American Election Discontent Amplified

 

Only in America can there be two Super Tuesday Primary Election Days in under a one month span and only in America can one party elite grumble about the election leader while the other party be so evenly divided yet still have their party elite choosing the eventual candidate. The Republican elite are meeting in an effort to find some means of not only stopping the primary leader thus far but also the runner up as they prefer not to have either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz to be their candidate and their only seeming hope is for neither of these men to manage to achieve a first round win allowing for what is being salivated over, a contested convention where anybody can be shoved down the voters throats which often can result in a brokered candidate which could even see the return of Jeb Bush as the compromise best to lead the drive to the White House. On the Democrat side of the campaign there is a self-confessed and proudly stated socialist promising the stars and the moon with some magical formula catching up and threatening to unseat the chosen one, Hillary Clinton and could conceivably win if he breaks out ahead in such states as California and New York and some select other primaries and the Democrat may be feeling the Bern as in Bernie Sanders without more than at most a dozen of the super delegates. Whatever the combinations which make it to the election this November there will be those pushing that a third party candidate with potentially one or both party elites backing such a run as they find the candidate produced by the primaries completely untenable. Such a move or any use of political chicanery denying the obvious voter preference will result in the other party winning the White House almost by default.

 

The campaign has some ugly events which fault has been assigned dependent on the politics of the reporting news reporters. The reality is that these confrontations were pushed by people opposed to the candidate who was either appearing or had been scheduled but forced by threats or under advice from the schedulers who decided that such an appearance could only inflame things more. What is of interest is that there have been such disruptions at other candidate appearances but the news reports have concentrated on one candidate solely simply because the news elite from all sides also have an apparent displeasure with the particular candidate. The slants of the news and party elites are an ugliness which is quite uncomely and may only grow more dire and vicious. The rest of the campaigning and commentary leading to the conventions will continue to become heated to the point of boiling over until, or will it be if, a candidate secures the nomination through the primary process or by a combined primary delegates and super delegates. So, let’s actually look briefly at each party.

 

First we’ll cover the easier one, the Democrat primaries. Hillary Clinton has wrapped up the vast majority of the super delegates which equates to approximately one third of the required delegates to win the nomination. This gave her a commanding lead even before the first primary was held and a single vote had been cast. She has been winning but by ever narrowing margins with some of the largest states still ahead. Bernie “Feel the Bern” Sanders, if we remember back six months, entered into the race at three percent in polls. He has slowly gained ground and should his popularity gain the slimmest margin and Hillary could watch the nomination slip away from her once again. Such a devastating loss would be the end of Hillary Clinton’s political ambitions. It might also make the investigations into her possible wrongdoing while Secretary of State with her mail server and other questionable favor dealing for contributions to the Clinton Foundation. Obviously it would be more embarrassing and potentially more difficult to indict for any of her actions while she was also the Democrat candidate for the Presidency and even more difficult if she wins the White House. It would be strange for her to pardon herself from any wrongdoing as President while it is still possible that President Obama could pardon or otherwise immunize Hillary Clinton freeing her from all charges clearing her from any responsibility. Still, Hillary Clinton most likely will emerge as the Democrat candidate and it remains to see whether she will find an easy path to the White House or a real challenge from a Republican candidate.

 

The Republican nomination is going to be potentially very ugly and that is without any acrimony from their ongoing contests. The media and many of the elite political commentators are running a steady stream of trumped up controversy which is actually quite appropriate as the candidate all the trumped controversy is centered on is in Donald Trump. When they are not trumping Trump they are hoping the party does not find itself running on Cruz control. Sorry, I am not quite capable of doing anything cutesy with John Kasich. The dissatisfaction with politics as usual is apparent in copious amounts on both sides of the populace but has really found a home on the Republican side of the fence. The oddity is that there are two candidates on the Republican side who are anti-establishment and they are the two contesting for the nomination. They could make a deal and keep it private, like that is possible in politics these days, promising to assign their delegates to the other whichever one has the lesser amount in exchange for being either in a choice cabinet spot or better be the running mate on the ticket which would place them in a promising position to be the next candidate after eight years whether the President won reelection of not. This is going to continue to grow more and more acrimonious leading to a great relief once the nomination is secured, assuming it would be secured before the convention. Should the nominating process in Cleveland at the Republican Convention go past the second or third round there will be a greater and greater potential for some chicanery pulled to short-shrift the expression of the voters in the primary voting.

 

 

First Republican President After Split
From Whig Party was Abraham Lincoln

 

There will be near constant critiques and outlandish claims of the elites of either party should their preferred candidate not be proceeding to the nomination resorting to backing a third party or independent candidate which they would use their connections and arrange to place such onto every state ballot is nothing other than making controversy and out of the box and bordering preposterous scenarios simply to press ratings. Both parties will acquiesce to any winner as attempting to defeat their own party’s nominee would be political suicide and a step towards the dissolution of the party and the formation of a new party similar as when the Whig Party refused to side against slavery thus forcing a splinter group to break and form their own party. That party made a theretofore unheard of accomplishment, namely getting their Presidential candidate elected and thus the Whig Party died and the Republican Party gained respectability and has held together through serious challenges before and will likely survive the Trump trumping the party elitists. The elites can disagree with the will of the voters until it is made obvious that taking any other path other than backing the populist candidate and unify in order to reach the real goal that party desires, their man in the White House and not the other party’s candidate. So, enjoy the fireworks for as long as they last and then be amazed as the entirety of each party suddenly become unified and supportive, silent at worst, as the White House and the powers which go with having a friendly rather than adversarial President to work with your people in the congress and the governors and others of the party. Both parties desire the gold ring and will do whatever it takes to grab that ring and the path is going with the people, with the electorate and there is no other path as that is the method in a democratic republic form of governance. Let the games continue.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Iowa Results and Insights

 

The biggest lesson we learned was that the media placed far too much emphasis on the caucuses. What we learned was that in cases where there was no definitive winner, then the entire choice would come down to a coin toss, how perfectly random. In the six instances where these rules were applied it was apparent that team Hillary got to call the coin-toss and call them they did. Apparently Bernie Sanders was perfectly happy to allow her team to call it, “Heads we win and Tails you lose.” And in six caucuses that appears to have been the call as Hillary either won each or Bernie lost, either way, Hillary went forth and declared a great victory while Bernie, being Bernie, claimed he and his supporters gave it a good fight and promised to continue the “Revolution” on to New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and beyond. When one looks beyond the primary delegates to the “Super Delegates” which are more or less decided by the Democrat Central Committee, one sees the reality of the delegate race as Hillary has 357, Bernie has 14 and O’Malley has 2 all going towards garnering the 2382 delegates needed to win.

 

We learned that Hillary can place way too much emphasis on her phantasmal ability or luck by her precinct chairs abilities to call coin tosses. Her grand claims of victory soon turned to sand in her mouth and she probably sputtered and spurted still insisting she had a mandate. Perhaps she was looking at the super delegate count which is made up of party hacks and people of whom Hillary had their FBI files on another server which was not used for State department e-mails but whose contents would be just as interesting to the voting public but has zero chance of ever seeing the light of day as it would be burned as soon as it was taken in as evidence. There are far too many people the files held there could damage and who have the power to destroy evidence just as well as Bill and Hill have proven capable. We also learned that Bernie has excited and tapped into an interesting voter group, the young and first time voters. Some of these first time voters have been of sufficient age to vote before but have now found their candidate. This is a large part of the voters eight years ago which propelled Obama into the White House and are just as likely to spoil Hillary’s last chance saloon and give her a really bad case of déja vu hiccups as she watches another upstart, this time a seventy-four year old hippie socialist who never let go of the dream from his college days, or is it daze? Should Bernie Sanders pull this off he will have proven that Hillary is fated to never grasp the golden ring in politics and Bill will never hear the end of how it was supposed to be hers but that Obama beat her and then Bernie the crazed lunatic stole it and it just was not fair. I guess nobody ever had the nerve or the suicidal tendencies to tell Hillary that life quite often is not fair. We learned also that Bernie had a solid and faithful following and that his challenge to the chosen one is real and very possible no matter how many delegates Bill can line up on Hillary’s side as in this day and age of the voters, as a collective intelligence, choose the candidates and the final elevations of a President. We also have seen the inside of the “Feel the Bern” generations and they are coming on strong and this might make Bernie Sanders the more electable Democrat and the real candidate the Republicans should fear facing.

 

The Republicans gave us a different message. The evangelicals, the Christian Right, was supposed to decide the Iowa vote and put one of two candidates on the short list for failure; they did not come through that way but have written the last swan song for Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz needed to corral, he is from Texas you know, the Evangelicals but he somehow lost about half the herd which left him limping into first place by a small margin, though it was a landslide by Hillary standards. Ted Cruz did do well as many had predicted claiming that the majority of the polling numbers for ‘The Donald’ (Donald Trump from here on) were mostly fictitious and when the time came to actually support a candidate, these polling numbers would prove to be a phantasm and disappear. Well, they actually did but not as far as predicted and Donald Trump has proven he is for real and will become a viable and potential winner should he start to actually express serious steps and reasons for his bombastic statements and clarify them into a reasonable platform people can stand behind. Ted Cruz, as wonderful as his supporters claim, will very likely fall flat in New Hampshire and rebound in South Carolina and Florida though it will remain to be seen if that is sufficient for him to remain in the race. After the caucuses in Nevada and Colorado it will be definitively decided who is the acceptable alternative to the establishment choice which appears currently to have fallen from Jeb Bush to Chris Christie to John Kasich and now on the Marco Rubio. Other than Cruz, Trump and Rubio who finished in close proximity to one-another, the rest should start taking stock of how much is this worth pursuing and what actually are your actual chances of emerging from the background in a positive manner. The media will ignore you until you make a mistake, and then they will crucify you until you fall on your sword; trust me, I’ve been there. For a good number, probably larger than those willing to vote for him, Ben Carson leaving will be heart-wrenching. We want so much to just once have the nice guy who refused to go negative and was an exemplary person whose life reads like a storybook where underprivileged youth from the worst part of town rise to prominence and was not only a success but also a solid positive force and contribution to society become Mr. Smith Goes to Washington except with a much happier result as he rises above the political machinery and does great and wonderful things lifting the nation by his inspirations. That would have been Ben Carson but perhaps this is better as the media have not torn him to shreds which would have come next had he shown he might succeed. The media will praise you to the hills and as soon as you start to succeed, partially due to their building you up, they will tear into you until you let out a personal secret, say that one time you lost your temper, we all have at least one such moment, and then that will become your defining moment as if nothing else you ever accomplished really made up for the momentary weakness when you were eight years old.

 

 

Mr. Carson Goes to Washington

 

 

So the result in Iowa placed Ted Cruz momentarily in the cat bird seat with Donald Trump close behind and Marco Rubio in tightly behind Donald Trump. There being merely 8,500 votes between the three out of close to 175,000 they finished in a photo finish which their margins only looked large compared to the difference, or lack thereof, between the top Democrat candidates who basically resulted in a dead heat. The reality hopefully will become obvious to the three that for the race to be determined honestly then one of the non-establishment candidates will need to bow out if the other will have even a chance of taking the nomination. Should all three remain in the race and the contest continue to have similar results then there will be the definite possibility that at the Republican Convention there will be no definitive winner and as long as the three remain holding their delegates to their vote then there will be an arranged result which is basically a fixed convention where a candidate is chosen in some back room with some establishment and insiders making a choice and then bringing their golden boy forward and sweeping the convention as the party machinery steamrolls any opposition and presto, Jeb Bush is brought forward as the great hope of the party and we end up with the potentially lowest turnout election percentage in American history as we end up with that dreaded Clinton-Bush family rerun of the 1992 election without the drama or concern as the people show their disgust by staying home. Should this scenario become reality, then there need be a slight Constitutional Amendment making every Federal elected office have an additional choice at the bottom such that the people can demand better choices than the party line who has scratched the most backs and it is decided to reward them by making it their turn for the House of Representatives and then later the Senate and finally, for the real party hardliners, the Presidency by voting for “None of the Above” and if “None of the Above” receives the greatest plurality then the parties must find new candidates and a reelection will take place six weeks later, so they better choose well and somebody the people would rally to or they could face embarrassment after embarrassment and perhaps allow a primary if it is a Senate or House of Representatives for unaligned people to attempt to gain ballot access and allow the highest independent vote getter to also be on the ballot as it is doubtful such a person could do any worse in the performance than some of those currently in office. We really need to get better quality candidates and until the parties are forced to consider that they have to win over the people or face challenges from what are usually referred to as Joe-six-pack meaning it as a pejorative label when actually that may be a person who would do a far better job of representing the people with their being from amongst them. Still, there are the gems amongst a sea of party functionaries and the quality, or lack thereof, of the candidates on the average ballot simply proves George Washington correct when he claimed, “However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” Enough said.

 

We regret that nowhere in the conglomerate of offerings is there a single candidate with military service in their background. Some of the candidates I doubt could reduce their self-worth to a sufficient level to survive basic training nor would they know when to stand on principle and when to stand down as that is also something they test in basic training and for the select few who respond accordingly they offer them to attend OCS which is the one way that an enlisted man can become an officer, and maybe a gentleman. The world stage being what it is, we believe would be best served by somebody who has served and our first choice would be Lt. Col. Alan West.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Do Not Sell Trump Campaign Out So Fast

 

The going money bets that when the primaries get going that the electorate will become more serious than they currently are with pollsters as their votes will be “for real” rather than for funzies. Sure Trump comes up with some of the most ridiculous ideas and his Muslims need not apply for entry into the United States as the door is locked is probably the leader of the pack of crazies that Trump has said and people think it just wonderful funzies. The problem is that the people have reached a frenzied point where there is a sizeable and potential plurality who have had it with any actual politician and Trump is most definitely, if nothing else, the anti-politician candidate going away. Trump is a winner even if only in his own mind and the world it has created where “You’re Fired!” was given great recognition and the people loved it and many are probably hoping that if Trump were to be elected there would be a great number of people told, “You’re Fired!” and possibly even entire Cabinet Departments because the people believe Trump would be just the lunatic to not only try but actually succeed in doing just that, and that excites them.

 

The idea of closing the borders, all the borders and to everybody if that is what is necessary to protect the nation, well, at least for a period until the world settles down from its current frenetic and fiery frenzy, just might be the right medicine for the right time. The other side of the coin is they know, as does The Donald, that a President Trump will have limitations the systems impose which will temper his activities, but they also hope he will break what rules are necessary to correct the misadventures of the last who even knows how long America has been adrift from her moorings. The one thing that polling has shown is that the bigger the mouthing-off The Donald does and the more ludicrous and impossible his suggestions, as long as they appear to be directed at the correct and identifiable problems as perceived by the electorate and the public in general, the higher Trump’s polling numbers appear to go so one can definitely say the people’s anger is quite palpable and the entire field of politicians in both parties will definitely feel this in the primaries and maybe even carrying into the elections. Further, this anti-politico anger bodes extremely badly for both Bush and Clinton as the two most identifiable politicians in the two parties. If the main goal of the party elites is to produce the lowest ever turnout in an election, offer the American public a Bush against Clinton Presidential race and watch the vast majority to simply give up on the system and be ready for anybody who promises to tear things down and start from scratch such as the constitution has written and the Bill of Rights and a broad reading of that and go from there. There is an awful lot of anger out there to tap into and the party that can excite that at the local level will be given a mandate to fix what’s been broken by overregulation and stifling Federal and State laws onerous in their applications and stripping government down to the bare bones and starting from a ground level. This is why the anti-politician with experience delegating and managing can and will play heavy in the upcoming Presidential election and whichever party, or both parties ignoring it do so at their own peril.

 

 

The Donald
Donald Trump That is

 

 

Donald Trump would make any campaign one of the most watched and should he gain the Republican nomination and then the general election, in both cases with sufficient numbers of the people, particularly in his Presidential election, that there could be no doubt that he would still be required to work with the Congress, especially on budget matters. Further, despite what President Obama has claimed that he will go rogue and act where he believes the nation should go, whether the Congress acts as fast as President Obama desires or not, that is all well and good; but the Congress, in particular the House of Representatives, will be required to act if one is going to have their agenda financed. There is scant little the President can accomplish if he has an adversarial Congress, and Trump is pretty much guaranteed to have an adversarial Congress. Furthermore, where is The Donald thinking he will find people to manage the different cabinet posts? Is he really so delusional that he believes he can ask the people he rubs elbows with and are eminently qualified to hold a cabinet position just because he asks them? These people make more money in a month than a cabinet post pays in a year and they make their money managing their money. These people are not about to let some “so-called” independent manager to invest and control their investments as they would be likely to lose as much per month compared to their making the choices than they would make in four years at a cabinet position. As for doing it for G0d and Country, if that would work then every President would have such people in their cabinets. The Donald will be just as hampered as any President in finding cabinet secretaries as looking to career political appointees and academics, all people who are receiving above their abilities in most cases than the cabinet post calls for. Even most upper middle management in the business world would be taking a cut in pay just to put on their resume they were in The Donald’s cabinet, and that would be the main draw to get competent people. The one cabinet position where there are a pool of well qualified candidates is Secretary of Defense, but that is because currently there is a number of top grade retired Generals and other senior officers due to the management of the defense of the United States by a Commander in Chief, we like to refer to him as the Ditherer in Chief, whose battle cry is, “To the rear charge and follow the backsides of the Europeans.”

 

No, a Donald Trump Presidency is nowhere near as disastrous as is being played up in the media. The media is worried they will not have the ‘as usual’ relationship with the White House as they now share, no matter which party holds the office of President. They know that instead of their framing the debate, there will be real thinking and bold, almost reckless, person in the White House and they will be left simply quoting him and making guesses what will come next. They know any attempt by their media elites to frame the discussion will be met by a “You’re Fired!” broadside as the Donald steers the Ship of State through dangerous mine-filled and rocky outcropped lined channels steering as if he was Captain Jack Sparrow without a care in the universe and using stars as wishing wells more than steerage points and still, like Captain Jack, coming through unscathed and much the better for the adventure. They are scared that he might actually succeed, which means that anybody really could be President and the nation survive, well, almost anybody as long as they meet two overriding qualifications, they consider themselves as President of the United States and not the bloody United Nations and second they love the nation and people of America.

 

Beyond the Cusp