Hugh Mackenzie
Huntsville Doppler
For those who enjoy politics as a blood sport, events during the past week south of the border have been worth watching.
Just seven days ago, there were six candidates trying to win the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. Today, for all intents and purposes, there are only two. They are both white men of, shall we say, a certain age.
Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders could not be more different from each other and, in many ways, they have split the Democratic Party apart.
One of them, Sanders, doesn’t even belong to the Democratic Party. He sits in the senate as an independent, makes no secret about being a socialist, actively promotes a revolution, albeit a peaceful one, and he has nice things to say about Fidel Castro and his communist regime.
Joe Biden, on the other hand, is a centrist. A liberal to be sure, but still a capitalist and in many ways part of the American status quo. He is seen by many as a champion of the little guy and an advocate for black Americans, but he is not, like Sanders, out to play Robin Hood or to radically change the way the United States does business, at home or abroad.
Both of these men have physical issues. Every time I watch Sanders speak, especially in front of a crowd, I fear he may drop dead right in front of the microphone. He has recently suffered a heart attack. When he gets excited, which he often does, his face turns beet red, and when that happens I have seen his handlers in the background visibly tense up.
Joe Biden has his own problems. He can be extremely articulate, but at times he comes across as being somewhat vague and saying things he doesn’t mean and then having to correct himself. He also has a reputation for being the master of the gaff. Both of these traits give his opponents an opportunity to question whether he is losing it.
The reality is that unless the only other candidate still in the race, Tulsi Gabbard, a congresswoman from Hawaii and a former veteran, pulls off a Hail Mary, one of these two men will be up against Donald Trump in November. Currently Gabbard has just two delegate votes.
Now, Donald Trump himself is no spring chicken but of those three he is the baby of the bunch, only in his mid-seventies. If I had a vote (and I am happy that I do not), I would vote for Joe Biden. Of the other two men, in my view, one is a dangerous radical and the other a self-centered liar who makes things up along the way, regardless of the facts.
What a terrible thing it would be to have to choose between Sanders and Trump. I can’t believe I am writing this, but if that were the case I would be rooting for Trump.
But hopefully that won’t happen. It looks like Joe Biden is headed for the top of the Democratic ticket although there is a long road ahead and Bernie Sanders, who has huge support, will likely stick it out to the bitter end.
Either way, now the question becomes: which old man will become the next president of the United States once the November election rolls around? My bet is that it may all depend on a woman. While of course it is pure speculation, here is a scenario that could unfold.
Donald Trump may well dump Mike Pence as his vice-president. This rumour is already in circulation and most people know that loyalty is a one-way street with Trump. In a tight race, demographics count, and Pence fails that test in a number of ways. He is white, male, and comes from the wrong part of the country. If it is in his best interests to pick a different running mate, Donald Trump will not hesitate.
If Michael Pence is shown the door, my guess is that Nikki Haley will be on the ticket in November with Donald Trump. She is a well-known and popular Republican of Indian extraction. As a former governor of South Carolina, she will bring votes from the South the president might otherwise not get. She was appointed U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations by Trump and has remained loyal to him. She would add a great deal to the Republican ticket.
Joe Biden has made no secret about wanting Michelle Obama as his running mate should he become the Democratic nominee. The chances of him getting her are slim to none, but polls show her as still the most popular woman in the United States and what a contest that would make. More likely, Biden will look to Kamala Harris, a senator from California, a former prosecutor, and a fiery African American politician from a part of the country important to Democrats. She dropped out of the primaries early and yesterday endorsed Joe Biden. She is well-known, well-liked, and represents the right demographics.
Although he is currently behind, if Bernie Sanders manages to win the Democratic nomination, the likelihood is that he, too, will pick a woman as his running mate.
My prediction is that the next vice-president of the United States will be a woman and, factually, the next president will not be that far away from eighty.
The president, whoever he may be, could die in office. If not, by law, Trump would not be able to run again, and it is unlikely that Sanders or Biden would.
It may well take a woman to influence the final outcome of the American presidential election in November and it may well be a woman, in the not too distant future, that becomes president of the United States.
On this day, International Women’s Day, it is a good thought to have.
Hugh Mackenzie
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Jim, My relatives living in NYC are wishing they had the Canadian government managing the response to Covid 19. Much more professional!
All very amazing stuff.
I think it is time to lie down with a cool compress on my forehead and the lights off.
Hopefully avoid all this fanciful speculation and the virus.
Canadians would do well to concentrate on our own incompetent train wreck of a government and let the Americans manage their own miseries.
IMHO
A respectable analysis.
Unless you are a professional, you cannot diagnose Biden with dementia. And even if you were, it would still require a neurological exam. This is a talking point being circulated both by Trump supporters and Russian bots.
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Sanders’ net worth is $2.5 million, not ten or hundreds of millions. He and his wife made this money over decades of careful work saving and investing, mostly in real estate, plus proceeds from a bestselling book — a trajectory that would be considered perfectly respectable and legitimate for any other candidate.
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This — “privilege and wealth will be available to a tiny minority of the world population, where the rest of the citizenry are often brutally controlled through incarceration and torture” — is actually what *Trump’s* totalitarian instincts are leading towards. Tearing children from their parents and putting them in cages *is* torture and incarceration, and he’s doing it already. He is the current American political leader of those elites who are working to further impoverish everyone else. Sanders, on the other hand, has plans that would lessen inequality, and has been working towards that his whole adult life.
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Politics is actually very simple if you strip away all the lies: some politicians are in favour of decreasing income equality, and some are in favour of increasing it. If you look at actions rather than words, it is very obvious which are which, and which parties are which. These heavy-sounding terms — socialist, communist, globalist — are actually just fluff designed to conceal the truth by inserting confusion into the discourse.
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All you need to do is check who raises vs. who lowers taxes on the wealthy and incomes/benefits for the average or poor — and who makes it easier vs. who makes it harder for people to vote.
Okay….got to the part where you supported Trump over Sanders, and I had to stop reading. I closed the computer, and walked away. Then I thought, what point is Hugh trying to make? So I went back and read to the end. I am still appalled at your support of Trump, in any way shape or form. You boys that play politics, like it doesn’t matter what happens. There were a lot of excellent human beings asking to serve their people….and the best ones are already out of the race. Either of those men, are not going to cage, your fleeing grandchildren at the border. But Trump would, and has. Give your head a shake Mr Mackenzie.
Time for a reality check. Actually, Sanders ideas are not crazy at all.
The goal of universal health care is to make it accessible and affordable for all. What is wrong with that? There are various methods of paying for it, but it is not “free” anywhere. About 150 out of 200 countries have universal health care. 31 out of 32 “developed” countries have universal health care. The exception is the USA. The US health care system is good for perhaps the top 75%, but there are over a million Americans every year who die or go bankrupt because they cannot pay their medical bills. Life expectancy is the bottom-line measurement for health care. The USA ranks # 46 in life expectancy. That is inexcusable for a country that professes to be the greatest in the world.
Sanders advocates for equal and better access to post-secondary education which is the single most important thing to enable any country to adapt to changing technologies and to enable people to achieve “the American Dream” (which in reality is everybody’s dream). The US has fallen behind on that. In the US, if you live in a well-off community you have good schools. If not, you don’t.
On the inequality ratio of the top 10% to the bottom 10% of wage earners and wealth distribution, the US has become one of the worst in the world. They have become the very thing their first settlers sought to escape.
Although Sander’s solutions to climate change are a bit pie in the sky, at least he gives the subject the priority it deserves, and reality would correct his ultimate actions.
The problem is that half of the US population is so brainwashed about “socialism” that they don’t know the difference between communism and the good public policy practiced by all 32 “developed” countries except the USA. So, Sanders will not likely be elected.
Having said all that, I agree that it is time for a woman to be Vice-President (President in waiting) and there are several well-qualified candidates. But they will have to be able to stand up to the childish name-calling and insults that Trump will not be able to stop himself from delivering. 4 more years of Trump would give the world a set of headaches that may be permanent and incurable.
Hugh, I think that you’re spot on concerning running mates. The day that Kamala Harris dropped out was a sad one for me (why?), and Pence’s ticket was punched as soon as The Donald gave him the tangled web of Covid-19 to unweave. Were there no pandemic experts in the entire USA?
Strangely, the only woman who Americans could wrest the Presidency from Trump is Oprah Winfrey. Parenthetically, I would opt for Michelle Obama; but that’s a story for another day. Ms. Winfrey’s unknown candidacy doesn’t surprise me though: Have you noticed the plummet in the sales of Corona beer in the States since the inception of the virus? Apparently there is a mysterious connection (Mexican payback?).
Teflon Don, unfortunately, will prevail again. Biden (of the Anita Hill baggage) will nose out Bernie; and with Kamala’s support and the completely unjustified black vote (as you mentioned); will make a respectable showing.
The excitement will be as to when Donald will declare himself President for life a la Putin and Un (2 of his closet heroes). Don’t bet against it. The impeachment trial misinterpreted Article 2 of the Constitution to give him imperial rights (without the checks and balances of a true monarchy). There are stranger things done under the political sun.
Yeah, Hugh, I can’t believe you wrote that either, that you would favour Trump over Sanders. You know what Sanders’s most wild-eyed crazy radical commie pinko ideas are? 1) Single-payer universal health care — same as we have here in Canada; 2) a minimum wage that allows a living — same as we have here in Canada; and 3) free university tuition — similar to what we have here in Canada in that university tuition is heavily government subsidized. Paid for by taxes on the wealthy more like what we have here in Canada.
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Bar the doors, the reds are coming!
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Instead, you’d take the guy who rips apart families, co-ordinated with an enemy government to interfere with the 2016 election, tried to extort a foreign government into digging up dirt on his likely 2020 opponent, routinely uses the presidency to enrich himself, has been bankrupt six times, calls the media “the enemy of the people” and himself “the chosen one”, created a trillion-dollar deficit, lies every time his lips are moving, has scores of credible accusations of sexual abuse from women against him, has multiple record stock-market crashes on his watch, including yesterday’s that shut the NYSE down entirely, and thinks that windmills cause cancer, that a hurricane hit Alabama because he drew it on a map with a Sharpie, and that coronavirus is no big deal so it was okay that he fired the USA’s national anti-pandemic team a couple of years ago? And that’s all just *some* of the lowlights?
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I want to say, you know better. I’m stunned if you don’t.
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Aside from that, it’s an interesting analysis, though I doubt very much the gender of the running mate will actually decide the election. On the Dem side, everyone is expecting Biden or Sanders to choose a female running mate, though no one expects it to be Michelle Obama. Might be Harris, though if they want to flip the Senate they might have to keep her where she is. Might be a historical two-fer with Stacey Abrams (Google her). I notice you are aping the US mainstream media in pretending Senator Elizabeth Warren doesn’t exist, maybe because she too wants to eat the rich by providing single-payer universal healthcare? But a female running-mate is no big deal to Dems, as they already did it way back in 1984 (Google Geraldine Ferraro) and had a female candidate for President last time, who actually won the popular vote by some three million.
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On the Republican side, I think you think Trump is more rational than he actually is; if he wants to ditch Pence (and it really doesn’t look like it right now as he assigned him the job of heading up the coronavirus response) he’ll most likely go to whichever Republican man sucks up hardest. Could be Lindsay Graham, could be Matt Gaetz, could be Mark Meadows (once — irony alert — those last two are out of self-quarantine after someone with the virus also attended an important conservative conference where attendees agreed the serious nature of the virus was a Democratic hoax designed to hurt Trump). I think the only qualification Trump would look for in Nikki Haley is that she’s good-looking, even though she’s smarter than he is (pretty much anyone in government is), because looks are his main measure of women. But I doubt that would overcome his general contempt for women, which reflects that of his Republican base. Sure he’s got them as spokespeople, but notice his series of Secretaries of State and White House Chiefs of Staff has included precisely 0 women, even though the precedent of a woman Secretary of State was set with Hillary Clinton.
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My prediction for November is that so long as a “blue tsunami,” a record turn-out voting Dem to get Trump out of office, is big enough to overcome what is likely to be a bigger and more effective Russian hacking, the United States of America will indeed get its first ever female VP, and, yes, there is a reasonable chance she’ll end up President, either by succession if Biden or Sanders dies in office, or election down the road, or both.
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And I agree with you that this would be a good thing.
A. Kamala Harris is not an “African-American”. She is half Indian and half Jamaican. As such, she is not particularly well-liked in the African-American community for what is seen as “cultural appropriation” on her part. Another reason why she is disliked among African-American voters is that her record as a district attorney is problematic for them. She is also frequently disliked among African-American female voters because of Harris’ affair with Mayor Willie Brown. Biden would be better off with Stacey Abrams as a running mate but he is unlikely to make it all the way to November anyway, as he appears to be becoming progressively more confused by the day. He is undoubtedly in the early stages of dementia. The other day, he introduced his wife, Jill Biden, as his “sister”. The stresses and fatigue of the campaign will only make it worse.
Bernie Sanders is a communist (recall that Lenin said that “the goal of socialism is communism”). Not only has he praised communist despots throughout the world, but he also honeymooned in Soviet Russia with his present wife, Jane. He is a total hypocrite, as he has millions in the bank. He also owns three houses; a mansion in Burlington, Vt., an extremely expensive house in Washington and an equally expensive lake house in Vermont. He is a tool of the globalist elites who are seeking to move the Western nations closer to a one-world “socialist” government. That world government will, in reality, be “socialism” and poverty for the masses (poor people who are entirely dependent on government are easy to control). As in all communist/totalitarian governments of the past and present, privilege and wealth will be available to a tiny minority of the world population, where the rest of the citizenry are often brutally controlled through incarceration and torture. As a present-day example, think of Venezuela. It has its impoverished masses versus a privileged elite surrounding the socialist President Maduro. Maduro employs goon squads like the worst of the rightest dictators of S. America.
The elites have been waging a covert economic war on the middle classes of the West for some time, but it has never before been so obvious. It is time for the middle class of the U.S. to wake up and vote for the only candidate who champions the middle class–Trump. He echoes his father’s sentiments on the middle classes as the one and only bulwark of democratic rule. As such, he and his father built middle class housing in NYC in order to try to prevent the extreme stratification of NY society into the “haves” and the “have-nots” such as what exists there today.
A great analysis of the situation; thank you very much.
BJ
I believe if Trump dumped VP Pence, he would loose the evangelicals
wow Hugh for once I have nothing to say some will think boy thats a first. I can’t even follow the crazy world of politics in this country never mind down south.