Heartfelt thanks to Bernie Sanders for endorsing Joe Biden today saying : “Joe, we need you in the White House.”
In a livestream half hour split screen conversation Bernie said : “I’m asking every Democrat, every independent and a lot of Republicans to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse.”
Joe Biden responded: ” This is a big deal. If I am the nominee, which it looks like now you just made me, I am going to need you, not just to win the campaign, but to govern.”
Both campaigns will jointly form “task forces” soon on : economy, education, climate, criminal justice, immigration reform and health care.
Watch out, IMPOTUS and MAGATS! Mark your calendars today as WORST NIGHTMARE day.
United we stand! Divided YOU fall!
This was a good news day for patriots. Why ?
1. Bernie endorsed Joe.
2. Wisconsin
3. East and West coast Governors formed regional cooperative coalitions to fight the virus, thus bypassing the Monster.
President Obama is expected to endorse Joe Biden this morning.
Everybody needs to see this, just in case you have forgotten what a President sounds like! It managed to simultaneously bring a smile to my face and tears to my eyes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJAPfahus_U
Our own Senator Elizabeth Warren is expected to endorse Vice President Joe Biden today in a video address.
This address reminds me, again, of just how abysmal the 22nd Amendment was.
The direct result of the utter inability of the GOP to find anybody remotely competitive to FDR, that single change to our Constitution has hobbled America ever since.
If the 22nd Amendment had been law prior to FDR, then either Windell Willkie or Thomas Dewey would probably have been elected in 1940. In either case, the international language of trade, finance, and diplomacy would almost certainly be German.
If the 22nd Amendment had not been law prior to 2008, then Barack Obama would almost certainly be our president today.
Donald Trump and the Trumpists are an embarrassing disgrace to America. It is no accident that this is the direct result of GOP malpractice, then and now.
Careful what you wish for, Trump and his cronies are already looking into that change.
The better change is a parliamentary system. One party rule until it screws up and then it’s a new party. Parties largely control the nomination process ensuring someone with actual experience gets to be the leader. No chance of a Trump or Le Pen in a parliamentary system. Unfortunately Orban and to a lesser extent Netenyahu found ways to consolidate power even in those systems, but they are by and large far less prone to authoritarian seizure than presidential system. Ours is the only example without a coup (for now).
Except that means no check and what the PM wants the PM usually gets without much dissent.
The check is the electorate. When McCain voted down the ACA repeal there would have been a new election since it’s a confidence vote. Of course, someone like Trump would never have gotten near the leadership of a party. The irony of our now ideological parties and permanent campaign cycle is that it has created de facto parliamentary government slapped onto a presidential model. Most parliamentary systems have a fixed elections law and conditions on when to call elections. PMs are far more accountable to legislative bodies and voters than Presidents.
Here’s a good rundown of what a multiparty American parliament would look like.
We might get away with it with our strong democratic traditions, but Hitler and Mussolini were both duly appointed heads of their respective governments. My other objection is it constitutionalizes parties and I like that we have avoided that.
Have we? It’s next to impossible for a multiparty system to gain any kind of traction in America since they are burdened with high membership requirements to stay on the ballot, unequal funding, and unequal airtime. I think not anticipating parties was one of the worst mistakes the founders made.
It was maybe not as big a deal back when the parties were both big tents with many factions, but now they are essentially parliamentarian in nature with party identification dictating how people and elected officials will vote on a given issue.
Even as recently as the 90’s, there were northern republicans and western and southern democrats who would buck their party like or senators of either party who would “vote their state”. These days, that’s next to impossible to find.
This election will see the blue state Republicans (Gardner/Collins) and the red state Democrat (Jones) lose their Senate seats no matter what they do. Meanwhile in the purple states Mark Kelley in Arizona is running on the same center-left platform as Sara Gideon in Maine and Amy McGrath in Kentucky. All are socially progressive/economically moderate choices similar to the nominee. Every single Republican running for federal office is running as a Trump Republican and every single Democrat is running as a Biden Democrat. This would have been unprecedented a generation ago and is now the new normal.
I also think the founders were woefully naive on thinking parties wouldn’t develop, especially since that generation chose sides almost as soon as they left Philadelphia and the British system they knew and just split from had Whigs and Tories. I still believe that officially we should be represented by individuals rather than party lists and I definitely don’t want the party leadership deciding you can’t even run because you bucked the party. Yes, the parties are now more internally consistent than in the past, but voters should still choose candidates on their own merits.
May have given Reagan a third term too. OTOH probably ditto for Clinton.
Does Ike beat Kennedy if he runs again in 1960?
I think Mr. Reagan barely finished his second term. I don’t think he would have run for a third term even in the absence of an explicit term limit.
I think Bill Clinton would have easily won re-election. If he had, there would have been no war on terror and no invasion of Iraq.
You’re overconfident on the no war prediction. 9/11 still happens and we’d still be in Afghanistan at least. You also conveniently forgetting that Sen. Clinton voted for the war and the former President supported it at the time. He was the first president who committed the US to regime change in Iraq. and attacked it with air strikes multiple times throughout his presidency without congressional authorization. I would have preferred a third Clinton term to any Bush one, but Gore would have been the better President for 9/11.
I agree that the 9/11 attack would have happened. I think Bill Clinton would have treated it as a criminal matter, just as he handled the first 1993 attack.
Regarding the 2004 Iraq invasion, I invite you to re-read the piece you linked. I note the following (emphasis mine):
It would have been extraordinary for ANY ex-President to refuse to support the 2003 invasion. Instead, he said he supported it for the lead and headline, and also revealed why it would not have happened on his watch in the details.
The 2003 Iraq invasion was a major strategic blunder promoted by a cabal of right-wing extremists who had the ear of the sitting vice president who happened to be the puppet-master of the allegedly often-impaired president.
Neither Bill Clinton nor Al Gore would have been foolish enough to make such a blunder. That cabal of extremists hated Bill Clinton precisely because he consistently and properly ignored them. Neither Bill Clinton nor Al Gore would have been tempted to direct multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts to their private family business.
Bill Clinton was a much better president than you admit.
I’ve walked away from a lot of my previous criticism of his presidency. He’s on my top 15. I think any other Democrat in the Reagan consensus years would have had to make similar decisions. I think being scarred from Rwanda made him and Hillary more hawkish and more likely to intervene. It’s why he signed that bill and why a lot of that cabal, the Project for a New American Century co-signers, met with him at the time to convince him to sign it.
The foreign policy establishment bought into the lies of Ahmed Chalabi. I think he would have finished the job in Afghanistan and maybe used more air strikes against Iraq, maybe even a full blown air war, but I have my doubts he would have just let the existing successful containment strategy continue without some kind of ramping up the military pressure on Iraq. Maybe not on the same time table and maybe he backs down without UN support, but he was in that Hillary/Kerry/Biden liberal hawk consensus.
I can’t imagine Bill Clinton launching an unprovoked strike with no contingency planning for what happens afterward. I also can’t imagine him using language like “crusade” in the runup, and staging “Mission Accomplished” photo-ops afterwards.
I think whatever military steps he took would have been carefully planned, restrained, and successfully orchestrated.
Until Donald Trump, George W. Bush was the worst president of my lifetime. I think America has suffered an enormous moral, spiritual, and ethical decline since 9/11 — a decline that would not have happened if a competent president had been in office.
That’s fair. I could see him repeating 1998 and launching air strikes on suspected weapons sites to force the inspectors back in, or using the threat of war to force them back in, and then waiting for the results. When they found no weapons, he might have left it alone. I do not see him cooking the books to justify war either.
Another counter factual is he might have launched the pre-emptive strike on Afghanistan he briefed Bush on in the waning days of his presidency and that could have prevented or lessened the impact of 9/11. Clinton’s foreign policy was largely successful in my book.
On procedural grounds, I make the perhaps rash assumption that any such change would be intentionally to avoid applying to a sitting president.
If elections are allowed to happen, I don’t think Mr. Trump will survive the next one.
I don’t think he’ll survive either, and it takes a lot to amend the Constitution. There WILL be an election this year for reasons laid out much better than I can at https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2020/Pres/Maps/Apr02.html#item-3 and followed up at https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2020/Pres/Maps/Apr03.html#item-6
I’m more worried about the stuff Jack talks about where we have the optics of a normal election but it’s integrity is obstructed. God forbid the post office shuts down and the virus is still with us in November and vote by mail can’t occur.
Yes, I believe the “deep right” is looking into how to steal the election if Trump loses. I expect the validity of the results to be contested in key swing states. Think Gore’s loss in Florida or Abrams loss in Georgia, only worse. Republican controlled legislatures, Secretaries of State and State Supreme Courts may all come into play. Expect bots to flood the internet with misinformation and outright falsehood. And, be prepared for violent outbreaks if Trump loses.