The Democratic “Convention” talked policy, but stressed character, competence, openness, and grace. And highlighted real people with real feelings for the candidate, from the New York elevator operator who’d spontaneously said, “I love you!” to the New Hamshire boy who stutters as Joe did, whom Biden encouraged.
Capped by a Joe Biden speech even Karl Rove praised on Fox, the well-produced event taught us who Biden and his wife are. Character counts, and whatever Republicans do next week, they can’t copy this with Trump’s life and character.
Biden’s father was a workingman, a loving father with character and principles. Dad losing his job was a defining moment in Joe’s childhood.
Trump’s father was a very successful and unscrupulous businessman, and a demanding father. You can call Mary Trump disgruntled, believing Donald and his siblings ripped off her father’s share of her grandfather’s wealth; but all accounts portray a cutthroat family dominated by a cutthroat Father.
Biden quit a high-paying law job to be a public defender. When he ran for the U.S. Senate, Republican Caleb Boggs was so entrenched that no top Democrats sought the nomination. Joe took it and won, narrowly. Before he was sworn in, his wife and daughter died in a car crash. His sons survived. Friends talked him out of resigning from the Senate to care for the boys; but he was home for supper every night, in Wilmington, working on the commuter trains to D.C. and back.
Trump ran a half-dozen businesses into bankruptcy. His life is littered with lawsuits by suppliers, contractors, and investors. He was saved by a crafty ghostwriter whose book in Trump’s name attracted a TV producer.
Widower Joe met a lovely, smart, and strong-willed young woman, Jill, who married him and made them a family again. Dr. Jill Biden, who taught school through eight years as Second Lady – and who reacted to a rough spot in life by running marathons.
Trump’s three marriages and other sexual arrangements resemble a bad soap opera. His first wife alleged rape. He got his second wife pregnant while still married to the first. I defy anyone to claim s/he’s seen Trump and Melania share a moment of spontaneous love or humor.
I think it matters who you are inside.
It’s no sin to make money; but competence, good judgment, and caring for your workers are consistent with making a fortune. Having the self-confidence to listen openly to others is not weakness. Had Trump listened, our nation might not have suffered the world’s most unnecessary COVID-19 infections and deaths. He tries to cover inadequacy with boasts and bullying. He asserts that he knows best, and when facts show otherwise, he denies the facts and calls people names.
Meanwhile, a bipartisan Senate Select Committee (Republican-controlled) has finally reported that Trump’s campaign manager was sharing confidential information with the Russians; and his former top advisor Steve Bannon has been indicted for bilking investors in a (purported) non-profit “build a border-wall” scheme from which Bannon and others were secretly profiting. Trump didn’t deny their initial statements that it had his blessing, but now he says he didn’t know about it – and was against it.
Trump also encourages Q-Anon, people who actually believe that Democratic leaders like Biden and Harris are devil-worshiping pederasts (and cannibals) from whom Trump will save us. And after the 2017 Charlottesville white-supremacist rally and attack, Trump spoke of “very fine people on both sides.”
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[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 23 August 2020, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and on KRWG’s website. A related radio commentary will air during the week both on KRWG and on KTAL, 101.5 FM (http://www.lccommunityradio.org/) and be available on demand as well.]
[I don’t claim Biden or Harris or anyone else is a saint, or profess to agree with all anyone’s positions. Under all these folks, the U.S. government continues to make errors and omissions that are both unwise and sometimes illegal. However, I thought the virtual convention was effective, at times eloquent, even moving, in illustrating Biden’s decency and the party leaders’ variety. Then his speech, which I feared might be too long and too dull, pretty much knocked it out of the park. It was effective, direct, personal, and powerful.]
[Families are important.
Donald Trump has a strong father who taught his kids that life's goal
was to make as much money as possible, that anyone who didn't was a
loser, and that only weaklings worried about others. Donald was
compelled to emulate that. No mitigating influence appeared to
counter the lesson that other people exist to be taken advantage of
or to be induced to admire him. Women to be groped, if
decorative, and demeaned as "horse-faces" if not.
Trump sure won't have his niece, Mary Trump, at the convention. He won't have older sister Maryanne Barry, the recently-retired U.S. appellate judge, appointed to her first judgeship by Ronald Reagan. I urge everyone to read this Washington Post story about Barry's honest view of Donald, recorded by Mary without her aunt's knowledge. In summary, pretty much what we say about Donald she says too: that he's "only out for Donald," that "he doesn't read," and that his immigration policies are hateful. That “Donald is cruel.” And “He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this. . . . His goddamned tweet and lying, oh my God,” she said. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy shit.”
Bottom line? Biden's family, who know him well, love him. Trump's family, knowing him a lot better than we do, loather him. Fact. ]
[Biden would also try to rebuild what Trump has destroyed, as often by incompetence as by design, and deal more sensibly and honestly with the current pandemic.]
[For another perspective, read Algernon D’Amassa’s Sun-News column this morning, “When You Vote, You're Choosing a President, Not a Friend.” I tend to agree with much of it. However, despite that, I see a sufficiently significant difference between current policies of the parties, and particularly between Trump’s incompetence and lack of compassion and Biden’s relative competence and basic decency, that I will vote for Biden and encourage others to do so. I still know, as I did in my youth, that this bus is driven to benefit the wealthy far more than the poor or middle-class; but if that bus runs off the mountain road, that’s no good for any of us.
Looking
through the paper, before reading Algernon’s column I read a story
about a tragic car crash that killed a 32-year-old wife and mother in
Santa Teresa. Drunken driver charged with depraved-heart murder, not
just manslaughter or vehicular homicide. As likely he should be; but
what’s the right charge for a guy who’s so selfish, narcissistic,
and childish that he lets a dangerous pandemic kill a vastly higher
percentage of his country’s citizens than it kills in any other
country, despite wealth and relatively good health technology and
healthcare people?]
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| Celendin Market © Peter Goodman |
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