trump's anti-Biden nomination acceptance speech for the Republican convention (which I refused to watch).

She laid out the case like the lawyer she is, explaining how Trump always makes incendiary comments in the wake of police shootings of blacks to incite more violence that he can blame on the Democrats. She also went after Trump on the pandemic, making the case of how he bungled the initial response to COVID-19 back in January and tried to devolve responsibility for handling it to the states.

"Donald Trump froze. He was scared. And he was petty and vindictive," Harris said, adding that he was  "fixated on the stock market" and "caved" to the Chinese government in order to preserve his chances for re-election. 

Did I once say that she has a shrill voice?  Funny, it's suddenly sounding a lot more pleasant! :-D 

Harris's speech was a prelude to a two-minute ad that the Biden campaign aired on all three broadcast networks and on Fox News before the convention. The ad slams Trump for the way he's handing the issues while mainly putting a positive spin on Biden's accomplishments.

So if you'd been wondering if Biden and Harris were going to counterprogram Trump during the Republican convention, well, there you are.  Okay, maybe they should have done it sooner - Biden, by the way, went on MSNBC and CNN to condemn Trump just before Harris's speech, though with less energy - but better late than never.

Expect more of this from the Democrats.  And now we know why Biden chose Harris to be his running mate.  

Biden Nails It

Joe Biden did what he had to do in his presidential nomination acceptance speech - he not only hit out out of park, he had a grand slam, getting the issues on each loaded base - the pandemic, the recession, and racial strife - over home plate, with climate change as the fourth home run. 

The former Vice President touched on these issues and summed up his plans for tackling them as President, and he did it with a message of compassion and patriotism with a tone of hope and faith, saying it was time for Americans to rise up and provide light over darkness.  He anchored his principles and beliefs in his personal story and his resolve to overcome tragedy and tribulations.   And he did it all without mentioning Trump by name.

This gets Biden off to a good start, and he has to keep up the soaring rhetoric for the next two months and change.  And here's one caveat - the Republicans hold their convention this week. Expect withering attacks on Biden from Republican speakers, and expect them - and Trump in particular - to twist Biden's words and take them out of context to the point where he's depicted as the second coming of Pol Pot. 

And, if that doesn't work, mail-in ballot delays and Kanye West on several state ballots ought to do the job.

I'ts not over, fellow Biden supporters.  Don't take anything for granted.  In the meantime, find something better to do than watching the Republican convention.  Like chewing on tin foil, the kind QAnon make their hats from.  

Kamala!

Okay, Kamala Harris is Joe Biden's running mate.  It was less of a surprise than I thought it would be, because she looks great on paper.

So do I have a problem, guys, with the choice?  Not really.  She makes sense politically, and despite her dust-ups with Biden in the 2020 campaign primary debates, she gets along with him, and there are no hard feelings against her on Biden's part.  She has a distinguished record as a California Attorney General and as a United States Senator, and she not only brings racial and gender balance to the ticket but geographical balance as well; she is now the first Democratic nominee for national office from a Western state.

Since she was always the obvious choice for Vice President, the choice, now that it's been made, seems rather anticlimactic.  As for me, it's gotten to the point where I don't care anymore.  The stress of the pandemic has worn me down, I feel exhausted, and I'm just glad this VP drama is over.  Now I don't care what happens between now and November, as long as it leads to the defeat of Donald Trump.

Carry on.

When I Look To the West

It seems ironic that the only major performer in rap who goes by his given name could get in trouble with the law for fake names.

Kanye West, whose head looks more and more like a fist with eyes when I look at him, is being accused of electoral fraud - a different fraud from the one that Trump charges comes from mail-in voting.  The petitions submitted for West's presidential "campaign" in various states to get on the ballot have been rejected for using fake names.  His home state of Illinois rejected his petition there because some names may have been forged.  New Jersey rejected his petition because the same name was used over and over and over.  West got his petition to appear on the ballot in Wisconsin - where Hillary Clinton barely lost to Trump in 2016 and where Democratic Governor Tony Evers barely won in 2018 - just in the nick of time, but the fake signatures found there mean that he likely won't appear on that state's ballot, either.  There are even reports of real people being tricked into signing a West petition without knowing what it's really for; they signed under the pretext to show that they're registered to vote.

Kanye isn't really running to become the forty-sixth President of the United States anyway.  Republicans have been gleefully helping West get on the ballot, and he's already assured to appear on the ballot in Oklahoma.  Possibly Colorado as well.  The idea was to help West get on the ballot for President in as many states as possible to hurt Joe Biden, the supposition being that he would draw votes from young black voters.  Most of his fans are white, though, and black people resent him for his once strong alliance with Trump.  In a rare moment of candor, West recently admitted as much that he's part of a plot to damage Biden.  Gee whiz, even the thugs who conspired against Nancy Kerrigan to help Tonya Harding in the 1994 Winter Olympics were better at this sort of thing.  The big fraud here, of course, is that West never really broke with Trump.  He's actually helping him do his dirty work.

Fraud, of course, is nothing new for West, who has been part of the larger fraud to convince people that rap is art and should be treated with the same respect as jazz.  Those who disagree with the idea of rap as music and with Kanye's self-professed claims of genius, particularly classic-rock-era musicians,  have spoken out against this fraud, only to be dismissed angrily as white male "rockists" who don't get it.  So, I am enjoying the schadenfreude of seeing West's mostly liberal defenders realize what an idiot and a poser (as David Crosby called him) he really is.

Because he is clinically insane, West will not go quietly.  But, given his quixotic efforts to give his buddy Donald Trump an advantage in the election while pretending to have disavowed him, he will indeed go. The sooner, the better.

Desperation

How desperate is Donald Trump in his bid for re-election against Joe Biden?

Let's examine the evidence:

• Trump tried to stop his niece Mary from putting out a book about what a soulless sociopath he is.  It didn't work.  Mary Trump was barred from granting interviews about her book, but that didn't last long.  She's been all over TV promoting her book.  It sold a million copies in a day.
• Trump banned hospitals from sending information about COVID-19 to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and ordered that the date be sent directly to the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington in an apparent effort to control the new flow about the disease. One thing he can't control, however is the rising number of deaths from it,which are expected to reach a quarter of a million by the end of October.
• Trump demoted his campaign manager, digital-media wunderkind Bill Parscale, in favor of former Chris Christie confidant Bill Stepien in an effort to reverse his slide in the polls.  This happened even as a new Quinnipiac poll showed Biden ahead by 15 percentage points, 52 percent to 37 percent.
• And now Trump says he may not accept the election results if he loses.

Like any wild animal, Trump is vicious when he's merely wounded.  He'll do anything to win at this point.  He could let the Postal Service shut down to discourage mail-in voting. He could get the Russians to hack voting machines.  He could make a statement designed to gin up the stock market.  He could find a way to resurrect Tara Reade in the news media or find some other woman to make a sex-assault accusation against Biden.  And one thing I could definitely imagine him doing is getting some crazy rapper to run for President to dilute the black vote, but we all know that's not going to work out.

Oh, wait . . . :-O     

Joe Biden's Moment

On May 8, 1987, the day Gary Hart was forced to withdraw from the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination campaign in the wake of a sex scandal, ABC News' Peter Jennings asked political commentator Hal Bruno who, among the seven remaining 1988 Democratic candidates for the Presidency, would likely become the front runner in Hart's absence. Bruno scarcely hesitated in answering, "Joe Biden."

Thirty-three years ago today, June 9, 1987, Joe Biden announced that he was a candidate for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination.  At the time Biden embarked on his first bid for the White House, Donald Trump was a boorish New York real estate developer who was just beginning to cultivate a reputation outside his hometown.  Nancy Pelosi was a first-term congresswoman (being sworn in that very day, June 9, after winning a special election), and Mitch McConnell was a first-term U.S. Senator from Kentucky whose only major achievement was having been elected in an upset.  Anthony Fauci, already Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was waging a fight against a major epidemic - the AIDS crisis.  William Barr was a Washington lawyer.  Bernie Sanders was the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, and many of the supporters of his future presidential campaign hadn't even been born yet.  Beto O'Rourke was a high school student who occasionally wrote nihilistic poetry.  Cell phones were as large as a brick and had retractable antennas.  The Internet had not been made available for civilian use yet, and the only "social media" we had was MTV.  Personal computers were green-screen contraptions used as word processors, and data was stored on removable "floppy discs" that really were floppy.  Twitter founder Jack Dorsey was in fourth grade, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg was three months away from starting kindergarten, and "going digital" referred to buying record albums on compact discs, such as the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, released on CD for the first time eight days before Biden declared his candidacy.

Biden's first bid for the Presidency was derailed by a plagiarism scandal, and he would spend the next twenty years cultivating a record of accomplishment in the Senate before beginning the 2008 electoral season as a presidential candidate for a second time and ending it being elected Barack Obama's Vice President.  The twin failures of his earlier presidential bids suggested that neither time was his moment.  But this past weekend Biden won enough delegates to win the Democratic presidential nomination at last - at the age of 77.  With the country rocked by two major crises - a coronavirus pandemic and institutional racism run amok - Biden finds himself hoping to realize his lifelong ambition to become President of the United States at a time far less settled than 1988, a year of relative prosperity that showed some disturbing undercurrents - such as a budding meteorological phenomenon that would come to be known as climate change, as well as the last battles of a nine-year war in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupiers that would embolden a Saudi militiaman named Osama bin Laden.   This time is even less settled than 2008, the year of a great financial crisis that brought the stock market down 4.4 percent in a single day and almost led to the collapse of the economy.  The year 2020 has been a disaster for America and the world.  Biden, despite his age and his awkwardness, would be forgiven to recall the disparaging words about the Presidency from, of all people, Grover Cleveland, the only U.S. President to serve two nonconsecutive terms.  "My God, what is it about this office that would make anyone want to enter it?"  

A lot has obviously changed since America first learned of Joe Biden the summer of 1987, but as I wrote back in November 2019, Biden hasn't.   Staunchly progressive by 1987 standards, he entered the 2020 campaign viewed as a centrist by people who apparently confused him with Bill Clinton.  His policies and positions were out of step with an increasingly radicalized Democratic base energized by Bernie Sanders, whose ideas only recently became mainstream.   Hoping to restore the country to its time under Obama when he began this third presidential campaign, Biden now plans to embrace the most liberal policy agenda since Franklin Roosevelt, or maybe even Lyndon Johnson, to restore a country wrecked by COVID-19 and racial unrest into a country people can be proud to live in.

He wants to make America great again.

And he's just the guy to do it.  His age signifies wisdom, and his experience in Washington betrays a steady hand.  And as we trudge though what may be the worst year in American history of recent memory - and who knows what 2021 will bring! - that's exactly what we need.  I regret that we never got Martin O'Malley's new leadership the same way Bernie Sanders supporters regret that we won't get a revolution, but old leadership to serve an evolution into a freer and most just society will do just fine. 

This is your moment, Joe Biden.

The Biden Map

With Delaware's governor set to lift the COVID-19-based stay-at-home order this coming Monday (June 1), Joe Biden may finally be a free man, with the ability to make the public campaign appearances he so obviously loves and gets energy from.  But the Biden campaign is still focused on expanding its digital operations, where Trump currently holds an advantage.  Biden is not only looking to hold on to key "battleground" states Hillary Clinton won in 2016 and take back the blue firewall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin but also attempt to make inroads in other states Trump won more comfortably than the blue firewall states and also in states where Hillary Clinton had no chance at all - but she went for them anyway.  Biden's electoral battleground map below should explain it.

All of the states in color are states where Biden is ahead or competitive in the polls.  The dark blue states are the states the Democrats won in 2016 - barely, in some cases, as in Minnesota - that Biden hopes to hold onto.  The light blue states are states unsuccessfully targeted by the Democrats in 2016 that Biden hopes to fight more vigorously in.  The lavender states are solidly Republican states where Trump is slipping and where Biden has the outside chance Hillary Clinton thought she had, based on current polling.  Arizona, which is becoming more bipartisan, is no surprise, and Florida isn't either.  But look at Texas, will ya?  Trump is actually beating Biden by only a few points there, which means that Trump is vulnerable in the Lone Star State. And even though it's not targeted on his map, he's only a couple of points behind Trump in Republican Utah - Utah, the Mormon homeland, perhaps the most socially conservative theocracy west of Iran.  Now that's news. 

The diagonal-line states of Maine and Nebraska are targeted for their awarding of only two electoral votes on a statewide winner-take-all basis, the other electoral votes awarded based on who carries which U.S. House district.  Trump will likely win Nebraska's two electors representing the state, of course, but with three House districts each choosing one elector, Biden can possibly pick off one elector in the Democratic-friendly Omaha-based district, as Barack Obama did in 2008.  And I have a feeling that Biden's looking to sweep Maine.

I got this map in an e-mail from the Biden campaign asking for donations.  I'm not giving away campaign secrets here; the Trump campaign is obviously looking at the same map and the same polls.  And I'm sure the Trump campaign recognizes what Biden has to do as much as the Biden campaign folks themselves.

"Every organizer we're able to put to work in these critical battleground states translates to more votes for Joe Biden on Election Day," the Biden campaign explained in its e-mail.  "And we're working on developing innovative ways for organizers to reach out to voters safely, allowing us to champion social distancing standards as long as we need to while not sacrificing any of the groundwork we need to do.  We’re not taking a single vote for granted, so we've got to make sure every voter in every state on this map hears directly from someone on our campaign about Joe's plans for our country."

Biden has his work cut out for him despite his consistent leads in the polls over the past couple of months.  He may have survived Burisma and his son Hunter's involvement in that, and he may have even survived the Tara Reade story (though far too many people seem to believe Reade, including the increasingly insufferable congresswomen known as the Squad), but now he has to deal with doubts among black voters, and Bernie bros still won't give him any quarter (or quarters - 97 percent of Sanders supporters have failed to donate money to the Biden campaign).  However, Biden's overall strategy and his increasingly liberal policy positions (made possible by a pandemic) show that he is taking this campaign far more seriously than one might think.     

Who Was That Masked Man?

It's Joe Biden, appearing at a Memorial Day ceremony in Delaware and following recommendations to wear a "face covering" to help stop the spread of COVID-19.

He practices what Trump's advisors preach, even though he probably wouldn't have to wear one outside where social-distracting opportunities abound  But as a presidential candidate, he probably had a Secret Service detail that couldn't stay six feet apart from him.

One the one hand, those how serious Biden would be as President in fighting COVID-19.

On the other hand, the Trump campaign will probably use this picture against him.  Not to illustrate what a weenie he is, but how dangerous a Biden Presidency would be.

Let's just say that wearing a black mask with sunglasses and looking like a member of the James Gang (the Western outlaw gang, not the seventies power trio fronted by Joe Walsh) wasn't the best possible optic . . .  

Tara! Tara! Tara!

I have to address the Tara Reade story, because everyone else is addressing it - even the PBS NewsHour, which still - still - hasn't done a story about the possible collapse of the Postal Service.

The accusation from Reade that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993 when he was a U.S. Senator and she was a Senate staffer first surfaced in late March, soon after Biden took the lead in delegate votes necessary for the Democratic presidential nomination.  Because there was no proof beyond er word and a couple of corroborations, the mainstream news media ignored the story.  It has gotten more traction of late as more people have backed up Reade and as "evidence" in the form of a recording of Reade's mother calling in on Larry King's old CNN talk show to express concern about Tara having difficulties with an unnamed senator (nothing about sexual assault, no mention of Biden by name) has surfaced. Investigations in to the story led to the current brouhaha over the accusations, which Biden denied vehemently in a courteous manner toward Reade in an inquisition from MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski, who sounded like a disappointed mom questioning her child in a corner about a broken vase.

I'm sorry, but I'm not buying Reade's accusation.  The reasons for my stance are many, but among them are the fact that this story was promoted by supporters of Bernie Sanders, first appearing in the so-called progressive media while Sanders was still an active presidential candidate.  Another reason is the fact that Reade has changed her story  In the spring of  2019, she was one of seven women who said that Biden inappropriately hugged, kissed, or in Reade's case, touched them, which I talked about back then; Biden admitted to the transgressions and apologized by explaining that he never meant any offense to anyone.  The sexual-assault charge was only added much later.  She said she complained about the act to three supervisors and Senate personnel, then to two supervisors and Senate personnel with a report on file, and then to only one supervisors and Senate personnel with no filed report available. She's even changed her reason for leaving her Senate job, one time saying she was fired and another time staying she left voluntarily, i.e., quit.

Biden, who apparently isn't worried, asked the Senate to look in the National Archives to look for the Reade complaint to see what she exactly said, if the report does indeed exist, but progressive activists - who literally hate Biden - are demanding that he release this files at the University of Delaware, even though Biden has convincingly insisted that any personnel files would be in the National Archives and none of them would be in his University of Delaware files.  (And since the Secretary of the Senate has since refused to release any such report, the pressure on Biden to release his University of Delaware records may only grow.)  I can count all of the Sanders supporters who are satisfied with Biden's explanations on zero fingers; even before this story took hold in the mainstream media, Biden's detractors in the progressive movement have been seizing on any of his personality tics, such as his stutter and his avuncular image, to try to paint him as a menace to society.  Now they're going after his sense of decency by insinuating and by pushing these allegations that he has none.

The crux of this story is that Biden himself, along with other Democrats have once said that women need to be believed when they come forward with stories of sexual misconduct, or at least heard.  Biden has tried to remain consistent that by saying that Reade has a right to come forward with this accusation and that it should be taken seriously but that it should be vetted like any other accusation, and other Democrats have said the same.  Not good enough, Sanders supporters say; either you always assume a woman is telling the truth or you don't  If you don't, you're a hypocrite.  And, on cue, Republicans have seized on this charge of hypocrisy, saying that Democrats wouldn't give Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, when he was nominated for the Court, the same benefit of the doubt that they're giving Biden, while top Republican leaders - even Trump - are suggesting that the accusations against Biden have more credibility than the accusations against Kavanaugh. Thanks a lot, Bernie bros - you've just given the Republicans a weapon to attack Biden with.  It's like you think Biden will drop put and step aside for Sanders.  Oh, wait - that's right . . . you do!  Never mind that Sanders supports Biden now.  You'd rather be a purist than oust Trump.

I'm having flashbacks to 33 years ago this week in 1987, when far less serious womanizing charges against Gary Hart forced him out of the 1988 presidential campaign (that week ended on Saturday, May 9, just like this week does!)  and even back to Joe Biden's own 1988 presidential campaign, when proof of college plagiarism ended his bid for the White House.  (To underscore how far less serious that transgression was than what Biden is being accused of now, Presidents - especially Ronald Reagan, who was President in 1987 - usually don't write their own speeches.  Not even, for the most part, their inaugural addresses.  Yet we attribute famous speech quotes to John F. Kennedy, not his speechwriter Theodore Sorensen.)   But the biggest flashback to the 1988 election campaign that I'm having is to when Al Gore first used Willie Horton against Michael Dukakis in a Democratic debate, only for the elder George Bush to successfully use it against Dukakis in the 1988 general election, which allowed the younger George Bush to assume the Presidency in a campaign in 2000 against . . . Al Gore.

There is good news - so far, all indications are that not too many people take these accusations seriously.  I certainly don't.  As for polls, a Monmouth University poll shows that about a third of respondents believe Biden, a third of them believe Reade - with even 32 percent of those who believe Reade still planning to vote for Biden - and anther third don't have a clue one way or the other.  But unless something explosive happens, I'm not going to comment on this again.

And if Biden does drop out . . . let's bring back Al Gore.  After all, he's younger than Biden, he's even younger than Trump, he served in Vietnam, and he has a great environmental record.  

Uncle Joe and Grandpa Bernie

Donald Trump's worst nightmare took a big step closer to becoming reality when Senator Bernie Sanders officially endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination.  Sanders made his endorsement wholeheartedly, and with plenty of time to work things out between the two camps before the Democratic convention in August.  They underscored the importance of beating Trump with a joint appearance on Biden's YouTube channel this past Monday, as seen below.

Biden and Sanders agreed on the need to do much more in fighting the coronavirus pandemic and also agreed on the necessity to address persistent issues such as climate change, workers' rights, and college tuition assistance.  But Biden also said something that must have made Bernie bros wonder why he, not their hero, is going to be the nominee. Biden said that fundamental change was needed to transform this country.  Ironically, Biden had been considered the better choice because he advocated change within the system rather than changing the system as Sanders has advocated. The reason for his apparent change of heart is simple - the pandemic.  

Biden's approach to change wouldn't be anything like Sanders', though.  He still believes in using the system to shift policy and programs toward different constituencies rather than try to rebuild everything from scratch - which Republican hostility toward change makes impossible even in the most dire circumstances.  That's why many Sanders supporters are still reluctant to embrace Biden and why some of them are still dead set against the idea.  The persuadable ones have a list of demands for Biden on numerous issues, despite his incremental move toward the left, and it's Biden's responsibility - and grave concern - to accommodate Bernie bros as much as possible without alienating the more moderate supporters of his own campaign.  And the polls show that Trump, despite all of his foul-ups, bleeps and blunders, could still win re-election in the fall because the country, even in the worst pandemic in over a century, is still so bitterly divided.  

Biden has a lot more going for him in dealing with Sanders than Hillary Clinton had in 2016, as I've noted before.  They're good friends with each other, and they agree on the issues more than they disagree on them.  Most of their disagreements are on how to address the issue; those are disagreements that can easily be worked out over the next couple of months.  Hillary and Bernie rarely if ever agreed on anything in the 2016 campaign, and they had only a grudging respect for each other at best (but a common disrespect for Martin O'Malley, but I've already bitched about that).  And the fact that the Democrats now have to deal with the reality, not the idea, of "President Trump" (who's been attempting to push the constitutionally unfounded idea of total control over the states in re-opening the economy) should be enough of an impetus or Biden and Sanders to work together.  Also, they now have Barack Obama working with them, as he just endorsed Biden as well.

As indicated in the video posted here, Biden and Sanders have a long way to go to get to a place where their respective factions are united enough to take on Trump in the fall.  But they've made an excellent start.

Joe Biden For President

I am now making an official endorsement for President.  With Trump as the de facto the Republican nominee, now that William Weld has dropped out (he dropped out on March 18 - nobody noticed), and with only two candidates left for the Democratic presidential nomination, I am now compelled to issue such an endorsement.  I know my Bernie-bro and Sanders-sis friends won't like this, but I am backing Joseph Robinette Biden.

I'm not going to list the reasons for my endorsement here - you can read them in my previous post about Biden from November 2019.  I will add, though, that he is more pragmatic and less doctrinaire than Sanders, but - and this is important - he's more empathetic than Trump, something he's shown in his recent interviews with the press and in his live online statements.  Anyone who saw Biden express his concern for the American people on his March 27 appearance on CNN with Anderson Cooper should be comforted by the idea of "President Biden" - even Sanders supporters, who are so inflexible that they've become the Islamic State of political fandom.  And I'm sorry if I've offended any of you who are Sanders supporters, but I didn't make this endorsement to spare anyone's feelings.

Sanders can't win the Democratic presidential nomination; it's mathematically impossible.  Andrew Cuomo is no more likely to accept a draft for the nomination than his father was in 1988.  And even though I live in a safe Democratic state where a third-party candidate wouldn't take enough votes away from Biden to give the state to Trump, I'm not going to go third party again this November like I did in 2016.  I've had it with so-called progressives who want to start a new liberal party.  They've had four years to do it, and they haven't done a lick in that endeavor.  No - at this point, it's Biden or nothing, nothing being Trump.

Joe Biden for President.  End of story.