Tag: Zoom

The Democratic Party Will Not Be a United Dinner Party

By Michelle Naranjo

My grandmother would always make Sunday dinner for my extended family, and she always made sure to cook specific dishes for every member of the family. Fried chicken for me, chicken fried steak for my brother, glazed green beans for my mother, and so on. Weekly, she spent hours in the kitchen, making all of these dishes, and in the end, we all ate together.

The Democratic Party, for the most part, appeared to unify behind Joe Biden for president. But in the days following Nov. 3, 2020, the cracks began to show. It would seem that the party was holding a collective breath to keep up appearances before exhaling the deep-seated division that has been grumbling under the seams for years. 

While former Democratic presidential candidates Michael Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Andrew Yang threw their weight behind the Biden/Harris ticket, hitting campaign rallies (many of which were on Zoom because of concerns about COVID-19), their supporters mostly followed along. They decided that unification mattered, and a career moderate politician was the direction that the Left needed to go to defeat President Trump.

But there are still echoes of “Me! Me! Me! Pick me!”, resounding among the diverse voters.

During an era when people choose to support by how a candidate’s platform appeals to the individual themselves as a voter -- which insinuates more of an emotional commitment to a candidate than one that is pragmatic for the greater good -- it is no surprise that “true feelings” built up to an almost explosive level post-election. 

Add to that equation the Republicans who came into the Biden fold through The Lincoln Project, and the fire gets even more fuel.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the Squad immediately began to criticize the former Republican operatives that founded The Lincoln Project for collecting funds that supported their anti-Trump state-targeted advertising campaigns instead of funding their own Democratic campaigns. Many of The Lincoln Project supporters -- some of whom do not qualify as Republicans but tend to be voters who don’t vote party lines every election -- fought back that The Squad is anti-Semitic because of their human rights for Palestine stance.

Black allies don’t like Pete Buttigieg because of his hiring record. Progressives complained that there wasn’t enough recognition given to women, Black people, the Latinx, and Native American voters in Biden’s success. Moderates Democrats thought that the “abolish the police” slogan lost support for state and local candidates. And progressive parties like the Working Families Party are beginning to run their own candidates, sometimes as Democrats, and increasingly under their own party name.

As Chuck Rocha, a Texas-raised Democratic strategist who runs Nuestro PAC, a super PAC focused on Latino outreach, stated to NBC, “Biden won, and that’s great, but everything underneath Biden was a huge catastrophe.” [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/huge-catastrophe-democrats-grapple-congressional-state-election-losses-n1248529]

Will Joe Biden be able to pull together all of the disparity, especially when the Democratic party performed so poorly down-ballot? With so many trying to raise their individualized voices, it appears that Biden will have an ongoing struggle with pleasing all of the people all of the time. Is this going to be a family-style dinner with a seat for everyone?

Beyond a strategy to combat the coronavirus and affected economy, Biden’s top initiative is climate change. Despite the currently divided rhetoric about the yet to be announced presidential cabinet, issues like this will be the grounding displays that will surely win some unity. 

Boston Consulting Group (BCG), one of the three largest strategy consulting firms globally, sees Biden as capable of making headway in leading the shift required to address climate change. BCG states, “President-elect Biden campaigned on the most ambitious climate platform of any presidential candidate in history—and he has indicated that his administration will move quickly to pursue that policy. A transition to a low-carbon economy can have enormous benefits for U.S. businesses, creating thousands of jobs across the country while positioning the U.S. to be a driving force and innovation leader both domestically and abroad. Companies that are prepared to participate in the green recovery can reap substantial rewards.” [https://www.bcg.com/publications/2020/new-course-for-climate-in-united-states]

That’s possible only if Biden can successfully and positively affect special interest groups, even those across the aisle, with initiatives that address the plethora of issues at hand.  

Will this stop splinter groups from trying to build a new third party? Or even a fourth and fifth? Unlikely. 

But as a collective restaurant under a President Biden, multiple dinners for the many “party of one” at least gets everyone in the same room. 

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Overexaggerated Fright

By Henry Payne

When 2020 began, America’s elites claimed the biggest threat to the planet was global warming. They were caught flat-footed by a real threat, coronavirus, despite the obvious warnings of H1N1 and SARS before it.

But, like climate change, government elites have seen in COVID an opportunity to grab power while exempting themselves from their own rules.

Stoking fear and burying science, Democrats and their media allies pushed America into destructive shutdowns while ignoring the real threats coronavirus presented. 

Despite his usual bluster, President Trump and his party enabled American federalism – allowing states to manage the virus while providing critical federal support. Partisans have tried to spin a narrative that the Trump administration covered up the seriousness of the virus. 

The New York Times – fresh off its false narratives about Russian collusion and Kavanaugh sexual deviancy – claims knowledge of the White House downplaying the virus.

But while experts scrambled to understand the outbreak in the early months of 2020, the record shows the Trump administration aggressively pursued mitigation strategies from early shutdowns of U.S. borders, to mobilizing an “arsenal of democracy” to make medical devices, to the White House Task Force coordinating with states.

Like environmental scaremonger Al Gore flying in private jets, this COVID high-handedness played out nationwide. Speaker Nancy Pelosi flogged San Francisco rules mandating masks and closing beauty parlors. After insisting on a national mandate for masks, Joe Biden dropped his own.

This tyranny of the ruling class might have been national policy had Democrats been in the White House. For all his unwelcome bluster, however, President Trump and his party enabled American federalism.

Outside the New York/D.C. media bubble, states learned to live with the virus on their terms. They managed risk just as they have other public safety threats. I’ve visited multiple states. In Georgia, for example, businesses were open in October– free to determine how best to protect their clientele. Working on data showing young people are at low COVID risk, schools were open. 

As a result Georgia’s unemployment rate is 30 percent lower than Michigan while the Peach State suffers slightly fewer deaths per capita. 

Government elites can afford to impose edicts by Zoom. But the working middle class has to travel, has to educate its children, has to deliver food. They have listened to the medical experts at the New England Journal of Medicine, at Stanford and Harvard and Oxford – and to non-partisan journalists. 

They take heart from a great leader who once said: the “only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

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Pundits on the Right Favor One More Presidential Debate

Conservative pundits’ comments:

Should there be more presidential debates? Yes, indeed. Should they be in-person affairs? Without question. An informed electorate needs these opportunities to evaluate the candidates in full measure, absent the usual campaign props. The best idea I’ve heard of late is employing two moderators, each representing their political POV, like a Hannity and a Maddow, asking questions of the opposing side. That sounds to me like a great way to get past the talking points and to test the candidates' mettle, and it would net a huge audience on both sides of the aisle! 

--Andrew Boyd

Conventional wisdom insists there are virtually no undecided voters remaining, accounting for 3 percent to 6 percent of the electorate, if even that much. Considering the close 2016 election was, even a small smattering of votes can change the election results if they are from battleground states. The debates should go on, even if electronically, so voters have all the information they need to make a good choice. Even if the media feed Biden questions or mute Trump, this will allow those voters who watch to learn a little bit more about the candidates. Debate on, Don! Not showing up will only hurt Trump, and he needs to try and do better than in his first, er, debate. As for Biden, the more he obfuscates or ignores questions the more the undecideds will break for Trump.

--Bryan Williams

The Commission of Presidential Debates has done a disservice to the country by politicizing the presidential face-offs. The Veep debate stage was a farce with plexiglass between two healthy, socially-distanced candidates. The Commission further spread unnecessary fear by canceling Thursday’s Trump-Biden Town Hall which should have been a feel-good moment for the president’s recovery from COVID. Outside the CPD/media bubble, Americans have adapted. I am in Georgia this weekend, which is a planet away from the panic being spread by political elites. Cases are way down, schools open, and the state’s 5.6-percent unemployment rate is one of the lowest in the country.

That said, President Trump has also done the American people a disservice by backing out of the debate. As president, he should take every opportunity to communicate how to combat the virus. He could simply have used the Zoom debate to read from the Great Barrington Declaration – a petition written by top Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford epidemiologists (and signed by nearly 20,000 medical experts). It details how to protect the vulnerable while opening society as Sweden has done – to date one of the most successful countries in combatting the virus.

--Henry Payne

Terri Walker of Meyersdale, Pennsylvania [“View from the Right: Talk with a Trump Supporter in Rural Pennsylvania,” Oct. 5] says via email: “I personally would rather see a live debate. It's important to observe body language. You can tell if someone is being untruthful. I'd much rather see the debates held with a clear barrier of some sort only used while President Trump is potentially still infectious. I do however, think it best that President Trump wear a face mask as precaution for himself and others. I do believe another debate is crucial for those still on the fence.”

Please address comments to editors@thehustings.news

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