Tag: #president

  • Post Election: Still Worried

    (Oh, and this is just about as cynical of a post you will find.)

    I was excited on Saturday. Amazingly excited, and we drank champagne and went down the block for the dance party in the street. Ding Dong! The Trump was Dead! His reign was over and sanity was to resume in the world. I did shed tears when I saw Vice-President Elect Harris come out, dressed in Suffragette white. Another barrier broken, and a step closer to a more perfect Union.

    Then Sunday morning came, and I could tell the joy was giving way. We went to visit friends who think along the lines that we do, and though they were happy about the win, they were rather pragmatic about the situation on a whole. 70 million voters still support Trump, they said, and why would they stop supporting him?

    Outside of my family, I am still in contact with one open Trump supporter, and that guy sees the election as rigged, the media is still faked and biased, and he started adding that the 2nd Amendment was created for situations like this.

    Well, crap…

    I’m trying to see the world from inside the other person’s shoes, but I keep feeling like the other side has no intention of returning the favor.

    It makes me think that Trump is filling a deep emotional void that half this nation is desperate to have satisfied. It is a hunger that is satiated by a desire to hurt back. Using logic against that pain yields no fruit, and only exasperates the situation.

    What all of this reminds me of is my last job, and trying to get several different departments to work together for the survival of the company. I tried every tactic and trick I knew, from being the first person willing to compromise, to making myself available to any issue or concern they had, but it never worked. The reason was that they never had any intention to work together, or with me. They just wanted to win more than do the right thing. (And in the end, to stave off bankruptcy, the Board laid off half the staff, and cut 1/3 of the departments. Nobody won, and a bunch of good people got hurt.)

    That is where I feel we are.

  • Watching, Waiting, Hoping

    Just waiting for the final vote counts to come in.

  • Live Tweeting the Debate

    I am purposely taking today easy, and not doing anything other than the basics. That’s because there will a Rapture level dumpster fire trainwreck of a political debate tonight.

    Did you know that was happening tonight? We’re you aware?

    I’m going to make miso ramen for my family, buy a bottle of sake and bourbon, and yell at my tv for over an hour. You know, like our forefathers used to do.

    I will be on Twitter tonight (@mlgroff) making an occasional joke, and seeing what everyone else has to say.

    Most importantly, make your plan to vote.

  • Don’t Eat Your Own

    Ung… That’s how I feel about people supporting candidates in the same political party.

    Forest for the trees, and forgetting who the real problem is, seems to be happening a little too much.

    I see it from supporters for all candidates. When trying to have a conversation about the differences and what that would mean if that person got elected, what I find is that everyone is claiming that the other candidates are the second coming of evil… after Trump that is.

    And then everyone ends with, “But I’ll vote for whoever gets the nomination.”

    Will you?

    Really?

    You can’t tell me how awful Sanders is, and then I am supposed to believe that you will vote for Sanders when it comes down to it? Even though you just told me that he will lose to Trump. You aren’t going to think that the cause is lost and just stay home?

    That’s what I fear, because Bernie fans did that in 2016, or they went for Trump… Which boggles my mind, but the more research I read up on, it makes a little sense now; Populism.

    The democrats need to chill out.

    No one is that evil, and the easiest way to make someone electable is to show up and vote.

    I can see Biden getting to nomination, and I see Bernie fans again staying home. And I can see Bernie getting it, and all the moderates then will think the game is over, and they will stay home.

    We need to think about this process as Thanksgiving; your family may annoy the crap outta you, but you are going to show up anyway.

  • Another Billionaire Problem Solver?

    I have nothing personal against Howard Schultz. As far as I know, and I will give him the benefit of the doubt, is that he is a good husband and father and friend to all.

    But he is a businessman billionaire. And going into 2020, that is a huge albatross around his neck. Is he going to try and convince me that a billionaire businessman isn’t qualified to be president, so we should elect another billionaire businessman?

    That’s going to be a tough sell.

    He isn’t making his case any easier by going after Medicare for all. (The only point I will give him is that no one is addressing how to pay for it, and he is right to point that out.) But it is completely a false equivalency to compare national health care to the boarder wall.

    There is national healthcare in the world, it does work. And if he is really worried about the insurance industry going out of business, then he should look at Germany’s system of national and private healthcare.

    The boarder wall plays on some people’s hate and racism. That doesn’t work.

    But here is where he has already fumbled the ball; he is trying to defend health insurance companies over patients, because effectively, that is what he is saying. He isn’t even politically savvy enough to at least say that putting insurance companies out of business would unemployed so many people, and that isn’t fair. (That’s a good old solid Republican line…) If he is trying to run as a centrist, and trying to get middle America to vote for him, then he needs to understand that this part of the electorate is living paycheck to paycheck (government shut down just hammered that home) and their experiences with insurance companies is adversarial. People have an emotional response to insurance companies, and his first steps out of the gate shows that he doesn’t understand that.

    Don’t show up to the emotion fight with logic, because you will lose every time. You fight emotion with emotion, and logic with logic, and the best politicians know when each is called for in the argument.