Hindsight 2020 - March 2019 edition

Before I say anything the 2020 election, let us give thanks to the president. Thank you, Mr. Trump for setting a new precedent for presidential power. Traditionally, Congress has the power of the purse. Congress consistently told him "no" about funding the building of a wall on our southern border, but he is choosing to ignore it giving us a new tier of presidential power. We will surely remember this when a Democratic president takes over. We can declare emergencies also. If Congress refuses to fund the Green New Deal or the Medicare For All ... we say "Emergency" and pull out the funding reserved for disasters and invasion for our pet product.  Thank for having the foresight for giving us this power.

Trump's 2020 campaign has started collecting data on three Democrats, according to Politico: Booker, Warren and Harris. We look like we have some front runners at least in their minds.

Back to the issues: About those issue, David Leonhardt in the NY Times suggested that the issues don't matter much in the Democratic primary. Why? Because the candidates (12 now I believe), mostly agree with each other. So we should primarily be concentrating on one thing: Who can beat Trump?  He says that Sherrod Brown and Kamala Harris are the standouts.But they are all out there, still talking about the issues. You may or may not agree with them, but every single one of them is better than Trump. If you say that both parties are to blame for our awful political situation, then you are just announcing to the world that you haven't been paying attention for the last 30 years.

The Republican party is still the party of global warming denial, maintaining the status quo on health care and billionaire tax cuts. By the year 2050, there may be no maple syrup production in Vermont and no wine grapes growing in California, but yet, a border wall is the emergency. I think the existential and economic crisis of our environmental situation is the real emergency. How silly of me!

I would love another president, like Obama, that would make the right wing extremist freak out. This generally means we are going in the right direction as a society. So a Jewish, Hispanic or a Black Woman as a president would be a really good thing then we can watch every scumbag pundit on Fox "News" heads explode.

Announcing this month:
Vermont Senator, Bernie Sanders: Bernie was the dark horse candidate in 2016. He enters this race as one of the front runners, if not the front runner. At this point, they could all be chasing him if he gets the momentum that he did last time. He is 77 years old which for many makes him too old. Is this ageism or simple practicality? The presidency is a very stressful job so his health is something to take into consideration, but health and age are not the same thing. His VP candidate should be chosen wisely because of this. He has two scandals behind him: (1) his wife's problems with Burlington College and (2) the sexism in his staff during the 2016 campaign. Hopefully, both of them don't weigh too heavily in the general voter's minds. If you think about him running against Trump, these "scandals" are minuscule compared to anything Trump has accumulated in only two years in office. As a Vermonter, I like Bernie and I have voted for his for both Rep. and Senator. I also voted for him in the primaries in 2016. I have met him twice. I disagree with him on a lot (particularly on economics), but I know him as an honorable and honest person. I vote for him because I trust him. He represents us well. He'd be a fine president. Jamelle Bouie in NY Times, says that Bernie is the only candidate so far that has a clear and comprehensive message on foreign policy, something he lacked during the 2016 campaign.

Bernie has the passion without details while Warren has details but is lacking in the passion. This makes me think that among the two further left candidates, Bernie is more likely to beat Trump, but far left is still going to be tough to win in the general election.

South Bend Mayor, Pete Buttigieg: In last month's Hindsight 2020, I didn't mention Pete Buttigieg (pronounced Buddha judge), who is the two term mayor of South Bend, Indiana. What's a mayor of a city of 100,000 people doing running for president? Good question. One thing to point out, he has more experience in government than Trump did when he became president. He is another Rhode Scholar, an Afghanistan war veteran and is openly gay. Just on that last sentence alone, he is a better candidate than Trump. I've heard him speak a view times in the past few weeks and I like him, a lot actually. But the key question here is: will the general public vote for a gay man? a married gay man? It is hard to believe he'd win the general election.

New York Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand: She is very pleasant and personable. If you have watched Colbert at any point in the past, you may have seen her on one of his shows. She was conservative in her past, but has claimed to be reformed. She appears to me to be an opportunist and a hypocrite.When she talks about important issues she comes off as being quite trite. When sexual assault accusations came out about Senator Al Franken, he asked for investigations into the allegations and she lead the charge to throw him under the bus. Now that much worse allegations have come out about Lt. Governor of Virginia, Justin Fairfax, she is calling for an investigation. Not sure why Al Franken didn't get this respect. She is a lightweight and I wouldn't turn my back on her.

Governor of Washington Jay Inslee: He is the current governor of the state of Washington and used to be a member of the US House of Representatives. His campaign is the only one so far to have his campaign headquarters fully based on the West Coast. He is from humble stock with his mother being a clerk at Sears while his father was a high school counselor and football coach. His big issue is the environment which makes him appealing to me. Can a relatively unknown like this defeat a sitting president? Since that President is Trump, perhaps, yes.  Clinton did it to Bush and Bush (the first one) was a half decent President.

Marianne Williamson: She is a new age spiritualist author from Houston and is often called Oprah's "spiritual adviser." I don't take her very seriously and unless I see something that makes her qualified to run this country, I am not going to mention her again.

Those still not declared yet:
Former VP Joe Biden, former NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, Governor of Montana Steve Bullock, former Governor of Colorado John Hickenlooper, former Governor of Virginia Terry McAuliffe, Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, Rep. from Massachusetts Seth Moulton, former Rep. from Texas Beto O'Rourke, Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, California Rep. Eric Swalwell and Mark Warner, Senator from Virginia.

The rest of the field:
Cory Booker: I have notice that eight of my friends, on Facebook, are following Mr. Booker. One of them is a staunch Republican so I know this doesn't mean much, other than he probably has the most name recognition in the Democratic field right now, among those who have announced. He made a visit to Iowa in February and is hiring staff in the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. He is trying to draw a distinction between himself and his competition stating that they haven't run anything and while he has run a major city, Newark. He has released a plan to reduce housing costs.

Kamala Harris: California's primary has been moved up early this year. This gives a distinct advantage to Ms. Harris. She has visited Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada in February. She advocated for universal childcare and has proposed the LIFT act to assist struggling middle class families.

Amy Klobuchar: The Senator from Minnesota raised $1 million within 48 hours of announcing her candidacy which is pretty impressive. She is the only candidate that is positioning herself as a moderate. She may do well if Biden stays out of the race. If he does enter the race, his name recognition alone may overshadow her.

Elizabeth Warren: While Bernie talks about blowing the system up and rebuilding, she talks about restructuring the system from within. She has proposed a universal childcare program.and a family leave act. She is a policy candidate, which may have a lot of appeal to someone like me, but many voters choose based on personality and the "would I like to share a beer with this person?" question looms bad for her. If I were voting on domestic policies alone, she may have my vote.

Julian Castro: He plans on visiting all 50 states during his campaign. I'm looking forward to seeing him here in VT if he lasts that long. Maybe he should just come on over when he is pounding the pavement in New Hampshire. Since we're overwhelmingly for Sanders, I doubt if we'll see him.

Tulsi Gabbard: If you are looking for the peace candidate, she might be your candidate. She has come out strong against US involvement in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Here is an interesting fact about her. Her net worth is only $208,504.00. This is really amazing since she lives in a very expensive state, Hawaii.

John Delaney: Because he declared so early, he has already visited all 99 counties in Iowa. He is another moderate candidate who has gotten accolades from even conservatives like George Will who in a November 2018 opinion piece in the Washington Post, stated that Democrats should consider a moderate like Delaney to defeat Trump. While having a background in business might not appeal to the left in the Democratic party, it may be gold in the general election. He is pro-business but he still stands in all the right places on the issues that Democrats care about: health care, the environment and education etc.

Andrew Yang: He is another candidate I am not taking too seriously because he has no government experience, but it seem like others are. Rolling Stone Magazine puts him at #17 among 27 candidates (published in mid February 2019) which is not great but is higher than Delaney or Gabbard. So I will keep him on my radar.

Talk to you next month.