Why I Think President Biden is the Worst President Ever

Published 2Sep24.  Updated on 5Sep24 to add #7 (Charter Schools).  I had intentionally left that off originally because I didn't have the data at that time.

In a previous blog explaining why some voters favor Trump, I covered much of this information.  Here, I have separated it out and organized it better.  Short summary:

1.       President Biden has set the world on fire, while reducing our ability to defend ourselves.  This alone would justify my conclusion.
2.       We needed deficit spending to keep the pandemic from causing a depression.  However, when such disasters are over, we need to save for the next crisis.  Instead, President Biden has gone on an unprecedented spending spree.
3.       Under his leadership, the Democratic party has undermined our election process with major deceptions in each presidential election and by interfering in opposition parties.  In addition, he has tried repeatedly to outlaw requiring voter photo ID in federal elections and to allow unlimited ballot harvesting.  At best, Biden is the second-worst president in history in this regard to Trump.
4.       His energy policies have limited (relatively clean) energy production in the USA and boosted (dirty) energy production in Venezuela, Iran, and Russia.  He makes our allies and independent countries dependent on our enemies, enriching those enemies  and costing us jobs and revenue, while worsening the world’s environment.
5.       He has concentrated more power in the Executive.  This has been a long-term trend, well before Biden, but it continues to escalate.    
6.       After promising to bring us together, he has been the second-most divisive president in my lifetime (Trump wins the title).
7. He has been the least supportive president as regards public charter schools.  In matched-student comparisons, such schools have improved urban reading and math results by 16%.

The details:

1)     The world is on fire worse than any time in my lifetime.  This is not an accident; it sadly can be attributed directly to President Biden (Ukraine, Afghanistan).  Neville Chamberlain is widely disparaged for his 1938 agreement allowing Germany to annex the Sudetenland in return for a promise to make no further land demands.  President Biden, in contrast, has made numerous decisions that have exacerbated the situation. 

In President Biden’s fantasy world, he is the second coming of FDR.  But FDR strengthened the military tremendously in the years before we entered WWII.  Each of President Biden’s military budgets has increased by less than the inflation rate.  Wake up!  China, Russia, Iran et. al. are serious threats to democracy, including in the USA.

2)     The inflation during a President’s first term is generally not related to their policies; it is the result of prior administrations.  We needed deficit spending to counter the impact of COVID.  However, in good times, we must save money so we can operate at a deficit when crises such as COVID or war occur (10 Lessons from the Pandemic).  Instead, President Biden President has gone on an unprecedented spending spree that will burden future generations with intolerable and unnecessary debt levels.

Here's a CBO Projection of Debt (not reflecting Biden's Proposed Tax Increases.  

A CBO report on the 2024 deficit recently projected it to be 27% higher than projected in February in February, at 99% of GDP, rising to 122% of GDP in 2034 and continuing to rise thereafter.  The increase of the past six months was caused by support for Israel and Ukraine, student loan forgiveness, higher Medicaid costs and FDIC insurance.

3)     Undermining our electoral process:

Hoaxes: The Democrats have created significant election deception for three consecutive presidential elections.  I don’t hold President Biden responsible for the 2016 deception, but he certainly is responsible for 2020 and 2024.

2016: Hillary Clinton’s campaign funded the “Steele Dossier” hoax.

2020: President Biden’s staff stimulated 51 Intelligence officers to state falsely that the Hunter Biden laptop appeared to be Russian disinformation.  (The media failed to report how the statement was created and that many intelligence officers refused to sign it.)  The CIA had proof that the statement was false, but James Clapper, former National Security Director, testified that he intentionally avoided access to CIA classified information that he was entitled to see because he “wanted only to go on what I had seen publicly”.   That is, he wanted the plausible deniability which he has since relied upon.

2024: Despite his 2020 claims that he would be a “one-term”, “interim”, “transition” president,  President Biden decided that he wanted to run again.  During his term, he hid his deteriorating mental faculties by avoiding interviews and obscuring doctors’ visits (meanwhile excoriating Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for a smaller transgression in health transparency).  When Robert Hur accurately described the difficulty in indicting him about his intentional keeping of classified documents, the Democrats engaged in character assassination.  Reports of Biden’s failures were characterized as political lies and films of his instability were falsely labelled “doctored”.  The Democrats suppressed opposing candidates in Democratic primaries at least partly so that Biden’s losses would not be exposed.

Now the Democrats try to convince us that President Biden did a patriotic thing by voluntarily stepping down.  The truth is that he tried to hoodwink us and that he strongly resisted stepping down.  Now we have a Presidential candidate who was not vetted in any primaries and who is running the shortest Presidential campaign in history.

Suppressing democratic elections:  During Biden’s presidency, the Democrats expanded earlier practices by spending $51.5 million in 2022 to interfere in Republican primaries in 12 states to nominate Republicans who would be easier to beat.   They say Trump is a threat to democracy, yet they finance the Trumpiest candidates.  How’s that for hypocrisy?  Interfering in the other party’s primary is unpatriotic and a strong threat to democracy.  It continues today.

Likewise, the Democrats also took a variety of clearly undemocratic and immoral steps to undermine the “No Labels” party.  You might argue that Biden did not lead some of these efforts, but he was the leader of the party, the President of our country, and should have urged Democrats to discontinue these activities.

The Democrats have also colluded with Republicans in several ways to thwart democracy.  These may not be Biden’s responsibility.  “Sore loser” laws exist in most states precluding a candidate for running for a position if they lost a primary election for that post.  The parties work together to undermine Ranked-Choice voting because it poses a threat to their duopoly.  They engage in joint gerrymandering, creating safe districts for each other.  In safe districts, the general election is decided in the primary of the party whose seat is assured.  Thus, a small percentage of that party (generally those most extreme) determine who will win the general election.

Election reform: President Biden continues to lie about election laws in GA and other states (see Voting Laws and Voter Suppression and Election Fraud).  Meanwhile, Democrats continue to try to allow unlimited voter harvesting and ban requiring voter photo ID for federal elections.  (See section 303a and 307(f)(2) of H.R. 1 and sections 103-104 of the HEROES Act. HEROES Act.)  In my view, the Democrats’ (fortunately unpassed) bills to accomplish these goals are a significant threat to democracy, moving us back toward Tammany Hall/Richard Daley/Pendergast elections.  My local Democratic newspaper repeatedly refused to publish a letter to the editor I wrote on this topic because they insisted I was wrong.  When I finally sent them the relevant text of the laws, they discontinued communication without acknowledging that I was right.

4)   Energy policy: President Biden’s energy policy strikes me as a Saturday Night Live skit.  Prior to entering office, Biden said his position was “No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill.  Period.”  He also said “no new fracking” and “no new oil and gas permits on public land”.  While in office, he said “we're going to be shutting [coal] plants down all across America”. 

The Keystone XL pipeline was subject to a huge number of regulatory bodies in the US and Canada with numerous expensive studies required over many years.  Each time they passed the “last hurdle”, the US added new requirements for political reasons.  Frustrated that the XL Pipeline passed each requirement, President Obama finally approved the project in March 2012.  In November 2015, Secretary of State John Kerry said there was a “perception” that it would increase greenhouse-gas emissions and whether that was true or not, it was not in the US’s interest to continue the pipeline.  So, in a colossal example of perfidy, Obama shut it down.  Trump appropriately allowed it to re-start.  On his first day in office, Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline, making a mockery of US regulations and laws.  What is the purpose of a regulatory process if the president can cancel the project because some of his constituents don’t like it?

Nord Stream II: After blocking the Keystone XL pipeline, President Biden decided to help Russia build Nord Stream II to get gas to Germany while by-passing Ukraine.  He did so, despite bipartisan opposition, by waiving multiple Trump-era sanctions.

Boosting foreign oil: After putting the industry on notice that he wanted to put them out of business, Biden blamed the industry for energy shortages.  He turned to Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia to boost production.  What sense does this make?

a.      Attacking our fuel sources makes our energy supply less stable, hurts our economy and costs jobs.

b.      He made concessions to Venezuela and Iran, helping terrible regimes and funding terrorism.

c.      He helped Russia export oil, undermining Ukraine and funding Russia’s war.

d.     He made our allies and third world countries dependent on our enemies for energy.

e.      He increased worldwide pollution significantly because those foreign sources develop energy in much less environmental fashion than we do.

LNG: President Obama embraced LNG exports for geopolitical reasons and because exported LNG was more environmentally friendly than foreign local coal.  Trump embraced LNG exports, approving permits on average in 7 weeks. 

Biden averaged 11 months to approve (nearly 7 times as long) until, in January 2024, he “paused” approvals to reconsider whether to allow them.  A review may well have been a good idea.  However, as President Biden has made so many energy decisions based on politics rather than sound reasoning, there is cause to be skeptical.  (A court ruled that he could review policy, but that the law required him to process applications in the interim.  In weighing the court’s ruling, I sadly must keep in mind that President Biden has repeatedly taken steps that he knows are not within his jurisdiction.)

This article gives the anti-LNG-export argument, that it is dirtier than local coal (because of diverting natural gas to LNG rather than increasing natural gas production) and will replace renewables (countries that invest in LNG facilities won’t want to convert to renewables).

My main take-away is that we make major decisions based on unreliable studies, as this article argues regarding studies under Obama and Trump.  The current studies also might be wrong.

Opponents suggest that, if we don’t export LNG, countries will develop more renewable resources.  Did they consider that countries may build the facilities anyway, to receive LNG from Russia (which had record LNG exports in December), Iran and Qatar, our biggest LNG competitors?

Electric cars: I’ve been an advocate of alternative fuels for a long time.  In the mid-1990s, I successfully insisted that Transamerica allow me to have a flexible fuel vehicle for my company car.  But the hellbent for leather approach to electric cars does not make sense to me.  We seem to be plunging ahead without knowing what we’re doing:

a)        Some studies indicate that hybrids might be a better approach, but Biden won’t “pause” his pushing of the electric car button.

b)       Electric cars require a tremendous amount of rare earth minerals which are mostly mined in China (and secondarily in the Congo with forced labor).  President Biden is creating a huge strategic risk for the USA by giving China control over a critical resource and worldwide pricing of this resource.

c)         Biden has picked some projects to invest in that are trying to develop rare earth minerals from waste (I don’t think the federal government should be picking winners and losers).  On the other hand, he has blocked mining of rare earth minerals.

d)       We don’t know the impact electric cars will have.  Currently there are reports of fires and the cars are much heavier, likely requiring more infrastructure costs that reportedly have not been considered in environmental impact studies.

  5)   Within our Federal government, Presidents are grabbing increased power, with President Biden and his administration continuing to take executive power to new limits, spewing rules at an unprecedented pace without due process.  They cancel student loans, assume control over energy production, try to put industries out of business, invalidate contracts on a widescale basis, set aside huge acreage by executive fiat, create internet and labor law, etc.  (Whether I support the policies or not, I do NOT support the Executive Branch unilaterally making such decrees.)  Agencies act as prosecutor and judge.  Congress abdicates authority, passing laws such as the Inflation Reduction Act which authorizes the President to pick winners and losers.  What could possibly go wrong?

The increased power at the Federal level and particularly in the President has contributed to our national elections becoming so contentious as the stakes and number of issues increase.  Elected Presidents presume they have a multitude of mandates no matter why they got elected.  The Democrats are intent in further undermining the separation of powers that is critical to our success (Separation of Powers).

6)  President Biden promised that he would bring us together.  Instead, he has divided us.  He went from moderate to progressive.  He benefited from the quick development of the COVID vaccine under Trump and he continued some Trump policies relative to tariffs and borders but has never said anything favorable about his opponents.  He claims that Trump handed him a terrible economy, but by the end of Biden's second month in office, the real GDP had recovered to its pre-pandemic level (according to the WSJ, 16Aug24), having improved 48% in the previous three quarters.  Clearly, Biden was not responsible for that recovery.  As noted, he had particularly lied about election laws and has tried to undermine our elections in several ways that have divided us.  We really need a president who will work to bring us together; we haven’t had one since Bill Clinton.

7)  According to Jason Riley ("Biden and Harris Work to Crush School Competition", WSJ, 4Sep24, "Biden is easily the most anticharter president in American history."  President Clinton created the Charter Schools Program and President Obama expanded it.  President Biden's proposed FY2025 Education Budget is $82.4 billion, a 4% increase over FY2024.  However, he proposed a 9% cut for the Charter Schools Program.  In addition, Riley quotes Christy Wolfe of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools as saying the Biden administration is creating more obstacles to make it harder to get the money.  (Note: I'd likely conclude that the Federal government should be less involved in Education, but that is not the point here.)   President Biden is, in his own words, "not a charter-school fan", even though a large matched-student study by Stanford University shows that charter schools produced 16% better learning in both math and English for urban schools.

What Would Likely Happen if Trump is Elected in 2024?

Although I’m a never-Trumper, I acknowledge that Trump did some good things as president and that his Presidency was greatly more favorable than President Biden’s term. 

Many people voting for Trump are hoping to reprise what was happening in our country pre-pandemic.  However, for the following reasons, a second Trump presidency is hugely unpredictable and less likely to have the favorable consequences of his first term.  (Admittedly, predicting is speculative, particularly with respect to Trump.)

1.        Trump has no principles.  He does what feels good to him and is very volatile.  It is not clear that he would try to do things he did in his first administration.

2.        Who will serve in his cabinet and in the White House if he gets elected?  The adults who were in the room the first time are likely to be replaced by people in whom I’d have a lot less confidence.  Why would any intelligent reasonable person want to report to Trump?  He has no loyalty and is most likely to stab you in the back. 

When have we ever seen a former President run for re-election and have so many former staffers expressing that he is unfit to be President?  Is it not scary that so many of those who were closest to him feel that he is unfit?  Lots of people criticize Nikki Haley and William Barr for supporting him.  It remains clear that they still consider him to be unfit.  They just consider the alternative to be worse.

3.        His Vice President running mate is telling.  In 2016, he picked Mike Pence, a man of great personal integrity and a patriot.  Pence had tremendous experience and was an effective deal-maker in Congress.  This time, Trump picked J. D. Vance, a young, inexperienced individual whose history since graduating from Yale Law School shows little accomplishment other than enriching himself by writing a book and creating a move that expose the dysfunctionality of the family into which he was born.

4.        His tariffs were a bad idea.  Now he is saying he wants across-the-board tariffs, which clearly can’t be a good idea.  How can across-the-board anything be a good idea?  Across-the-board is the lazy person’s way to avoid having to think and evaluate.

5.        He promises to deport all illegal immigrants no matter how long they have been here, how much they have contributed, whether they have a clean record, and the impact on their families and the economy.

6.        He (like the Democrats; please note I am not praising the Democrats!) has promised stupid things to pander for votes: no tax on tips, free IVF, etc.

7.        Being a lame duck may also make Trump less effective, but I think that will be balanced by his use of Executive Orders.  I have spoken against the growing use of Executive Orders for at least 12 years.  These undermine our separation of powers.  Trump is not alone in this regard.  President Biden told us things were illegal, but he’d do them anyway.  But Trump is likely to ratchet them up even further.  There will be more fights between the Executive Branch and the Courts.  (I think the Supreme Court will continue to support separation of powers, but if you inundate the Supreme Court with issues, it can’t address them all.  Trump is likely to leverage that approach.)

8.        The Democrats and media will fight Trump tooth-and-nail, perhaps even harder than before.  Although the Democrats say “When the Republicans go low, we go high.”, the Democrats lied repeatedly about Trump in his first term and will continue to do so. 

9.        Trump would be inheriting a very different world situation in February 2025.  Trump has not demonstrated that he has the skill set to handle such a situation.  He claims to have a lot of skill as a negotiator, but his “skills” are limited to bullying, temper tantrums, threats, name-calling, etc.  He is NOT a skilled negotiator.  See my blog Risks To Which Trump Exposed Us.  These risks remain and will likely get worse in a second Trump presidency.

10.   In 2016, I described his limited attention span.  It has not gotten any better.  He is often incoherent, as he was in his debate with Biden.

11.   I am worried that such an irrational, emotional person could hold the keys to nuclear war.

12.    Trump could easily walk away from revenge, but he continues to suggest retaliation and has consistently been vengeful his entire (at least, adult) life.  Do you want a large part of the next four years to be focused on revenge more so than governing/  The recent Supreme Court decision making it harder to hold him accountable is troubling and will encourage him to misbehave.  He will undoubtedly continue to engage in childish, petty name-calling which is not constructive.

13.   A president needs to understand the consequences of his actions and modify his behavior to accomplish his goals.  Instead, Trump alienates the voters he needs to win by making fun of Harris’s name and ancestry. 

Incredulously, he speaks in an important swing state (Georgia) where the very popular governor is supporting his candidacy and goes into a prolonged rant against that governor.  When Trump previously tried to defeat that governor, the Georgians demonstrated that they overwhelmingly (for very good reasons) favor Kemp over Trump.  Why a competent, sane person do that?

He had a tremendous opportunity when he attended a Black journalists’ conference and Kamala Harris was not present.  The interviewer asked him a challenging question: Why should African-Americans vote for him in the face of the many slights she rattled off?  From my perspective, this was a GREAT opportunity for him.  He could have responded:

Thank you for asking.  I don’t believe in identity politics.  Just because someone is African-American does not mean that he should vote for me.  That alone is one reason why African-Americans should consider me.  Unlike Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, I don’t take them for granted.  You mentioned disrespectful comments; yes, I’ve done some of those, but look at my overall approach and policies.  Can you imagine a President of the USA saying “If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black.”  When I was president, the unemployment rate for African-Americans hit a historic low.  African-Americans had record increases in real income.  That does not necessarily mean they should all vote for me; for example, affluent professional African-Americans did not experience such benefits themselves. 

Another issue is that the Biden/Harris campaign has set the world on fire.  Who suffers if we have a major world war?  African-Americans are 50% more likely to be in our military than Caucasians, so a war exposes them to more risk.  In addition, they are half as likely to be officers, which exposes them to more risk.  And if a war brings economic hardship, that falls most on the less affluent members of our society, and they are disproportionately Black. 

These comments raise the question: How are we going to improve Black affluence?  In addition to my economic policies, we need to improve the public education system.  We talk about systemic bias in this country, but the public school system is the most systematically biased institution we have and the Biden/Harris team steadfastly supports the teachers unions who have failed the less-affluent portions of the African-American population.   I also directed record sums of support to historically-black colleges.

Am I the President who allowed our cities to burn?  Would I have ordered the police to stand down and let minority-owned businesses burn to the ground?  Of course not, I’m tough on law which is important to protect minority neighborhoods.  But I coupled that with pushing through the First Step Act which may important changes to our judicial and penal practices.  It was hailed by most everyone as a positive and momentous law.

I could obviously go on for a long time.  How has the Biden/Harris border policy affected African-Americans?  Again, it depends on where they live, their affluence level, etc. but illegal immigrants have taken jobs away from African-Americans, they have put downward pressure on wages at the lower end and they have increased crime in the inner city and in prisons.  He could have also mentioned his tariff policy (although I disagree with it).

Instead, Trump blew up.

Trump supporters might say I just made a great case for electing Trump.  I acknowledge that but, besides that other points made herein, this bullet shows how incompetent Trump is.

14.   A Trump presidency would further destroy the Republican party.  From my perspective, Trump is the RINO (“Republican” in name only).  It is a typical schoolyard tactic to cover your weaknesses by pinning them on someone else.   A resounding defeat of Trump would be good in this regard.

The LWV is a partisan organization masquerading as a non-partisan to benefit from non-profit status and to push its favored agenda

The breadth of partisan extremism in our country is breath-taking and discouraging.

For example, the League of Women Voters describes itself as “a nonpartisan, grassroots organization (their bolded text, as per their website).

However, for a long time, they have failed to be non-partisan.  For example, on 2024-07-25, we received a survey that included the following questions.  When I read such “surveys”, I think maybe they should lose their non-profit designation because of slanted advocacy.

#7: Which of the following is the biggest threat to voting?

·        New ID laws

·        Reduced early and mail-in voting opportunities

·        Confusing new voter laws

·        Mis-and disinformation that misrepresents issues

·        Voter intimidation

·        Other, please explain:

I think the biggest threat to our elections is the continued Democratic Party efforts to ban photo voter ID for federal elections and to allow unlimited ballot harvesting.  It is not hard to figure out why LWV chose to leave those issues off their survey.

#9: Which issues are you most passionate about?  Please prioritize your top 3 issues with “1” being the most important issue to you.

·        Universal health care

·        Racial justice

·        Women’s rights

·        Reproductive rights

·        Environment/climate change

·        LGBTQIA+ rights

·        Dark money

·        Immigration reform

·        Ensuring open and equal access to voting

·        Gun safety

·        Passage of the ERA

·        Other, please specify

Note the absence of so many issues such as Education, Public Safety, Balanced Budget, Foreign Affairs (Israel, Ukraine), Freedom of Speech, Border control (could be argued that is it part of “immigration reform”), etc.

I went to their website today and submitted the following comment:

“I am a moderate who has voted equally for Democrats and Republicans.  LWV continues to present itself as non-partisan but does not act accordingly.  For example, question #7 in the survey form you recently sent lists voting threats without mentioning outlawing photo voter ID and unlimited ballot harvesting, both of which the Democrats continue to try to pass.  Question #9 ignores issues such as balanced budgets, border control, safe streets, education, etc.  Have you considered that LWV is guilty of misinformation or disinformation by slanting its surveys to favor Democrats?”

The LWV responded promptly as follows:

Hello,

Thank you for reaching out with your concerns. We are a nonpartisan organization, although we do take stances on certain issues based on careful study and input from our members. You can find out more about our nonpartisan status here: https://www.lwv.org/blog/remaining-nonpartisan-hyper-partisan-times

Kind Regards,

 

Brittany Clark  She/Her Office Manager T 202 263 1300  E bclark@lwv.org   League of Women Voters of the US 1233 20th Street NW, Suite 500 Washington, DC, 20036 www.lwv.org | www.vote411.org

I responded to their response the next day:

Thank you for your response.  As I mentioned originally, I am a moderate who has voted for Democrats and Republicans equally often.  For example, I voted for President Biden in 2020.

You seem to be a wonderful, idealistic person.  Your love and support of animals is admirable.  (I support EarthWatch, for example, and took my daughter on a wonderful EarthWatch trip measuring the intelligence of dolphins.  A lady I know is on the leading edge of lawsuits to defend animal rights.  You might like me to put you in touch with her.)

I suspect you realize that your response does not justify LWV’s slanted surveys and ignored the issue I raised. 

It appears that LWV management decides what they want to do, then sends surveys out slanted to justify their action, but really intended to raise funds.  My theory may be wrong, but it is clear that LWV surveys are intentionally slanted.  I commented this time, but I’ve observed the bias for a long time.

It is sad that such a great organization has chosen to abandon its fundamental principles.

If you are a person of conscience, I suggest that you encourage LWV to improve or that you choose to work elsewhere if LWV insists on partisanship.

Note: As of 23Oct24, Ms. Clark has not responded to my 7/26 email to her.

Be Tolerant of Each Other's Presidential Choices (and other election thoughts)

We should be more tolerant of others’ choice for President of the United States.  As I see it, the parties tried to foist on us a choice between the worst person to have been President* and the person who has been the worst President.**  To the degree that people are trying to find the lesser problem between those choices, I have to commiserate them.

* See my 2016 blog: Donald Trump’s profile

** See my 2024 blog: Why will People Vote for Trump even though they Consider Him Unfit?

If someone is passionately pro-Trump or Progressive (President Biden and the other mentioned possibilities all represent the Progressives), I try to help them understand why people might be voting contrary to their strong preferences.

Depending on the positions taken by the new Democrat candidate, people in non-contested states should consider that they have the privilege and responsibility of voting for neither major party, if they disagree with each.  Your vote doesn’t have any impact except that whichever party you vote for will claim that your vote shows support for that party.  I don’t care who you vote for (Mickey Mouse is OK), I just urge you to keep the established parties from mis-characterizing your vote if you dislike both.

We voters should be united in opposing both parties.  Both parties lie to us to try to divide our country.  As derogatory as they are to each other, they collude to protect their duopoly.  No one is representing the centrist voters and neither party respects democracy or the separation of powers which made our country great.  See my blog: Our Political Parties have Abandoned the Center

The Biden-Trump debate was amazing in that both clients were incoherent.  I was shocked to conclude that had I been dropped in, unprepared, to take either candidate’s position I could have easily won the debate against the other.  Yuck!

Democrats have reason to fear ex-President Trump’s personality, the January 6^th uprising, his lies about the 2020 election, etc.

However, Republicans have cause to fear the woke left that wants to control thought (use of pronouns, etc.).  The Democrats have foisted hoaxes on the public in each of the last 3 Presidential elections. 

·        2016: the Steele Dossier financed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign

·        2020: at the behest of Joe Biden’s campaign, 51 Intelligence Officers sold their souls to convince people that Hunter Biden’s laptop was a Russian hoax.  The media participated by not reporting, for example, that many intelligence officers refused to sign.  Some of those intelligence officials had access to CIA files.  The CIA had already confirmed that the laptop and emails were, indeed, Hunter’s.  When asked why he did not consult with the CIA, James Clapper testified “I didn't want to be tainted by or -- this, in any way, involved access to classified information.    Bad choice of words.  I didn't want -- I wanted only to go on what I had seen publicly.  That's all.”  Sounds like he wanted plausible deniability.

·        2024: the Democrats tried to cover up President Biden’s reduced capabilities.

The Biden turmoil is interesting.  There was no concern in the Democratic Party (other than Dean Phillips who was ignored/ridiculed) until they decided that Biden would lose the election.  A deteriorating President wasn’t a problem to the Democratic Party, but a loss of power was unacceptable.

In the discussion, many Democrats make it clear that they don’t want VP Kamala Harris to be the candidate.  The main argument expressed in support of Ms. Harris was that picking someone other than her would alienate African-American voters.  It is stunning that her credentials were rarely mentioned. 

The Democrats undermine their minority talent.  This 2020 article explains “increased pressure for Biden to pick a woman of color” to be VP.  Although it also includes a Biden quote “the most important thing is that there has to be someone who, the day after they’re picked, is prepared to be president of the United States of America”, the Democrats created the impression that Ms. Harris was selected because of being a Black woman rather than a uniquely strong candidate for VP.

Likewise, during the 2020 campaign, President Biden pledged to appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court.  It would have been better to say that he was going to pick the best candidate he could find, then select Ketanji Jackson.  But, as is typically the case, trying to buy votes justified, in his mind, setting Ketanji Jackson up to be viewed as having been selected for her physical attributes more so than her acumen.

President Biden did the same thing with the military, announcing that he would promote minorities, rather than saying he’d pick the best people for the jobs.  Either way, he could have promoted minorities but he preferred to increase their burden of being viewed as “quota” nominees, because he felt doing so was to his political advantage.

President Biden sadly showed the accuracy of the phrase “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  Biden kept stating that his candidacy was critical to the future of the USA.  No other candidate could step in for him.  Even if his motivation was not malicious, his thinking clearly was corrupted.  Once people develop that perspective, it is an easy slippery slope to do unethical things (such as those mentioned earlier) because they tell themselves that such actions are critical so they can assume/retain power to help people.

Given a choice of Biden, Harris, Trump, or Vance, I’d pick Kamala Harris.  It is hard to imagine she could be worse that President Biden.  I’ve often commented on my opposition to ex-President Trump and as noted below, J. D. Vance creates huge concerns.  I admit that I did not like Ms. Harris’ 2020 campaign to be President because she was too progressive.  But that’s scant evidence and out-of-date compared to what I’ve seen of the others and primaries demand that people be extreme to succeed..

J. D. Vance has done a TREMENDOUS job of making his life meaningful.  He was raised in an extremely abusive family.  Joining the Marines, attending Ohio State University and then Yale Law School are admirable achievements given his handicap.  I would LOVE to support a candidate with that background, but I have a lot of concerns about Mr. Vance.

1.      He says he joined the Marines believing President Bush had good cause to invade Iraq, then was disillusioned by the government’s deception in that regard.  Spot on!  But then Vance uses that experience to justify being the most anti-Ukraine politician in Washington.  It doesn’t take much thought to understand that the Iraq invasion and helping Ukraine defend itself are light-years apart, perhaps diametrically opposite.  It is hard to believe that Mr. Vance does not understand this.  Defending Ukraine is probably my #1 issue, so Mr. Vance gets dinged for a terrible position and questionable motivation.

2.      He has said that the 2020 election was stolen and “"If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there”.

3.      He believes Lina Khan is doing a great job as Chair of the Federal Trade Commission.  That’s worthy of an entire blog.

4.      In 2016, he wrote "I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler."  Now he enthusiastically supports Trump, claiming that Trump convinced him by being a great President.  This is extremely different from people like Nikki Haley and Bill Barr who continue to believe that Trump is not suited to be President but feel that he is a better choice than Biden (and possibly other Democrats).

5.      He does not accept abortion even in the case of rape.

6.      He is a supporter of high tariffs.  (At least 3 of the candidates are pandering to voters with unwise tariff programs in my opinion.)

7.      His career since Yale is short and not very encouraging:

a.      In the first 3 years, he worked for Senator Cornyn, then clerked for Judge David Bunning of the US District Court in eastern Kentucky, then spent nearly two years as an attorney with Sidley Austin.  I don’t yet know the details of his jobs, but moving around so quickly makes me wonder if he could have accomplished much.  I’ve never heard a reference to anything he accomplished in those jobs.

b.      In 2016, his book “Hillbilly Elegy” was published.  Working on the book seemingly would have distracted him from getting a lot done in the jobs mentioned in the previous bullet.

c.      It is my understanding that his Mamaw (grandmother) taught him that family is important above all else.  I have this nagging question of why, if family is so important, he would write a book and fund a movie to demonstrate how incredibly dysfunctional his family was, including their unlawful activity.

d.      Then, he spent two years in venture capital, as a partner with Peter Thiel.  How did a young fellow with his experience earn that position?  What did he accomplish?

e.      He then joined a new venture to jump-start new companies in cities not usually thought of as hubs for new success companies.  That’s a great vision and he can sell it.  But what came of it?  What did he accomplish?

f.       Then Thiel and others seeded his next venture, Narya, with $100 million to accomplish the same goal.  Clearly, Vance can talk his way into positions and money. 

g.      Vance moved back to Ohio to be closer to family with the idea of starting a non-profit “Our Ohio Renewal” to deal with the opioid crisis (pertinent given his family’s drug history) and running for political office.

h.      Inside JD Vance's Faltering Ohio Anti-Opioid Nonprofit  is one of two sources I read that reports that his non-profit seems to have done extremely little.  He says they commissioned a study, but it is not clear that anyone has ever seen the study.  A spokesperson for Ohio Opioid Education Alliance had never heard of Vance’s non-profit.  Despite his ties and clear fund-raising ability ($100 million for his VC fund), he raised so little money (less than $50,000/year) before closing that it was not required to report to the IRS.  Reportedly, most of the money raised was paid to his best friend from Yale Law school who, at the same time, was serving as a political advisor to Vance.  To be fair, this friend developed stage IV non-Hodgkins’ lymphoma, which clearly would have had a very detrimental impact on the non-profit.  But how come this quintessential fund-raiser was not able to raise funds for such a lodestone cause?  Maybe that’s not where his real interest lay.

 

Regarding other potential Democratic candidates besides Harris:

Gretchen Whitmer (governor of MI) and Amy Kobuchar (Senator, MN) stimulate my interest. Klobuchar ran a more leftist campaign than I would have liked in 2020, but our system pushes candidates to the extremes in primaries.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigrieg interested me early, but I became convinced that he is inexperienced, not a good thinker and unfavorably ambitious.  He wants to pack the Supreme Court.

Governor Gavin Newsom (CA) is a physically attractive individual with good presentation skills.  He sounds good unless you think about what he is saying or look at what he is doing.  Because he is so slick, I worry that he could win an election and do a lot of harm.

I’d have to give more careful attention to Governor Pritzker of Illinois.  He seems to have accomplished a lot of things in IL, but I’d have to study those changes to form an opinion.  It seems as though he has been very partisan and has been involved in gerrymandering and not adequately addressing IL’s debt.  But as noted, I’d have to look more deeply.

Governor Shapiro (PA) intrigued me.  I believe that our public education system is the most systemically racist institution in our country.  Public charter schools have clearly shown how we can improve education in the inner city, but the teachers’ unions have steadfastly opposed public charter schools.  In two consecutive campaigns, Governor Shapiro pledged to support programs which would enable impoverished students to escape their dysfunctional schools.  But each time, he has reversed himself after the election.  I gave him some benefit of the doubt the first time, but now that it has happened again, I am leery.  Of course, I’d have to hear what he has to say, but for now, his words don’t seem to carry much weight with him.  Why should they carry weight with me?