Why Pete's Nomination Should Sail Through

On December 16, 2020, history was made as the first open LGBTQ person was nominated for a cabinet position. President-elect Joe Biden announced that Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, IN, has been selected to be the Secretary of Transportation in the new Biden-Harris administration. 

Mr. Buttigieg's remarks following the announcement are shown here.

The Senate would have to confirm this nomination for this historic breakthrough to be official. And they will.

Yes, Mitch McConnell is a serial obstructionist and a spiteful one at that. And he could cause mischief with Biden’s cabinet nominees assuming his party retains control of the Senate and that is certainly an open question. And yes, Republican senators still under the thumb of sore loser Trump may resist anything Joe Biden tries to put forward. But in Mayor Pete‘s case, they will confirm.

For one thing, the Department of Transportation, important as it will be in a potential infrastructure deal as well as energy and climate considerations, is not part of the top tier cabinet positions. Those include State, Defense, Treasury and Justice. Therefore, the nomination should not be one in which Republicans will find ideological differences to contest.

Secondly, Mr. Buttigieg is a centrist and not a “left wing radical,” the type that Republicans loath. During his campaign he promised to work across the aisle so that will bode well for him during the Senate confirmation process.

Mr. Buttigieg’s personal story is compelling. A Rhodes Scholar, a military veteran, an ability to speak some seven languages fluently, and the first gay presidential candidate from a major political party to win delegates during a primary are qualities that endeared him to many in the public and media after he burst onto the scene two years ago. 

The historic nature of this selection will not be lost on the Senate. When McConnell grudgingly acknowledged Biden’s victory the day before, he proudly announced that Kamala Harris will be the first female vice president. If nothing else, the Senate reveres history.

If they block the nomination, the media and the public writ large will assume it was due to homophobia and not on the merits. That is a possibility for sure given that the Senate contains a fair number of bigots.

But it would be politically damaging to the Republicans if that perception gains traction. It’s not a good way to expand their “tent” if suburban women see this rejection for what it is. If this election proved anything, you cannot win a national race with just the base.

Moreover, there are a number of gay Republicans who are big donors. The GOP should keep that in mind.

The only reason I can fathom in which the Senate would reject this nomination is that they don’t want to bolster Mr. Buttigieg’s resume. He is an enormous political talent as evidenced by his brief remarks following Mr. Biden's introduction, and at age 38, a future presidential run is likely. The experience he will garner at the federal/cabinet level will put the kabash on his lack of resume. He will pose an enormous threat to Republicans in a potential presidential bid should he capture the Democratic nomination.

Nonetheless, the Senate Republicans will be eyeing the near term and should have no ostensible reason to reject this nomination with more significant battles looming. Mayor Pete should sail through without a hitch, and we will be calling him Secretary Pete in a few months.

The Most Impactful People of 2020

For 93 years TIME magazine has awarded some form of the “Person of the Year.” It started out as Man of the Year (Charles Limbergh) in 1927 and evolved over time to select women, groups, machines, ideas and other recipients. Its criteria have been “the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year.”  

For example, Adolf Hitler was chosen in 1938 having met TIME’s criteria.

While I am not making a selection for THE person of the year, I am offering some candidates who, in my view, deserve consideration, for better or worse, for having the most impact in an extremely impactful year. They are listed below in no particular ranking:

Joe Biden. The president-elect is Joe Biden, capping a long political career. Winning the presidency is consequential enough but in doing so, he rescued the United States from another four and likely dangerous years of a second Trump term.

Biden garnered a record 80 million votes and regained the crucial Democratic “blue wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin that were lost in 2016. Moreover, he flipped two perennial red states Georgia and Arizona. It was a decisive victory with 306 electoral votes amassed.

Biden exercised sound judgment by avoiding rallies and large crowds during the pandemic—something Trump irresponsibly engaged in. Trump and his cohorts considered Biden a lightweight though he got himself impeached for trying to find dirt on Biden and his son Hunter by bribing Ukraine. This attempt indicated that deep down Trump feared running against Biden.

They also tried to scare the voters into thinking Biden is suffering from dementia, but by allowing the bar to be so low, Biden easily overcame it.  He also committed very few of the gaffes he is famously known to spew during his past campaigns, which seemed to have nullified the Trump campaign's attacks.

As a refreshing elixir from the past four years, Biden will re-install honesty, competence, experience and humanity to the presidency. During the campaign Biden demonstrated a measure of responsibility that Trump lacked in his urging Americans to follow CDC's guidelines as they pertain to the coronavirus.

Kamala Harris. When inaugurated, Kamala Harris will become the first ever U.S. woman vice president and the first Black and Southeastern Asian to hold the position. Biden’s pick of Harris as his running mate was not unexpected as he had promised it would indeed be a woman. However, her election energized his campaign and led to the raising of millions of dollars to counter the Trump smear machine.

Kamala Harris’ most significant impact was galvanizing the African American vote, which was arguably the defining factor in the Biden-Harris win.

Donald Trump. Most, if not all, of Donald Trump’s weaknesses as a president and as a human being surfaced in a perfect storm during 2020. First and foremost was, and still is, his incompetence and narcissism in “managing” the coronavirus pandemic that has so far claimed some 265,000 lives in the U.S. and climbing at an alarming rate.

Not only did he deceive the American people when he learned of the deadly nature of the virus by downplaying it and predicting it would disappear on its own, he was instrumental in its spread when he politicized it. Trump could have spoken to the American people from the beginning about the seriousness of the virus and urged everybody to help mitigate its spread by wearing masks and maintain social distancing. Instead, he bungled everything about it by not putting a national plan in place to combat the pandemic.

Fearful that the pandemic, which he dubbed as the “China Virus,” would spook the stock market and hurt his re-election bid, Trump pressured governors to re-open businesses prematurely and mocked those who wore masks. Trump’s fervent supporters took his cue and refused to wear face coverings and to social distance as a bizarre sign of strength and to trigger liberals who were committed to stopping the spread. Selfishly he held numerous super-spreader rallies that led to a surge in cases.

In addition, Trump’s long history of racism became more evident in 2020 (see below). He could not bring himself to denounce white nationalism and racist vigilante groups like Proud Boys. During the campaign he tried to scare white suburban women with louder than normal dog whistles about how their neighborhoods will be threatened by you know who. He played to the racists among his base.

Over three weeks since he lost the election, Trump has refused to concede displaying his selfishness, narcissism, petulance and disconnect from reality. Only recently did he grudgingly allow the transition to proceed while taking baseless, almost comical, legal action to the courts by maintaining only widespread voter fraud defeated him. Somehow he conflates Black people voting with a fraudulent act.  Trump lost handily; in fact, Joe Biden’s Electoral College totals are the same as Trump’s in 2016 in which he declared a landslide then.

The impact of Trump’s refusal to accept reality has been an assault on our democracy that could produce long-lasting detrimental effects. America First? Not so much.

Rep. James Clyburn.  Civil Rights champion and highest ranking African American in Congress Rep. James Clyburn gave one of the most consequential endorsements in modern political history. Joe Biden had badly lost primaries/caucuses in Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire and seemed at the precipice of ending his long political career. Three days before the South Carolina primary, Clyburn endorsed Biden, which figured strongly in the former vice president’s landslide victory there.

An exit poll found that 47 percent of voters stated that Clyburn’s endorsement was significant in their decision while 24 percent indicated it was the most important factor.

“You brought me back,” Biden told Clyburn after he hugged him on the stage following the results. And so he did. Biden essentially ran the table in the remaining primaries with this newly found momentum he acquired out of South Carolina powered by the support from Black voters to easily win the nomination.

George Floyd. “I can’t breathe” may have been the most significant three words said during
2020. When George Floyd, an African American, was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis during an arrest this summer, his neck was under the knee of Derek Chauvin for nearly nine minutes as his life was agonizingly snuffed out while the heinous act was captured on video footage for the world to see.

This tragic incident set off protests not only throughout the U.S. that transcended racial lines but also in foreign countries. The killing reinvigorated the Black Lives Matter movement aimed at exposing systemic racism that exists in police departments and the disparate treatment Black people receive as opposed to whites when interacting with law enforcement. 

The killing of Floyd and the subsequent protests revealed the true belief systems of our presidential candidates. For President Trump, it uncovered his innate racism by siding with the police and labeling the protesters as rioters. For Joe Biden, it demonstrated his compassion by visiting with the Floyd family and denouncing racism while at the same time he condemned any violence that grew out of the protests.

The impact of Floyd’s death is a renewal of the conversation about race and policing in America. 

Front line health professionals, scientists and essential workers. As bad as the pandemic has been, it would have been exponentially worse had it not been for the dedicated work of the front line doctors, nurses and technicians who have risked and lost in many cases their own lives. Furthermore, scientists searching for therapeutics and a vaccine as well as essential workers like truck drivers, supermarket employees, police, teachers, fire fighters and others have kept the country moving throughout the ordeal. They have prevented a catastrophe beyond description, and their impact will be felt long into the future.

Why Dems Will Not Face Trump in 2020

Potential Democratic presidential candidates for 2020 have been dipping their toes in the political waters to determine if they will indeed make a run. From the familiar Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden to the lesser known Julian Castro and Mitch Landrieu, with well over a dozen in between including Beto O’Rourke, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, these individuals are exploring whether or not they can raise sufficient money for a presidential bid, if they are viable to survive the grueling primary system, and to see if the voters think they are tough enough to stand up to Donald Trump in 2020. 

The latter point is interesting as these candidates will attempt to out-Trump Trump in an effort to corral the Democratic base behind them.  It should be noted, however, that Hillary Clinton has always been considered tough yet she couldn’t topple Trump for a bevy of reasons irrespective of her toughness. 

Nonetheless, voters, especially Democratic voters, will be applying ideological litmus tests to these candidates as well as determining their electability against an opponent who has yet to approach, much less crack 50 percent job approval.

With all the hand wringing that will take place in order to figure out an effective way to “stand up to Trump,” it may be a moot point.   I may be in a small minority but I truly believe that Donald Trump will not be their opponent in 2020.

The President’s legal woes haven’t even scratched the surface and already he’s in trouble. For the first time, Federal prosecutors directly implicated Trump for federal crimes involving illegal campaign contributions resulting from payments made to Trump’s alleged mistresses in an effort to defraud the U.S. by paying hush money to these women so their stories remained hidden from the voters during the 2016 campaign.

Those offenses alone supported by former Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s statement as well as corroborating evidence and testimony that are in the possession of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) and Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III would amount to, in the opinion of many legal scholars, an impeachable offense.

Yet, that is just the tip of the iceberg.  According to NBC News, the following are other investigations underway:

. The Mueller probe looking at Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, and whether there was cooperation/coordination/assistance from the Trump campaign;

. New York prosecutors looking at the inaugural committee;

. New York’s attorney general examining the Trump Foundation and Trump’s business dealings;

. the lawsuits looking at whether Trump is violating the Constitution’s emoluments clause through his business dealings; and

. the defamation lawsuit by Summer Zervos, who alleges that Trump defamed her after she claimed she was sexually assaulted by the president in 2007.

In addition, there is Mr. Mueller’s investigation into possible obstruction of justice on the part of the President (think: Comey and Sessions firings, Trump’s public comments to Lester Holt and, of course, his tweets).

And let’s not forget the myriad investigations the Democratic-controlled House will launch in 2019.  Any organization Trump had led over the past decade is currently or will be under investigation. Follow the money because with Trump, it’s all about money.

A full listing of ALL the investigations that involve Trump and Russia can be seen here.

That is one big basket of deplorable legal perils. 

My gut tells me that the meticulous, professional and extremely competent Mr. Mueller will present

Image: The Daily Beast

(if allowed to complete his work) a convincingly damning case against Mr. Trump in the areas of his purview. Moreover, the relentless U.S. Attorney’s office in the SDNY as well as an incoming New York State Attorney General will probably clobber Mr. Trump and members of his family for other crimes.

So, what does all this mean with respect to 2020?  There will likely be Articles of Impeachment drawn by the new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives after reviewing the reports and/or indictments that will undoubtedly be forthcoming. But even if impeachment is voted by the House, the fate of Mr. Trump’s removal from office rests in the hands of the Senate.

When President Nixon was about to be impeached, key Republicans approached him to tell him his time was up.  Rather than face a difficult and divisive trial, Nixon chose to resign.

 Most people that I know believe a defiant Donald Trump would never cave like Nixon did.  He will fight back with all his might and try to rally what will remain of his loyal base to “revolt,” as he suggested, pressuring Senate Republicans from convicting.

Whether those Senators will succumb to such pressure will be determined by how the public reacts to the Special Counsel’s report and indictments and from what the SDNY brings to the table.

If the evidence is so overwhelming and his support erodes significantly, I suspect Mr. Trump will choose not to fight any impeachment attempt and may resign and return to his gilded lifestyle that was partially interrupted by winning the presidency. Even his wife feels the stress is too much for his health.  

More likely though, he will not seek a second term and will blame the media, the Democrats, President Obama, “Crooked Hillary” and everybody else but himself.

Either way, Democratic presidential candidates will not be facing Mr. Trump in 2020.