Tired of ‘winning’? Vote Trump out

Donald Trump says everyone is tired of the word racism. Trump actually claims to be "the least racist person in the world." That is like KKK members saying they are not a hate group, they just love white people. Uh-huh. In July, it was announced that yet another GM plant would be closing, putting the total such closings in 2019 at a cost of 14,000 jobs that Americans used to have. Thanks, Dear Leader. We are indeed tired of that sort of winning, just as you predicted (Trump said at a Billings, Montana, rally speech in May 2016: "We're going to win so much, you're going to be so sick and tired of winning.") According to Forbes, Trump has created 1 million jobs fewer than Barack Obama -- though George W. Bush and Dick Cheney left office and handed off an economy plunging into potential depression and Obama handed off a recovered economy to Trump. Obama fixed it; Trump stands to ruin it. Can we do better? Are we tired of high-paying, skilled, working-class jobs leaving while low-paying service industry work is helping drop the unemployment rate? If all the recently unemployed, living-wage workers plus happy high-schoolers can score low-paying work, is that winning? The Democratic primaries are going to be a process of choosing the candidate who can smack Trump back to his tower and out of the White House. At this moment, the primary dividing issues seem to be racial correctness versus socialized medicine and free college versus playing it safe in the middle and young versus old. We all get asked, "So, who do you want to lead the Democratic ticket in 2020?" "Any port in a storm," I say. I wish I could predict who would do the best against Trump. Some say Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, the two radicals. Some say Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. I'm going to vote for any of them who emerges as the chosen Democratic candidate. Yes, I have a great deal of opinion on policies being debated by Democrats, but all that is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic after it's collided with the iceberg compared to energizing folks who know Trump is bad for America to get out and vote. After all, polls showed that Sanders would very likely have beaten Trump in the 2016 presidential election even more resoundingly than Hillary Clinton did in the popular vote, but the Clinton campaign machinations stole the nomination from Sanders and she never elicited much enthusiasm from much of anyone. A Warren/Harris ticket might galvanize the country and bring out millions of quiescent voters on all sides. Or a Sanders/Cory Booker ticket could do the same. This is a fluid race, a shifting set of polling numbers, and it's worth recalling that ace lawyer Rudy Giuliani was in the polling lead for a minute this far out in 2012, and Jeb Bush was at one point really looking like the likely Republican nominee in 2016. Joe Lieberman looked presumptive early on in 2004 primary polling and Gary Hart did so in early 1988 polling. If you want to vote Trump out, please overcome that tired or defeated and depressed attitude long enough to vote. The future of democracy is at stake. Tom H. Hastings is the director of Peace Voice, a program of the Oregon Peace Institute, located in Portland. He can be reached by emailing PeaceVoiceDirector@gmail.com.

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