TONE DEAF

ELECTING A PRESIDENT

As we move to the election of a President in November, 2020, we grudgingly accept the fact that every Presidential election cycle begins earlier and earlier; the first Democratic Primary debates will start in days over a period of two nights to give 20 of the 23 hopefuls a chance to be seen and heard.

And so we continue to comment on the inevitable as we have done in our two previous posts.

There is a great concern among traditional Democratic voters that a man who has run three times previously, has served admirably in the US Senate for decades, was our Vice President for eight years and who currently leads in the polls seems not to be winning the supreme confidence and admiration that we believe is essential for every winning candidate.

And we believe the reason for that failure to date has to do with the premonition among even those who genuinely admire him, that Joe Biden isn’t in touch with the changes that have taken place in America during his long public life.

It is one thing to excuse a novice like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking to her millennial followers about concentration camp-like conditions on our southern border to keep hopeful immigrants out of this country, but then add words that equate them with Nazi concentration camps established to systematically murder Jews. As bad and as misguided as these immigrant-binding activities are, no one who genuinely knows would make a similar comparison.

Ms. Cortez’s admirable electoral success should not be mistaken for deep knowledge or high intellectual content.

Mr. Biden, on the other hand, should have known better than to use his relationship with three of the most noted and powerful segregationists in the history of Congress to explain the success he has had working with “the other side” to make laws and programs happen while the present occupant of the White House does everything possible to demonize the other side as often as he can…with very little getting accomplished in Congress because of it. And thinking like it.

Yes Democrats worked to support and protect ‘their’ Presidents as Republicans worked to support and protect theirs…but the Legislature, keenly aware of its role, worked to legislate and did. Today that former knowledge and place in our tripartite government seems to be lost.

Joe Biden prides himself on his experience and his talents. He should. But if he is to make a real run at the Presidency, through a massive field of primary candidates and then against a Master of ‘his people’, Biden will have to learn fast that thoughts and feelings he has long held must be reshaped to meet the new realities of gender and race; and become keenly aware of the real wants of a new breed of Americans who do not have the education and experience he has; who do not understand the subtleties of government and could care less; who know what they want even if they have absolutely no idea of how to get it.

Bernie Sanders learned about that America in the year preceding the 2016 election. He learned that the ideas themselves that sounded so solid and real were just that – ideas – with no solutions offered and no solutions demanded.

The so-called ‘lefty-socialists’ now making some impressive noises about very similar ideas have themselves found the same ready audience…the ideas have merit even if solutions seem impossible or impossibly expensive.

But two things are true that must be acknowledged: the Democrats have had no ideas since the Clinton effort to triangulate what might work into some programs that did; and the Republican Party had no ideas at all after Clinton was through with them.

So Americans chose ‘W’ Bush over a reluctant ‘idealess’ Al Gore and then feeling wonderful about their new non-racist selves, chose an inexperienced Barack Obama who promised simply hope and change.

TRUMP IN HIS GLORY

And then came the most obvious mistake of all: Hillary Clinton, a program-brilliant but tone deaf politician who chose people around her who thought as she did. None of them recognized the simple, glaringly obvious fact that Donald J. Trump stood for something far too many Americans believed: get rid of the selfish, lying, self-concerned politicians who only wanted votes and get rid of all those ‘foreigners’ who were taking their jobs.

It is a serious mistake to believe that Trump was elected President simply because he had marshaled millions of ‘deplorables’ who would put up with his infantile language and attitudes, who did not have the education to understand how unqualified he was to be President and because he eked out just enough votes to win an Electoral College victory.

Take away the heavy popular vote margin against him in California and you find that he received a staggering popular vote from people who probably live right next door to you.

He has begun to campaign with language used in 2016. He knows exactly what to say and exactly who to say it too. He is a political musician with perfect pitch in perfect tune with his orchestra and his audience.

Does Joe Biden have perfect pitch? At the moment his old problems still plague him. He need not have perfect pitch…carrying a tune will be fine. He better not be tone deaf.