Category: Politics – Elections

Election Meltdown

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The Book of the Week is “Election Meltdown” by Richard L. Hasen, published in 2020.

This short, slightly sloppily-edited volume named names of incompetent or criminal election workers, and unethical, influential political workers, in connection with specific political races of the past couple of decades. The offenders are listed below, in no particular order. The location of their actions, where applicable, is in parentheses.

The incompetent ones included:

  • Brenda Snipes (Florida)
  • Susan Bucher (Florida)

The criminal ones included:

  • Brian Kemp (Georgia)
  • Mark Harris (North Carolina)
  • Mark Anderson (Florida)
  • Leslie McCrae Dowless, Jr. (North Carolina)

The unethical ones who spread disinformation (one or more lies) via social media included:

  • Ken Paxton (Texas)
  • Donald Trump
  • Kris Kobach (Kansas)
  • Hans von Spakovsky (Kansas, Missouri)
  • Jesse Richman (Kansas)
  • J. Christian Adams (Florida)
  • Hillary Clinton
  • Kamala Harris
  • Michael Cohen (Trump’s former New York attorney)
  • Paul Ryan (former Speaker of the House)
  • Kayleigh McEnany
  • Christie McCormick

The author also named elections experts, lawyers and judges who refuted the claims of the above.

The author related that the Clintons argued that the reason for investigating voter suppression is to make sure it doesn’t affect the outcome of the election. But that should not be the most important reason. The most important reason to make sure there is no voter suppression, is to ensure that everyone eligible to vote, has a chance to vote. The reason Americans should vote is to show they believe in the process of free and fair elections.

Democracy requires that a significant number of people believe in it for it to work.

The bottom line is: Democracy is compromised when political workers engage in voter suppression, election crimes, or spreading of disinformation. All of those can result in low voter turnout, which in turn, can end badly. For example, in 1972, low voter turnout resulted in the reelection of the war-criminal Richard Nixon.

Read the book to learn many additional details regarding the above-named individuals’ actions, and about those who called out the liars.

Whistlestop

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The Book of the Week is “Whistlestop, My Favorite Stories From Presidential Campaign History” by John Dickerson, published in 2016. Some of the stories in this slightly sloppily-edited volume got tabloidy, but all of them just reminded the reader that there is nothing new under the sun, or showed how times have changed, in connection with presidential politics in America.

In 1948, Democratic incumbent Truman speechified about the usual politico-economic nature of the Republicans:

  • trickle-down economics;
  • heartless;
  • greedy toward American consumers;
  • betraying American farmers.

Currently, many people would agree with the above description of the Republicans. Truman urged voters to elect a Congress which would help ordinary Americans rather than act in “the interests of the men who have all the money.” Truman wasn’t a hypocrite in this, as he inherited neither a business nor a boatload of wealth from his daddy.

In 1992, presidential hopeful Bob Kerrey “suggested using the military to fight the War on Drugs, an idea that could get a candidate arrested in Democratic politics…” Not anymore. Just ask Nicolas Maduros of Venezuela– a rerun of George H.W. Bush’s episode with Manuel Noriega of Panama.

In 2004, presidential candidate Howard Dean went on the TV show Meet the Press with Tim Russert. Critics said his delivery was awful, as he made rambling generalizations and got impatient and impertinent with the questioner.

Apparently, by 2016, some viewers tolerated an inarticulate presidential candidate (Trump) who attacked the media outright! Those viewers wish they could accumulate (over the course of decades) the kind of power that allowed Trump to get away with that.

One last interesting factoid: In the last sixty years, three vice presidents ran for president and never became president, all three of whom were Democrats, and two of whom were from Minnesota: Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, and Al Gore.


Read the book to learn about various other episodes involving presidential hopefuls who won or lost, from all different centuries.

ENDNOTE:

According to media headlines, Trump PLANNED in February 2025 to (in no particular order):

  • use military sites across the country to detain undocumented immigrants
  • take over the Postal Service
  • inspect Fort Knox gold
  • impose tariffs on foreign automakers, chips and pharmaceuticals
  • create a sovereign wealth fund
  • lower consumer energy costs
  • name himself chair of the Kennedy Center and fire board members
  • create a tourist mecca in a strip of land in Gaza
  • reduce access to abortion
  • lower the corporate tax rate to 15%
  • eliminate income taxing and payroll taxing of tips
  • eliminate taxing of Social Security benefits
  • trample on the rights of LGBTQ+ people
  • eliminate the Department of Education
  • replace the Affordable Care Act
  • give a tax credit for family caregivers of older and disabled adults between $5,000 and $6,000 per year
  • support more oil and gas drilling
  • take over Greenland and
  • take over Canada.

It has been a year. The above can be used as a checklist of what the president has accomplished, made progress on, or NOT.
The simplest, most direct way for ethical leaders to turn the country around, would be to TAX THE RICH.

Martin Van Buren

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WARNING: VERY LONG POST

The Book of the Week is “Martin Van Buren, America’s First Politician” by James M. Bradley, published in 2024.

In this hodgepodge of a volume, the author recounted many of the historical events to which Van Buren was witness in his lifetime. Throughout, the reader can see the evolution of American politics, and how some bad situations have become reversed, and others have stayed the same or gotten worse.

Van Buren was born in December 1782 in Kinderhook, New York State, now a part of Columbia county, a couple of hours’ drive north of New York City. For most of his teenage years, he was apprenticed to an attorney. His preliminary training was spent in a version of “night court” in a tavern– the courthouse of his generation.

Republicans were the “bleeding heart liberals” of the 1800’s, while the Federalists were the free-market capitalists who believed the country should be governed by a centralized authority. Van Buren began his political career as a Republican. Nevertheless, he accumulated great wealth while practicing law. There were wealthy politicians who bought the votes of the lawmakers to make themselves richer. He became one of them through the decades. Back in the day, there were no campaign finance laws, so no one was required to disclose any information on campaign donations.

Van Buren was elected New York State senator, and began his first term in November 1812. The governor of New York State appointed him to be that state’s attorney general in early 1815. Politics were fickle, so his job security was poor. At the same time, he was allowed to finish his term as senator before starting the attorney general job. By December 1821, the Republicans were the only political party in the United States.

In the last half of the 1820’s, Congress frequently succeeded in opposing president John Quincy Adams’ initiatives. For months, senator Van Buren and his cronies fought against one initiative Adams managed to push through: funding for a diplomatic trip to Panama, to make nice with various countries in South America. Adams and his vice president Henry Clay (of the Whig party he founded in the mid-1830’s) had wasted resources on this project that ended up a bust anyway, because a few of the key diplomats passed away. Meanwhile, Van Buren had been building a bipartisan coalition to oppose his political enemies on hot-button issues such as race and slavery.

In the early 1800’s, ninety percent of federal revenue came from tariffs, as a federal income tax wouldn’t be levied until 1913. Various parties were hurt or helped by those tariffs. New York City’s business stakeholders, as did the southern states of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Alabama, mostly agricultural, were hurt. Commercial entities located around the Erie Canal, and states in New England began to favor tariffs as they built new factories. At the dawn of the 1830’s, the federal government was able to purchase its own Treasury bills and pay off its debt entirely.

At the same time, President Andrew Jackson, claiming it was an anti-corruption measure, imposed a policy of mandatory turnover of federal office holders every four years. Only about ten percent of the workforce was affected, but drawbacks included: disruption of corporate culture and loss of institutional memory in the workplace, so that new hires had to re-invent the wheel, and the replacement-workers would likely be inexperienced. Jackson later named his party the Democrats.

In 1836, Van Buren ran for president as a Democrat. He was the only candidate on the ballot at the Convention in Baltimore. Separate states were allowed to push various Whig-party candidates, and they did, so they all became spoilers of one another.

Then then-philosophy had been to leave the economy alone, and not grant bailouts. President Jackson’s Democrats blamed the banks on hard times. But after the president himself enacted banking legislation, that wouldn’t fly. A financial crisis hit the fan in 1837. Van Buren’s presidency was the first in which ordinary Americans blamed the bad economy on the federal government.

President Van Buren proposed an Independent Treasury– a federal entity that would simply be a conduit for collecting federal revenue and paying bills. It should be unconnected to commercial and savings banks, which were proft-seeking and had to answer to shareholders. It should not be subjected to political meddling.

Nonetheless, the politicians were greedy hypocrites all, of both parties. Ordinary Americans of course, were brainwashed by propaganda, and didn’t know the half of it. The legislation for the Independent Treasury was finally passed in June 1840.

By the late 1830’s, America’s government consisted of a two-party system. The party that was out of power trashed the one in power. But, presidential candidates didn’t travel around campaigning. They promoted themselves by writing letters that got published in various newspapers (which were partisan). Whig candidate William Henry Harrison broke tradition by traveling around the country, smearing Democrat Van Buren.

Read the book to learn much, much, much more about Van Buren’s life and times.