Most of us or at least many of us are of one mind. We don’t like the choice of a national leader. Donald Trump’s baggage is well known and President Biden who bears the burden of incumbency, is at 40% approval and only 24% think he is leading the country in the right direction; at least that is how the Real Clear Politics (RCP) averages see it. While the election is six months away, the polls seem to have settled into this statistical pattern.
A foundational problem is that most voters have concluded that Washington is broken. They think that a majority of its “big deals”—the President, Vice President and leaders of Congress—are not so big. As President Biden would say, “here is the deal”; many if not most voters believe the “big deals” have connived, not earned their way to their exalted positions.
So if everybody is not up to the job, why is Trump so bad many ask? It is not the Trump of the “hush money trial,” but the former president and his four years. Or, more cynically, why is your narcissist better than ours?
The other side sees President Biden as a narcissist as well. Their argument: if Biden cannot understand why he should retire it is because he too is in some version of a narcissistic fog. The President is seen by many as a good person but not a preferred President and this is not a popularity contest.
It has been argued, more locally, that Maryland’s popular former Governor, Larry Hogan, should not be favored by right-thinking voters in the Senatorial election because his election might help the Republican Party and everything possible should be done to burn it down.
If we are going to start burning candidates on the stake of their Party affiliations, millions would say burn down both of the dominant Parties, not just their candidates. Neither Party is popular and for good reasons. Yet both, working together, have erected barriers making it damnably hard to mount a 3rd Party. The one thing they are certain about: we don’t want to share power.
I am an Independent, and if I could rebuild the two political parties, I wouldn’t. What I would do, however, is work at the State levels to make it much easier to organize and credential political parties. Not simple but easier.
Much of the dynamism of America comes from the freedom to start things. We have millions of for-profit and not-for-profit organizations that meet needs and demands with innovative responses. Organizationally we have elected and appointed officials with a mandate to protect us from monopolization. We seem to understand the importance of diffusing power.
So lets take a look at political performance within our strictly protected two party system, beginning with our immense budget deficit. The last time our fiscal accounts balanced Bill Clinton was President and Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House. The last national legislator who attempted to lead us back to balance was Tom Coburn, a Republican Senator from Oklahoma; his last year in office was 2015. His was a lonely voice.
The last President to win a war was George H W Bush. He put together an impressive coalition of nations and kicked Iraq out of Kuwait, in what is known as the Gulf War. And then he brought our soldiers home. He did not attempt to remake Iraq.
The last President to leave the White House with modest wealth was Gerald Ford. Joe Biden is said to have a net worth of $9m yet he has spent his entire career receiving pay checks from governments.
I could go on. The US government does not, for example, take incremental steps to solve problems and then adapt as they learn what works or not. We begin with immense appropriations encircled by heroic language which is then protected by political expenditures.
Our national government has been better. Without an active central government Hitler would have won WWII. The next time you see a veteran salute. I would add that without farsighted action there would not be Social Security and companion health care support laws. And certainly federal civil rights laws and actions were a must. Also environmental consequences of human action or inaction cross State lines.
But we are now stuck. Money from all the special interests attached to the federal budget and government programs of one sort or another has us stuck. Washington is awash in lobbyists, lawyers, political operatives and the like whose sole purpose is to elect candidates who will do what they say. Hundreds of millions are raised to elect and reelect and keep those federally anointed advantages. This debilitating circumstance has been digested even by what pollsters call low information voters.
The 2024 election will not lead to the beginning of any real reform. Eight years of Trump and then Biden reveal the implausibility. Neither have the capacity to lead coalitions or by their popularity deliver for their Party a commanding position from which to lead. And Biden will be a lame duck from day one.
Whew! Yes I know I have offended almost everybody. I, too, am offended. Even at my advanced age I am looking forward to the years to come. Hoping, hoping that I can cast a ballot that will reflect well on our veterans. They have saved us, the free world, and deserve our courageous best.
Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books.
David Taylor says
You make some great points. Can’t wait for the mindless Democrats to comment that “our team isn’t as bad as yours”, which seems to be the only argument they can muster these days. We have seen it on here, that you can’t possibly vote for Larry Hogan, a measured, reasonable, moderate, because he has an R behind his name.
It’s why we are mired in the political muck.
Deirdre LaMotte says
No one is saying “our team isn’t as bad as yours”. What we are saying is Republicans now despise our nation’s
democracy, Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Particularly “all men are created equal”.
Republicans hate an America that restricts their ability to rape the public treasury. It isn’t philosophy or public responsibility – it’s getting at the wealth in terms of
deregulation (higher profits from less gov’t interference), in terms of unrestricted access to enormous public subsidies (with less/ no Congressional oversight) and less/ no legal accountability (abolishing the FBl and the Justice Dept).
Ask Citizen Trump, Citizen Musk, and Jamie Dimon, the Kochs and the Mercers (and the Murdochs). It’s all about money. It has nothing to do with America.
This is why “educated” support the lier , cheat, ignoramus man-toddler: power and money. F the country.
And the Republicans throw women under the bus for the evangelical/Catholic vote.
Read the Heritage’s paper on 2025. Medieval at best.
David Taylor says
You could not be more wrong. The miseducated support the fascism of the left. The left despises the Constitution, most notably the 1st, 2nd, and 4th Amendments; the Electoral College, Senate representation, police officers, and punishing violent criminals, and has no idea what the words “personal responsibility” actually mean. There is no more corrupt politician than Joe Biden.
Enjoy living in your delusional world.
Deirdre LaMotte says
Robert Reich says it best. Open your eyes and see the deception that has consumed you.
Or don’t bother.
On Friday, Trump posted a video featuring an image of President Biden hog-tied —with hands and feet bound together.
Trump has previously posted doctored photos and videos depicting him physically attacking Biden, such as hitting Mr. Biden with golf balls.
It’s all part of Trump’s 5-step fascist plan.
In a previous post, I laid out the defining traits of fascism and how MAGA Republicans embody them, and I suggested that Trump and his lackeys shouldn’t be seen as simply “authoritarian.” They need to be understood as fascist.
But how could Trump actually turn America into a fascist state?
In five steps, which he’s already signaled he plans to take. Here they are:
Step 1: Use threats of violence to gain power.
Hitler and Mussolini relied on their vigilante militias to intimidate voters and local officials. We watched Trump try to do the same in 2020. Even before he incited the attack on the U.S. Capitol, he said on national television: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.”
Now, Trump is vilifying his political opponents as “vermin” who needed to be “rooted out.” He shows an image of Biden hog-tied.
After Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg requested a gag order, providing some 300 pages of exhibits documenting the real-world consequences of Trump’s attacks, Judge Juan Merchan found the filing persuasive. He said Trump’s statements:
“were threatening, inflammatory, denigrating, and the targets of his statements ranged from local and federal officials, court and court staff, prosecutors and staff assigned to the cases, and private individuals including grand jurors performing their civic duty,” citing Bragg’s filing, [and had caused] “the assignment of increased security resources to investigate threats and protect the individuals and family members” of those Trump targeted.
After the gag order was issued, Trump attacked Judge Merchan’s daughter for running a political consulting firm that’s worked with Democrats, saying it should disqualify Merchan from his case. On Friday night, Bragg asked the judge to “clarify or confirm” that the order applies to family members and order Trump to “immediately desist from attacks on family members.”
Also last week, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton spoke out in an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins about Trump possibly instigating violence:
“We do these jobs because we’re committed to the rule of law and we believe in the rule of law. And the rule of law can only function effectively when we have judges who are prepared to carry out their duties without the threat of potential physical harm.”
Meanwhile, Republican election officials have testified to the threats they faced when they refused Trump’s demands to falsify the 2020 election results.
Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state who refused Trump’s demand to “find” the votes needed to flip the state into Trump’s hands, said “my email, my cell phone was doxxed.”
Rusty Bowers, the Arizona state speaker and a pro-Trump Republican who resisted pressure from Trump and Rudy Giuliani and refused to go along with an illegal scheme to replace Arizona’s legal slate of electors, remains a target of pro-Trump partisans. As he said, “They have had video panel trucks with videos of me proclaiming me to be a pedophile.”
Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer for the Georgia secretary of state who helped manage the 2020 presidential election and recount in Georgia that found no Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer for the Georgia secretary of state who helped manage the 2020 presidential election and recount in Georgia that found no widespread fraud, has faced death threats. Sterling admonished Trump:
“Mr. President, you have not condemned these actions or this language. … This has to stop. Stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone’s going to get hurt. Someone’s going to get shot. Someone’s going to get killed.”
Step 2: Consolidate power.
After taking office, a would-be fascist turns every arm of government into a tool of his will. One of Hitler’s first steps was to take over the civil service, purging it of non-Nazis.
In October of 2020, Trump issued his own executive order that would have enabled him to fire tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists. He never got to act on it, but he’s now promising to apply it to the entire civil service if reelected.
Trump has urged making every executive branch employee fireable by the president of the United States. This has become the centerpiece of something called Project 2025, a presidential agenda assembled by MAGA Republicans, that would, as the AP put it, “dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump’s vision.”
Step 3: Demonize a group of people and establish a police state to round them up into detention camps.
Hitler used the imaginary threat of “the poison of foreign races” — mostly Jews — to justify taking control of the military and police, placing both under his top general, and granting law-enforcement powers to his civilian militias.
Now Trump is using the same language to claim he needs similar powers to deal with immigrants. Trump says they’re “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Recently, Trump warned that the country would face a “blood bath” if he lost the election (he then walked back the claim, saying he was referring to losing the auto industry). A few days later, he attacked Jewish Democrats in a radio interview, saying that Jews who vote for Democrats hate their religion and Israel.
At a rally on March 16, Trump baselessly claimed that other countries were sending gang members and other undesirables to the United States: “I don’t know if you call them ‘people,’ in some cases. They’re not people, in my opinion.” He then referred to them as “animals.”
Trump plans to deploy troops within the U.S. to conduct immigration raids and round up what he estimates to be 18 million people who would be placed in mass-detention camps while their fate is decided.
Even though crime is actually down across the nation, Trump is citing an imaginary crime wave to justify sending troops into blue cities and states against the will of governors and mayors: “You’re supposed to not be involved in that, you just have to be asked by the governor or the mayor to come in — the next time, I’m not waiting.”
Trump insiders say he plans to invoke the Insurrection Act to have the military crush civilian protests. We saw a glimpse of that in 2020, when Trump deployed the National Guard against peaceful protesters outside the White House.
With promises to pardon January 6 criminals and stop prosecutions of right-wing domestic terrorists, Trump would empower groups like the Proud Boys to act as MAGA enforcers.
Step 4: Jail the opposition.
As Putin and other of the world’s dictators do, Trump is now openly threatening to prosecute his opponents: “If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business.”
He’s looking to remake the Justice Department into a tool for his personal vendettas: “As we completely overhaul the federal Department of Justice and FBI, we will also launch sweeping civil rights investigations into Marxist local district attorneys.”
In the model of Hitler and Mussolini, Trump describes his opponents as subhuman: “the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country…”
Step 5: Undermine the free press.
As Hitler well understood, a fascist dictator needs to control the flow of information. Trump has been attacking the press for years, calling them “the enemy of the people.”
He’s threatening to punish news outlets whose coverage he dislikes. On his “Truth Social” platform, he wrote: “Our so-called ‘government’ should come down hard on them and make them pay for their illegal political activity. Much more to come, watch!”
He has helped to reduce trust in the media to such a historic low that his supporters now view him as their most trusted source of information. He tells them: “I will never lie to you,” although his lies are constant and continuous.
***
Trump has not hidden his plans. You’ve heard him promise to “be a dictator for one day.” History shows there are no “one-day” dictatorships.
We must take Trump’s 5-step fascist plan seriously and do everything in our power to stop it.
Barbara Denton says
President Biden is not a good man. President Biden is evil. He is a crook who has made millions of dollars selling his “brand”. The whole family has lived off the government all these years.
If you want to cast a ballot that will reflect well on our veterans you must vote for Trump. Biden has thrown veterans out of nursing homes and other housing facilities to house illegal aliens He has done nothing to support our vets.
Deirdre LaMotte says
I don’t ever – EVER – want to hear a Republican lecture, whine or bark about ethics, morality or rule of law.
Because under current circumstances, their hypocrisy absolutely reeks like raw and toxic sewage.
Laurie Powers says
Mr. Sikes,
I agree with your excellent points. I am also an Independent, formerly a life-long Democrat. I am thrilled to be able to vote Independent this election, and for the best candidate in my lifetime, Bobby Kennedy, Jr.
Our grassroots people’s campaign is working tirelessly to get him on the ballot in all 50 states, despite DNC legal challenges in nearly every state to attempt to keep him off the ballot and limit voter choice. We have enough signatures in twelve states already and are officially on the ballot in a handful of those.
A recent Zogby poll of tens of thousands of voters in all 50 states shows Trump handily beating Biden in a two-person match. Kennedy also handily beats Biden in a two-person match. And, Kennedy beats Trump in a two-person match. In a three-way race, Trump barely beats Kennedy and Biden comes in last. Biden cannot win in any scenario and needs to keep his campaign pledge of being a one-term president. Hubris has gotten the better of him and those controlling him won’t cede power. Kennedy has challenged Biden to drop out if objective polls continue to show this outcome leading up to the election.
There is a wonderful new 30-min. promotional film on YouTube called, “Who is Bobby Kennedy” for people who don’t know much about him or have only seen the MSM smears and interview hatchet jobs. It’s an excellent watch. Additionally, Kennedy24.com has campaign information, interviews, policies, etc. where people can learn more about why Bobby feels called at this time and is uniquely qualified to lead and help heal our country.
Deirdre LaMotte says
People like you elected Trump. RFK,Jr. would be the perfect running mate for Trump: both narcissistic
wannabes. They are both gross in every way. Just ask their family members and T’s former cabinet members, ugh.
Jerry McConnell says
Ms Powers, your poll information ( the Zogby Poll ? whatever that is ) is fantastical, as in unbelievable, erroneous and inaccurate. Mr Kennedy is so detached from reality that his own family have disowned and shamed him. Anyone who thinks as you do about him needs to reference accurate information based on facts. But, some people would just prefer not to know the truth. Most of them are Trump supporters, but obviously not all.
Jerry McConnell says
Joe Biden has positioned his party for the strong possibility of failure in November by his refusal to acknowledge his own political, mental and physical vulnerabilities. He could have —with the guidance and support of the leaders of the Democratic Party —helped select and promote an alternative candidate. His failure to do that was an act of arrogance and negligence.
Nevertheless, Biden is ten times better than the Orange Tub of Guts. Republicans are off the deep end supporting this moron ( it’s now been confirmed that Trump’s in early stage dementia ) and they are ignorant and foolish for promoting the most dangerous and immoral criminal seeking public office in the history of America.
Republicans have chosen to try to destroy the fabric of our democratic republic because they are aggrieved and feel maltreated and dominated by their progressive government. The GOP is a shambles and they appear to be reveling in their disfunction and frustration. The House of Representatives is an excellent example of a 5* Clown Show. They seem to relish embarrassing themselves and show no signs of slowing down. And, it’s truly amazing that their constituents don’t seem to care.
Mickey Terrone says
Hello Jerry. It seems to me that far too many Republicans are beyond embarrassment. They believce that if Trump loses the election, it was only because it was rigged and some of them are ready to take to the streets whenever he calls for another revolution. For them, its not about the economy. Many of these zombies are happy to give away their social security, inexpensive health care and women’s rights to avoid prison for getting an abortion. The Dow is now double the value it was when Trump left office. These zombies have no problem with handing billionaires billions more in tax cuts. No, its not about the economy. And its not about our national interest either. They are happy to see America drop NATO, watch democracy die in Ukraine, give the murderous Putin everything he wants and not surprisingly, give away their own rights in our democratic republic. Their “What, me worry?” stance is the essence of political zombiehood.
Ironically, if and when Biden wins, all their economic interests will be far better represented by the Biden Administration via all of his policies. The Democrats take better care of these zombies than their own cult leader, allegedly sent by God to save them and America from immigrants and other minorities. It doesn’t even bother these evangelical christians that their leader sent by God asked a porn star to spank him in a hotel room.
No sir. With these people, the economy isn’t the issue. Their issue is fear of being “bypassed” by colored people and immigrants who outwork them, become better educated in this techno savvy world and prosper while they linger in angry ignorance and laziness. Trump’s bigotry and racism has harnessed their unquestioned support and that will not change.
There must be, and I believe are, many Republican rank and file voters who know better and will hopefully go into the voting booths and vote against this Orange Blob and help us save America. They must know that this is Trump’s last hurrah and he’ll say or do anything to sieze power in the White House.
Paul Rybon says
The only sensible commenter that I see here is David Taylor. Some of them seem to think that, being president gives that person unlimited power. Not true. POTUS is powerless without the consent of the people. Think about it can’t make laws, determine the budget, declare war, prosecute folks they don’t like.
Perfect example of this lack of power is the existing POTUS whom we knew was being reprogrammed in his basement. Democratic apologists seem proud of the fact that he leads the agenda via cue cards. Yet we allow that because of the implied threat of installing the VP who, even Democrat apologists can’t even stand.
Donald Trump tried to weed out this morass of public servants with no real success proving that the president had no practical power even if his own administration. Through carrot and stick techniques we are ruled by a faceless mass of regulators. That’s what Trump is trying to to unwind. God bless him for that.
Jerry McConnell says
Talk about nonsense…Mr Rybon’s comments are typically/predictably loud foul balls The President absolutely doesn’t need the approval or consent the people to exercise his powers: to make executive decisions, including initiating a military action; attacking and retaliating against enemies; or to make financial commitments to their pet programs.
The people elect their President ( ostensibly, since the Electoral College can override the popular vote), but as the world certainly noticed under Trump, our President doesn’t need our approval to do anything, including attacking political opponents and torpedoing existing environmental and social programs that he feels are a burden to big business or to his own personal interests.
One thing is crystal clear about the OrangeTurd — his personal and political interests will be prioritized at the expense of the desires of the public. In stark contrast with Biden, Trump has promised to pursue vendettas against his critics and, if possible, pardon criminals who have committed a felony under his direct instructions.
And that’s just the start of his publicly announced plan to prosecute opponents and critics. He’s apparently convinced Republicans in Congress and in the backwoods of Red Territories that their survival depends on a fascist, one party-dominant
government. Obviously there are many civilians ( including several who “contribute” their thoughts to The Spy ) who buy his b.s. And, that’s the real enigma this country’s facing right now…how can anyone with a sense of decency and fairness, a desire for progress and the common good, and an I Q over 70 possibly support this clown? Well, it really boils down to this: they don’t.