My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a part:

C’mon, America. Are we really going to do this? In a country of over 330 million people with legions of brilliant, ethical, honest, compassionate and humble servant leaders, are we really going to be forced to choose between Joe Biden and Donald Trump? Is this the best we have to offer? If the polls are any indication, we are barreling headlong into choosing between these two terribly flawed grouchy old men.

 

The Democrats appear to be committed to nominating President Joe Biden to be considered by the voters for a second term. Biden’s cognitive decline is as obvious as it is distressing. The incidents of Biden getting confused, wandering off and rambling incoherently are increasingly frequent. His press conference in Vietnam last week was tragic. He rambled from inappropriate jokes to getting confused over questions and admitting, “I’m just following my orders here” to having his staff cut him off as he closed with, “I’m going to go to bed.”

 

As happens with many elderly people who are in cognitive decline, Biden’s unsavory personal traits have come to the surface. Unable to stop himself from wandering from a podium, he is now vacillating between strange whispering into the handheld microphone to shouting for no apparent reason. Biden has always been known for his prolific lying. He was even run off the presidential campaign trail in 1988 when he was caught plagiarizing. His sagging ability to think on his feet have him blundering into even more obvious lies. His claim last week that he was in Manhattan the day after 9/11 was disproven within minutes by video of him in Washington D.C. that day.

 

Biden’s years of rank corruption are also coming to the surface. The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability has released some of the evidence they have gathered about the Biden’s real family business. The evidence shows years of corruption where tens of millions of dollars from foreign bad actors flowed through a web aliases (Joe Biden had at least three) and shell companies controlled by Biden family members with Hunter Biden serving as the primary bag man. The product they were selling was allegedly access to one of the most powerful people on the planet — Joe Biden. The Biden family has not offered any other reasonable explanation for why foreigners have been giving them millions of dollars.

 

As if the lies, corruption, and slip into senility was not enough, Biden’s first term has been an unmitigated failure. Inflation has raged out of control eating into every American’s quality of life. People are struggling to buy groceries, cars and homes as real wages have stagnated. The Southern border is wide open with tens of thousands of illegal aliens flowing into our nation every month to eat at our overburdened social safety net. Our nation is running up our national debt to a nation-killing level. Our enemies and friends are laughing at us as the world order reorients away from a languishing lion.

 

Despite all of this, the Democrats seem dead set on propping up old Joe for another term.

 

The Republicans are not doing much better. Despite several fantastic alternatives who are younger, smarter, more conservative, more likable, and with better records in public office, the Republicans seem dead set on nominating former President Donald Trump.

 

Only three years younger than Joe Biden, Trump’s cognitive abilities are holding firm even as his stamina slumps with marathon rallies being replaced by short and infrequent campaign stops. His lifetime of lying is currently manifesting itself in a voluminous attempt to gaslight the nation as to his record and the records of his Republican opponents. His energies that were focused on the righteous populist anger of the average American in 2016 and 2020 have been redirected in 2023 to his lengthy list of personal grudges and electoral fantasies.

 

While the litany of indictments against Trump are the more the result of the Marxist weaponization of our judicial system than a true assessment of Trump’s behavior, he has always shoved past dowdy ethical to flirt with the skirts of law.

 

Trump’s record as president was decidedly mixed. He was exceptional in securing the border, deregulating, selecting conservative judges, pulling America back from bad international deals, destroying ISIS, and reigniting our economy. These remarkable successes are weighted down by his prolific spending, ballooning debt, and lethargy in adjusting government policy to the reality of the pandemic. Perhaps his greatest failure was his terrible selection of, and support of, government officials from Anthony Fauci to Christopher Wray. Instead of draining the swamp, Trump added to and protected it.

 

America deserves better than to have a presidential campaign that resembles two semi-coherent old men yelling at each other from opposite ends of the bar about the television channel. Or do we?

 

I ask again … are we really going to do this?

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a part:

Only halfway through his first term, President Biden has rent our great republic to the point that it will take generations to reverse the damage – if it can be reversed. Our national debt now far exceeds our country’s full annual economic output. Inflation is crushing dreams and robbing the middle class of their spending power. Our borders are wide open with terrorists and criminals intermingling with the world’s indigent. All of them are stretching and breaking our social fabric. Crime is eating out the core of our once great cities. America’s power on the international stage is at its lowest ebb since World War 1. All of this is being overseen by the increasingly senile head of what is proving to be one of the most prolific criminal family organizations our nation has ever seen, according to the investigation of the U.S. House Oversight Committee and IRS whistleblower.

 

Despite all of that destruction, if the Republicans choose Donald Trump as their nominee, it is more than probable that Biden will win reelection.

 

Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 was lightning in a bottle. He managed to speak to the large, disaffected segment of the populace who were fed up with Washington ignoring them. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party nominated a uniquely disliked political figure in Hillary Clinton after a fractious primary where the party’s schism with the socialists, led by Senator Bernie Sanders, failed to heal before the general election.

 

Trump’s term in office was terrific in many ways. He pushed back the regulatory state to allow the American economic engine to flourish. The Trump-Ryan tax cuts unleashed American capital and drove up real wages faster than in decades. Trump’s “America first” foreign policy was clear and sensible. Trump’s excellent choice in federal judges and fortuitous opportunity to appoint three Supreme Court justices has proven to be the only bulwark against Biden’s rapacious rule.

 

But let’s not kid ourselves. Trump accelerated the decadent spending of his predecessor and built the foundation from which Biden launched generational inflation. While Trump did well with Operation Warp Speed and the initial response to the pandemic, he was lethargic in letting America get back to normal and perpetuated the Rule of Fauci. Despite all of the bluster about “draining the swamp,” the swamp won.

 

Even with the full power of incumbency, Trump failed to win reelection. Irrespective of your thoughts on the integrity of the electoral process in 2020, Trump in 2020 was simply less popular than Trump in 2016. After all, he lost to a candidate who ran an anemic campaign from the comfort of his basement.

 

Trump in 2023 is in even worse shape than Trump in 2020. There is a noticeable difference in Trump’s message and priorities. Instead of talking about Making America Great Again, Trump is just a rhetorical blowtorch to anything and anyone who threatens him. Trump’s message in 2016 was about us. His message in 2023 is about him.

 

This is why Trump cannot win the general election. Despite what you may think of him, he has irreparably damaged his relationship with half the conservatives, three-fourths of the independents, and he never had the liberals. No matter how you work the electoral math, he cannot win a national general election again. He has let the lightning out of the bottle.