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Trump’s Outreach to Black Voters Is Real, and Prominent Media Voices Are Beginning to Take Note

Trump’s Outreach to Black Voters Is Real, and Prominent Media Voices Are Beginning to Take Note

By John R Guardiano on February 7, 2020

In the immediate aftermath of President Trump’s State of the Union Address, we were struck by the fact that it was written in large part to appeal to black voters.

Trump touted the strong U.S. economy and explained how it is benefiting the poor and disadvantaged, who are disproportionately black, brown, and members of racial and ethnic minorities.

He heralded his tax cuts and enterprise zones as the engine of opportunity and upward mobility for “forgotten Americans” in the dilapidated inner cities. And he pledge to build “the world’s most prosperous and inclusive society—one where every citizen can join in America’s unparalleled success, and every community can take part in America’s extraordinary rise.”

In short, we will leave no American behind, Trump essentially said.

However, a close reading of the speech shows that it has even more explicit appeals to African Americans, and prominent media voices are beginning to take note.

The Wall Street Journal, for instance, published an editorial called “Trump’s Bid for the Black Vote. African-Americans,” the Journal notes, “were front-and-center at the State of the Union.”

Beyond the inclusive tone, Mr. Trump emphasized policies that address real inequities in American life.

Perhaps the most compelling was Mr. Trump’s extended brief for school choice. The quality of many urban government schools is a national disgrace, and African-American children suffer most.

Mr. Trump highlighted a black youngster whose “future was put further out of reach when Pennsylvania’s Governor vetoed legislation to expand school choice,” and he called for Congress to expand opportunities for scholarships to attend alternative schools.

This has become a sharp dividing line between the two parties, as Democrats have abandoned choice under pressure from unions.

In 2018 Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis won a close race thanks to the votes of African-American women who supported him out of proportion to other GOP candidates. One likely cause was his school-choice platform.

Mr. Trump should campaign around the country highlighting charter, private and parochial schools that help children of all races escape rotten union schools.

CNN analyst Van Jones, meanwhile, warned his fellow Democrats that Trump’s State of the Union Address was

a warning to us, a warning shot across the bow of Democrats that he’s going after enough black folks to cause us problems.

It’s not just the white suburban voters. He’s going after black voters, too… And what he was saying to African Americans can be effective.

In addition to the strong economy, enterprise zones, and school choice, Trump specifically mentioned his administration’s support of historically black colleges and universities, as well as criminal justice reform.

“Our black colleges have been struggling for a long time,” said Van Jones. “A bunch of them have gone under. He [Trump] threw a lifeline to them… in his budget.”

Indeed, according to the Associated Press, the Future Act, which Trump signed into law Dec. 19, 2019,

authorizes $85 million a year for historically black colleges and universities, along with $100 million for Hispanic-serving institutions, $30 million for tribal schools and $40 million for a variety of other minority-serving institutions.

“The money,” reports the AP, “is primarily meant to expand programs in science, technology, engineering and math.”

“To expand equal opportunity,” said Trump in his State of the Union Address, “I am also proud that we achieved record and permanent funding for our nation’s historically black colleges and universities.”

Criminal Justice Reform. Trump is equally proud that he achieved criminal justice reform, which, he said, is giving many former prisoners the ability to work and make a fresh start in life.

“Everybody said that criminal justice reform couldn’t be done, but I got it done, and the people in this room got it done,” he bragged.

“Mr. Trump’s willingness to buck political convention on this issue is making a difference for young black men especially,” says the Journal.

In fact Trump clearly wishes to communicate to African Americans and other minorities that he is fully committed to broad-based opportunity, inclusion, and second chances. His campaign thus spent “half of its $10 million Super Bowl ad-buy highlighting [his] commutation of a black woman’s life sentence for a drug offense.”

African-American Contributions. Moreover, the president made clear that African Americans have contributed mightily to our achievements and greatness as a nation. Thus he recognized one of the last surviving Tuskegee Airmen, Charles McGee, whom he promoted to Brigadier General.

The Tuskegee Airmen, of course, are a storied U.S. military unit of predominantly black fighter pilots and support personnel who served during World War II, when the U.S. Armed Forces were still segregated by race.

Trump noted that Brigadier General McGee flew more than 130 combat missions in the Second World War before serving in both the Korean and Vietnam Wars as well.

McGee is now 100 years old; and his great grandson, 13-year-old Iain Lanphier, aspires to follow in his footsteps through service in the United States Space Force

Finally, Trump rounded out his paean to American greatness by acknowledging that Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Martin Luther King, Jr. rank high in the pantheon of heroes and heroines who are responsible for “our glorious and magnificent inheritance” as a nation.

Leadership. Trump’s outreach to black voters is a demonstration of moral and political leadership, and it is the right thing to do irrespective of any potential political gains for him and the Republican Party in November. But sometimes, doing what is right is also good politics, and this may be one of those times.

Trump won about eight percent of the black vote in 2016; however, a conspicuous number of recent polls suggest that he is poised to significantly increase that tally on election day.

A new Zogby poll, for instance, finds that Trump’s approval rating has reached 50 percent among all voters; and that 26 percent of African Americans and 47% of Hispanics at least somewhat approve of the job he’s doing as president.

Even if just half of that 26 percent end up voting for Trump, that would represent a 62 percent increase in the president’s share of the black vote vis-a-vis his 2016 tally; and, with that, Trump would most likely easily win reelection.

It’s still too early to tell what will happen; but it’s never too early to do the right thing. And Trump, to his credit, is trying to do the right thing for African Americans and other minorities. Good on him.

Feature photo credit: Getty Images via MegaNewsEn.

Tuberville: Wrong about Some Things, but Right about the Nazis Being Socialists

Tuberville: Wrong about Some Things, but Right about the Nazis Being Socialists

By John R Guardiano on November 15, 2020

The media think they caught Senator-Elect Tuberville speaking idiocy, but the real idiots are in the media.

When a politician misspeaks or says something that appears to be egregiously wrong, one of two things happens, and for two distinct reasons:

One. The remarks are mostly ignored and downplayed. The media recognize that the politician misspoke, or got something wrong, but don’t think his remarks are indicative of some larger and more important truth about the politician.

Everyone, after all, misspeaks and gets things wrong from time to time—even (and perhaps especially?) President-Elect Biden! It’s no big deal; there’s nothing to see here. Let’s move on.

Two. However, if the media believes that the misspoken or erroneous remarks reflect some larger truth about the politician—i.e., that he is ignorant and stupid—then his remarks are publicized and played up.

So it is that the media have castigated Senator-Elect Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) for making remarks that they believe are obviously ignorant and boneheaded during a recent interview with the Alabama Daily News.

As the New York Times reports, Tuberville

misidentified the three branches of the federal government, claimed erroneously that World War II was a battle against socialism, and wrongly asserted that former Vice President Al Gore was president-elect for 30 days.

Tuberville is a former football coach at Auburn University. He defeated former Republican Senator and Trump Administration Attorney General Jeff Sessions during the GOP primary.

Conservatives warned Alabama voters about Tuberville. He is “amazingly ignorant on national issues,” reported Quin Hillyer in the Washington Examiner.

“The national media,” he added, “will have a field day with Coach Tuberville.”

So this is no doubt the first of many Tuberville comments that the media will hold up as an example of Republican ignorance and stupidity.

Unfair enough. Despite the glaring double standard, if Tuberville or any other politician makes a boneheaded comment, they should be flagged and called out.

Of course, it would be nice for a change if Democratic politicians also were flagged and called out when they misspeak or say something stupid.

Errors. Be that as it may, Tuberville obviously erred when he referred to the House, the Senate, and the executive branch as the three branches of the federal government.

In fact, the three branches of the federal government are the executive branch or the presidency, the legislative branch (Senate and House), and the judiciary, which includes the Supreme Court.

The separation of powers, moreover, was designed to keep any one branch of government from having too much power; it was not designed to prevent any one political party from monopolizing the three branches of government.

And no, Al Gore was not President-Elect for 30 days before the Supreme Court intervened to stop a partial and selective recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court.

Still, Tuberville’s larger-scale point about allowing the political and legal processes to exhaust themselves before declaring a winner in the 2020 presidential election is perfectly sound and legitimate.

World War II. As for his claim that World War II was a fight against socialism, well, that, too, is not exactly right. There were many self-avowed socialists, after all, who were passionately anti-fascist, and who eagerly took up arms against Hitler.

It would be more precise to say that World War II (in Europe) was a fight against German Nazi imperialism, genocide, and tyranny.

With that obvious acknowledgment or caveat, let it also be said: Tuberville is not completely wrong. He makes a legitimate point.

The Nazis, after all, called themselves the National Socialist German Workers’ Party for a reason: As Jonah Goldberg observes, “they were socialists.“

National Socialists or Nazis. Goldberg knows of what he speaks. He has written the definitive book, Liberal Fascism, on the collectivist or socialist roots of American progressivism, Russian communism, Italian Fascism, and German Nazism.

As the Amazon writeup for Liberal Fascism explains:

Contrary to what most people think, the Nazis were ardent socialists (hence the term “National socialism”).

They believed in free health care and guaranteed jobs. They confiscated inherited wealth and spent vast sums on public education.

They purged the church from public policy, promoted a new form of pagan spirituality, and inserted the authority of the state into every nook and cranny of daily life.

The Nazis declared war on smoking, supported abortion, euthanasia, and gun control.

They loathed the free market, provided generous pensions for the elderly, and maintained a strict racial quota system in their universities—where campus speech codes were all the rage.

These are indisputable political and historical facts. So yes, in a very real sense, Tuberville is absolutely right:

His dad did, indeed, fight in World War II to free Europe of socialism—a particularly virulent and genocidal strain or variant of socialism, to be sure, but socialism nonetheless.

Media Ignorance. Yet, this hasn’t stopped clueless media types from smugly berating Tuberville for his supposed ignorance about World War II.

But in truth, it is they who are ignorant, not Tuberville. They are ignorant of the collectivist or socialist nature of German fascism or Nazism.

Conclusion. It is perfectly fine to criticize Tuberville if or when he makes genuinely stupid and erroneous remarks; however, people in glass houses really should not throw stones.

The truth is that many journalists and wordsmiths are guilty of the same sins—political and historical ignorance and a gross lack of understanding—for which they so smugly castigate Tuberville.

They could use—we all could use—a little more humility, introspection, and learning before casting stones.

Feature photo credit: Senator-Elect Tommy Tuberville, courtesy of Al .com.

The Senate Should Censure Senator Schumer for Threatening Two Supreme Court Justices

The Senate Should Censure Senator Schumer for Threatening Two Supreme Court Justices

By John R Guardiano on March 7, 2020

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) has introduced a resolution calling on the Senate to censure Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) for threatening two Supreme Court Justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

The resolution has 14 Republican cosponsors, but won’t ever pass the Senate, even though the Republicans have a majority there.

The reason: too many Republican senators, such as Lindsey Graham (South Carolina), are opposed to the move because they fear it would ignite a tit for tat by Democrats, who then would demand that the Senate censure President Trump.

Graham’s concern is legitimate and understandable, but he’s wrong. Whatever the merits of the case for censuring Trump because of his misconduct vis-à-vis Ukraine, the stark reality is that what Sen. Schumer did is clearly and obviously wrong and deserves to be censured.

This isn’t a matter of partisan politics, or at least is should not be a matter of partisan politics. Instead, this is matter of institutional integrity and ensuring that standards of conduct and behavior are maintained and enforced.

For any institution, but Congress especially, this matters. Public trust and confidence can only be maintained if institutions police themselves and discipline their own.

Institutional Integrity. In fact, one big reason the public holds Congress in low regard is that, as Yuval Levin explains in an interview with National Public Radio (NPR), it doesn’t see Congress maintaining or promoting an institutional ethic that shapes its members in a reliable and responsible way.

Levin has written a new and important book, A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream. And while his aforementioned comment to NPR wasn’t directed at Congress or Schumer in particular, it nonetheless applies here.

How can the public trust Congress if the institution doesn’t stand for anything more than the will of the majority? And how can public confidence be maintained if standards of propriety, decency and respect are routinely flouted to secure rank partisan gain?

As Levin succinctly puts its: “We trust an institution when we think that it forms the people within it to be trustworthy.”

Rule of Law. Moreover, as National Review’s Andrew McCarthy points out, censure is necessary to bolster the rule of law.

Schumer, after all, issued his threats on the steps of the Supreme Court while playing to a mob trying that was trying to shape or influence a Court decision that should be immune or indifferent to political considerations.

What should guide the Court’s decision, exclusively, as McCarthy observes, is the rule of law and applying the law dispassionately, without fear, favor or prejudice, to the particular case at hand. Yet, Schumer used political intimidation tactics and threats explicitly to undermine the Court and the rule of law.

“That should rate censure,” McCarthy argues. “Case closed.” He’s right.

Censure, as the Senate explains on its website, is

less severe than expulsion [and] sometimes referred to as [a] condemnation or denouncement. [It] does not remove a senator from office.

It is a formal statement of disapproval, however, that can have a powerful psychological effect on a member and his/her relationships in the Senate.

In 1834, the Senate censured President Andrew Jackson – the first and only time the Senate censured a president. Since 1789 the Senate has censured nine of its members.

Censure. It is long past time for the Senate to censure its tenth member, Charles E. Schumer—not as a form of partisan warfare or political retribution, but rather as a statement of institutional honor and integrity.

No American, and certainly no member of the United States Senate, the world’s greatest deliberative body, should ever threaten a sitting justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Surely, all of us, Democrats and Republicans alike, can agree that this is unacceptable and beyond the pale.

Let the Senate, then, demonstrate to all Americans and to the world that it expects and demands better. It expects and demands of itself and its members professional conduct, respect for the Constitutionally prescribed powers and authority of the Supreme Court and the judiciary, and civil discourse, dialogue and debate.

As it concerns Sen. Schumer, the way to demonstrate this commitment is through the power of the censure, which should rarely be used, but also not disused. Indeed, there are times when the censure is needed and necessary, and now is one of those times.

Feature photo credit: News Metropolis.

Media Coverage of the Supreme Court’s Public Charge Decision Sows Confusion Over the Role of the Judiciary

Media Coverage of the Supreme Court’s Public Charge Decision Sows Confusion Over the Role of the Judiciary

By John R Guardiano on January 28, 2020

The gnashing of teeth over the Supreme Court’s decision Monday to allow the Trump administration to “begin enforcing new limits on immigrants who are considered likely to become overly dependent on government benefit programs” shows that there is widespread confusion over the role of the judiciary.

The courts were never intended to be a super legislature where disputants who lose out in the political process can appeal for a rematch and ultimate victory. Public policy is supposed to be determined by the legislative branch of government and, to the extent that the Constitution and legislature allow it, the executive branch as well.

The judiciary simply has no role in formulating public policy, or at least is should not have such a role in the American system of government. “We the people” through our elected representatives, not nine unelected lawyers ensconced in Washington, D.C., are responsible for setting public policy.

Yet, media coverage has focused on the public policy implications of the Court’s ruling, with fulsome quotes from various left-wing interest groups who politick and litigate on behalf of open borders and unrestricted immigration. These advocates decried the allegedly negative effects of the Court’s ruling on immigrants.

“This rule is an all-out assault on legal immigration,” David Leopold, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told the Washington Post.

“The public charge rule is the latest attack in the Trump administration’s war on immigrants,” [added] Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration expert at Cornell University’s law school.

But if the Trump administration’s new public charge rules are, indeed, an “all-out assault” in its “war on immigrants,” this is something that Congress can remedy. There is no need for the judiciary to intervene: that’s not the Court’s job.

Unsurprisingly, the hyperbolic rhetoric from partisans with a political agenda to grind doesn’t square with the facts, which are far more benign than these verbal volleys suggest.

“The policy would not apply to humanitarian programs for refugees and asylum recipients,” reports the Post. Moreover, an official with the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service

said the policy will not be applied retroactively to those who have used benefits in the past; it will apply only to those who receive taxpayer-funded benefits after the rule takes effect in mid-October.

What’s more,

the change will have little to no effect on those who already have permanent resident status who are seeking to become naturalized U.S. citizens. ‘Naturalization applicants are not subject to a new admissibility determination and therefore are not generally subject to public charge determinations,’ said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly.

So much for the “war on immigrants.” In truth, the new rules are a modest attempt to update the definition of a public charge, so that the definition accounts for both cash and non-cash federal assistance.

I say update because as social assistance programs have grown and expanded, they increasingly include many non-cash benefits such as Medicaid, food stamps, Meals on Wheels, the provision of housing, et al.

Yet, in the past, when determining who might be a public charge, these non-cash benefits were ignored. That might have made sense several generations ago when non-cash benefits were miniscule and non-existent. However, it makes little sense today, as non-cash benefits occupy an increasingly prominent place in the social safety net.

Partisans can debate the particulars of the Trump administration’s policy changes. The devil, as they say, is in the details. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, while applauding the Court’s decision, argues that there are real problem s with the administration’s public charge rules.

Perhaps, but the appropriate place to hash out the issue is in the policy-making branches of government—in Congress, principally, and, to a lesser extent, within the administration.

Doing so is no doubt laborious and difficult. Legislating isn’t easy and policy-making can be hard. But that is what liberty and self-government demand: hard work and effort, argument, persuasion, and consensus. A free and proud people should not want it any other way.

Feature photo credit: iStockphoto.com via National Public Radio.

Federalism and the 50 States Are Key to Combatting the Coronavirus and Reopening America

Federalism and the 50 States Are Key to Combatting the Coronavirus and Reopening America

By John R Guardiano on April 26, 2020

“The key remains: together as ever as one. We have to push as one for solutions to protect our families and our fates. So what do you say? Let’s get after it.”

—Chris Cuomo, Cuomo Prime Time, Apr. 21, 2020

This is Cuomo’s schtick. He begins his prime time show every night on CNN with a blessedly brief and snappy introductory monologue that culminates in his plea for Americans to work “together as ever as one” to combat the coronavirus.

Politically speaking, what Cuomo means is this: we need a unitary national effort as opposed to 50 disparate state efforts, and a public policy oriented around “science” and what the public health “experts” say and counsel.

It sounds so high-minded, commonsensical, and appealing. But Cuomo is wrong and he has it precisely backward:

Far from a unitary national effort, we need 50 laboratories of democracy combating and responding to the coronavirus in various ways that reflect the very real regional and demographic differences in the spread of the virus itself.

Scientific Understanding. Moreover, our scientific understanding of the coronavirus is not some settled piece of Biblical scripture that compels “The Ten Scientific Commandants.”

To the contrary: our scientific understanding is rapidly changing and evolving as we learn more about this new or novel coronavirus. Hence the provisional name nCoV before it was named SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19.

“Over 2.43 million people around the world have contracted COVID-19,” the disease caused by the virus, and there are more than 1.6 million active cases,” reports Business Insider.

However, ongoing research on and about these patients has revealed that many of our best original assumptions about the virus weren’t fully accurate—or in some cases misguided.

After China confirmed the first case of the mysterious “pneumonia-like” illness at the end of December, for example, it turned out someone else likely started spreading it there in November.

Symptoms of COVID-19 also turned out to be far more expansive and peculiar than anyone initially realized. Even our understanding of how the virus transmits itself from one person to the next has changed.

But even if our scientific understanding of the coronavirus were fixed and settled, this understanding needs to be applied within a larger-scale analytical framework that considers the tradeoffs involved in various public policy options.

The goal of social distancing, remember, was never to eliminate the coronavirus and protect everyone from infection. That is well-night impossible.

Instead, the goal was to “flatten the curve” and thereby slow the spread of the virus, so that our hospitals and healthcare providers were not overwhelmed to the breaking point as happened in northern Italy.

And that, thank God, has been achieved. New York City and its surrounding suburbs were pressed to the breaking point, but they did not break.

Indeed, despite the genuine and well-founded fear that there might be too few ventilators and that rationing would ensue, the truth is: no one who ever needed a ventilator was ever denied a ventilator. New York, consequently, has actually given away some of its ventilators to other more needy states.

This is a remarkable achievement, which, two or three weeks ago, no one thought possible. It doesn’t’ mean we should abandon social distancing because all is well and the coronavirus is a thing of the past.

However, it does mean that we need to begin making reasonable accommodations to the reality of the virus and start reopening the U.S. economy.

We cannot wait for a vaccine, which, in the best scenario, is 12 to 18 months away. “The fastest vaccine ever developed for a viral infection is the Ebola vaccine, which took five years,” notes Avik Roy in the Wall Street Journal.

If we wait that long to reopen the U.S. economy, there will be no U.S. economy to open. America will lie in ruins. As George Gilder explains:

The health-care system saves lives; the economy provides everything we need to live. The damage being done to the economy—if sustained—could easily cost more lives world-wide than the coronavirus.

Federalism. The genius of the American political system is federalism and decentralization, and it is the answer to our dilemma between, on the hand, protecting the public health and, on the other hand, protecting our economic livelihood and survival.

Federalism allows each of the 50 states to balance these competing concerns and decide for themselves which precise accommodations to make for the coronavirus. This is appropriate and wise.

It is appropriate because the coronavirus is having widely disparate effects on different states and regions, all of which have different and divergent demographics.

Sixteen states, for instance, each have fewer than 100 COVID-19 deaths and, together, account for just 634 deaths versus 54,021 for the country as a whole. Another 24 states plus the District of Columbia have between 100 and 1,000 COVID-19 deaths.

Some 40 percent of the deaths have occurred in New York. New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey account for nearly 60 percent of the virus’s fatalities, observe NPR’s Elena Renken and Daniel Wood.

“The curves are flattening; hospital systems haven’t come close to being overwhelmed; Americans have adapted to new etiquettes of social distancing,” writes Bret Stephens in the New York Times.

“Many of the worst Covid outbreaks outside New York (such as at Chicago’s Cook County Jail or the Smithfield Foods processing plant in Sioux Falls, S.D.),” Stephens points out, “have specific causes that can be addressed without population-wide lockdowns.”

We also will learn from what each of the states do—what works well and what doesn’t—and can adjust our efforts accordingly. That’s the advantage or wisdom of having 50 laboratories of democracy as opposed to one sole and exclusive federal policy or decision-point.

Competition and experimentation in governance breed excellence. Monopolistic federal government control, by contrast, breeds mediocrity and failure.

Public Policy. Of course, public policy must continue to be informed by our rapidly evolving scientific understanding of the coronavirus

In fact, says Avik Roy:

The starting point for a more realistic strategy is the key fact that not everyone is equally susceptible to hospitalization and death due to Covid-19. There is considerable evidence that younger people largely avoid the worst health outcomes.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, those over the age of 65 are 22 times more likely to die of Covid-19 than those under 55.

That is not to say that younger people are invulnerable…

Still, the much lower incidence of death among younger people warrants a reconsideration of our one-size-fits-all approach to stay-at-home policies, especially outside the hard-hit tri-state region of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Georgia and Oklahoma are the first states to begin reopening their economies, and good on them for it. Governors Brian Kemp (R-Georgia) and Kevin Stitt (R-Oklahoma) made careful and deliberative decisions based on the data and informed by the science.

Georgia and Oklahoma aren’t abandoning social distancing. Instead, they’re incorporating social distancing into the workplace and social settings to allow residents and businesses to get on with their lives. All Americans will learn and benefit from these pioneering efforts.

The key remains: together as ever, not as one, but as 50 distinct and sovereign states. We have to push not as one nation, but as many states or jurisdictions, for potential solutions.

What do you say? Let’s get after it. Georgia and Oklahoma already are doing so. Let’s watch, observe, learn, and follow.

Officer Chauvin May Not Have Killed George Floyd, But He Is Still Legally Culpable for Gross Wrongdoing

Officer Chauvin May Not Have Killed George Floyd, But He Is Still Legally Culpable for Gross Wrongdoing

By John R Guardiano on June 1, 2020

The autopsy has some surprising results. However, it doesn’t negate what we already know about guilt and innocence in this case.

Maybe new evidence will emerge that helps to explain or exonerate the actions of the Minneapolis police officers who apparently murdered George Floyd last week, but I very much doubt it. The video that we’ve all seen is utterly compelling, straightforward, and clear-cut.

For more than eight long and fatal minutes, Officer Derek Chauvin dug his knee into Floyd’s neck while Floyd lay prostrate on the ground. Three other Minneapolis police officers, meanwhile, either joined in, or watched and did nothing to stop Chauvin. Floyd then died.

The autopsy reportedly found that Floyd died “from a combination of heart disease and ‘potential intoxicants in his system’ that were exacerbated” by the unrelenting police pressure on the carotid artery in Floyd’s neck.

Thus, according to the autopsy, Floyd did not die from asphyxiation or strangulation caused by the police.

From a medical standpoint, that may be significant; but in terms of law and public policy, it is largely irrelevant, and for two reasons:

What Chauvin and his fellow officers did was obviously and manifestly wrong. Floyd was handcuffed and subdued. Thus there was no reason to risk killing him through unrelenting pressure on his carotid artery.

Any properly trained police officer (or military veteran for that matter) knows that unrelenting pressure on the carotid artery is a surefire way to kill someone because it cuts off the supply of blood to the brain.

Chauvin either was grossly stupid and ignorant, or he was malicious and sadistic. Either way, he is legally culpable for wrongdoing—whether or not it resulted in Floyd’s death.

From the standing of public policy: within our judicial system, the police have a limited and prescribed role. The police are tasked with subduing a dangerous suspect, handcuffing him, and taking him into custody.

That’s it. The police are not tasked with meting out justice, real or imagined, outside the confines of the judicial system.

If a dangerous suspect cannot be subdued, then the use of deadly force is prescribed. This typically happens when a suspect is free and on the loose, and the deadly force most often employed involves a firearm or weapon.

But Floyd was not free and on the loose. Quite the opposite: he already was subdued and handcuffed! So there was absolutely no need to employ deadly force against him.

In short, Chauvin may not have intended to kill Floyd (thus he was charged with manslaughter and third-degree murder as opposed to first- or second-degree murder); but neither did he intend to do his job in the manner that he surely had been trained and prescribed by the Minneapolis Police Department.

And Chauvin’s fellow officers who stood by and joined in, or who did nothing to stop him, are equally culpable and disgraceful.

Justice. In the United States of America, no one is above the law, not even the police.

In fact, police officers in the United States are rightly held to a higher standard of conduct than ordinary Americans precisely because they are entrusted with the use of deadly force to protect the weak, the vulnerable, and the innocent.

Officer Chauvin and his fellow officers will be represented by counsel and they will have their day in court. They will be forced to explain themselves and justice will be served, American-style. Thank God for that.

In the meantime, our hearts grieve for Floyd’s family and we weep for the stain of shame inscribed on the thin blue line.

We Americans know better and we Americans deserve better. So, too, did George Floyd. RIP.

Feature photo credit: New York Daily News.

Joe Biden Is No Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. His Administration Will Be Much More Radical and Much, Much Worse.

Joe Biden Is No Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. His Administration Will Be Much More Radical and Much, Much Worse.

By John R Guardiano on October 31, 2020

America survived Bill Clinton and Barack Obama because the Democratic Party then was center-left. But America likely will not survive Joe Biden because the Democratic Party has become radicalized and is now a “progressive” or socialist party.

Many center-right voters who don’t like Donald Trump’s obnoxious personality and unpresidential behavior are thinking about voting for Joe Biden. Here’s why, and here’s why that would be a serious mistake.

Point. Their thinking goes like this: America survived Bill Clinton; we survived Barack Obama; and we’ll survive Joe Biden. Clinton and Obama were liberal Democrats, after all, and yet, Republicans lived to fight another day.

The republic did not end. Free-market capitalism endured. America remained free and prosperous. Surely, the same thing will happen if Biden is elected president:

Democrats and Republicans will have their policy disagreements, of course; and sometimes one party or the other will win; but we’ll return, at long last, to a state of political normalcy.

Quiet. “The first thing you’ll notice [in a Biden presidency] is the quiet,” writes New York Times columnist David Brooks.

There will be no disgraceful presidential tweets and no furious cable segments reacting to them on Inauguration Day…

It will become immediately clear that in a Biden era politics will shrink back down to normal size. It will be about government programs, not epic wars about why my sort of people are morally superior to your sort of people…

It will also become immediately clear that in a highly ideological age, America will be led by a man who is not ideological.

“I’m sure there are Republicans and independents who couldn’t imagine crossing over to support a Democrat,” said former Ohio Governor John Kasich, Republican, during his Democratic National Convention speech endorsing Biden.

They fear Joe may turn sharp left and leave them behind. I don’t believe that. Because I know the measure of the man—reasonable, faithful, respectful. And you know, no one pushes Joe around.

Counterpoint. Brooks and Kasich are wrong. The idea that a Biden Presidency would be a garden-variety, center-left Democratic administration is badly mistaken and wishful thinking.

To believe this, you have to ignore all of the political and cultural forces that, in the past decade, have been relentlessly driving the Democratic Party further and further to the left:

Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, George Soros;
Black Lives Matter, reparations, defund the police;
the public option, Medicare for all, amnesty, open borders;
end the filibuster, abolish the Electoral College, pack the Supreme Court;
ban fracking, end fossil fuels, enact the Green New Deal;
D.C. statehood, Citizens United, Modern Monetary Theory;
Critical Race Theory, intersectionality, the 1619 project, et al.

In short, the Democratic Party today is far more radical than it was when Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992 and significantly more radical than it was when Barack Obama ran for reelection eight years ago in 2012.

Clinton ran for election as a “New Democrat” from the South, and he eschewed the liberal fundamentalism that had dominated his party for more than a generation.

Obama, meanwhile, campaigned as a non-ideological Democrat who rejected labels while espousing “hope and change.”

More importantly, Clinton and Obama ran in a Democratic Party whose center of gravity was well to the right of where it is now.

Today, by contrast, the intellectual ferment and activist energy lies entirely within the “progressive” or socialist wing of the party.

Biden is not a socialist, but that doesn’t matter: He is a weak and physically frail politician who will accommodate the progressive left because he knows no other way and has no other choice. As the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board explains:

What evidence is there today that Mr. Biden will restrain his increasingly radical party? Across his long career he has been the consummate party man, floating right or left with the political tides.

As a presidential candidate this year he has put no particular policy imprint on the Democratic Party—not one. The party has put its stamp on him.

Little wonder, then, that Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and “The Squad” are among Biden’s most fervent supporters. They know he will do their bidding.

Biden, in fact, has tacked left since winning his party’s nomination. Thus last summer he signed a 110-page “unity” manifesto with Bernie Sanders.

The manifesto “envisions the socialism of an all-encompassing welfare state, with virtually every need a right, and every right guaranteed by taxpayer funding,” writes economist (and former Texas Senator) Phil Gramm.

Sanders “may not sit in the Oval Office next year,” notes the Journal, but Mr. Biden will be implementing Bernie’s dreams.”

If the Republicans controlled Congress, or even one branch of the Congress, they might serve as a useful check on a Biden presidency that is otherwise preordained to swerve sharply left. But the reality is that if Biden captures the White House, the Democrats almost certainly will gain control of the Senate.

Our politics have become too polarized for much split-ticket voting. And the Dems are expected to retain control of the House of Representatives.

Clinton and Obama, by contrast, had to contend with a Republican-controlled Congress for six of the eight years that they each were president.

The bottom line: if Biden wins, his administration will be staffed by hardcore progressives working in tandem with the socialist left, both in and out of Congress, to pursue what the Journal rightly calls the most left-wing policy agenda in decades.

Irreversible Socialist Change. Bad public policies, of course, typically can be changed or reversed legislatively by future presidents and future congresses. But if Biden and the Dems take over, that may not be an option.

That is because the progressive left is hellbent on instituting structural “reforms” that will make it impossible for a future Republican president or congress to reverse their radical policy agenda.

D.C. statehood, for instance, would add two very liberal senators to the Senate, thereby giving Democrats an all-but-guaranteed lock on that legislative body for at least a generation.

Ending the filibuster would mean that, unlike in our nation’s past, major reform legislation no longer would require bipartisan support and cooperation.

Instead, the Dems could steamroll the Republicans while enacting new and costly tax-and-spend redistribution schemes, including reparations.

Packing the Supreme Court with “progressive” justices who legislate from the bench would allow Democrats to create new and permanent “rights” for favored classes and reciprocal political and financial obligations for less favored and ostensibly “privileged” Americans.

Repealing Citizens United would pave the way for the worst legislative and regulatory assault on free speech in American history.

Unprecedented. That is why this election is not like past elections; and it is why electing Biden as president would yield a very different result than what happened when Clinton and Obama were elected. This time, to a real and worrisome extent, America itself is at risk.

Indeed, when the Democrats are done, there likely will be no going back: A dynamic, diverse and freewheeling commercial republic will be replaced by a sclerotic and slow-growing statist democracy with fewer jobs, less opportunity, and more bureaucratic constraints.

Basic Constitutional liberties, such as freedom of speech, religious worship, and the right to bear arms will be under sustained assault. And our national memory and understanding of our political inheritance will wither away as the activists who have toppled statues now implement bureaucratic decrees that erase our nation’s history.

A Defeated Nation. Sure, all of this may happen quietly, as Brooks and others hope or expect. There will be no juvenile, cringe-inducing tweets from a President Biden, as there are too often from President Trump.

But the quietude will reflect the dull and subdued resignation of a tired and aging nation burdened with an entitlement state that it cannot long support and lacking the economic dynamism and cultural wherewithal needed to sustain and support its people.

Moreover, far from making politics a less invasive force in our lives, as Brooks hopes, a Biden presidency instead will extend the reach and influence of Washington, D.C. That, after all, is what the Democrats’ progressive base demands: a more assertive, domineering, and activist federal government.

This will be the “new normal” ushered in by the “progressive” or socialist Democrats who will dominate a Biden presidency. Be careful whom you vote for, we just might get it.

Feature Photo Credit: Political twins Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders (Elise Amendola, Associated Press, courtesy of Citizens Times).

Schumer’s Attack on the Supreme Court Is the Democrats’ Latest Attempt to Intimidate and Politicize the Judiciary

Schumer’s Attack on the Supreme Court Is the Democrats’ Latest Attempt to Intimidate and Politicize the Judiciary

By John R Guardiano on March 6, 2020

Most independent observers, left and right, have rightly lambasted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) for literally threatening two Supreme Court justices if they do not rule in favor of abortion rights in a case now pending before the Court.

What no one seems to have noticed, though, is that Schumer’s threat is part and parcel of the Democratic Party’s dangerous and decades-long politicization of the judiciary, and its ongoing attempt to subvert the courts to serve blatantly political ends.

Most of the Democratic presidential candidates, for instance, supported a court-packing scheme to ensure that the Supreme Court rules in a “progressive” way which ensures politically correct or desirable results.

Pete Buttigieg, for example, proposed expanding the number of justices on the court from nine to 15 through a selection process ostensibly designed to depoliticize the Court, but which, in reality, is itself highly politicized.

Joe Biden, who will be the Democratic presidential nominee, says he’s opposed to a Court-packing scheme. Yet, he nonetheless pledges to subject his Court appointments to a political litmus test in which would-be justices must affirm their commitment to Roe-v.-Wade, abortion rights, and other left-wing, “progressive” political goals.

Politicization. This is, sadly, unsurprising. The attempt to politicize the courts, and the Supreme Court in particular, has reached a fever pitch on the left, with well-funded left-wing groups making this a high priority.

The left’s attack on the independence and integrity of the judiciary is also dangerous. This “is something we recognize as a banana-republic tactic when we see it in other countries,” writes National Review’s Dan McLaughlin. “Court-packing,” he notes,

is a Rubicon we should dread to cross. It last appeared on the national agenda in 1937, the high-water mark of one-party federal government at home and ideological authoritarianism around the globe.

Even then, it was roundly rejected by the American body politic. In one swoop, it would irreparably destroy the American tradition of judicial independence of the political branches.

In short order, this would end the American experiment of the rule of law and a government of separated and limited powers.

But Democrats and the left care little for what they clearly consider to be Constitutional niceties. What matters to them are results.

And, if they cannot achieve their desired political ends through the legislative branch of government, as the Constitution prescribes, then they will seek redress in the judiciary and the courts.

This has been happening for decades, as Democrats and the left have short-circuited the democratic process to achieve political results in the courts that they never could have achieved—or would have achieved more slowly and incrementally—in Congress and the state legislatures.

However, the left’s grip on the judiciary, and the Supreme Court in particular, is threatened now with the appointments of a new generation of originalist justices and judges who have a more modest and limited view of the judiciary’s role in American political life.

Indeed, as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, famously put it in his 2005 Congressional confirmation hearing:

Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules; they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role.

Democrats and the left, though, don’t view the Court’s role as limited; they view it as supreme, at least if it is pursuing a left-wing political agenda. Consequently, they are positively apoplectic that they are losing their grip on the judiciary.

That’s why they went to war over the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, deploying mob intimidation tactics that we more often see in a banana-republic, not a mature and modern democracy.

Justice Kavanaugh, of course, and his colleague Justice Gorsuch, are the Court’s newest members; they were appointed by President Trump; and they have yet to fully rule on a host of matters, including but not limited to, abortion.

Sen. Schumer is not a stupid man. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and he boasts of achieving a perfect score on his SATs. He knew exactly what he was doing: He was laying down a marker for these new justices, and letting them know that they had better rule in politically correct fashion—or else.

Schumer has since apologized, but the damage to the rule of law and the integrity of our political and legal institutions already has been done. Democrats and the left have put the justices, and the judiciary more generally, on notice:

If you do not hew to the “progressive” political agenda, “you will pay the price,” as Schumer put it. “You won’t know what hit you,” and you will reap “the whirlwind.” This is frightening talk, made all the more dangerous because of the mob intimidation tactics sanctioned and encouraged by Democrats and the left.

And what makes these remarks all the more frightening is the spate of mass shootings in recent years by deranged individuals with political axes to grind.

It was only three years ago, after all, that a nut with a manifest hatred for Republicans almost wiped out the entire House Republican leadership and some two dozen GOP congressmen.

Unsurprising. Unfortunately, we should not be surprised by Schumer’s dangerous attempt to cow and intimidate the Supreme Court’s newest justices.

Democrats and the left have long made it their life’s political work to capture the judiciary and to use the courts for blatantly political purposes. And, to a disconcerting extent, they have been successful.

But with Trump’s appointment of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to the Court, that project is now threatened, and Democrats and the left are lashing out. Indeed, Schumer’s condemnable outburst wasn’t their first such attack and, sadly, it won’t be their last.

Feature photo credit: News Thud.

Bring Back the Party Bosses, and Bring on Tom Cotton and Andrew Cuomo

Bring Back the Party Bosses, and Bring on Tom Cotton and Andrew Cuomo

By John R Guardiano on April 13, 2020

In the good old days, political pros and party bosses would meet in smoke-filled rooms to identify political talent and select presidential candidates.

That’s how we ended up with relative titans as president, and as failed presidential nominees—men like Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon.

Today, by contrast, democracy rules and the people decide; and, as a result, we have… Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Trump is mentally ill and obviously incompetent, while Biden clearly shows signs of senility and dementia.

It gives me no joy to say this. I sincerely wish it were otherwise. But the truth is the truth. It should give all of us serious doubts about the wisdom of pure, unadulterated democracy. More filters, checks, and balances, please.

Party Bosses. Why, just imagine if the political parties were stronger than they are now, and if the party bosses were true bosses, and not figments of our historical memory. Who, then, would be our two major 2020 presidential candidates?

There are, I think two obvious choices: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, and Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican.

Why Cuomo and Cotton? First, unlike Trump and Biden, they both pass the threshold test of being physically and psychologically healthy—of sound body and mind.

Part of this is age: Cuomo is 62 and Cotton turns 43 in May. Trump and Biden, by contrast, are 73 and 77, respectively.

But age, in itself, is not the problem. While Trump is obese and may be a heart attack waiting to happen, he is, nonetheless, spry of mind.

Moreover, Anthony Fauci, M.D., who heads up the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is 79 years old, and no one would ever accuse him of being too old for that or any other job.

Biden and Trump. However, people age in different ways and at different paces. Joe Biden today is clearly and obviously not the same man he was 12 years ago when Barack Obama selected him as his running mate.

Age has taken its toll. Biden often loses his train of thought and sometimes has conspicuous difficulty articulating full sentences and coherent thoughts.

Trump, meanwhile, is a narcissist with the maturity of an insecure and needy adolescent. He has shown no interest in mastering the difficult art of governance, nor in applying himself as a student of public policy. He is beyond his depth in a big way, and it shows each and every time he tweets or opens his mouth.

Cotton and Cuomo, by contrast, are capable and competent in ways that Trump and Biden simply are not. Indeed, agree or disagree with them, no one can deny that Cotton and Cuomo are on top of their game and can effectively wield political power.

Cuomo has spent his entire life in politics and government, learning at the knee of his father, the late great Mario Cuomo, the former governor of New York.

Cotton is younger but whip-smart and a combat veteran to boot, with tours as an infantry platoon leader in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in just three years before earning a law degree from Harvard as well.

As important, both Cotton and Cuomo have proven themselves equal to this moment in history.

Cuomo has distinguished himself through his steady and sure-handed management of the coronavirus. His daily press briefings have been informative and uplifting—reassuring not just New Yorkers, but all Americans during this time of doubt, darkness, fear, and confusion.

Cuomo’s leadership stands in marked contrast to Trump’s dismal and dismaying lack of leadership during this crisis. For Trump, it’s always about him. For Cuomo, it’s always about us.

Cotton, meanwhile, was arguably the only political leaders who saw the coronavirus coming, and who tried valiantly, back in January, to alert the Trump administration and the nation to the impending danger.

Of course, for doing so, Cotton was mocked and ridiculed by the media, which was willfully blind to the virus emanating from Wuhan, China.

Still, Cotton was right—and his prescience and wisdom become increasingly apparent each and every day as we learn more about the origins of the coronavirus and China’s duplicity and deceit regarding its spread and transmission.

History. In an earlier era in American politics, the two major political parties, and the so-called party bosses, would have realized that Cotton and Cuomo should be running for president. They, not Trump and Biden, should be competing on the national stage for America’s biggest and most coveted political prize.

Cotton and Cuomo, after all, are natural political leaders, who have stepped up in a big way at this moment of national crisis. Thus they are deserving; Trump and Biden are not.

And while the vox populi may not fully understand or appreciate this, the political parties and the party bosses do. We need them back—and we need less pure, unadulterated democracy, and more filters, checks, and balances. And we need this precisely to save American democracy from itself.

Feature photo credit: Tom Cotton (Mark Wilson/Gett Images via Slate) and Andrew Cuomo (Pat Arnow via Wikipedia).

Biden, Afghanistan, and the U.S. Military

Biden, Afghanistan, and the U.S. Military

By John R Guardiano on April 25, 2021

No to ‘Forever Wars,’ but Yes to ‘Forever Forward Deployed’

“It’s time to end the forever war,” declared President Biden in his Apr. 14, 2021, announcement that he is withdrawing all U.S. military forces from Afghanistan.

No one wants to say that we should be in Afghanistan forever, but they insist now is not the right moment to leave…

So when will it be the right moment to leave? …War in Afghanistan was never meant to be a multi-generational undertaking.

Of course no sane American wants to fight a “forever war”—that is, an indeterminable conflict with no end in sight, only a mounting list of U.S. casualties. But the President is wrong when he argues that the only alternative to “endless war” is military retreat and withdrawal.

In fact, there is a third and much better option: forever forward deployed as a garrison force, in country, that works closely with our allies—in this case, the legitimately elected government of Afghanistan—to protect vital U.S. interests in the region.

This was the option strongly recommended to Mr. Biden by his own military advisers, as well as the bipartisan Afghanistan Study Group.

A small residual force of 4,500 U.S. troops, they argued, would be enough “for training, advising, and assisting Afghan defense forces; supporting allied forces; conducting counterterrorism operations; and securing our embassy.”

U.S. troops, after all, have been forward deployed in Germany, Japan, and South Korea for more than half a century. True, Afghanistan is a far cry from being remotely like any of these three countries; it remains wracked by armed conflict and civil war.

Progress. Nonetheless, with American military help, Afghanistan has made tremendous strides forward—socially, politically, economically, and militarily. U.S. casualties, meanwhile, have steadily and precipitously declined. As the New York Times’ Bret Stephens reports:

Millions of girls, whom the Taliban had forbidden to get any kind of education, went to school. Some of them—not nearly enough, but impressive considering where they started from and the challenges they faced—became doctors, entrepreneurs, members of Parliament.

“There have been no American combat deaths in Afghanistan since two soldiers were killed and six wounded on Feb. 8, 2020, in a so-called insider attack in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province,” reports the Desert News.

“The U.S.,” Stephens notes “has lost fewer than 20 service members annually in hostile engagements in Afghanistan since 2015. That’s heartbreaking for those affected, but tiny next to the number of troops who die in routine training accidents worldwide.

“Our main role in recent years,” he adds, “has been to provide Afghan forces with effective air power. It is not an exorbitant price to pay to avert an outright Taliban victory.”

Strategic Ramifications. And preventing the Taliban from winning matters for reasons that extend far beyond Afghanistan. It matters in China, Taiwan, and the South China Sea. It matters in Russia, Ukraine, Pakistan, and Iran. And it matters in North Korea, Europe, and the Middle East.

“Our enemies will test us,” warns Bing West.

After Saigon fell [in the Vietnam War], Russia and Cuba supported proxy wars in Latin America and Africa, while Iranian radicals seized our embassy in Tehran.

The Biden administration will face similar provocations. Already, China is threatening Taiwan, Russia is massing troops on the Ukraine border, and Iran is increasing its enrichment of uranium.

“The theory of deterrence relies not just on the balance of forces, but also on reserves of credibility,” Stephens explains. “Leaving Afghanistan now does next to nothing to change the former while seriously depleting the latter.”

Diplomatic Leverage. The President disparages the notion “that diplomacy cannot succeed without a robust U.S. military presence to stand as leverage.” Yet, he offers no evidence to refute this commonsensical and well-proven truth.

Instead, he blithely asserts:

We gave that argument a decade. It’s never proved effective—not when we had 98,000 troops in Afghanistan, and not when we were down to a few thousand.

But the failure to win in Afghanistan is a reflection of an intractable war in an antiquated tribal society; it is not an indictment of the necessary nexus between military and diplomatic power.

Recognizing that the U.S. military has failed to achieve victory in two decades of conflict and likely will never achieve victory in the classic sense does not mean that we must reject wholesale the use of military power in Afghanistan.

This is a colossal blunder and unforced error by Mr. Biden.

The President compounds his error by arguing that “our diplomacy does not hinge on having boots in harm’s way—U.S. boots on the ground. We have to change that thinking.”

In fact, we need to understand that a forward-deployed U.S. military presence overseas is a stabilizing force for the good and a critical component of American diplomacy.

False Choice. The bottom line: the choice between so-called endless war and abject withdrawal and retreat is a false choice. We do not have to accept either of these two badly mistaken and extreme options.

Instead, we should choose to be forever forward-deployed militarily in small but strategically significant numbers to protect our interests and put America First. The President’s failure to do so in Afghanistan jeopardizes our national security.

Feature photo credit: President Biden announces that he is withdrawing all U.S. military forces from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, 2021, courtesy of ABC News.