Monroe Dispatch - No Struggle, No Progress

The 2020 presidential election is a mere 60 days away and there are some undecided voters out there who the media is telling the public, really can’t make up their minds for whom to vote. These are the so called “undecided”, the less than 10% of voters who will say that they may stay with the current incumbent or vote for the challenger. Some will say that they may make up their mind on election day because given the choices that they have, the challenge that they face is not going to the dentist or even worse, splitting hairs. That’s how difficult some say it is when it comes to making up their minds. However, for the overwhelmingly number of other voters, the choice for president is crystal clear. Some may say that there should have been other individuals to choose from, but that is the price the nation must pay for having a two-party political elections apparatus in which every four years, voters basically have only two candidates for whom to vote. So, it’s “either or” when it comes to casting a vote, but still a choice that will have important ramifications on this nation for the next four years.

Now that the Democrats and Republicans have had their respective conventions to select their nominees, voters must endure two more months of name calling and mudslinging from the candidates instead of discussing the issues/problems that this nation faces and how those issues/problems will be resolved. That kind of political theater usually happened during the primaries within political parties leading up to and sometimes during the convention before both parties kiss and make up on their way to selecting their nominee. One candidate has stood out as the one who will sling the mud and mischaracterized his opponent and that is President Donald Trump. Mr. Trump will not run on the issues like continued unemployment (yes, it is still high), health care, infrastructure improvements and the coronavirus because things are still bad four years later. One other issue that won’t come up is Mexico paying for the border wall. Mr. Trump will not mention that because his onetime campaign manager/confidant Steve Bannon has been charged with fraud to privately help build the wall, but some of that money allegedly went into Bannon and his associates’ pockets. He will not talk about all of the scandals in his administration from day 1, but will accuse Joe Biden of taking away guns, religion, freedom of choice, raising taxes, weakening the military and other things that Republicans have used to instill fear into their base. He will at every turn remind the nation that it is the Democrats and liberals that has the nation in the bad situation that it is in and will cast himself as the only one who can “make America great again”. That’s kind of odd. If America is this “great nation” that can do big things as we are told constantly, why does it has to be “made great again”? We are told that America is still the “greatest” nation that the world has ever seen. Great as in the present tense and getting greater every day should tell us if that is the case, why should there be an “again”? Nonetheless, the president will use his salesman’s pitch to convince his supporters and the undecided voters, that despite him being an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the Michael Cohn hush money payments to two women, that he is an “honest broker”. It doesn’t matter because their minds are already made up.

Joe Biden and President Trump are mirror opposites. Biden has a record of public service stretching over decades. Though Biden may be not be perfect, he has not been involved in scandals such as President Trump, but Republicans and the president have been trying to get at his son Hunter Biden. Voters will remember that the president was impeached for trying to get the Ukrainian president to open an investigation on Hunter Biden at Trump’s request because he felt all along that Joe Biden would be his opponent in the 2020 election. Just as President Trump’s son, Don Jr. had hoped that the Russians had some dirt on Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Biden doesn’t need to cheat to win, as he and the Democrats are not heading voter suppression efforts to keep minorities from voting. Joe Biden has shown that he can “work with Republicans” to get things done. One other thing that voters can be reasonably sure of, is that Biden will not spend more time on the golf course or his private resort (doesn’t have one) than he will in the White House. There is a clear choice in 2020. America does not need to be “made great again”, but this nation needs to live up to the ideas/principles of equality and fairness in which the world used to believe. Trump may fool his supporters, but he can’t fool the world because this nation is living in a glass house. Remember, the world is watching. So is God.