My message to readers

I do not really have a high regard for Donald Trump, but this November he gets my vote. The reasoning is:

1. There are only two choices that really count;
2. Hillary Clinton is certain to try to move this country in the wrong direction, and
3. The only way to prevent this is to elect Donald Trump to the Presidency.

I hope most readers (and everyone else!) agrees.

Gay & lesbian rights and Donald Trump

I am on the e-mailing list of the Human Rights Campaign, mainly I think because I endorsed the gay marriage referendum in Maryland a few years ago. Unfortunately, the HRC has come out strongly against Donald Trump's candidacy, and in this action has forced me to strongly oppose this organization. Mr. Trump invited openly-gay industrialist Peter Thiel to speak at the convention last week. Mr. Thiel must have been worried about being booed for parts of his speech, but this did not occur. And Mr. Trump specifically complimented the delegates for that.

Donald Trump will not single-handedly make the GOP into a pro-LGB party, but he is working to move it in that direction. And HRC's backing of Clinton is working against Trump's attempts in that direction. I say “Shame on you!” to the HRC.

“Dark” Donald Trump

Democrats have been criticizing Donald Trump for the “dark” tone of his speeches and those of his supporters at the Republican National Convention at Cleveland last week. Well, if (as most Democrats seem to believe) the last 7½ years were good for the U. S. A., then those speeches would seem unjustifiably dark. But if (as I do) you see these years as a period of decline in U. S. prestige abroad and order domestically, you (as do I) will see this “darkness” as entirely justify. The “darkness” is reason to support Trump, not oppose it.

Endorsement for November

This blog endorses the Republican ticket for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency of the United States in November. This isn't quite the same thing as an endorsement of Donald Trump and Michael Pence—I would have preferred any of a number of Republicans who sought the post. But as it stands, it is necessary to vote for Trump and Pence to set this country in a proper direction, at least a better direction than the alternative would provide.

There is, in fact, a ticket I might prefer: the Libertarian ticket of Gary Johnson and William Weld, both experienced Governors with excellent records. But our election system guarantees they have no chance, and a vote for them helps Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine get elected. And it is preventing her election that is more important than Johnson's superiority over Trump. She would continue and expand the policies of the worst president in recent history: Barack Obama.

And now it's over

With yesterday's decision by John Kasich to end his campaign, Donald Trump has no opposition, and will be the nominee of the Republican Party for this year's Presidential election. He's not the one I would have wanted to see, but when it comes to November, I'll have to vote for him, given the opposition.

Kasich's leaving was fore-ordained. After Ted Cruz left, Trump was sure to make the 1,237 delegates he would need, so Kasich had no chance to get a later ballot where he might get the nod. It was futile to continue.

My wife has a visceral feeling against Trump. She will be supporting Clinton — even, just yesterday, gave the Clinton campaign a small sum of money — though she has some misgivings about her. For me, I'm more negative about Clinton than she is, and more willing to give Trump a chance, so my vote is going to go the other way. And in this very blue state, it won't make much of a difference. Clinton will win it. But I'm hoping Trump turns the polls around. We certainly don't need four years of Hillary Clinton after eight years of Barack Obama.

Right now, this blog is not endorsing Trump. That will happen if and when he is nominated. But on the chance that some unpredictable event happens that changes the picture of an inevitable Trump nomination, I'm holding up on a formal endorsement.

Ted Cruz has left the race…

…and while John Kasich continues to run — I got an e-mail from his organization today asking for funds — it doesn't really look to be at all likely that Donald Trump can be prevented from getting the nomination. The only way a contested convention can be brought about is if enough votes go to Trump's opponents to keep him from getting a majority of the delegates. And that would require Cruz to win a fair number. And he's not going to gain any more. So it looks as though Trump will be nominated.

I'm no fan of Donald Trump, as you know if you have been reading this blog. But in a race against Hillary Clinton, I have to support Trump. Clinton will continue President Barack Obama's unfortunate policies, and if anything, expand them. She was for Obamacare before Obama was. And she's exercised bad judgment in things like the e-mails.

Now I will not deny that Hillary Clinton is competent. But that makes the prospect of her in the White House even more of a scary proposition. While Trump's more outrageous proposals will never come to pass — Congress or the Supreme Court will knock them out — Clinton might actually get hers through, and I shudder to think of what she'll do, and this worries me more.

Donald Trump really won big

I am not very happy with Tuesday's results, and I'm getting more and more resigned to Donald Trump's nomination. If he does get the nomination, I'll hold my nose and vote for him in November, of course. The two main reasons are:

1. He's a clown and proposes all sorts of outrageous things, but we do have a Constitution, and most of his outrageous proposals will never happen, either because Congress will never pass such legislation for him to sign, or because the courts will knock them down, and

2. Hillary Clinton may be the most competent person running (assuming it's Trump against her!) but she wants to take this country in the wrong direction and she might actually succeed because she is so skilled. I'd rather take a Trump who might take us in unknown directions than a Clinton that I know will lead us in a bad direction.

So if it's Trump vs. Clinton, I'll vote for Trump, not very enthusiastically, but as the lesser of two evils. And if it's still possible to nominate someone else (as long as it isn't Ted Cruz!) I'll be a lot happier to vote the Republican line. (However, as I said in an earlier post, if Cruz is the nominee, my vote will go to the Libertarian or another minor party candidate!)

I wish I could believe it!

There is a post I read yesterday, dated a week ago but first coming to my attention yesterday evening, by Seth Abramson on the Huffington Post site, with the title “John Kasich Will Be the Republican Nominee for President.” I really wish I could believe things will play out that way. It would cap a crazy primary election season with the best outcome I could possibly imagine: a Republican ticket that I could enthusiastically support.

The major premise of Abramson's post is that:

Donald Trump needs 1,237 delegates to win on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, and not only will he not get to that figure prior to the Convention — he’d need to win well over 50 percent of the remaining delegates to do so, and even during his current run as front-runner he’s only won 46 percent of delegates — he won’t even get close enough to that mark to pass it via uncommitted delegates at the Convention.

Ted Cruz and John Kasich staying in the race through Cleveland not only will ensure that Trump can’t get close to 1,237 delegates via primary and caucus votes, it will also ensure that both men have a reasonable delegate total by the time they arrive at the Convention — more than enough to keep both of them in the picture in the view of Convention delegates.

So far I think he is right. There is a good chance, even a likelihood, that the first ballot in Cleveland will sho no majority for either Trump or Cruz. However, in his next point he strays into unpredictable territory; whether it will come about is unclear to me:

Republican Party elders have more than enough clout to make sure that “Rule 40(b)” gets changed prior to or at the Convention, thereby enabling Republicans like John Kasich who haven’t won a majority of delegates in eight states to nevertheless be considered for the nomination.

I hope so; it is very important that that rule be changed, and I think the probability of this happening is high enough that I cannot be certain whether it comes about. Certainly, without the change in the rules, Trump gets the nomination, even if Cruz is the one pushing hardest to keep the rule.

The next two points are crucial, and I devoutly hope Abramson is right:

After the first ballot in Cleveland — during which no candidate will have the require[d] delegates for nomination — most of the delegates will be free to vote for whomever they wish, and while Ted Cruz has craftily planted his supporters in many delegations, it’s not nearly enough to get him to 1,237 delegates on the second ballot.

Whereas Ted Cruz is loathed by the Republican Party elite, has lost to Hillary Clinton in head-to-head polls 55 percent of the time since November 2015, and has no actual accomplishments in government to point to, John Kasich hasn’t lost a single head-to-head poll to Hillary Clinton in 2016, is broadly if imperfectly acceptable to both Party elites and movement conservatives, and is far and away the most accomplished Republican primary candidate left.

If “electability” were what mattered most, the second of these would be very important. Will it? Most certainly Kasich is hoping so. It's also what I really wish would happen. I think that last point is the key to Abrahamson's argument. But the next point is equally critical:

Marco Rubio has deliberately held onto his 172 delegates so that he can create a unity ticket with John Kasich in Cleveland — a ticket that will begin with somewhere between 350 and 600 delegates on the first ballot at the Convention, depending upon how many delegates John Kasich wins going forward.

Has Rubio held onto his delegates “so that he can create a unity ticket with John Kasich in Cleveland”? I can't read Rubio's mind. He certainly has a plan to be an influence on the result. So Abrahamson's next point is a given:

Rubio is certain not to give his delegates away for free, nor to give them to his arch-enemies Cruz or Trump, nor to — as some suppose — merely fade into the background when he was and remains among the most ambitious politicians in the Republican Party.

And the next point is also certainly true:

A Kasich/Rubio ticket would appeal to both mainstream Republicans (Kasich) and Tea Partiers (Rubio), to both white and Latino voters, to younger voters who want to see someone relatively young on the ticket, to those looking for a ticket whose members run the gamut from executive to legislative experience at both the state and federal levels, and to those who believe all members of a presidential ticket should hail from a major battleground state.

Yes, a Kasich/Rubio ticket would be acceptable to many Republicans and to people who might be persuaded to vote Republican in November. It would be more than merely acceptable to me: John Kasich started off as one of my two favorite candidates, and ever since Chris Christie dropped out has been my #1 choice; Marco Rubio was originally the person I thought would be the Presidential nominee, and one I would not have any qualms about supporting if he had been nominated. The question is not whether Kasich/Rubio would be a good ticket; it is one which I have already said I would support with enthusiasm. The question is whether all these pieces of the jigsaw puzzle which Abrahamson has put on the table will actually fit together to produce a Kasich/Rubio ticket in reality.

I hope so. I wish I could believe it will happen that way. Nothing could happen at Cleveland that would make me happier.

Whatever happens, I cannot support Ted Cruz

There are some signs that people who want to thwart Donald Trump's nomination as Republican candidate are coalescing around Ted Cruz. I am quite appalled at this. If Cruz is the nominee, for the first time in over 50 years I could not vote for the Republican candidate for the Presidency. It is clear. Ted Cruz is a religious fanatic, whose view of the Constitution is so far from mine, I could not vote for him. When I read things like

When Cruz says he wants to “reclaim” or “restore” America, he does not only have the Obama administration in mind. This agenda takes him much deeper into the American past. Cruz wants to “restore” the United States to what he believes is its original identity: a Christian nation.

it makes me shudder. This is not my America. I see our country as a pluralistic nation, one which may have a majority of its citizens Christians, but one equally open to all religions, which means the Government should be totally secular.

If it happens that I am forced to choose between Trump and Cruz, I will go with Trump. And if Cruz gets the nomination, though I cannot vote for Hillary Clinton, I will not vote for Cruz in November either. My vote will go to a third-party candidate: which one depends on who will be on the Maryland ballot.

In a Trump vs. Clinton election, the vote will be strange

I'd heard before of well-known Republicans who might vote for Hillary Clinton rather than see Donald Trump in the Presidency, and others, like Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who might go for a third-party candidate. Now along comes former Senator Jim Webb, who considered himself enough of a Democrat that he entered the competition for that party's nomination, who looks to be headed the opposite way.

This November may see some strange voting patterns.

Mark Salter's vew of Donald Trump… is it John McCain's?

There is a posting by Mark Salter dated yesterday, entitled “Donald Trump, the Anti-Patriot,” which I've been reading. Now Salter's name is not widely known, but he has co-authored a number of Senator John McCain's books, and I suspect that he and Sen. McCain have very similar views on many political topics. In Salter's post, there are a number of points, and one of the counts he has against Trump is the remarks he has made about Sen. McCain:

By his own admission, the closest he came to combat was his sexual adventurism in the 1980s, when HIV/AIDS was claiming the lives of better men than him. It was his “personal Vietnam,” he told shock jock Howard Stern in 1997. “I felt like a great and very brave soldier.”

While Americans with little wealth and few family connections were dodging bullets, mortars and booby traps in the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam, our Sergeant York of well-appointed bedrooms was bravely jumping in harm’s way, armed only with the aphrodisiac of his daddy’s money.

From his brush with mortality in service to his libido he acquired the self-regard to find John McCain’s heroism wanting, and by implication the heroism of all POWs. What’s to admire about being shot down, imprisoned in solitary confinement and tortured? Losers.

But there is a real concern there as to Trump's own proposals on how he might treat our enemies:

His cluelessness about what a genuine love of country entails seems to have liberated Trump from other conventional scruples including a respect for the inherent dignity of human beings that is central to Judeo-Christian values.

Trump is also ignorant, it seems, about just what constitutes a war crime; what is and is not permissible in lawful warfare. Or worse, he vaguely knows and doesn’t care.

Trump’s ignorance is a distinctive kind, familiar to schoolyard bullies everywhere. It’s indifferently stupid and reflexively brutal, a dumbass cruelty exercised by people too emotionally incontinent to let reason govern passions, too selfish to develop a conscience, and too insecure to relate to others by means other than base instinct.

In the war against terrorists, he’s recommended deliberately killing their wives and children. He promises to waterboard captured prisoners and torture them even more severely though the practice of waterboarding was ended by executive action and outlawed by congressional legislation. He can’t reinstitute it without new legislation and without changes to war crime conventions.

Were he to order military and intelligence officers to employ torture, as he insists he would, they would resign rather than comply, as they would if he ordered them to take innocent lives on purpose. He would deserve to be impeached. He would belong in an international court of justice, on trial for his life, the fate met by enemies in World War II who authorized the torture of our prisoners.

Trump recently cited as an example of how to deal with captured Muslim insurgents an anecdote from America’s occupation of the Philippines in the beginning of the 20th century. Gen. John J. Pershing ordered 49 of 50 Muslim prisoners shot with bullets dipped in pig’s blood, defiling them under Islamic law, and ordered the survivor to report to his confederates what he had witnessed. After which, Trump assured his audience, “for 25 years there wasn’t a problem.”

In fact, Salter points out,

The story is fiction. Pershing did nothing of the kind. He was a disciplined general officer, whose sense of honor remained intact through the trials of war, as did his loyalty to our country and values. See what I mean about dumbass cruelty? Trump’s never more ignorant then when he’s playing at being a tough guy.

And I did some checking. Salter is right about this story being fiction; perhaps Trump actually believed it, however, as such a story has been circulating on the Internet:

On Friday in South Carolina, Donald Trump told a story of how General John J. Pershing executed 49 Muslim prisoners in the Philippines.

In the early 1900′s, Trump said, Pershing “caught 50 terrorists that did tremendous damage and killed many people.” So Pershing “dipped 50 bullets in pig’s blood” and executed 49 of the men. Then he released the 50th prison to tell others what had happened. Trump’s point was that America needs to get tough on terrorism.

But the story is not true. There was no mass execution led by Pershing. That is a rumor created on the Internet.

A Chicago Daily Tribune article from 1927 reports the true story that Pershing was holding prisoners from the Moro Rebellion in the Philippines. The Moros were Muslims who resisted American or any other occupying force. The Moros included swordsmen, called Juramentados, who were killing Christians in the uprising. It had to be stopped.

The Tribune story reports that Pershing sprinkled some prisoners with pig’s blood, which the Juramentados believed would condemn them for eternity. But then Pershing let the prisoners go. He issued a warning to others about being sprinkled with the pig’s blood. And, according to the Tribune story, “those drops of porcine gore proved more powerful than bullets.”

There were no executions as described by Trump.

In fact, Pershing was more inclined toward peace talks with the Moros rather than violence. The general met with the Moros and read from the Koran with them. Pershing wanted to build bridges. An illustration accompanying the story shows the general in peace talks in the jungles of the Philippines.

Salter continues:

Wars have brought out the worst as well as the best in Americans. We have struggled at great cost to uphold the values that distinguish us from our enemies. In every war, soldiers under enormous strain have committed atrocities. In some cases they had been ordered to. But those instances were aberrations, considered a national disgrace and are remembered that way. Except, I guess, by Donald Trump, the man who fought his war in the discos of New York and would have American soldiers commit atrocities as a matter of national policy.

Much of what Salter says has validity. However, his final conclusion gives me pause:

Trump is not trying to make great America great. He’s trying to make us the worst we can be to satisfy his own vainglory. There’s no dealing with him, no trying to encourage him to behave like a grown-up, much less a statesman. If you can see him plainly and you love our country, you must vote against him. Even if that means electing Hillary Clinton.

That last sentence goes, in my mind, too far. “Even if that means electing Hillary Clinton”? I hope that Sen. McCain does not agree with this part of what Salter says here. For she has her own problems. She may not plan to torture our enemies. However, she has a direction for this nation that goes counter to our greatest needs. She has said,

I'm a progressive, but I'm a progressive that likes to get things done

and “progressive” is a term that here means “extreme leftist, possibly socialist.”

I do not know whether Sen. McCain agrees with Mark Salter on this position. I strongly respect Sen. McCain, and wish he had been elected eight years ago and was now coming to the end of two terms as President, rather than the man who is actually in that office today. But if he agrees with Salter's remark that Hillary Clinton is preferable to onald Trump, I must there respectfully disagree.

Our long election campaigns

People have been pointing out that Canada, for example, has much shorter campaigns than the United States; for example, the most recent election campaign that made Justin Trudeau Prime Minister was 11 weeks long, and people complained that this was too long! But they are comparing apples and oranges. In countries like Canada, with parliamentary systems, everyone knows who the candidates for Prime Minister will be — a party has a recognized leader. Our long campaigns are a result of the fact that we first have to choose the candidates who will run for President. Yes, Ted Cruz filed over a year and a half before the election, but this was as a candidate for the Republican nomination, not for the actual election this coming November. Justin Trudeau became leader of the Liberal Party on April 14, 2013, winning on the first ballot with nearly 80% of the vote. So in effect he has been able to define himself as the Liberal candidate since that time. The Republican and Democratic candidates for the presidency will be officially chosen this summer. This makes a difference. One can really say that Trudeau's campaign for the Prime Ministership began in 2013 and lasted until October 19, 2015, when Trudeau's Liberals defeated Stephen Harper's Conservatives — about 2½ years. This compares with about three months that our candidates for the Presidency (whoever they will be; Hillary Clinton probably for the Democrats, but who knows for the Republicans?) will have after the conventions. Now whose campaigns are longer?

It's now down to six

It starfted with 17 candidates for the 2016 Republican nomination. Now there are only 6: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, and John Kasich. Of course, if you've read my earlier posts, you know I prefer Kasich among those six. But I could support anyone but Cruz if he were the nominee. I prefer that it not be Trump (who has a limited knowledge of what the Constitution says a President can do) or Carson (who, with Trump, has little relevant experience, though I think he'd make an excellent chair of a task force studying how to replace Obamacare). Jeb Bush is, as that CNN questionnaire I took showed, quite close to me on the issues; I'd think he'd make a good President, but I'm afraid that many whose opinion of his brother's Presidency is poor would not vote for him, so my only objection to Jeb Bush is electability. Rubio is somewhat more conservative than I'd prefer. However, he's still within the bounds of acceptability. And running against either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, of course Rubio would get my vote: both of those prospective Democratic nominees are far further to my left than Rubio is to my right.

That is my current take on this election.

It isn't an "either-or" choice!

This past Saturday, there was a debate in New Hampshire among the candidates for the Republican nomination for the Presidency. And the most talked-about exchange was between Chris Christie and Marco Rubio.

Now as I've said before, Christie is among my favorite candidates for the nomination, while Rubio is the one that looks like the actual winner. So I'm a bit uncomfortable with such a degree of hostilities between them; should Rubio actually get the nomination, I should hope that Christie could support him against the far worse candidate (probably Hillary Clinton) that the Democrats will nominate. But the gist of the exchange was that (according to Christie) Rubio's short experience in the Senate — comparable to Barack Obama's when he first ran eight years ago — is insufficient preparation for the Presidency. And Rubio's retort was that Obama's failure is not from inexperience, but that there is a “fiction that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing.”

Well, in my estimation, it is not an either-or choice. Obama's inexperience has led to many problems in the past seven years or so, thus Christie is right in pointing to Obama's election and saying, “What we need to have in this country is not to make the same mistake we made eight years ago.” But Obama has chosen a direction for this country that is contrary to its best interests, as Rubio has implied.

So both Christie and Rubio have valid points to make. And we should recognize this.

According to CNN, I agree most with Jeb Bush!

There is a page on CNN's site called the Election Candidate Matchmaker. You answer a series of questions, and it finds the candidate whose positions are closest to your own. I took the quiz, and was interested to see that the candidate it picked out for me was Jeb Bush. Not too bad a choice, but a little surprising. I was a little happier with its 2nd choice for me, which was Chris Christie. But the third was Donald Trump, a big surprise. But I guess it is clear, my opposition to Trump is not based on his positions on the issues. I think he is not acquainted with the limitations imposed on the Presidency by the Constitution, and his manner is unbecoming to a President. And this is why, unlike my wife (who is so opposed to Trump to the point that she could never vote for him against anyone being discussed) I am more willing to accept Trump than some other politicians. In particular, we've discussed a Trump vs. Hillary Clinton matchup, and though she mistrusts Clinton, she would vote for her over Trump. I would vote for Trump over Clinton, because he would at least take the country more in a direction I favor than she would.

The page only gives the top three matches; it doesn't rank them all. So it doesn't put John Kasich in a rank that I could find. And yet I like him about as much as Christie. I wonder where we differ most.

Sorry for my absence

I haven't been posting here for a few months, in part because of my own life's being complicated (including a surgery and more than a month in a rehabilitation facility), and in part because I do not know what to make of the large support being gathered, according to the polls, by Donald J. Trump in his candidacy for the Presidency. I see him as a very poor choice, though if he is nominated against Hillary Clinton he will get my vote in November, mostly because his direction for the country is closer than hers to what I would like to see. He has no political experience (which his supporters see as a positive! and seems not to understand the Constitution (based on some of his proposals), and thus I see him as really poorly qualified for the office of the Presidency. I certainly would prefer Chris Christie or John Kasich.

However, the Iowa caucus just completed inspired me to resume posting. I was, on the one hand, glad to see Trump receive a lot less support than the polls indicated, though, on the other hand, not very happy that the man who beat him was Ted Cruz, who I like even less than Trump. Yet Cruz' victory is not a big surprise. Iowa seems to be very hospitable to the religious Right; in the two most recent previous elections it gave its support to Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum.

I do not, however, expect Cruz to be the nominee, any more than were Huckabee and Santorum. For some time, I have been predicting that the eventual nominee would be Marco Rubio. And Rubio's near-tie with Trump for second place makes me even more convinced that this will be the outcome in the end. And while Rubio is not my first or second choice (or even my third or fourth!) I see him as certainly a nominee I can live with.

But New Hampshire may tell a different story next week. We will have to see.

Comments on Thursday's debate

First of all, I have to confess that I did not watch the debate. I do not, these days, like to stay up late, and I decided to spend my evening going early to bed. So these comments are based, not on observation of the debate itself but on others' comments on the debate.

The consensus was that three of the candidates helped their cause. Of the candidates considered “major,” the winner seems to have been Marco Rubio; however John Kasich seems to won a new-found attention (about which I am, of course, very happy, as can be evinced by my comments of a few days ago), and one candidate who was not even in the main event, Carly Fiorina, has impressed a lot of people. In addition, my actual favorite (though Kasich is becoming something of a “co-favorite”), Chris Christie, seems to have done well. And the beginning of Donald Trump's fall from the top seems to have occurred.

Since Christie and Kasich appear to have both improved their positions and Trump has hurt his own, I think the debate has helped in the struggle to winnow down the candidates. Such candidates I really dislike as Mike Huckabee do not seem to have changed anyone's opinion, which on balance is probably good. So all in all, I'm happy. But the biggest surprise is Carly Fiorina. As I've said, the biggest flaw I see in her is a lack of political experience, but after this debate, it seems she is being considered more seriously. To me, she and Ben Carson form a matched pair — brilliant exemplars of what they are good at, but simply not experienced in the specific needs of political leaders. But their performances were dead opposite in this debate. Fiorina has made people wish she had been in the main debate; Carson has prompted comments as to why he was on the debate stage at all.

Before the debate, I was of the opinion that Scott Walker was the eventual nominee, and I could certainly support him in November 2016 if he were the nominee, though Christie and/or Kasich ranked much higher in my preference list. Now I'm not so sure. I'm more optimistic about the chances of my two favorites, less certain that Walker will pull it out, but even less certain that if it's not Walker, it'll be Jeb Bush. Both Walker and Bush seem to have turned in disappointing performances. But what will happen next? Will Fiorina move into the top ten? Will Trump decide he's an independent and quit running for the Republican nomination? (This would scare me a bit, because it could take just enough votes from the actual Republican candidate to throw the election to Hillary Clinton.) I guess all I can do is wait and see.

Christie finally officially enters the race

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie just announced that he is officially a candidate for the nomination as President in the 2016 election. And to me, he is still the best candidate for the job, though his standing in the polls has taken a hit since I first started commenting on Christie with an eye on next year's election.

The best reason to support Gov. Christie is exemplified in a comment he made in April, a couple of months ago. A Girl Scout had asked him what he would change in Washington, and his reply was:

I think in Washington what's happened is everybody goes to their separate corners. They don't talk to each other anymore, they don't deal with each other anymore on a regular basis. They don't get to know each other. And so then if you have differences of opinion it’s much harder to hate if you don't know the person. And so I think one of the things that has to change in Washington, whether I run for president or I don't, is that the president and the Congress has [sic!] to work with each other more and has to get to know each better cause it’s harder to hate up close and that applies to anything, right, whether it’s politics, whether it’s your friends at school.

And in his announcement of candidacy, Gov. Christie struck a similar note:

Both parties have failed our country. Both parties have led us to believe that in America, a country built on compromise, that somehow compromise is a dirty word.

Christie's position — that the President needs to work with Congress and that Republicans need to work with Democrats if anything is to be accomplished — is identical to my own beliefs. His comments to this effect are my reasons that I still prefer him over all his rivals.

Now this does not mean I totally dislike Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Scott Walker, and such. Should they get the nomination, I would certainly support them over Hillary Clinton without hesitation. (There are other candidates, like Mike Huckabee, that I could not support; Huckabee in particular seems to be against almost everything I stand for!) But for now, and unless Christie's chances become so small that it is useless to support him, Chris Christie is my preferred candidate, and I repeat my earlier statements to that effect.

Why so many?

There certainly seem to be a lot of Republicans contending for next year's nomination for the Presidency. Some people are expecting as many as twenty to declare, and already there are so many it's hard to keep track. While the polls seem to give the edge to either Scott Walker or Jeb Bush, a lot can happen between now and next year's convention. But why so many? I can't recall there ever being such a large field of contenders.

It's not that hard to figure out. Barack Obama has become one of the most unpopular Presidents in history. While a popular President can anoint a successor (witness the fact that Ronald Reagan was able to pull in enough voters to the Republican side to elect George H. W. Bush, even though Bush was not a very charismatic campaigner), an unpopular President serves to recruit votes to the opposite side. Many people will be voting Republican just to say we need a change from Obama. So a prospective Republican nominee has a good chance to win the Presidency in 2016.

And that's a good thing. It is really necessary to undo the damage that the years of Obama's Presidency have caused — to our economy, to our foreign standing, and in other ways. And certainly Hillary Clinton would not undo that damage; her proposals in the health care area, for example, out-Obama'd Obamacare. (As a candidate, Obama opposed — and Clinton proposed — some features that are the most objectionable in Obamacare, like the mandates.)

Michael Bloomberg? As a Democratic nominee?

On June 2, 2015, Michael Goodwin, of the New York Post, posted an article entitled, “NY Dems push Bloomberg to run for president.” It raises an interesting possibility; Michael Bloomberg, former Democrat, former Republican, (and former Mayor of New York), now an independent, is being considered by some as a possible Democratic nominee for President. He was a good mayor of New York City; he mostly carried forward the policies of Rudy Giuliani, who I would have liked to see as President, if you go back to look at my posts of a number of years ago. And Bloomberg's nomination as a Democrat is almost the only thing of which I could conceive that could get me to consider voting for a Democrat for the Presidency. But can Bloomberg be nominated?

I do not think so. First of all, the fact that he governed New York City as a Republican, and even after changing his registration to independent was re-elected mayor on the Republican line, would probably make him anathema to too many Democrats. Second, he's too centrist for most Democrats these days anyway. When those Democrats who oppose Hillary Clinton are attacking her for being insufficiently “progressive,” Michael Bloomberg certainly would fall short of their criteria. (Look at what happened to Arlen Specter, who thought the Republican Party had drifted too far right for him to win a primary in that party; he found that the Democratic Party had drifted too far leftward for him to win it either.)

So it's a nice dream. But Bloomberg has no chance of being nominated by the Democrats.