TERRY MOSHER
BERNIE SANDERS
This presidential campaign season is unlike any I have experienced. Maybe it’s my age, but there seems to be a field of candidates devoid of much sense and I swear I would be a better candidate than most of them and that is worrisome.
I realize it is early in the campaign. I’d compare it to the lockerroom stage where athletes stroll in to get dressed and ready for the combat that is hours away. These so-called candidates are in their lockerroom, taking their time to get dressed for the actual political season that won’t really gear up until the calendar turns to 2016.
But what I seen from these candidates so far gives me shivers unless they are going to battle against the Sisters of the Poor because not one of them seems terribly tough to me.
Oh year, the Donald talks tough. He thinks he knows it all, In fact, he doesn’t think he knows it all he believes he knows it all and would be the greatest president in the history of our country.
He certainly, as he shows, doesn’t lack for an ego. In fact, he may have enough ego for all the rest of the candidates and still have enough left over to be great, at least in his own mind.
My main problem right now is how do I handicap this race? It’s like a $5,000 claiming race at Emerald Downs where all the entrants are so rundown that the only way to pick a winner is to throw a dart at the racing form and bet the one where the dart lands.
Like everybody else I’m waiting for the Donald to take a nose dive in the polls. Most pundits believe The Donald’s mouth will eventually lead him into that crash and dive. However, there is something working here that we haven’t seen. His refusal to be political correct has hit a nerve and all of a sudden a lot of common folk have jumped up off their couches and yelled, “Yes, go get them Donald.”
We have become so used to be scolded for saying what we believe and want to say that we shut up to keep peace. Now, all of a sudden comes this blowhard who is saying all the things most of us want to say and are afraid to and we are screaming from the sidelines to “go get ‘em.”
How long this will go on before The Donald really says something or does something that even the couch surfers revolt against is the question the pundits are betting on when they say he’s not electable.
So we’ll see. But right now nobody is really challenging him in the Republican polls and that, to me, is scary.
The front runner to be the next president from the get-go has been Hillary Clinton. The Clinton’s (Bill and Hillary) have developed a big nest egg of markers from the wealthy that they have yet to use. They also have a huge political machine on the ground in every state and when the engines on them are cranked up when it really counts next year her profile will grow much stronger.
Right now Hillary is running into a negative backlash for her apparent phoniness and she doesn’t look as good for being the top presidential candidate as she once did.
Still, it’s hard to digest a growing opinion that she can and will be beaten when the campaign really heats up. Who is going to be her primary challenger on the Democratic side?
Bernie Sanders?
I think it’s going to be difficult for an admitted socialists to garner enough votes to really challenge Clinton when it comes right down to it. The socialist word has such a demonic label attached to it in this country that voters will back away just from that thought alone.
What is amusing is that we are a socialist country in many respects. Or have you not heard of Social Security? We traditionally have been a country that bends over backward to help the less fortunate, and we still do despite the best effort of the Republican Party to do otherwise.
Sure, there is a definite rift right now between the haves and haves not that is growing wider and wider by the moment. That, though, is a different issue, one that will at some point in our future history lead to a class warfare battle that will likely be fought as Churchill once said of the British about World War II, “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender ….”
The purchase of our democracy is in full bloom with billionaires strengthened by the Citizens United decision and we have become less of a democratic nation and more of a plutocracy.
On the Republican side I still think the serious threat to go all the way is Jeb Bush. He, like Clinton, has a powerful political machine behind him and in the end he will be left standing while the others will have fallen away.
When I talk about powerful political machine I mean all the money that can purchase a political contender. The heavyweights – billionaires – will put their money where they believe they have a winner (creating that plutocracy) and to me that is Bush, although he like his brother George can’t help but put his foot in his mouth from time to time.
Put foot-in-mouth disease notwithstanding, we have had two Bush presidency’s and I would not hold my breath against a third.
In the end, it will likely be what I have thought all along – another Clinton-Bush presidential campaign. It will be big money against big money and the loser will be the average Joes and Marys, the couch surfers who are so fond right now of The Donald.
I guess I’m a pessimist because I see the rise of China as a powerful economic country with an ever aggressive foreign policy built around a strong military that includes a rapidly growing navy, and a Russia controlled by a man who is about as evil as Hitler but more crafty in his devilish ways (i.e. building up his military in Syria and annexing Crimea and eastern Ukraine with his little green men) and that does bode well for the future of America.
We are still a great and powerful country, but our political divisions and the rise of the plutocrats should give us all pause. I believe we are at a turning point in our history from which we can either go down the righteous path or become another great country that falls into ruins by splitting into smaller pieces.
It’s possible that we may have become too fat and lazy and contented and lost that edge that allowed us to stand fast against our enemies. I hope not, but if we don’t watch out we could be like the Roman Empire that collapsed because it lost what it once had to become great.
What worries me the most is that we do not have a great political leader rising up to excite us and to cement the strength we do have. The Donald excites some of us, but for all the wrong reasons. He is not, and never will be, a great leader.
So who is it?
That could be the most important question of our generation. Because not since FDR and JFK have we needed such a great leader as we do now. We need somebody who has vision and the strength to project that vision onto the world stage and lead us down the righteous path.
And, again, I ask who is it?
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.