Everyone knows that Republicans have little appetite to help impoverished Americans get through the COVID-19 economic lockdown. But there isn’t much difference between them and Democrats when it comes to reality: neither of them will actually expand any political capital to get help to the people who need it.
Every candidate attracts unrealistic expectations but the Democratic idea that Joe Biden is going to fix everything that is wrong under Donald Trump has brought magical thinking to a fever pitch. Newsflash: if things get any better, it won’t be much better.
Earlier this year when Bernie Sanders was in the lead for the Democratic presidential nomination, his centrist opponents said that he would be a bad standardbearer because the Republicans would call him a socialist. Now Joe Biden, anything but a socialist, is being targeted just the same way as though he had been Bernie Sanders.
Normally political parties try to attract constituencies but Democrats have an unusual approach to try to get progressives on board with their decidedly corporate centrist candidates this year: yell at them and call them names.
Everyone is criticizing President Trump, and rightfully so, for the fact that he is so crude, belligerent and bullying to those he disagrees with. However, progressive people who are hesitant about the candidacy of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are getting similar reactions from fellow Democrats.
The choice of Kamala Harris as Democratic nominee for vice president presents a bit of a conflict for liberal leaning voters. If they vote for her, they are voting for racist policing. If they don’t vote for her, is that racist too?
One of the biggest stories to come out of the COVID-19 crisis has been the tremendous Black Lives Matter movement. At a time when racist policing and violence by police is front and center, it’s a little odd to see Democratic candidates for president and vice president be the person who wrote a controversial crime bill that contributed to mass incarceration and an aggressive prosecutor who sent innocent man to death row.
Joe Biden’s basic appeal to voters: he’s not Donald Trump and he’ll have other people run the country.
The Florida recount crisis involves 43,000 disputed votes in four counties in Florida in the year 2000. This year there could be tens of millions of paper mail in ballots for the election officials to count, and they will be operating without a full complement of workers. This is going to work out perfectly.
One theory about the collapse of ancient Rome is that a pair of plagues, probably the bubonic plague, precipitated the end. Now we are dealing with the COVID-19 plague. Conservatives are worried about the deficit as the costs of stimulating the economy add up, but what alternative do they have?
