Just a Reminder

For two months people have been protesting and rioting over the treatment of blacks in this country. One of the chief complaints is the incarceration rate for blacks sometimes described as the "School-to-prison-pipeline".

All of the crime bills responsible for this have Joe Biden's name on them. Every last one. He even bragged about this back in the 1990s.

Now Biden is the Democratic presidential candidate. His likely pick for running mate made her reputation as a prosecutor who was tough on drug crimes (and who also giggled about her own drug use in college).

When challenged about his crime bills by Charlamagne tha God, Biden said, "You've got more questions? Well I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black.

I just thought people needed to be reminded about that.

From a gun owner to the protestors

I don't have any "assault weapons" and at the age of 65 I'm not going to try taking on the police or military but I still think I'm qualified to answer the question a lot of protestors have been asking: "Why aren't you guys helping us?"

Let's start with a counter-question: "Do you guys really want to go there? To start an actual civil war to be fought in the streets instead of just 'peaceful' protests?" And the follow-up, "If you want ar armed civil war then why aren't you armed?"

It's true that a big defence of the 2nd Amendment is to preserve the option to overthrow a government that has become oppressive. But if you ask a "gun nut" what an oppressive government looks like, he'll probably tell you it would be Marxist with an overbearing centralized government that did not respect individual rights starting with the right to bear arms.

Guess what? If you protestors had your way that's exactly what you'd set up. You've said so. It's in BLM's charter (the organization). Among other things they want to abolish capitalism and the nuclear family. Once you do that you won't want any competition so you'll confiscate guns and we won't have things like the 4th Amendment to protect against house-to-house searches.

So the gun-nuts are going to sit this one out and cheer on the government.

The Democrats' Biden Problem - July Edition

Joe Biden was supposed to have been the official candidate as of this week. The Democratic National Convention has been postponed and moved to virtual. That's a problem since the convention always gives a candidate a big boost in popularity and serves to define his campaign. Instead of that, we will have several more weeks of Uncle Joe trying to campaign from his basement or to small, select groups. That may work out for the better for the Biden campaign.

Biden didn't really win the primaries. Not in the sense that he was people's first choice. He did terrible in the first few primaries/caucuses and was similarly behind in fundraising, coming in a distant 5th. He was not really able to compete. He didn't even have a campaign headquarters in most states.

Joe won because Bernie Sanders scared people. He placed first of a very close second enough for people to worry that he was going to get the nomination. Left-leaning columnists began warning that the Democrats were going to suffer a 1972-style defeat by nominating a candidate who was so far-left that he'd scare voters to Trump. So arms were twisted and the other "moderates" were convinced to drop out of the race so that Biden could capture the "anyone-but-Bernie" vote. That strategy worked great. Biden even won states he'd never campaigned in. People voted for Biden, not because they liked him but because he was the "moderate" and the "centrist". Plus he was Obama's uncle or something like that.

But, the big question is if the "anyone-but-Bernie" candidate can win the presidency by being the "anybody-but-Trump" candidate? The problem with "anyone but Trump" is that it sounds good until you see who that "anyone" actually is. Then many voters do a double-take and decide that Trump isn't so bad after all.

And Biden is not a moderate or centrist. He never was. He's always been well-left of center and as the Democrats' center has moved left, he's moved with it. Biden has been around for decades and people mistake positions he held in the 1990s for his current positions. He's made that clear by signing unity positions with Bernie Sanders. Sanders has praised Biden for having one of the most progressive platforms in the history of the Democratic Party.

That's why it might be to Biden's advantage that the Democrats will not have a standard convention. The better he hides his positions the longer he can claim to be a moderate. But eventually Joe's going to have to start a real campaign and that means running on something.

Biden has other problems, too. His positions may have shifted but his name is still on a bunch of crime bills that are responsible for mass incarceration of black men.

The Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police protests put Biden in a quandary. He needs black support but it's unlikely that moderates will support any meaningful police cutbacks. Trump has already staked out the pro-police side so Biden is likely to alienate some potential voters no matter what he does.

Currently Biden is ahead in the polls but his lead shrunk to a margin-of-error between June and July.

The question really comes down to "Is Joe Biden a strong enough candidate to defeat an incumbent?" For the last three years Democrats have insisted that President Trump was "historically unpopular" and that anyone could beat him. They revised that opinion when it looked like Bernie Sanders might be the candidate. That's why they went for Biden. They realized that he was the most electable out of a historically large pool of candidates.

Think of candidates who have defeated an incumbent since the end of World War II. It's a short list: Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Both were far stronger candidates than Biden. Reagan in particular transformed the Republican Party and is still considered one of it's greatest figures. Clinton was popular enough that his wife got more votes than Trump in 2016.

Biden does not have the presence of either of these men. He dropped out quickly the two previous times he ran and, as I pointed out above, he did poorly in the first few primaries. These were the states he spent the most time campaigning in but, until South Carolina, they preferred other candidates.

Finally, there is Biden's age. Trump already set a record for oldest president but Biden is older now than Trump will be in 4 years. Is that too old? Joe has always been known for "gaffs" but they seem to be getting worse. He has frequent memory loss, even referring to Obama as "President my boss" once. Are people willing to take a chance on a president who will turn 80 his first term?

Biden's pick for running-mate will be a bigger factor than usual. There is an excellent chance that person will either finish his term or be the candidate in four years. This is also a weakness for Biden. He already promised that his running mate will be a woman. There is a lot of pressure for her to be a woman of color but he's having problems finding one who is qualified to be President who does not have some baggage of her own. The rumored establishment candidate, Elizabeth Warren, would ruin any pretense Biden has as a moderate. Kamala Harris did poorly in the primaries. None of the other rumored candidates have had national exposure.

This does not mean that Trump is guaranteed to win reelection but the race is probably his to lose.