The following appeared on Monday, August 5, 2024, in the Blank Slate Media newspaper chain and on its website, theisland360.com:

When President Joe Biden was beating Donald Trump in public opinion polls, leading Democrats, including Sen. Chuck Schumer, House Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, were saying ad nauseam that Biden was in top form, alert, engaged, on the ball and clear-sighted.

Biden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, when asked about the president’s mental acuity, said, “He is as sharp as ever as I have known him to be in any engagement, in my experience with him. And I know when I walk into the Oval Office or see him on Air Force One, I have to be on top of my game.”

The “party line” throughout the 2024 primary season: Biden’s in tip-top shape. And any public figure who dared to disagree was demonized as a purveyor of disinformation.

Even though most Americans suspected that Biden’s mental acuity was declining, Democrats did not mind denying it was true so long as they thought Biden could win.

However, when battle ground state polls started trending towards Trump after Biden’s awful debate performance on June 28, the Democratic establishment turned on the president.

Throughout July, the pressure began to build on Biden to withdraw even though 14 million Democrats voted for him in the primaries and 99% of the delegates to the Democratic Convention were pledged to him.

When Biden wouldn’t budge and said only the “Almighty” could get him out of the race, the Democrats’ secular “Almighty,” Barack Obama, decided to save the nation from Joe Biden.

Obama’s behind-the-scenes coup succeeded. In an Oval Office speech on Sunday, July 24, Biden told the American people he was withdrawing from the 2024 presidential race.

While not giving a reason for dropping out, Biden said he was passing the torch to a new generation to save democracy and reminded listeners we were a republic not a monarchy.

Afterwards, Biden stuck it to Obama and his coup collaborators by endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him.

Harris was not the first choice of Democratic Party power brokers. They considered her a lightweight whose low 30s approval ratings were worse than Biden’s.

Throughout her term in office, Harris struggled in news interviews. Unable to talk substantively about major issues, she tangled up words, spoke in non sequiturs and tautologies, and in awkward moments, would burst out laughing no matter what the topic.

Thanks to Biden, however, there was a sudden rush of support for Harris and the skeptical Democratic Establishment had no choice but to jump on her bandwagon.

Harris is the nominee although she never received one vote from the party’s rank-and-file. (So much for the democratic process Biden lauded.)

Harris has been crowned—just like unelected potentates in despotic regimes. (Maybe Biden was wrong about the U.S.A. not having monarchs.)

Choosing Harris without a competitive process, New York Times columnist Bret Stevens has pointed out, “is a recipe for disaster.”

“The whole point of a competitive process,” Stevens noted, “is to discover unsuspected strengths and to test for hidden weaknesses, which is how Harris flamed out as a candidate the last time before ever reaching the Iowa caucus. If there’s evidence that she’s a better candidate now than she was then, she should be given the chance to prove it.”

Despite media adulation and well-scripted campaign appearances, there remains a laundry list of Harris’s weaknesses. Stevens sums them up thusly: she’s unpopular; she’s been a bad campaigner; she’s been a bad manager; she has a penchant for excruciating banality; she’s a blue-state Democrat who needs to win purple states; she’s anchored to Joe Biden’s record; and her career smacks of connections and favoritism.

I couldn’t say it better myself.

All of this is good news for Republicans. But Trump being Trump can blow it if he bases his campaign on name-calling and not on the issues that matter most to Americans: inflation, high cost of living, crime, border safety, and federal budget deficits.

The following appeared on Monday, July 22, 2024, in the Blank Slate Media newspaper chain and on its website, theisland360.com:

Seconds after Donald Trump named J.D. Vance his vice-presidential running mate, the media’s left-wing Talking Heads pronounced the 39-year-old senator from Ohio “unqualified.”

Unqualified?

Let’s compare J.D. Vance’s curriculum vitae with Barack Obama’s. Both Vance and Obama served 18 months in the Senate at the time of their nominations to a national ticket. Both went to Ivy League law schools. Both authored best-selling books about their upbringing.

Prior to his election to the U.S. Senate, Obama worked as a community organizer, an instructor at the University of Chicago Law School and as Illinois state senator.

Prior to Vance’s election to the U.S. Senate, he was a U.S. Marine who served in Iraq, and worked at a venture capital firm where he specialized in financing technology startups and creating jobs.

Do you get my point?

If Obama was qualified to be president, Vance is certainly qualified to be vice president and, if necessary, to assume the office of chief executive.

Nevertheless, there are significant differences between the two. Unlike Obama, Vance is a low-key, modest guy.

Vance would not make the following crass statement Obama made about people in the Rust Belt: “So it’s not surprising then that [people there] get bitter, they cling to their guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

No, Vance understands that the people in flyover America are good people, decent people, who may believe that the elitists in Washington and cosmopolitan America have deserted them—and they are not “deplorables.”

Nor would Vance articulate a view of himself as Obama did when he became the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party in 2008: “This is the moment the world has been waiting for…. This is the moment when the rise of the ocean began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

And if elected, I do not expect Vance to say anything close to what Obama said after his 2008 election: “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about politics on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Unlike Obama, Vance is not a super egoist. He lifted himself by his bootstraps and worked hard to achieve the American dream.

As for the Republican convention—it was well choreographed.

The words spoken by family members who lost their loved ones in Afghanistan were moving. The words spoken by the victims of New York’s defund the police policies and lax bail laws sent a strong law and order message.

To hear Sean O’Brien, the head of the 1.3 million Teamsters Union, castigating “big business” at a GOP convention, was extraordinary. “Massive companies like Amazon, Uber, Lyft, and Walmart,” he bellowed, “take zero responsibility for the workers they employ. These companies offer no real health insurance, no retirement benefits, no paid leave, relying on undefined public assistance. And who foots the bill?  The individual taxpayer.”

O’Brien’s pro-union speech could have been delivered at the 1948 Democratic convention that nominated Harry Truman or at JFK’s 1960 convention.

As for Donald Trump: dodging an assassin’s bullet by a quarter of an inch was remarkable.

Trump’s brush with death was his “come to Jesus” moment. One can only hope that there is a “New” Trump who campaigns as a unifier and who appeals to the better nature of all Americans.

Trump began his acceptance speech at the convention by taking the high road describing the assassination attempt, and paying tribute to the retired fireman who died and to those who were seriously injured.

But later in his 90-minute speech, when he was ad-libbing, he lapsed into the same old accusations and name-calling. That was unfortunate.

At this point in time, the November election is Donald Trump’s to lose. If he forgets the grudges, describes his governing vision for America and curbs his outlandish comments about the heir apparent, Kamala Harris, he may well be the first ex-president since Grover Cleveland in 1893 to regain the office of chief executive.