The presidency of Donald Trump has passed its half-way mark. And from here on, news about Trump will compete with coverage of the people hoping to run against him.
Hillary Clinton, rather than Donald Trump, ought to be planning a campaign for a second term, of course. The reasons she isn’t ought to guide Democrats, Republicans, and third parties as they prepare for the 2020 election. It’s clear that Russia meddled during the 2016 campaign. And Russia hacked. But Russia didn’t cast votes, Americans did. Enough Americans wanted Donald Trump to be president – and enough Americans didn’t want Hillary Clinton – that Trump is the person preparing for a second term.
Enough Americans shrugged off Trump’s lies and misogyny, enough Americans identified with his anger, racism, and xenophobia that he won the presidency, fair and square.
The anger, racism, misogyny, and xenophobia won’t be gone when the next presidential campaign begins. And there’s no reason to think that our gullibility in the face of fake news will, either.
We’ve become too wedded to headlines, too prone to seek only opinions that agree with ours. And as a New York Times article argued on Sunday, we’ve become too lazy to engage our reasoning skills.
In that climate, on November 3, 2020, we’ll vote for president again. The first caucuses and primaries are just over a year away. The first presidential debates will be this coming June. Seven Democrats are already running, and some of the best-known likely candidates haven’t announced yet.
Deciding who to vote for won’t be easy. But we’d better do a better job during the selection process this time.
On my list of qualifications so far:
• I want a candidate who can defeat Trump. This is too dangerous a time for a protest vote.
• I want a candidate who can help turn the country around. Someone who can help us regain our status as a country that respects and encourages scientific discovery. Someone who recognizes the threat of climate change. I want a president who understands the need for regulations that protect us from harmful substances and harmful business practices. I want a president who respects and works with the leaders of other countries.
• I want a president who can move us ahead, somebody who can convince Congress that health care and quality education are a right that all Americans deserve.
• I want a president with the experience that the job requires.
• And I want a president who can pull the country together, someone who can educate, inspire, and lead. Right now, divisiveness and hostility in the country are a very real threat to its stability. We’ll always have divisions, but we need leaders who respect their critics as well as the people in their base.
And while it’s not a “qualification,” I hope the next president will be a person of color, a woman, or both. It’s hard to overstate the importance of our election of Barack Obama and what that said, to ourselves and to the world. Obama epitomized the America we say we are: a nation of many colors, backgrounds, and beliefs, one that celebrates its diversity rather than fearing it.
Far too often, we’re not that nation, but on Election Day 2008, and again in 2012, we were. With the election of Donald Trump, our darker nature took over, for a lot of reasons.
We owe it to ourselves to right that wrong a little over a year and nine months from now.
This article appears in Jan 23-29, 2019.
I want a president who knows how to read for content and is willing to read a POTUS briefing book every day. Can we start with that?
Economy growing 3x Obama’s. Lowest black unemployment ever. Wages and number of jobs at the highest ever. Trumps prison reform letting thousands of blacks out of prison for lower level crimes (with training programs). Trump has done more for this country than Obama did, especially for blacks.
Why would you wish we go backwards?
Democrats have only one possible candidate, Joe Biden, who’s qualified to be president. Unfortunately his age and his being Obama’s VP will be used against him by the Republicans, and the fact that he’s a pragmatic politician with experience in office will be used against him by his own party’s self-described “progressives” who decry as “corporate Democrats” anyone in the party who actually knows how to play the game in order to get something done. So as a result, as in 2016, we’ll see the kiddies running around after some blowhard like Bernie, or one of the Flavor of the month candidates now coming out of the woodwork, which will likely result in a fractured party and a second term for Demagogue Donny.
Inquisitive – Fairy tales like your traditionally begin with the phrase, “Once upon a time…”. The reality is that the economy, including employment, is simply continuing along the path set by the policies of the Obama administration. https://www.npr.org/2018/09/12/646708799/f…
As to the prison reform you mentioned, the First Step Act signed by Trump in December is little more than a rewrite of the . The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act introduced by the Democrats in 2015 and blocked by Republicans who to;ld horror stories about how thousands of felons were going to be let loose to prey on innocent Americans. https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/how-fir…
Thanks for the back up Richard. Your graphs were great. Remember Obama saying you would need a magic wand to bring back manufacturing jobs–up3.3% .
Here’s more
https://sharylattkisson.com/2019/01/22/50-…
Gotta laugh at anyone who would down vote Amylouise’s comment. “I want a president who knows how to read for content and is willing to read a POTUS briefing book every day.”
Richard, why would you refer to an obsolete source to make a claim that the economy has not performed better under Trump than Obama? The NPR article only had two quarters of data at the time it was written.
As regards GDP, it grew by 2.3% in 2018, Trumps first year, vs 1.8% in 2017, Obamas last year. That is almost a 30% faster growth rate. In 2019, where we will have the first cut of actual data in the next week or two, it is expected to be 2.9%. So under Trump, we will have had two years with avg growth of 2.6%. In Obamas last 7 years (after the recession), growth averaged on,y 2.2%. And under Obama, we never had more than 2 consecutive quarters with GDP growth exceeding 2%. With Trump, it is about to be 8.
Then think about unemployment. We have had record or 40-50 year low rates for blacks, Hispanics, and those with less than a high school diploma under Trump. And the labor participation for those aged 25-54 has gone up, which adds to the challenge of a declining unemployment rate. Under Obama, the rate was lower at the end of his last term than when he came into office. Even under a recovery.
There are many reasons onecandislike Trump as president. But one cannot seriously claim that Obama was as good an economic steward.