The Choice Is Stark For Voters In The 2024 Election

 In most of the presidential elections in this century, voters have faced a choice of policies. 

In Bush - Gore (2000), Bush - Kerry (2004), Obama - McCain (2008), and Obama - Romney (2012), the policies of the candidates were different. But all of the candidates, minus their policies, were fundamentally decent people.

They were people you could have an enjoyable conversation with. They were people you wouldn't mind having a drink or dinner with. They were people you wouldn't mind living next door. You might disagree with them, but they weren't bad people.

That changed in 2016, when Donald Trump became a candidate. I can understand why some people voted for him that year, because a lot of voters really didn't know that much about him.

But after his four years in office, the public came to know who he was, and most didn't like it. He exposed himself as different from past candidates - dishonest, greedy, angry, disrespectful of others, and dangerously narcissistic. And they rejected him in 2020 - choosing instead another fundamentally decent person in Joe Biden.

In 2024, voters are again faced with a stark choice. It's not a choice between fundamentally decent candidates with different policies. It's a choice between good and bad. It's a choice between decency and indecency. It's a choice between hope and fear. It's a choice between someone who thinks about others and someone who thinks only of himself.

Donald Trump has shown us who he is - and he's not a good person. Kamala Harris, whatever you might think of her policies, is a good person.

I hope voters will again reject the bad person. The presidency is too important, to this country and the world, and it requires a good and decent person to serve in the office.

It really is good versus evil. Make the right choice.

Significant Majority Says Race Relations Are Bad In U.S.

 

The chart above reflects the results of the latest Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between May 15th and 17th of a nationwide sample of 1,500 adults (including 1,342 registered voters). The margin of error for adults is 2.9 points, and for registered voters is 3.0 points.

The "Blue Wall" Protects Bad Cops - Good Cops Don't Need It

After working in various aspects of law enforcement for nearly 30 years, I have to admit that I never understood the "blue wall" -- the belief that all police must protect and stand behind other police who break the rules. This wall of blue only protects the bad cops. It actually hurts the good cops, because it lumps them in with the rotten apples in the eyes of the public, and heaps scorn on them that they don't deserve. The blue wall must be demolished -- for the protection of both the good police and the public they protect.

The following is part of an op-ed by Timothy Egan in The New York Times:

Cops protect the state. They also are the state. We revere them for the first part. We fear them for the second. But even as we condemn another round of horrific and excessive state violence directed at Black Americans, there’s actually a ray of hope on the police reform blotter.

The blue wall may be starting to crack. It was broken in the Derek Chauvin trial.

It’s no small thing that several Minneapolis police officers, including Chief Medaria Arradondo, took the stand against Mr. Chauvin in his trial over the death of George Floyd. Fourteen officers in the same department signed an open letter last year saying Mr. Chauvin “failed as a human and stripped George Floyd of his dignity and life.”

Maybe these acts of courage are isolated — mere dents in a wall that is institutional and pervasive. It will take far more than a few cops in a nation-shattering case of racist murder-by-authority to do structural damage to that edifice.

Cops protecting bad cops is ingrained in the system. Many officers feel that only a brother or sister in blue knows the peril they face — and has their backs. That’s true to an extent. But people in far more dangerous lines of work certainly don’t share this attitude. Too many police officers act as if being the face of the law makes them above the law. . . .

Smashing the blue wall is one thing that has to happen to fix the lethal flaws in modern law enforcement. Another will be just as hard, if not more so: acknowledging that racism, like the code of silence, runs deep in police ranks.

Defunding the police is not the answer. It’s an absurd idea. A wave of violence and chaos quickly overwhelmed an area declared police-free in Seattle, where I live, last summer. Among the victims were several people of color. “Two African-American men are dead,” said the city’s police chief, Carmen Best, at the time, “at a place where they claim to be working for Black Lives Matter.”

“Defund the police” is even worse as a political slogan; the idea is supported by only 18 percent of Americans, according to one pollfrom last month. Politically, all the slogan will do is hurt the cause of reform, as it appeared to drag down Democrats in last year’s congressional elections.

Reinventing the police, a far better idea, got a start in New Orleans in 2016, with a program that teaches officers to intervene when they see fellow officers doing something bad. It’s about to get another go in Maryland, now that lawmakers just overrode a veto and passed sweeping police reform legislation.

We need every cop to wear a body camera. We need to curb the power of police unions, the biggest protectors of the blue wall. And we need officers of all stripes to back the words of those 14 in Minneapolis. They said, “This is not who we are.” Now prove it.

The Good And The Bad Of The 2020 Election

The 2020 election is over. The voting is done, and now we just wait for the counting of the votes to be finished. I was hoping for a blue wave election, but that did not happen. This election contained both good and bad things. Here are some of my thoughts:

GOOD -- The 2016 election was lost because too many people did not vote. We can't say the same about the 2020 election. Voters set a record in turnout, and Joe Biden will wind up with more votes than any other president in our history. Donald Trump will have his second election in a row where he lost the popular vote by a substantial amount.

BAD -- Nearly half of American voters tossed their dignity, decency, and morality under the bus by voting for a dishonest, indecent, corrupt, bigot and racist.

GOOD -- It looks like Joe Biden will be our president after the votes are counted. He currently has 253 electoral votes, and it looks like Arizona (11) and Nevada (6) will give him the 17 electoral votes he needs to reach 270. There's also a good chance he'll get another 20 votes out of Pennsylvania -- but he probably won't need them to win.

BAD -- Our country needs a viable two-party system to have a workable representative democracy. It was hoped that without a substantial loss, the Republican Party would reform itself and once again become the loyal opposition -- willing to compromise for the good of the country. That didn't happen. Trump remains very popular with the GOP, and even when he loses, he will be the major force in the party. There will be no cooperation or compromise, and Trump is likely to choose the GOP candidates for 2022 and 2024 (and might even run again himself).

GOOD -- Joe Biden will repair our relationship with our allies, and hopefully repair our reputation around the world.

BAD -- Biden will not be able to unify this country. Trump's popularity with his deplorable base will prevent that.

GOOD.-- The Democrats retained control of the House of Representatives, and will be able to protect Americans from bad legislation and actions by right-wingers.

BAD -- It looks like Republicans will retain control of the Senate. That means Mitch McConnell will remain the Senate Majority Leader. He will continue to block any legislation passed by the House by just refusing to bring those bills up for debate and a vote in the Senate. We are looking at a stalemate in Washington for the next two years, with little or nothing being accomplished. 

Our democracy has been saved, but it's still in bad shape. The 2020 election did not fix it.