Midwest

Joe Biden, Obama’s Greatest Asset And Emissary To Blue Collar Working Class, Comes Out Fighting In Toledo, Ohio

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Vice President Joe Biden, who has been a great asset to President Obama in so many ways, started the national campaign in Toledo, Ohio, today with a speech before a labor group extolling the record of President Obama in saving the auto industry, and attacking the Republican Presidential candidates by name for the first time, since it is still not certain who the GOP nominee against Obama will be in November.

Joe Biden represents the blue collar working class of Scranton, Pennsylvania and Wilmington, Delaware, where he grew up. And being a commuter on Amtrak to work for 36 years of service in the US Senate, Biden has come across as an average guy, who cares about his neighbors and his country, and as sincere and dedicated to help those in the struggling middle class that was the story of much of his childhood.

Biden knows how to deliver a fiery speech and how to excite a crowd, and he will take the fight for the Obama Presidency all over America in the next eight months.

His rhetoric will be very supportive, and he will use all of the energy he possesses to advance a second term for President Obama. The President is very lucky to have him there by his side! Biden will help carry Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and other states in a tough battle against those who would use religion and resentment (as for instance Rick Santorum) against Obama. And if Mitt Romney is the nominee, Biden will attack him mercilessly for his refusal to back the bailout of Chrysler and General Motors.

The Ides Of March: Significant In The Past And The Present!

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Today, March 15, marks the anniversary of the assassination of Julius Caesar in the Roman Republic in 44 BC, so well depicted by William Shakespeare.

But in America, it is marked by the speech of President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, calling for the Voting Rights Act to stop discrimination in voting for African Americans in the South.

Ironically, 47 years later, we are seeing many states, primarily in the South and Midwest, trying to deny the right to vote for the elderly, college students, the poor, and minorities by onerous Voter ID requirements, in many cases for people who have voted for decades without trouble, but now are being told they cannot vote in this year’s Presidential election.

This is all designed by Republicans and conservatives in their effort to defeat President Barack Obama by any means they can find, because they do not have the issues to win the election without utilizing dishonesty. And yet they claim they are trying to prevent voter fraud, which is only a few cases in many millions, far less than even one thousandth of one percent in the past decade!

So the Obama Administration, through Attorney General Eric Holder, has brought lawsuits against South Carolina and Texas, as well as Arizona and Alabama on other issues of racial and ethnic discrimination related to voting and basic human rights. And many Midwestern and Southern states, other than those mentioned, are also setting out to abuse the Voting Rights Act, trying to take us back to the era of Jim Crow voter laws, that denied poor and minority voters their basic rights!

Also, today marks the beginning of what is seen as an end to our engagement in Afghanistan, as President Hamid Karzai is calling for Allied forces to retreat to bases, and remove themselves from Afghan villages. This is the reaction to the tragic massacre by one American soldier last week, the murder of 16 civilians, including nine children and three women and four men, as they slept in their village a mile away from an American military base; and the earlier burning of Korans by American soldiers, leading to the killing of several soldiers by Taliban terrorists.

America has been in Afghanistan more than a decade, and the war is leading to no improvement worth the continuation of the sacrifice of our troops, or those of our allies.

Afghanistan has been the doom of Alexander the Great in the ancient world; the British Empire in the 19th century; the Soviet Union in the late 20th century; and now the US and allied nations in the 21st century! It is time to expedite our exit, and just use drones and the air force against Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists. Making Afghanistan a democracy is, sadly, a lost cause!

So March 15 past and present has significant meanings we must not forget!

Rick Santorum The Promoter of Class Warfare, Not Barack Obama!

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Republicans have, on a regular basis, accused President Barack Obama of promoting “class warfare”, because he promotes the concept that the wealthy have been very fortunate, with the biggest tax cuts in history during the Bush and early Obama years, and must start to pay their fair share of taxes to help support the national commitments and responsibilities.

But actually, it is Rick Santorum, above all, who is promoting class warfare, by advocating an anti elitist view about the news media, colleges and universities, and liberals, blaming them for reporting what is going on, and promoting investigation of the mess created by the Bush Administration and the Republican Party during the years they controlled the national government, and advocating open inquiry and analysis and thinking, rather than accepting what we are told is the ultimate truth from a man who advocates religion in government, rather than separation of church and state.

Santorum is trying to organize blue collar whites who are not educated beyond high school and have a much higher unemployment rate against white collar workers and college educated people who have a much lower unemployment rate.

Instead of seeing that education is the road to success and the stable middle class, and despite the fact that Santorum himself has three college and university degrees and will certainly hope his own children will get a college education to advance themselves economically over a lifetime, Santorum calls educated people snobs, and Obama is blamed for promoting a better life for the future generation!

This campaign pitch of Santorum is promotion of resentment, anger, and against the role of education in attainment of life’s goals. It is sick, insane, destructive of social mobility for the future of the nation, and Santorum needs to be repudiated in a massive way by his party, but they seem unwilling to take him on, and they are therefore promoting further degradation of the middle and working classes by NOT advocating what Obama says is necessary for success–as much education as any young person can handle, rather than a drive to the bottom!

If the blue collar whites of the Midwest back Rick Santorum, they are guaranteeing their continued decline into poverty and degradation!

Santorum’s pitch is the closest to that of Pat Buchanan in 1992 and George Wallace in 1968, but he is more of a threat to be the standard bearer of a major political party, and this could, therefore, be a calamity in the making!

A Forecast Of The Future? Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley Vs. Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell

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Yesterday, the political website POLITICO sponsored a debate between Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley and Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell over the controversial social issues that have come to the forefront in the past few weeks.

Martin O’Malley came to the strong defense of President Barack Obama, and hailed the successes of the administration, while being critical of the Republicans, led by Virginia’s Governor Bob McDonnell, who became embroiled in a controversy over an invasive vaginal ultra sound bill to undermine abortions by women.

O’Malley at the same time defended the decision in Maryland to make that state the eighth state to legalize gay marriages.

Bob McDonnell was on the defensive, as he explained his change of heart on the invasive ultra sound bill, after much outrage by women and the news media and others who believe in the right of privacy and women’s rights.

As one watched this debate, one could imagine the scenario of a possible 2016 Presidential debate between the two men, governors of neighboring states, with totally opposite views, and both strong defenders of their viewpoints.

Martin O’Malley is already seen as a top tier Presidential candidate for 2016 in the Democratic Party, and Bob McDonnell has obvious ambitions on the Republican side, and has made it clear that he is interested in a Vice Presidential slot with Mitt Romney, if Romney were to choose him. That is the obvious, although denied, reason for his backing off on the invasive ultra sound bill that he seemed ready to sign.

O’Malley has showed evidence that he would be a hard, aggressive campaigner if he ran for President, as he has become one of the major defenders of President Obama’s record, and a critic of the governors of not only Virginia, but also Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida, all hard line conservatives, who he accuses correctly of presiding over very poor employment growth, while Obama, by intervening in Michigan and other Midwestern states, has promoted a revival of the auto industry and the general economy, along with the general progress in decline of the unemployment rate.

Not only is Martin O’Malley demonstrating that a Catholic can have an open mind on issues such as abortion and gay marriage and labor rights, but also Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York, is showing the same on these issues, and both are certainly to be considered front runners for the Presidential nomination in 2016.

Not all Catholic politicians allow their faith to dominate their politics, although Rick Santorum, particularly, and convert Newt Gingrich, both seem to feel that their religious views should be dictated to the population at large, even though we were founded as a nation on the concept of separation of church and state, which John F. Kennedy so clearly enunciated as the first Catholic President of the United States!

Can Mitt Romney Survive A Loss In Michigan Primary? His “Competition” With George Romney’s Image And History!

Ronald 2 Comments

The biggest crisis in Mitt Romney’s privileged life is coming in Michigan, the state of his birth, the state which elected his father George Romney Governor for three terms in the 1960s, the state which he fundamentally abandoned when he called for the ordered bankruptcy of the auto industry, the state in which there has been a major turn around and drop in unemployment due to the intervention of the federal government to help General Motors and Chrysler survive. General Motors has seen its best growth in 25 years, and Michigan and the Midwest, as bad as they are in economic terms, are far better off because of what Barack Obama did, as opposed to what Romney wished to do for the area–NOTHING!

Romney is about to be paid back in spades, as the odds are now heavy that he will lose his “home state” to Rick Santorum, who can relate to blue collar workers on a fundamental basis, as compared to the filthy rich Romney who has no clue as to the struggles of auto workers or anyone else, and lives off investments but can joke about being “unemployed”!

If Romney loses the Michigan Primary, he is doomed, and will not be able to survive and win the nomination. And even if, by some intervention by “establishment” forces on Wall Street, he gets the nomination, he will have a flaw that will be enough to cause his defeat in November. He is simply too plastic, to stiff, too elitist, for the average American, and by catering to the extreme right in his rhetoric, he is causing the loss of major groups of voters–women, Hispanics and Latinos, African Americans, labor, the struggling middle class, independents, conservative Democrats, gays, etc. Does anyone NOT get the point?

Mitt Romney is NOT electable; he may have the lifelong desire to be what his father failed to be–President of the United States! But in a way, he is competing with a ghost, as George Romney was a much more genuine candidate, a man who knew what it was like to be poor, a man who really built up the auto industry, rather than live off buying up companies and firing workers, and making money on the resale of those companies.

George Romney was genuine, compassionate, principled, and honest to a set of values! Mitt Romney is none of these attributes of his father!

In a way, this reminds us of the struggle between father and son of George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, another case of son trying to overcome the achievements of the father, but never matching up in any way, shape or form.

The difference is THIS time, it is not going to work out that this country has to deal with the psychological effects of the father-son battle for supremacy, as Mitt Romney is NOT going to be President of the United States, and is highly unlikely, as things stand now, to be the GOP nominee chosen at the Tampa Republican National Convention in August.

It is actually humiliating and embarrassing to see Romney trying to pander to Michigan now, talking about his old high school, the height of the trees, loving the lakes of the state, loving cars and Detroit! Such phoniness and catering to voters who know better than to be suckered by a rich guy who does not care about the “very poor”, the middle class, but only the rich, despite his protestations to the contrary!

Rick Santorum Surges To Significance: What This Means For The GOP

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Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum has had a good night, winning the Missouri Primary and the Minnesota Caucuses, and at this writing, also leading in the Colorado Caucuses.

If this happens, that he wins all three states, then Santorum has won four states (Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, Colorado), to Mitt Romney’s three states (New Hampshire, Florida, Nevada), and Newt Gingrich’s one state (South Carolina).

It means that Rick Santorum must be taken seriously, as possibly the true conservative challenger to Mitt Romney, instead of Newt Gingrich. It means that Santorum has won three Midwestern states, the area of the country usually considered prime and needed territory for a Republican win.

It means also that the Republican battle for the Presidential nomination will drag on for a long time, and that Super Tuesday on March 6, could be the decisive day in the battle.

All this ultimately helps Barack Obama, and for political junkies like the author, it keeps politics interesting!

Florida In Many Ways The Major Battleground Of America In 2012

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The state of Florida is now the center of attention, with its Presidential primary coming up on Tuesday, and polls indicating that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has a double digit lead over former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, with Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and Texas Congressman Ron Paul lagging behind.

Romney, by going on the attack against Gingrich in the two Florida debates this past week, and spending about four times as much on campaign advertising as Gingrich, seems likely to win despite the decision of two popular Floridians, Senator Marco Rubio and former Governor Jeb Bush to avoid endorsing anyone.

Without an endorsement, it still seems as if both Rubio and Bush are secretly behind Romney, seeing Gingrich as divisive and likely to cause a disruption in party unity.

Both are potential Vice Presidential candidates for Romney, and both are also potential Presidential candidates in 2016 if the Republicans lose to Barack Obama in 2012.

And being the third largest state, with an increase of two electoral votes, and matching New York in electoral votes, Florida becomes the biggest battleground of all, since California and New York are seen as strongly Democratic and Texas as strongly Republican.

Florida, won by Obama in 2008, is definitely up for grabs with its 29 electoral votes, and it is really three or four states. There is the Panhandle of Florida, likely to go Republican for sure. There is Central Florida, including Tampa and Orlando and other areas, which is the real battleground. There is Broward and Palm Beach Counties, likely to support Obama. And then there is the Miami-Dade County influence of Cuban Americans, traditionally Republican.

Florida is the South (Alabama) in the North; the Midwest in the Central area; and Northeast and Cuba in the South. It is also affected by the Jewish vote in South Florida and the Puerto Rican vote in Central Florida. As one observer summed it up, Florida is the Jews, the Cubans, and the “rednecks”! Of course, this is an oversimplification of the state’s political clout, but it is clear that the Republican nominee and President Obama will spend a lot of time in the state, as it may very well decide who occupies the White House in 2013!

Florida: A Complex State Politically, And Hard To Predict Its Impact

Ronald 1 Comment

With the Florida Republican Primary just eight days away, and with many Republican voters having already engaged in early voting or absentee mail ballots, the question arises as to what one can expect to happen on January 31.

Mitt Romney has the most money and is seen as the moderate in the race, although he professes to be conservative.

Newt Gingrich, flush off his victory in South Carolina, would seem to have an edge, although Florida is not quite the same as South Carolina electorally, being much more unpredictable.

Florida is really multiple states in electoral behavior, as the Panhandle, particularly west of Tallahassee, the state capital, is very much like South Carolina or “southern Alabama”, strongly evangelical Christian and Tea Party oriented. But central Florida, including Tampa and Orlando, tends to be made up of people from the Midwest, while South Florida has large concentrations of Cubans, but also Northeasterners, including Jews in large numbers. And Puerto Ricans are found in Orlando in large numbers, and liberal strongholds exist in Tallahassee due to Florida State University’s presence, and in Gainesville, home of the University of Florida.

So if Florida comes across in the GOP Primary as too conservative, that can affect the balance among Hispanics, African Americans, and Jews, heavily concentrated in South Florida and portions of Central Florida, when it comes to the Presidential election in November.

Florida has a “split personality”, and being a megastate, more representative of the nation than Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina, it could turn out to be very unpredictable in its impact on the Republican Presidential battle, and in the fall campaign against Barack Obama.

The Persistent Hillary Clinton For Vice President Chatter: Does It Make Sense? YES!

Ronald 2 Comments

Chatter is arising again, as it has on and off for a year, that President Barack Obama might ask Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to become his Vice Presidential running mate for the Presidential Election of 2012, with Vice President Joe Biden dutifully steeping aside and becoming Secretary of State in a second Obama term.

This is something that has been dismissed in the past as not going to happen, and not advisable to happen. The author himself is a great Joe Biden fan, and the general feeling is that Joe Biden has done a great job as Vice President, adding distinction to the office.

However, the arguments for Hillary Clinton as Vice President are as follows:

1. Hillary Clinton has improved her credentials as Secretary of State, but is tiring of the constant travel and wants to leave the State Department.

2. While Hillary claims she wishes to retire, and proceed to write, speak and travel, it is hard to believe that the highly competitive Mrs. Clinton really wants to do what she says!

3. With the possibility of a close election due to the slowly recovering economy, Hillary would certainly be a plus for Barack Obama, more so than Joe Biden, as she has great public support, with a present public opinion rating of 64 percent, higher than anyone.

4. Hillary Clinton running for Vice President would be likely to bring more Democratic victories in Congress, which is essential to accomplish the goals of a second Obama term.

5. Hillary would bring more support for the President among women, Hispanics and Latinos, African Americans and young people, the core of the Obama victory in 2008, but flagging somewhat in all areas after the realities of three years in power.

6. Hillary running would bring about the first woman Vice President in reality, an exciting proposition after the disastrous candidacies of Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and Sarah Palin in 2008.

7. The Democratic Party would have a front runner for President in 2016, although others would challenge Hillary, but it would increase the chances of a third Democratic term, and even possibly a fourth Democratic term, in the White House, and extra strength for the Democrats in Congress for the future beyond Barack Obama.

8. So called “shotgun marriages” in politics have occurred before with success, such as John F. Kennedy with Lyndon B. Johnson in 1960 and Ronald Reagan with George H. W. Bush in 1980.

9. Having Bill Clinton, supremely popular almost on the level of his wife, fully working for Obama and his own wife, would make for an exciting, dynamic campaign, creating a “marriage” between two powerful families, and would work well electorally.

10. Hillary could help President Obama in the crucial Midwest, with white working class men and women, her strong point in 2008, and his weak point.

11. Joe Biden would be a “good soldier”, who would willingly agree to step aside, but would get his ideal job, based on his career in the Senate, as having been former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and loving that area of policy, he would have great impact as Secretary of State in a second Obama term, and being 74 by the end of the second Obama term, would not be likely to seek the Presidency or be a real challenge to Hillary or other Democrats at that stage of his life. But since he has good relations with Hillary, he could have a future in the position of Secretary of State or some other important position in 2016.

12. Finally, some might say that the Bill and Hillary Clinton shortcomings might be revived in a race in 2012 and beyond, but that is all old news, not new, and would have little impact, as their reputations have soared, rather than declined!

So therefore, it makes sense at this point for Barack Obama to ask Hillary Clinton to be his running mate, and for Joe Biden to replace her in 2013 as Secretary of State in a second Obama administration, good for all of them, for the Democratic Party, and for the future of America!

Mitt Romney, His Auto Bailout Opposition, And The Midwest In The 2012 Election

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Mitt Romney, when all is said and done, is likely to be the Republican Presidential nominee, but he will have a great deal of trouble winning the “swing states” in the Midwest and even in Pennsylvania, because of his strong stand against the auto industry bailout pursued by President Barack Obama in 2009.

Romney, whose father was an auto executive and Governor of Michigan in the 1960s, strongly opposed any bailout and called for bankruptcy in very clear cut terms.

This will come back to haunt him in the campaign, and tonight, at the CNBC debate in Michigan, the state in which he was born, Romney will be confronted with the issue of the auto industry revival, with more than 1.4 million jobs saved, not only in Michigan, but also in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin and Minnesota, all “swing states” which are appreciative that Obama did not give up on the industry.

It was not only the auto industry itself, but satellite industries that supply parts and service for the auto industry, that won out by Obama coming to their aid.

The auto companies are paying back the loans, and the American economy, as bad as it is, would be far worse off if Barack Obama had not had the courage to do what he did.

Mitt Romney’s stand, which he cannot revoke, unlike other issues that he flip flops on regularly, will ultimately defeat him in the Presidential Election of 2012!