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When it comes to 2020, it is not a perfect world

12/26/2019

The 2020 presidential election is not one where you should vote with your heart. Vote with your brain.

I hear a lot of friends tell me things like, “I’m voting for Elizabeth Warren because she’ll tax the wealthy and help the little guy.” Or, “I’m with Bernie because he wants health care for all!” And on and on.

Some tell me they’re not supporting Joe Biden because “his time has passed.”

People, if your primary goal in the 2020 election is to defeat Donald Trump, vote with your head, not your heart.

Trump, guaranteed, will try to paint any opponent as a “liberal” and out of the mainstream of American thinking. Hell, when I was working for the Republican Party back in the 80s and early 90s, we won elections on that claim all the time!

That’s why liberals today call themselves “progressives,” so they can shed that liberal label.

I was talking to a friend the other day. He asked me who I was for in the 2020 election. I said I’ve been for Biden all the way. Why? He’s a good guy. He’s prepared to serve from the minute he takes the oath. Will he go down as the best president ever in our entire history? Doubtful. But that’s not what I’m voting for in 2020. I’m voting for the person who can lead AND who can beat Donald Trump.

If you really think Sen. Warren can win, go for her. But I think you’d be fooling yourself. She, and other Democratic hopefuls just cannot win, in my humble opinion. And, many of them will not be able to effectively take on Trump in debates, if he participates in them.

Joe Biden can definitely take him on and be a grown up about it. Remember Marco Rubio last time around? Trump started talking about his manhood and how it’s the biggest manhood the world has ever seen and what did Rubio do? He fell into Trump’s trap and started talking about his manhood. Can you say game over?

Plus, there are many in the Democratic field who will be perfectly fitting as a vice presidential candidate or Cabinet members, getting more experience to maybe some day run again. Biden probably won’t promise he won’t run for a second term, but he’s unlikely to.

If it was a perfect world I would agree. Biden’s time is passed. But because of Donald Trump, Biden’s time may have just arrived.

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Lessons learned from the Twitterverse

12/12/2019

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The other day I did something I rarely do. I commented on a Twitter tweet posted by a friend/acquaintance. I did it intentionally for one reason. I was, I thought, adding a clarifying fact to his post.

This friend/acquaintance I’ve known for about 30 years. He’s not a friend I’d spent any time with. He is more a professional friend. He, though, has nearly 400,000 followers on Twitter (I have 447 but that’s not the point). And his name isn’t important either because my learned lessons had little to do with him personally.

His tweet pointed out that CNN was not covering the Justice Department’s inspector general hearing live. I realized that CNN was teasing the hearing, but it wasn’t on air at that moment. What CNN did was make the news judgement that the opening statements by members – typically focused solely on partisan points of view – weren’t newsworthy so they didn’t carry them. They did, though, cover the hearing live when it moved on to the testimony.

So, I responded to him that fact. He responded within seconds pointing out that CNN did air the opening statements of the Democratic chairs on the impeachment hearings live but wasn't carrying the Senate's Republican chairman. He instructed me, “don’t defend their double standard.” I said something like, true but I could have lived happily not hearing those Democratic opening statements too. (I’m not exactly sure why he felt the need to instruct me what to do, but that’s not the key point either).

The news judgement was, apparently, that the impeachment hearings and the inspector general hearing on a report are not equal. Thus the opening statements had different import in each case.

Then the “likes” and comments came rolling through from my friend/acquaintance’s nearly 400,000 followers both “liking” his responses to me and, sometimes, adding their own. They said I was missing the point (though I’m not sure I really am. CNN made a news judgement like every other mainstream media outlet – print or broadcast – does all the time. I saw that as a correct judgement, they saw it as evidence of CNN’s bias against President Trump.) But that’s not the point either.

I don’t comment often on other people's Tweets but I do use Twitter as one platform for distributing this blog.

Even though my name on my Twitter account is “B. Jay Cooper” one responder said “perfect initials.” Obviously meaning the “BJ” and the various things (though he clearly had one in mind) that BJ can stand for. Frankly, I hadn’t heard such a brilliant comeback referring to my initials since I was in the fourth grade. (“Brava!” as Sirius Radio DJ Seth Rudetsky would say).

There were, literally, hundreds of “likes” or responses, some agreeing with my comments but the vast majority taking the other side and the other side in this case clearly wasn’t just my friend/acquaintance but President Trump's.

My first thought when I saw the number of responses (and they kept coming in the next morning and still are as I write this) was “do you have lives?” My second more reasonable thought was – the polarization of this country is even worse than I imagined.

Imagine, more than a hundred (I didn’t count them but Twitter apparently stops when it says “so and so and 98 others” responded. The vitriol. The, in some cases, immaturity. All because I pointed out what I (a former reporter) and other former reporters I talked to about it said -- CNN made the correct news judgement.

As Steve Martin used to say: “Well, ex-cuuuuuuse me!”

Folks, no leader is going to come around and fix us. We have to fix ourselves. You needn’t agree with me all the time nor I with you. But the vehemence of the responses needs to be dialed way back. We are no longer even coming close to arguing facts. We simply are have a knee-jerk, partisan reaction. That is no way to run a democratic country.

And I’m not talking just my experience on Twitter. I’m talking the bigger, more important picture. I watched a few minutes of the House Judiciary Committee hearing on the impeachment articles a bit ago. The Republicans were talking only about the Bidens (who have nothing to do with the topic at hand) and the Democrats were falling into the knee-jerk trap of defending Biden. I didn’t hear the name Trump or the country Ukraine at all for the 15 minutes or so I watched.

You may not agree that Trump should be impeached. That’s a legitimate opinion. But can’t this hearing, can’t this decision on Trump be made based on facts and not “facts” about Joe or Hunter Biden, but facts about what President Trump did or didn’t do? That’s the issue.

Imagine if President Trump had put up an honest defense to these allegations from the beginning. If he is innocent such a defense would be the right thing to do.

Now I have my view. It is affected, though, by the fact that Trump has stonewalled the investigation from the beginning. If he’s innocent, he should put his case forward, not hide behind Tweets and pointing fingers at others.

As to my new friends/acquaintances on Twitter. I was only trying to put some facts into the discussion.

My bad.

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A new dimension...

12/10/2019

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Each day when I wake up and, before I read the papers or listen to the news, I repeat the same mantra:

“You are traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Your next stop, The Trump Zone!”

And today was another such day. At 9 a.m. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, surrounded by about six committee chairmen, announced two articles of impeachment against President Donald J. Trump.

At 10 a.m., Speaker Pelosi returned to the podium and announced agreement with President Trump on USMCA, the U.S., Mexico, Canada trade agreement.

A slap across the face. Then presentation of something that fulfills one of his campaign promises.

Let’s be honest: Nancy Pelosi is a political genius.

I don’t know if she lucked out on the timing of the USMCA agreement or stalled for the right moment but announcing it right after impeachment is brilliance. No longer can the Republicans make the specious argument that the Democrats are focused solely on impeachment and thus there is a lack of progress in other areas. They can chew gum and spit at the same time, ladies and gentlemen.

The House has sent the Senate about 400 bills that have received no action from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who learned this rope-a-dope style of leadership when he denied President Obama’s Supreme Court choice by simply doing nothing. He is doing nothing again, I assume because he sees that doing nothing drew him praise from his people. And he is proving excellent at doing nothing!

What Pelosi demonstrated though is that indeed our government can work even when we have major issues dividing us. Trump is trying to wrap up approval of many of his campaign promises as he heads into his re-election campaign, a way I assume for him to back up his phony claim that he is the “best President in our history.”

Next up on the impeachment front, the House needs to finish its process of passing articles of impeachment. Then the action shifts to the Senate where Trump wants a long trial so he can stage manage it to his liking. McConnell doesn’t want that, preferring the bare minimum because doing nothing isn't an option in impeachment.

Repeat after me: “You are traveling through another dimension…”

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When it comes to 2020, it is not a perfect world

Lessons learned from the Twitterverse

A new dimension...

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