Abortion & Covid - Trump's Two Achilles' Heel Issues

 "I surprised them." - Donald Trump speaking about the 2016 presidential election that Democrats thought they were going to win right up to Hillary Clinton's cancellation of the planned fireworks display over the Hudson River the night before the election.

Democrats vowed to never again be surprised by Trump & in the 2024 Trump-Biden rematch each party thought they had the one opponent they could beat.  Nikki Haley astutely pointed out that the first party to drop their aging candidate would win.

When the Democrats started getting cold feet about Biden's cognitive capacity & falling poll numbers they sucker punched Trump into agreeing to a June 27 debate - over three months earlier than the usual first debate.  Biden did so miserably in the debate that he dropped out of the presidential race but has been able to continue with what must be the less important job of actually being president.   Just imagine the state of the race if Trump had not agreed to that debate - it would still be the Trump-Biden rematch with Biden's incapacity suspected but not admitted.  But Harris has quickly regained Biden's lost polling ground & in many polls it is now Trump who trails & slides a little more each day.

Trump won the 2016 presidential race 304 to 227 electoral votes.  He received 46.5% of the popular vote.  Three states provided the margin of victory: Wisconsin - 10 electoral votes by a 22,748 vote margin out of 3 million votes cast; Michigan - 16 electoral votes by a 10,704 vote margin out of 4.8 million votes cast; & Pennsylvania - 20 electoral votes by a 44,292 vote margin out of 6.2 million votes cast.  If Hillary had overcome this cumulative 77,744 vote deficit she would have won the presidency 273 electoral votes to 258 - there were seven faithless electors.

In 2020 Biden won the presidency by an almost identical electoral college margin 306 to 232 with three states providing an even closer margin of victory: Wisconsin - 10 electoral votes by a 20,608 vote margin out of 3.3 million votes cast; Arizona - 11 electoral votes by a 10,457 vote margin out of 3.4 million votes cast; Georgia - 16 electoral votes by an 11,779 vote margin out of five million votes cast.  RTE posts since the 2020 election have shown how Trump suffered this 42,844 cumulative vote deficit - for example, Trump received less votes than winning congressmen down ballot in many cases with the difference totaling more votes than Trump lost the state by.  If Trump had overcome these three infinitesimal deficits in 2020 the race would have been tied 269 electoral votes each.  Students of the Constitution know what would have happened to Trump & Biden as well as Pence & Harris.

A good indicator I go by in analyzing a presidential election is to subtract the California & New York totals from the national popular vote.  In 2016 Trump won the popular vote of the total of the other 48 states by over three million votes while in 2020 Trump still won by this metric but by only 44,590 votes so there definitely was a stronger anti-Trump movement in 2020 in the other 48 states.

In addition to Nikki's remarks about each party changing out old candidates, after the June 27 debate Nikki also recommended that Republicans prepare for the Democrats replacing Biden with a "younger" & more "vibrant" candidate which of course is exactly what happened on July 21 - right on cue three days after the Republican National Convention concluded to minimize the news coverage positive bounce coming out of the convention.  Quite clever timing.

Neither Trump nor Vance has handled the switcheroo well from the inept Biden to a black woman whose strongest issue is abortion rights.

Abortion is the issue that gets credit for thwarting the 2022 Republican midterm red wave congressional victory.  The November 2022 midterm election was held less than five months after the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that had made abortion legal throughout the U.S.  Trump bragged about appointing three justices with known anti abortion views but now backs away from this fact.

Previous posts have pointed out how Trump stumbles regarding abortion.  Trump's June 27 debate statement that everyone wanted Roe v. Wade overturned with abortion policy returned to the states is delusional.  No one seeking an abortion wanted Roe overturned, meaning they would have to travel out of their home state to get an abortion let alone wanted its legality decided by 50 different state government officials.  Unbelievably Trump repeated this ridiculous claim virtually verbatim @ the September 10 debate with Harris.

The Florida citizen-led ballot initiative that would amend the state constitution by explicitly blocking the implementation of laws that "prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability" has found Trump more than once on every side of the ballot initiative.  Since he is a resident of Florida Trump is being pressured to say how he will vote on the measure that will undo the six week abortion ban signed into law on May 1.  Trump originally criticized that law as "a terrible mistake," a thinly veiled attack of Ron DeSantis, but now says he is voting in its favor.  In an ultimate irony, if the initiative passes, abortion in Florida, after the Roe overturn, will have gone from a 15 week ban to a six week ban to a 22 - 26 week ban meaning a longer period to get an abortion than even before the six week ban was signed into law.  The ballot initiative needs 60% of the vote to pass.

More trouble for Trump & down ballot races - there are nine other states (Arizona, Nevada, Montana, South Dakota, Colorado, Nebraska, Missouri, New York, & Maryland) that have abortion measures on the ballot in the 2024 election cycle.

But Trump's pandering position on in vitro fertilization (IVF) as told to Tulsi Gabbard in Wisconsin the last week of August is the most pathetic: "The government is going to pay for it or we're going to mandate your insurance company to pay for it."  Republicans campaigned for years to overturn ObamaCare because, among other things, it forced insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions.  Does this make Trump the ultimate RINO?  Also, does this seemingly desperate position take into account that the average IVF cycle in 2023 cost $12,400 - not counting medications & testing?  With fertility medications & genetic testing the cost could range between $15,000 to $30,000 per cycle.  Source GoodRx.

Based on the above, abortion has all the potential in the world to once again work against Trump & Republicans up & down the ballot.

The handling of Covid was an issue that hurt Republicans in 2020 so Harris has made it the basis of her answer regarding why the economy & inflation have been constant problems for people under Biden/Harris.  Harris claimed during their September 10 debate that Trump handed Biden/Harris such a bad economy - including "the worst unemployment since the Great Depression, the worst public health epidemic in a century, & the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War - that "what we (Biden/Harris) have done is clean up Donald Trump's mess" @ least implying that it has taken this long to do so.

The following graphic shows that 50% of voters in 2020 understandably rated health concerns (41% Covid & 9% healthcare) as the most important issue in the 2020 presidential election - & Trump was on the defensive for most of 2020 regarding one aspect of Covid or another as described below.

  Click on graphic to enlarge

Right out of the box, in March & April 2020 Trump regularly disrupted the daily Covid TV briefings-updates by getting into arguments with members of the press over minutia while vulnerable senior citizens, who were interested in the updates as a matter of life & death, only saw non-productive sparring matches day after day.  The Covid TV briefings were supposed to be handled by Pence, & Drs. Fauci & Birx.  Trump did himself no favors the way he appeared in these briefings.

Congress started throwing money @ developing a Covid vaccine in March 2020 & by May 2020 Trump ordered the drug companies to produce a Covid-19 vaccine in rapid fire order under Operation Warp Speed (OWS) - the goal was to deliver 300 million doses of a safe, effective, vaccine for Covid-19 by January, 2021.  A typical vaccine takes 5 to 10 years to develop.  The FDA approved the Covid-19 vaccines under emergency use authorization.  My doctor told me it was an experimental approval.  Nevertheless, many employers including the United States government mandated that employees get vaccinated thereby causing more division throughout the country. 

Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases, provided the perfect example of what the administrative state produces to solve problems.  Fauci was wrong more than he was right with orders to wear masks & then not wear masks &/or to stand six feet apart before saying this is not important.  Fauci takes no responsibility for the shutdowns of either businesses &/or schools that occurred during Covid's worst time saying he did not have the authority to lock down anything - but while he was the top medical authority real GDP fell $2 trillion taking 15 months to recover (see graphic below) & PCE consumer spending declined $2.6 trillion taking eleven months to recover.  Seems Fauci forgot the federal government's leadership in "flattening the curve" to buy time so that healthcare facilities were not overwhelmed with patients.

Click on graphic to enlarge

With all of his wrong information no one, starting with Trump, ever suggested Fauci step down or be fired.  On the contrary, @ his salary, well into his eighties, he was the highest paid federal government employee during Covid's worse times & like Joe & Jill Biden had to be dragged off the job.

And all the while Congress was passing & Trump was signing into law $3.6 trillion of Covid welfare stimulus money that is the root cause of our 40 year high inflation problem that included direct cash payments to households ($1,200 per adult plus $500 per qualifying child under 17), an additional $600 per week in unemployment compensation plus increases in food assistance, tax credits for employers who offered paid sick leave, bailouts & loans for airlines & other industries, & loans & grants for small businesses.  In addition to the Covid stimulus money Trump signed a $1.4 trillion omnibus bill to fund the government.  All in all Trump is the biggest one term deficit spender in the country's history.

But Covid is different from abortion because Covid has culpability for both Trump & Harris while the two candidates could not be more different regarding abortion - Harris is full throated for it & Trump doesn't know what to do with it.

Harris bases many parts of her campaign on the premise that Trump left Biden/Harris a mess while acknowledging that the Covid-19 pandemic caused by the Wuhan coronavirus was partially to blame.  She also thinks Trump handled Covid poorly.  The truth is that more people died per unit of time under Biden/Harris than under Trump. See graphic below & notice the steeper slope of the line under Biden/Harris from 400,000 deaths to the first million Covid-19 deaths in America than the slope of the line under Trump's term from March 1, 2020 to January 20, 2021.  And yet Harris got away with this distortion in the September 10 debate because Trump just can't focus on anything other than his blather.

Click on graphic to enlarge

How much sharper would Trump have been in the September 10 debate if he had participated in the Republican primary debates with Pence, Haley, & Christy - three people who had worked for Trump & would have added great insight into the dialogue.  But Trump only wanted to debate the hapless Biden ("anywhere, any time, any place") & as of this moment wants no parts of a second debate with Harris who masterfully baited him time after time.

Harris was extremely well coached & prepared for the September 10 debate.  She responded to the questions each time exactly as she wanted to, telling just what she wanted, leaving out what she didn't want to bring up, but always ending her allotted time with a dig to stir Trump up like saying people leave Trump's rallies early out of boredom, the Wharton school scores Trump's economic plan poorly, or that Trump inherited millions of dollars to start his business.  In a failing junior high school type debate performance Trump was so distracted by Harris's maneuver that he never got around to pointing out the weakness of her response to the issue raised in the original question.  Trump could not resist talking about his crowd sizes or professors @ Wharton who he claimed think highly of his terrible tariff plans leaving Harris to smilingly go on to the next question only to repeat this mouse trap plan again & again.

Will any of this make a difference for the voters who are undecided?  Who knows what to think about an electorate who has given us this terrible choice for president?

The Border Czar Is No More Deserving Of The Presidency Than Trump Or Biden

If we're talking about Kamala Harris in this post's title, & we are, we know from her preferred gender pronouns that she would prefer czarina to czar.

Since the incessant overflow of migrants @ the southwest land border during the entire Biden/Harris term has finally moved border security near the top of concern for voters many Democrat pundits are saying that Biden never assigned Harris the role of Border Czar.

Checking the record we find that on March 24, 2021 Biden said "I've asked her, the VP, today - because she's the most qualified person to do it - to lead our efforts with Mexico & the Northern Triangle & the countries that help - are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border."  Click here to hear it in Biden's own words.

The definition of the noun czar is "a person appointed by the government to advise on & coordinate policy in a particular field" - sounds pretty close to what Biden asked Harris to do.  

NBC News reported that "the vice president is expected to focus on both curbing the current flow of migrants & coordinating with countries in the region to address the root causes (although Biden never used the words "root causes") of migration" - yet any activity by Harris over the last three & a half years regarding this assignment was confined to 1) a trip to Guatemala & Mexico on June 7, 2021: 2) a four hour trip to the El Paso Border Patrol station & the El Paso del Norte Port of Entry on June 25, 2021; 3) taking credit for a page & a half "Cover Message" to a National Security Council report entitled  "U.S. Strategy for Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America" in July 2021; & 4) issuing a Fact Sheet: Update on the U.S. Strategy for Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America on March 25, 2024 that says "the Administration is on track to meet its commitment in the 2021 Root Causes Strategy to provide $4 billion to the region over four years."

Notice that Harris has always ignored the part of her responsibility regarding "stemming the migration to our southern border" while morphing her assignment into identifying & spending money addressing the root causes of migration from Northern Triangle countries, which root causes we always knew were corruption, violence, trafficking, & poverty.  This was all known before Harris even began her feeble pretense of doing anything constructively in this regard or even showing interest in any part of the assignment except for not being tarred politically with the border overflow problem plaguing the nation.  Over eight million migrants illegally entered the country while Harris worked on root causes & Biden provided no supervision "because she's the most qualified person to do it." 

Most importantly, if there was an effort by Harris to stem the migration it was a complete failure unless the goal was to bring in future Democrat party voters.  Now that the damage is done & the election is getting closer the Harris effort has turned to one of professing border responsibility & she has statistics to prove it.  For instance the July encounters (Border Patrol & Office Of Field Operations) totaled 104,118 down from 301,981 last December.  The table below confirms that the trend of the number of encounters declined in 2024.  Click on table to enlarge.

And of course this reduction was brought about for political reasons benefitting Biden/Harris & AMLO (Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador) because 2024 is a presidential  election year in both the U.S. & Mexico.  In April AMLO asked Biden to hold off issuing his planned executive order that disqualifies migrants from winning asylum if they enter the U.S. illegally until after the June 2 Mexican presidential election that was won by AMLO's hand picked successor Claudia Sheinbaum.  Two days after the AMLO protege's victory, Biden issued the EO that requires migrants to be deported quickly which, with AMLO's help, in turn has discouraged thousands of migrants from heading north in the first place - thus the lower number of border encounters as recorded in the above table.

A responsible U.S. citizenry should withhold their vote until Biden/Harris explains why this extraordinary cooperation with Mexico did not happen three & a half years ago & why the EO was not issued then also.  Writing the EO in 2024 acknowledges that Biden had the authority to do so all along but in a dereliction of duty didn't.

Instead Harris is trying to turn the issue around saying she has been a responsible leader on border security all along & that the lower number of border encounters confirms that.  Harris blames Congress & Trump for not giving Biden/Harris the laws needed to properly enforce border security earlier.

This complaint is a reference to the Border Act of 2024 - S.4361 - negotiated with much fanfare by senators Lankford (R-OK), Sinema (I-AZ), & Murphy (D-CT).  This bill failed a floor cloture vote 43 to 50 (only Republican to support the bill was Murkowski - Alaska) on May 23.  Harris claims Republican congressmen capitulated to Trump's demands to not pass the bill because it would give Democrats an advantage over Trump by taking away his perceived best issue - border security.

A better reason to vote against the bill is found in Section 3.01 of the bill entitled Border Emergency Authority, paragraph (3) entitled Activations of Authority that is divided into two sections - discretionary activation & mandatory activation.  The new border emergency authority under the bill pertains to the Secretary of Homeland Security's authority & duty to summarily remove from & prohibit the entry into the U.S. of all aliens, except unaccompanied minors, between ports of entry in response to extraordinary migration circumstances (that we have had since Biden/Harris took office three & a half years ago).

The discretionary activation to prohibit further alien migration can occur if during a period of 7 consecutive calendar days there is an average of 4,000 to 5,000 aliens who are encountered each day.  The mandatory activation to prohibit further alien migration shall occur if during a period of 7 consecutive calendar days there is an average of 5,000 or more aliens who are encountered each day; or on any one calendar day a combined total of 8,500 aliens are encountered.

The outrageous part of hiding behind this bill having not been passed as the reason the border is out of control is that one or more of the above activation levels were hit every month that Biden/Harris has been in office except for February 2021 (their first full month in office when the caravans we're just gearing up) & July 2024 (for reasons detailed above).  See graphic below that shows the total number of encounters for each of the last twelve years & the average number of encounters per day for each of the years.  Click on graphic to enlarge.

How could Biden issue his Executive Order prohibiting entry two days after the Mexican election that placed even stricter limits (2,500 border encounters per day) on unauthorized crossings than the failed border bill described above if he had no authority to do so all along?  Answer - Biden always had the authority to control the border but chose not to.  The migration has only slowed as a result of enforcement of the EO so that Harris can use the lower number of crossings & encounters as a talking point to disguise her did-nothing record.

If we are all on the same team & Biden/Harris thought they didn't have the legal authority from Congress to enforce border security why didn't they meet with congressional leaders to explain the problem so that Congress could write a law they could enforce?

Harris has become so aggressive on border security she has even shamelessly shown a TV ad as part of her campaign highlighting the border she never visited with the voice-over saying how tough she is & that she will hire thousands of border patrol agents.

Now a vice president is subservient to their president & in order to make an informed vote a voter has to find out how much of the president's policy the vice president (Harris in this case) truly believed in.  For instance we know in 1996 that Jack Kemp temporarily put aside his supply side economic principles to support Bob Dole's economic plan for the country.  It was something Kemp had to do to be on the Dole ticket & I for one never felt Kemp had abandoned supply side economics.  After the campaign Kemp returned to champion supply side economics once again.

Based on Harris's improvement in the polls since becoming the presidential nominee it seems that voters are not holding her accountable for much of Biden's unpopular policies even though she made the tie breaking vote in the Senate on a record number 33 bills.  Source - Ballotpedia.

But Harris's record is all over the progressive lot from her days as California AG & senator.  Now she wants voters to believe she is for the strongest, most lethal military on earth, funding the police, respecting ICE, fracking, & supporting a bill that would resume building the wall that Trump never finished.  This from a self-proclaimed moderate candidate who was against all of these things just two months ago when she was more progressive supporting single payer Medicare for All while abolishing private healthcare insurance, outlawing gas stoves & gasoline-powered cars, supporting the disastrous Afghan withdrawal (after all she was the last person in the room with Biden on that decision), & wanting people who were never slave holders to pay reparations to people who were never slaves.  More recently Harris has been for national price controls @ least for groceries & the terrible ideas of no tax on tips, raising the top marginal tax rates on capital gains & wages, & taxing unrealized capital gains on the tippy top 0.01% of wealthiest households as if this would not trickle (flood) down to middle class households when she needed more revenue.

Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton says Harris must explain when & why she adopted her current policy views.

But Harris is quite content to keep a low profile & slide into the White House as a blank slate if she can get away with it.  The hostile anti-American media will not help in any substantial way so that leaves Trump having to drag her contradictory record out to the public in a way that makes sense because she has no intention of explaining any more of her record than she has to.

I don't think Trump can do it.

All in all, Harris is no more deserving of the presidency than Trump or Biden.

Fact Checking The Debate: Biden's Senility v. Trump's False Claims

Even the least discerning readers of this blog know that the theme of most posts over the last four years has been that neither Biden or Trump is fit to be president of the United States - some post titles were dead giveaways to this theme such as Neither Trump Nor Biden Deserves To Be President Again & Both Trump & Biden Have Disqualified Themselves From The Presidency.

Biden's performance in the June 27 presidential debate was so dismal that it not only caused him to drop out of the race but it made Trump's false claims during the debate that much harder to pick up except for professional fact checkers & readers of RTE.  

For instance, Trump absurdly stated, totally out of touch with political reality, that "everybody" wanted Roe v. Wade overturned with each state making their own abortion policy.  Trump said "Everybody wanted to get it back to the states, everybody, without exception: Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives.  Everybody wanted it back.  Religious leaders." & then added "Every legal scholar wanted it that way."  This falsehood was stunning to me.

Starting with conservative Kansas, less than two months after Roe was overturned, state after state (Kentucky, California, Vermont, Michigan, & Ohio) moved in the pro abortion direction with ballot initiatives.  Eleven other states (Florida, Arizona, Montana, Kentucky, Arkansas, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, & Maryland) are planning to put abortion directly on the ballot in November to either directly reject further restrictions or fully enshrine abortion into their constitutions.  We know that Trump is aware that the 2022 midterm supposed "red wave" Republican victory never appeared because it was overwhelmed by the abortion issue - prompting Trump to say "You have to win elections" so say or do whatever you have to on abortion "to win elections."  And that is exactly what Trump did during the presidential debate.

But Biden was so inept during the debate that he could not even muster up a response to Trump's gross misstatement on abortion.

When Biden could try (instead of just standing there with his mouth open) to discuss an issue it too was terrible.  For instance, Biden's claim that "Truth is, I'm the only president this century that doesn't have any, this decade, that doesn't have any troops dying anywhere in the world, like he did," referring to Trump.

Of course this falsehood does not mention the thirteen U.S. service members (11 Marines, one Army special operations soldier, and one Navy corpsman) who were killed in the suicide bombing @ the airport in Kabul during the hideous Afghanistan withdrawal in August 2021 following the Taliban re-taking of the country.  Biden also overlooks the three U.S. soldiers killed this year in Jordan by a drone attack instigated by Iran-backed militants.  Also two U.S. Navy Seals died in January in Somolian waters while attempting to seize lethal aid being transported from Iran to Yemen, & five U.S. soldiers died in a helicopter crash in the Mediterranean Sea in November 2023 during a routine refueling mission.  Lastly, eight U.S. airmen died in a CV-22 Osprey crash off the coast of Yakushima Island, Japan.

All told, according to the CNN fact checker Daniel Dale (whose work I relied on in this post based on my personal knowledge & previous RTE posts) Biden made @ least nine false or misleading statements during the debate - hard to believe he could muster up that many statements, false or otherwise.  Biden's misleading statements wandered through claims of Trump wanting to eliminate Social Security, saying unemployment was 15% when he took office, & incorrectly saying the Border Patrol union endorsed him before clarifying that he meant the border bill he had backed that was negotiated by Lankford (R-OK), Sinema (I-AZ), & Murphy (D-CT).

But the enormous unanswered question is why is Biden still president if he is so incapacitated that he could not perform better in a debate on his favored CNN.  If the debate proved anything it is that Biden should finally be given the cognitive test as a bare bones minimum to see if he can finish his term.  In the meantime, if this elderly man with a poor memory, who is @ least slightly senile, continues as president we are literally playing with a stick of dynamite that has a lit fuse.

Also, Kamala Harris immediately came on TV after the debate & continued the lie that Biden is as sharp as can be behind closed doors - this was before the knives came out to get rid of Biden's liability as a candidate for president.  But Harris certainly knew better - like all of us.  This is one of the questions she should answer along with 1) what is fracking, & 2) in your assignment from President Biden to lead our efforts with Mexico & the Northern Triangle countries to stem migration to our southern border did you ever issue a written report addressing both the root causes of & your recommendations for quieting the disorder @ the southwest land border that began right after the Biden-Harris administration took office.  Questions 1 & 2 were recommended by Steve Moore & Bill O'Reilly respectively.

Fact checker Dale logged in nine whoppers for Biden during the debate & "@ least thirty for Trump."

During the debate Trump said 1) that Democrats will kill babies in the "eighth month, the ninth month of pregnancy, or even after birth" (no state allows infanticide & 95.6% of abortions occur before 16 weeks of pregnancy & only 0.9% occurred @ 21 weeks or later in 2020); 2) that Biden will quadruple people's taxes (Biden's budget proposal for fiscal year 2024 calls for people making $60,000 per year to pay less tax than under current law while middle income households would pay about the same); 3) that Pelosi turned down 10,000 National Guard troops to protect the Capitol on January 6, 2021 (there is no record of Trump offering troops to Pelosi & even if he did Pelosi has no authority over the deployment of the District of Columbia National Guard, which is under the command of the president); 4) that Americans don't pay the cost of his tariffs on China & other countries (it is U.S. importers, not Chinese exporters, who make the actual tariff payments to the government meaning the American consumer ultimately foots the bill); 5) that the 2020 presidential election was marred by fraud (there has never been any evidence of any fraud even close to widespread enough to have changed the outcome in any state, but we do know that Rudy, Mark Meadows, Jenna Ellis, & Sydney Powell have experienced a world of hurt claiming otherwise & Fox paid almost $1 billion to Dominion for broadcasting such falsehoods); 6) that under Biden, "We have the largest (trade) deficit with China" (in 2023 the Biden trade deficit with China was the lowest since 2010 while under Trump in 2018 the trade deficit with China hit a new record high - see graphic below); & 7) that the U.S. currently has its biggest budget deficit (this claim from Trump who presided over the largest deficit spending in any four year period since the founding of the country - see graphic below.)

  Click on graphic to enlarge

Over the years I have written about the significance of the national debt many times in blog posts & over the past four years have received many comments from die hard Trump supporters who acknowledge that Trump is the biggest four year spender in the country's history but shrug it off by saying "In my opinion, voters don't care about ... the debt."

Now isn't it one thing to not care about the national debt & another thing to not care about being lied to about it?

Biden's Press Secretary Can't Identify Inflation Factors Without Implicating Democrat Party

"We got a lot of incoming on this yesterday & look, the point that the president was making is that the factors that cause inflation were in place when he took office."  - White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre answering a question on May 15 from Ed Lawrence (FBN) regarding Biden's repeated claim that inflation was 9% when he took office instead of 1.4% as reported by the BLS.  (Note - KJP's quote is cleaned up grammatically & repeated "uh"s removed.)

The interesting thing about KJP's above statement is that it is correct - but she can't tell the public why without fingering her boss; namely that the highest inflation factor put in place under Trump in 2020 was $3.6 trillion of irresponsible stimulus deficit spending - the exact same type of irresponsible stimulus deficit spending that Biden did in 2021 to the tune of $1.9 trillion.  KJP can't identify irresponsible stimulus deficit spending by Trump as the root cause of our inflation problem because it is the heart & soul of Democrats' answer for everything they see.

Professor Friedman taught that inflation "is always & everywhere, a monetary phenomenon.  It's always & everywhere, a result of too much money, of a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than an output.  Moreover, in the modern era, the important next step is to recognize that today, governments control the quantity of money.  So that as a result, inflation in the United States is made in Washington & nowhere else."  The great libertarian professor used graphs during his lectures that prove that there has never been an inflation in history that was not accompanied by an extremely rapid increase in the quantity of money & interchangeably there has never been an extremely rapid increase in the quantity of money without an inflation.  

Professor Friedman explained that during Diocletian's rule of the Roman Empire (284 to 305) the money supply was increased by replacing the silver in full body silver coins like the denarius with a worthless alloy, until the denarius (once equal to a day's pay for a common laborer or a quart of wheat plus 3 quarts of barley)) became little more than a copper coin with a wash of silver.  As silver was spread (i.e., the % of silver decreased) into more & more coins, the denarius lost value & prices were distorted by inflation.

We are currently seeing the definition of inflation play out - namely, what happens when too much money chases too few goods & services.   

Conservative pundits like to blame our inflation misery (real wages are still 0.8% below 2019 levels) on Biden's signing of a giant $1.9 trillion stimulus bill as if Trump's $3.6 trillion spending spree the year before, including $900 billion in December, 2020, has nothing to do with our inflation.  The conservatives never mention Trump's even larger contribution to the inflation problem &, since inflation started to rise during Biden's first full month in office, leave that fact out.  But both Trump & Biden doled out direct deposits to adults & children & made substantial increases to unemployment benefits that made going to work less attractive than collecting these new benefits.  The quantity of money was increased under both Trump & Biden & the amount of goods & services produced (i.e., the real GDP) was reduced.  See graphic that follows.

The difference in Trump's case was that the lockdowns in 2020 provided a forced savings mechanism - i.e., there was no place to go to spend the money being doled out by the government.

Professor Friedman also taught that monetary changes (like the stimulus giveaways) have their effect (in this case inflation) only after a lag - that can be long & variable.  (Professor Friedman's research over 18 business cycles in the 19th & 20th centuries showed the lag between monetary policy action & its economic effect ranged between 4 & 29 months, but also that there was little basis for knowing where in this range it would fall.  Source - Bill Dupor, St. Louis Fed.)  This is something akin to not feeling the full effects of being in a car accident until 72 hours after the accident.  Source - my chiropractor.

Trump's spending binge in 2020 did not start to be felt with stepped up inflation until February, 2021.  This lag is easy to understand - the lockdowns had gradually been lifted & as a result people were able to start spending the direct deposits & enhanced unemployment benefits they had saved.  Unfortunately for Biden this noticeable stepped up inflation coincided with his first full month in office.  Biden then signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act in March, 2021 - his second full month in office - further fueling the inflation that was just beginning.  But note, inflation was on its way up before Biden signed one penny of inflationary stimulus into law.  The following graphic illustrates this point.

In concert with the above, the following graphic illustrates that while the M2 money supply was increasing 15.7% in the three months from February to May, 2020 the real GDP was decreasing 9.5% from December 31, 2019 to June 30, 2020 - i.e., "a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than an output."

The above graphic shows that consumer spending - personal consumption expenditures, PCE - (the main component of GDP) decreased 17.6% from February, 2020 to April, 2020 due to the lockdowns.  The graphic below shows the excessive savings (the amount above what would have been saved if there was no pandemic) that developed as a result of both Trump & Biden's stimulus spending being sent to people in a country in lockdown or partial lockdown.

Click here to hear KJP's exchange with Ed Lawrence where she blames everything she can think of to be the cause of our inflation problem except the real cause, namely irresponsible stimulus deficit spending signed into law by both Trump & Biden.  To identify Trump's spending binge in 2020 as the root cause of our inflation that was in place in January, 2021 would necessarily implicate & connect her boss, Joe Biden, as a willing offender of the same thing in 2021 as well as expose the Democrats' playbook for government dependency & all the misery & mediocrity that follows.

Coolidge's 150th July 4th Anniversary Speech Refutes Progressivism

History shows that three of our first five presidents died on the fourth of July - John Adams & Thomas Jefferson within hours of each other on July 4, 1826, fifty years to the day after July 4, 1776 & James Monroe on July 4, 1831.  

But only one president was born on July 4 - Calvin Coolidge on July 4, 1872.

Following all of the principles of supply-side economics President Coolidge presided over one of the strongest periods of economic growth, prosperity, & a rising standard of living in American history.  

The income tax, ratified by the 16th Amendment in 1913, was supposed to be a flat tax with a single rate of 4% but it quickly changed to a graduated tax of 1% to 7% with the income brackets determined by the ability to pay.  By 1921 Congress had raised the top marginal rate from 7% to 73%.   President Coolidge was the only president to follow all of the supply-side economic principles: 1) the reduction of the size of government & its claims on earned income, 2) a lower marginal tax rate for the highest income earners, & 3) sound-money policies – the gold standard.  Silent Cal reduced the top 73% income tax rate to 25% by 1925, reduced the national debt, & balanced the budget – a budget that actually was smaller when he left office than when he took office.  Federal spending was 3% of GDP in 1928 – it is 24.2% today.  

The Coolidge administration emphasized limited government, personal responsibility, & free enterprise & came to power soon after the anti-American progressive movement started to take shape under the presidency of Woodrow Wilson.  Wilson had nothing but disdain for the relevance of the Founders & our founding documents to his way of life - he promoted the progressive idea that human nature is changeable & that each generation should define liberty, rights, & equality for itself rather than refer to what the Founders thought of as universal, timeless, permanent, & immutable principles listed @ the beginning of the Declaration of Independence.  In short, Wilson wanted to move beyond the principles & practices of the American founding.

Below is an excerpt from President Coolidge's July 4, 1926 speech on the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence that debunks Wilson's progressive theories.  The points from the speech can still be used today to counter arguments to slow the speed of our ever increasing progressive world.

Excerpt from President Coolidge's 1926 Independence Day Speech: 

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful.  It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern.  But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter.  If all men are created equal, that is final.  If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final.  If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.  No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.  If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress.  They are reactionary.  Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

The Difference Between Trump's First Three Years & Last Year In Office

"The thing about this election cycle with these two candidates for president: They both have a record.  You don't have to listen to rhetoric or theory or talking points.  How were you doing in the first couple of years of the Trump administration?  How are you doing now?"  - House Speaker Mike Johnson

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In answering Speaker Johnson's question we don't have to ask much about the years under Biden because Biden's policies & practices have been a deliberate assault on America that favors every progressive plank that will fundamentally transform our country from one of prosperity & high achievement where everyone has the equal opportunity to succeed to one of a tilted playing field of mediocrity where social equity is achieved by giving everyone under whatever circumstance they find themselves whatever they need to reach an equal outcome with anyone else.  In short, Biden has provided or attempted to provide equality of outcome by redistributing wealth to ensure that economic & social equality are actually achieved.  Biden's administration has not only been anti-American, its performance has risen to the level of betrayal of America with every one of its harmful actions & failures documented on this blog since his inauguration.

It's interesting that in his query the Speaker breaks out "the first couple of years of the Trump administration" from the last year Trump was in office because there was a tremendous difference that should be focused upon.

In the first three years under Trump you would be hard pressed to find one RTE post that was not favorable toward Trump.  If you do please let me know.  After all, I was a supporter of Trump from the official presidential announcement after the golden escalator ride on June 16, 2015 when most current Trump die-hards in this readership were still supporting Ted Cruz.  Ask yourself if you are holding a memory of the first three years & ignoring the performance of the last year including the near constitutional crisis that followed the presidential election of 2020 with what Trump asked Pence to do on January 6.  With all the bluster it is easy to misjudge Trump's record especially since he never mentions the last year.  The fourth year was entirely different from the other three starting with Trump's very poor handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Trump began well enough on January 31, 2020 by banning travel to the United States by foreign nationals from places like Communist China, where the Wuhan coronavirus originated.  This travel ban was extended on March 11 to twenty six European countries - all in accordance with Congress extending its authority to regulate commerce to the Executive Branch "to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable disease from foreign countries into the States or possessions."

But then Trump "got rolled by his bureaucrats, he caved in, & many of our most fundamental rights began to disappear practically overnight."1  

Although Trump complained about Dr. Fauci he approved his duplicitous method of "following the science" & let him run wild, unsupervised, for months, initially issuing social distancing guidelines telling Americans to stay more than six feet apart, refrain from nonessential travel in airplanes, stop going out to dinner in restaurants, & avoid gatherings of more than ten people – like @ NBA games or church services.  These initial federal guidelines were followed shortly by “Stay @ Home” orders from governors & mayors mandating the shutting down of schools & businesses these officials did not deem essential – like gun stores, but liquor & marijuana stores that bring in large amounts of revenue to states were deemed essential.  Businesses previously deemed non-essential had been allowed to operate between 5 AM & 8 PM in some states such as NJ. 

And right out of the box, from March 3 to March 27, Congress did what it does best – it produced a series of spending bills that Trump signed into law totaling $2.3 trillion the first 24 days that Covid was acknowledged as being in America - the total was $2.7 trillion by April & $3.6 trillion by December plus a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill.  Trump & Congress didn't take the time to find out what Covid was but their instincts were to throw money @ it including direct cash payments to households ($1,200 per adult plus $500 per qualifying child under 17), an additional $600 per week in unemployment compensation plus increases in food assistance, tax credits for employers who offered paid sick leave, bailouts & loans for airlines & other industries, & loans & grants for small businesses.

The federal guidelines & state orders described above are in violation of the Constitution of We the People of the United States as follows: 1) the prohibition of the free exercise of religion & assembly violates the First Amendment; 2) the picking of winners & losers, as in providing money to some industries, like the airlines, but not others in the rescue bills, violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; 3) the impairing of the ability of people to fulfill contracts by forcing them to shelter in place is a violation of Article I, Section 10; 4) the threatening of seizure & jailing people, without a warrant or due process, for disregarding orders to not assemble is in violation of Amendments Four & Fourteen; 5) the deprivation of liberty & property without due process of law when ordered to shelter in place with no means of securing the necessities of life violates the Fifth & Fourteenth Amendments; 6) the shutting down of gun stores to prevent the sale of firearms or ammunition is a violation of the Second Amendment: & 7) none of the money spent was for any of the constituionally enumerated functions of Congress or the President.

 

Here’s what the above constitutional violations specifically meant to people all over the country: 1) members of a church in Greenville, MS sitting in their cars with windows closed in the church parking lot listening to a church service on the radio, were asked to leave by police, & those who didn’t were each served with $500 tickets; 2) a paddle boarder alone on the ocean in Malibu was arrested; 3) San Clemente officials ordered the filling in of a skateboarding park with 37 tons of sand; 4) a man in Brighton, CO was handcuffed for playing ball with his wife & six year old daughter in an empty field; 5) the mayor of Louisville, KY prohibited drive-thru church services in which people never left their cars but did not prohibit a multitude of other non-religious drive-ins & drive-thrus like drive-thru liquor stores; 6) the Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer micromanaged her constitutional violations by proclaiming which products stores could sell – people could stand ten feet away from cordoned off paint & vegetable seeds they could not buy after buying lottery tickets, liquor, & candy; 7) Whitmer also OKed boat rides for a man & his dog in the lake to go fishing as long as the boat did not have a motor; 8) the newly elected KY governor sent state police out to record license plates of people attending mass church services on Easter Sunday so the people could be contacted & forced to self quarantine for two weeks; 9) Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot warned people they will be locked up for going to local parks – later violating her own stay @ home orders when she was caught getting her hair done saying she is in the public light & needs to look good (much like NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio being driven to his gym, while other gyms were closed).

The above examples coupled with the unchecked BLM & Antifa violent crime spree (arson, assault, & damaging business owners' property & federal court buildings) during the "summer of love" in 2020 was America on Trump's watch in his final year in office.  Instead of demonstrating presidential leadership to ameliorate the hard Covid times by fulfilling his oath to "take Care that the laws be faithfully executed," Article II, Section 3, Trump regularly disrupted the daily Covid TV briefings-updates by getting into arguments with members of the Press over minutia while vulnerable senior citizens, who were interested in the updates as a matter of life & death, only saw non-productive sparring matches day after day. 

Since Trump's last year in office & continuing today he has not produced a record of freedom, & bad jokes about being a dictator for one day & the speech to the National Rifle Association regarding the concept of a three-term presidency should be taken seriously by the man whose primary requirement for selecting a vice presidential running mate is that he or she believes the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump.

If Trump is reelected, will his second term be more like his first three years in office or the last year including his despicable actions & false claims made after the 2020 presidential election that persist today?  I for one don't want to find out.

In short, in his last year in office "Trump presided over the greatest restriction of individual liberties this country has ever known.  He didn't stand up for the Constitution when it really mattered."2

__________________

1.  RFK Jr. speaking @ the Libertarian National Convention on May 24, 2024.

2.  Ibid.

The History & Future of Abortion In America

With Congressman Mike Gallagher's (R, WI) resignation from the House on April 19 the 2022 GOP midterm election red wave victory has now dwindled to effectively one vote: 217 to 213.  The original red wave five vote margin in January, 2023 was bad enough @ 223 to 212 but that majority has shrunk with George Santos being expelled (& replaced by Democrat Tom Suozzi) & four GOP resignations (McCarthy, Bill Johnson, Buck, & now Gallagher).  Democrat Brian Higgins, who resigned on February 2, will be replaced by Democrat Timothy Kennedy who won a special election to replace Higgins on April 30.  Also McCarthy will be replaced by a Republican in the May 21 special election in California CD 20 so that will be a pick up.

Republican commentators had forecast a red tsunami in the 2022 midterms by Republican candidates winning 245 House seats & expanding their total in the Senate to as many as 55 seats.  What else would you expect after two years of Biden's progressive onslaught on the country & his cognitive decline - which has only gotten worse since November, 2022.  

The basis of Republicans' 2022 enthusiasm for the probability, in their minds, for taking back control of both the House & Senate in a red wave was the historical fact that the sitting President's party loses congressional seats in midterm elections most of the time - especially ones, like in 2022, where three quarters of the citizens thought the country was going in the wrong direction.  But in addition to the poor House showing Republicans actually lost one seat in the Senate (Fetterman over Oz succeeding retiring Toomey) & two governors races - one flip in Arizona (Hobbs over Lake succeeding term limited Ducey) & one pick up in Maryland (Moore over Cox succeeding term limited Hogan).

In 2018 Democrats made a net gain (blue wave) of 41 House seats thereby putting a check on Trump's last two years in office - a typical check made regularly on all but a very few presidents in our history.  So why didn't the country put this type of check on Biden?  There were clues all over the place leading up to the 2022 midterm elections & they centered around abortion - as described below.

In June, 2022 the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization concluding that the Constitution does not protect the right to an abortion thereby overturning both Roe v. Wade (1973) & Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992) - the two previous decisions that people who sought abortions relied on for legality.  

In summary, the Supreme Court found in Dobbs that "the Constitution makes no reference to abortion, & no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.  The primary holding of the decision - "The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe & Casey are overruled; & the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people & their elected representatives."

In response to the Dobbs decision French President Emmanuel Macron pledged to make abortion an irreversible right in France & he lived up to that pledge when on Monday March 3, 2024 the French parliament changed Article 34 of the French Constitution to read "a women has the guaranteed freedom to have recourse to an abortion" - two thirds of the French citizenry had polled in favor of abortion rights which now are legally entrenched in France in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy.  See the difference between how France & America treated this in the analysis of Roe v. Wade & Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey that follows hereinafter that shows American courts were more interested in getting what they wanted than doing their job of applying the law under the Constitution.

Naturally, the hostile anti-American media thought of the worst ways they could to describe the Dobbs decision, reporting such things as the Supreme Court "repealed the constitutional right to an abortion" or "eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion," as if there ever was a constitutional right to have an abortion - which we will see below there never has been.

The Founders created a government whose purpose was to secure individual natural rights with the power of the people superior to any power of the new government created under the Constitution.  The national government has limited & enumerated powers & functions under the Constitution & no general authority over state governments other than to require all officers of the several states to be bound by oath to support the Constitution.  The primary holding of the Dobbs decision above is in accordance with these principles.

But let's delve deeper than the text of the Constitution. 

Although both anti-abortion groups & pro-choice groups try to tilt the history of the legality of abortion in early America the records show that from 1600 through the 18th century abortion was practiced in some places & outlawed in others.  In British colonies abortion was legal if performed before quickening while in French colonies abortion was illegal but frequently performed.  Abortion was illegal in Spanish & Portuguese colonies in the Americas.  Although not illegal in most states in colonial America, by 1776 & until the mid-1800s abortion was considered socially unacceptable.  But one by one states started passing anti-abortion laws during the 63 years of the Victorian era (1837 to 1901)  The laws got stronger after 1860 & were more vigorously enforced.  Except for Kentucky, by 1910 abortion was an illegal criminal offense in every state, other than to save the life of the mother.  Abortion was illegal in Kentucky but not considered a criminal offense.

.  

So we can see that the history of abortion from 1776 to 1973 has been that there was neither a national ban nor a national right to abortion.  The people of each state decided the legality of abortion in their respective states for the first 197 years of our country - meaning the Dobbs decision was in accordance with the country's history.

Additionally, I researched the above history with a special eye as to whether abortion could be considered a privilege or immunity of citizens of the United States as stated in both Article IV of the Constitution & the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution that was ratified July 9, 1868 - although I thought that the history makes this virtually impossible for the following reasons: 1) abortion was not enumerated in the text of the Constitution in 1868, 2) abortion was not enumerated in the Civil Rights act of 1866, 3) abortion has not been enumerated in the Constitution after 1868, & 4) abortion is not an unenumerated right that has been deeply rooted in our nation's history & traditions in a supermajority of the states.  In fact the above history shows that abortion was not deeply rooted but was uprooted over time to the point that by 1910 it was illegal in every state in the Union.

So what happened in 1973 was that an unmarried pregnant woman from Texas, pseudonym Jane Roe for Norma McCorvey, wanted an abortion & found feminist lawyers & an activist Supreme Court ready, willing, & able to oblige - after the birth of the child, her third.  Abortion was illegal in Texas, except for those performed to save the life of the mother, during these legal proceedings which started in 1969 .  

In Roe, the 1973 Supreme Court had relied on the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut decision that struck down a contraceptive ban to married couples based on a made up constitutional right to privacy.  The 1965 Supreme Court had found the right to privacy because "specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life & substance."  The 1973 Justices extended the right to privacy to Roe because this right was imagined to be implied by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. 

Instead of using the type of analysis I provided above using the Privileges Or Immunities clause & the history of abortion like the 2022 Supreme Court did in finding that there is no constitutional right to abortion, the 1973 Supreme Court found that women had the right to end pregnancies through abortions up to viability & that individual state laws banning abortion before viability were unconstitutional which has resulted in over 50 million lives lost.  It is the height of insult & judicial activism to base such a momentous decision by extending a fictitious right to privacy found in the Griswold case that was based on penumbras (partially shaded outer regions of the shadow cast by an opaque object) & emanations (an abstract but perceptible thing that issues or originates from a source) hiding a right to privacy not clearly seen or stated & that never existed under the Constitution.  It is no wonder that Justice Antonin Scalia called the Roe reasoning "garbage."

The Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey decision of 1992 reaffirmed abortion rights also based on the Due Process clause but this time using the 1992 Justices definition of "liberty" - namely, "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, & of the mystery of human life."  This definition of liberty was another rejection by progressives of the founders belief in an unchanging human nature.  The Casey decision is also as insulting as Roe - both cases go to the heart of fundamental questions of morality, liberty, & government power. 

In deciding the Roe & Casey cases the way the Justices did is tantamount to reading a sentence containing no more than three letter words like "The car is red" & concluding that the car is one of pink polka dots on a black background. 

Both the Roe & Casey decisions rate with Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) as the worst Supreme Court decisions in our history & deserved to be overturned by Dobbs.  The Dred Scott decision was overturned by the 13th & 14th amendments - the amendment process provides a much more entrenched way of making law than relying on the courts like the plaintiffs in Roe & Casey did.  See above reference to France enshrining abortion rights into the French Constitution.

In summary, the two Supreme Court decisions, Roe & Casey, making abortions legal were clearly using the courts to make abortion law never passed by the elected branches while the 2022 Supreme Court was interpreting law in Dobbs based on the Constitution & the principles I laid out above regarding the history of abortion in the United States.  A tremendous difference.

But let's get back to June, 2022 when the Dobbs decision was announced & progressives saw a great opportunity for electoral gain.  Of particular importance to Republicans who were denied the red wave they expected in November, 2022 is the fact that inflation reached its 40 year annual CPI high point of 9.1% the same month in 2022 that the Dobbs decision was released, meaning that in @ least the 2022 midterms abortion was a more important issue to the voters than inflation.

Republicans had called for the repeal of Roe for over 50 years & many conservative states enacted trigger laws that were prepared for such an overturning, but this euphoria was short lived.

Right out of the box, on August 2, 2022 conservative Kansas overwhelmingly voted to keep abortion a state constitutional right by a 60 to 40 landslide margin.  Conservative commentators said the uproar of the May leak of the Court's draft opinion overturning Roe would fade by November & would not be a significant issue compared to inflation in the midterms.  Well, the abortion issue brought every Democrat, most Independents, & some Republicans out to vote in the 2022 midterms. 

Since the Dobbs decision Kansas, Kentucky, California, Vermont, Michigan, & Ohio have all moved in the pro-abortion direction with ballot initiatives.  In addition, Milwaukee County elected a judge by 11 points who campaigned on striking down the state's anti-abortion law that had been enacted in 1849 (part of the history presented above).

States planning (or hoping) to put abortion directly on the ballot in 2024 to either directly reject further restrictions or fully enshrine abortion into their constitutions include Florida, Arizona, Montana, Kentucky, Arkansas, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, & Maryland.  I added "hoping" because there are tens or hundreds of thousands of signatures required plus approval of the wording of the ballot measure so some may not make it.

Recognizing the potent electoral power of the abortion issue, coupled with the fact that they have no other issues to campaign on @ all, Democrats obviously plan to keep abortion front & center especially in swing states.

So far in 2024 the Florida Supreme Court approved the law enacted after Dobbs that banned abortion after six weeks but also approved a ballot measure for November, that if successful, would undo the ruling regarding the six weeks law (making that law unconstitutional) & would restore abortion rights like the state had before Roe was overturned.

And in swing state Arizona you can expect an all out effort to get a pro abortion ballot initiative ready for November after the Arizona Supreme Court's decision to ban nearly all abortions when they brought back an 1864 law (again, see above history) that did just that.  A WSJ poll shows good prospects for the initiative with 9 out of 10 Democrats, two thirds of Independents, & one third of Republicans supporting abortion rights in Arizona.  Arizona had a 15 week ban on abortions before the 1864 law was reinstated but what restrictions, if any, for the expected initiative are not yet known.

And there is no presidential leadership from Biden or Trump regarding all this abortion activity.  Issue by issue they both consistently prove they do not deserve to be president.

Biden is a self-proclaimed practicing Catholic who paradoxically called for restoring Roe v. Wade as the law on the land in his State of the Union Address on March 7 - "Like most Americans I believe Roe v. Wade got it right.  And I thank Vice President Harris for being an incredible leader, defending reproductive freedom & so much more.  But my predecessor came to office determined to see Roe v. Wade overturned.  He's the reason it was overturned.  In fact, he brags about it.  Look @ the chaos that has resulted. . . If Americans send me a Congress that supports the right to choose, I promise you, I will restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again."  See more on "the law of the land" hereinafter.

Several Catholic bishops have found Biden's position on abortion to be an offense to the Catholic church & that many of his actions, such as making the sign of the cross @ abortion rallies is sacrilegious & a mockery of the Catholic faith.  Bishop Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois specifically has called Biden's advocating for abortion an act of heresy that goes against the sixth commandment (Exodus 20:13): "Thou shalt not kill."

Although Biden attends Mass regularly his political actions show he has no respect for Catholic doctrine.  But like so many things he does & says that are obviously false he may not understand the significance of what he is doing & saying as he repeatedly mumbles various phrases or reads off a teleprompter about Bidenomics or the willful non-enforcement of illegal crossings @  the southwest border or abortion.

Biden is just another temporary politician incapable of following his oath of office but is expert in determining how many votes an issue will bring him.  In this case he went from his specific clear oath to "preserve, protect, & defend the Constitution" to supporting a non-existent right to privacy found in the "penumbras, formed by emanations" in the Bill of Rights that leads to a right to abortion tied by implication to the Due Process clause.  In short, his presidency can make anything up.

After waiting many months to state his position on abortion post Dobbs, Trump released a milquetoast video on the subject on April 8 that only made Democrats happier as it did little more than restate most of the primary holding of the Dobbs decision that Roe is overturned & the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the states - the problem Republicans were facing before the video was released.  Trump also took credit in the video for nominating three justices who helped make the Dobbs decision a reality, which is red meat for Democrat campaign ads.

Much of Trump's position on abortion in the video is similar to Nikki Haley's position - talk about a birdbrain!

Like Biden, Trump said that "the Supreme Court decision is the law of the land, or in this case the law of the states."  No, the "Constitution, & the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; & all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land" - Supremacy Clause, Article VI, Clause 2.  Dobbs was the Supreme Court decision that interpreted,  followed, & applied the Supremacy Clause in the above named abortion case.  Wouldn't you hope that these two would know this by now?

For 50 years Republicans have emphasized that overturning Roe will not eliminate abortion in America - it will merely return the issue to the states.  Of course Democrats have a field day pointing out that a woman living in a state where abortion is illegal has the inconvenience & impracticality of traveling hundreds of miles to have her abortion.  It takes only a few seconds to say "returned to the states" but the effort involved with what this means will also be a focus of Democrat campaign ads.

Whenever Trump takes a back seat to someone else's supposed power (like when he said Pelosi was in charge of Capitol security on January 6 as if he had nothing to do with it although he was responsible for security of the entire nation) you know that something is not right with the issue for him personally - in this case blaming the Supreme Court for putting abortion in the hands of the states.  Trump uncharacteristically looked for company in the video by saying that Ronald Reagan had the same exceptions to bans on abortion as Trump does himself.  I never remember Trump talking about President Reagan in this respectful tone before. 

In 2015 Trump said that he had "evolved" on the abortion issue from 1999 when he was pro-choice.  Trump said in 2016 that he would select Supreme Court justices from a list prepared by Leonard Leo, then Executive Vice President of the Federalist Society - which Trump did resulting in Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, & Barrett joining the high court with all of them voting to repeal Roe.  Trump is now very careful about bragging about this.

In 2018 Trump endorsed a 20 week federal abortion ban, which turned to a 15 week federal ban in March, 2024.  In April Trump said he would not support any Federal ban on abortion so we can see his position is all over the map.

In 2023, when Trump went out of his way to disparage Ron DeSantis, he called the Florida law banning abortion after six weeks "a terrible thing & a terrible mistake."  And in Arizona, after the Arizona Supreme Court upheld a law banning abortion throughout pregnancy that had been in effect from 1864 to 1973, Trump said the pre-Roe law & outright ban had gone too far & called on the Arizona legislature to remove it.

Majorie Dannenfelder, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said "We are deeply disappointed in President Trump's (current) position . . . Saying the issue is 'back to the states' cedes the national debate to the Democrats who are working relentlessly to enact legislation mandating abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy.  If successful, they will wipe out states rights."

But when all of the Trump abortion dust settles it comes down to Trump saying both in the video & last January referring to the abortion issue "I will say this: you have to win elections.  Otherwise, you're going to be back where you were, & you can't let that ever happen again.  You have to win elections."  So Trump will keep changing his position on abortion until he thinks enough people have heard him say what they want to hear - enough people that will get him the votes "to win elections."  

That is no position @ all.