Day: July 20, 2016

Second time.com/history/ Article From History News Network (hnn.us) Published

Ronald 2 Comments

I wanted to point out that my second History News Network article to be placed on the time.com/history website occurred on July 15, regarding the Supreme Court and Presidential Ambition.

My first article on time.com/history was on April 4, on nine Presidents who had to fight to gain the Presidential nomination of their party on later ballots at the national conventions of their party.

Altogether, this blogger has been fortunate to have 24 articles and counting published on the History News Network site (hnn.us) this year, so I encourage my readers to access that website three times a week, with all articles eventually posted on this website under Articles and Op-Eds.

Barack Obama Enters His Last Six Months As The 44th President Of The United States!

Ronald 2 Comments

Today marks six months until the end of the Obama Presidency.

Barack Obama has survived, literally and figuratively, for seven and a half tumultuous years as the 44th President of the United States.

He has come under the most blistering attacks of any President, including Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, since the times of Abraham Lincoln.

He has been insulted, ridiculed, not given proper respect, and accused of every sin imaginable.

No matter what he says and does, no matter how innocuous it is, right wing talk radio and Fox News Channel and Republican politicians at all levels have refused to cooperate on anything that would be beneficial to the nation at large.

His opponents make him out to be evil incarnate and constantly having ulterior motives, and they have stoked racism to new levels that are shocking in 21st century America.

Blockade, stalemate and gridlock have occurred on an every day basis, but despite that, Barack Obama has been an historic President, and has moved to add to the progressive tradition of Presidents since Theodore Roosevelt and Progressivism in the early 20th century, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal in the 1930s, and Lyndon B. Johnson and the Great Society in the 1960s.

So when history is written, Barack Obama will stand out as a path breaking President, and will, assuredly, end up in the top ten of all Presidents over the long haul of historical analysis.

Analyzing Hillary Clinton’s Choice For Vice President: Most Likely To Be A Sitting US Senator

Ronald 30 Comments

It is two days until Democrat Hillary Clinton announces her Vice Presidential running mate, and it is almost certain, looking at history, that it will be a sitting United States Senator.

If one looks back historically from 1944 onward, every VP nominee except one and a half times (to be explained in next paragraph) was a sitting Senator.

The only exceptions were Sargent Shriver (second choice after Senator Thomas Eagleton withdrew over his mental shock treatments being revealed) in 1972, and Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, and those were the two worst Democratic defeats ever in their history.

So 16 out of 18 elections, a US Senator ran for Vice President:

Harry Truman 1944
Alben Barkley 1948
John Sparkman 1952
Estes Kefavuer 1956
Lyndon B. Johnson 1960
Hubert Humphrey 1964
Edmund Muskie 1968
Walter Mondale 1976 and 1980
Lloyd Bentsen 1988
Al Gore 1992 and 1996
Joe Lieberman 2000
John Edwards 2004
Joe Biden 2008 and 2012

Notice that 8 of the above 13 Senators who ran for VP were from the South or Border states, and two were from Minnesota–and keep this in mind as you read further down on this entry.

So it would seem to this blogger that, based on history, one can assume that three cabinet officers—Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro, Secretary of Labor Tom Perez, and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack (a recent name added to the mix), would be unlikely to be chosen.

So that would leave the following as possible choices, all US Senators:

Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts
Cory Booker of New Jersey
Tim Kaine of Virginia
Sherrod Brown of Ohio
Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota
Al Franken of Minnesota

The problem is that Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Ohio have Republican Governors, so at least temporarily, a seat would be lost by Republican appointment, which could be crucial to organization of the US Senate next year.

So it would seem to this blogger that Tim Kaine is the most likely choice, followed by Amy Klobuchar (bringing a woman to the ticket, but not the highly controversial Elizabeth Warren).

In two days, we shall see!