Commentary by Sanford D. Horn
November 3, 2024
And so I face the final curtain
My friend, I’ll say it clear
I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain…” (“My Way,” lyrics by Paul Anka)
In 24-48 hours, the polls in the thousands of voting precincts across the fruited plain will be open and ready for business. From Harrisburg to Honolulu and from Albany to Anaheim; from Detroit to Denver and from Birmingham to Boise, American voters will most certainly state their case. And who remembers entering a voting booth and actually drawing a curtain closed? I absolutely remember voting in one of those booths.
Of course by that time millions of Americans will have already cast their ballots via a number of early voting options. I prefer voting on Election Day, which should be a national holiday - but that’s an argument for another column. My wife and I vote together, and then, depending on the time of day, go out for breakfast or dinner.
Hopefully any legally registered voter will be able to arrive, vote, and depart their voting precinct unmolested by those who would commit the crime of voter interference. American elections must be easy to access by legally registered voters with photo identification, who should then cast their ballot, receive a print out receipt of their votes, and have the confidence that their vote will be appropriately counted. This is the United States of America, after all, and should be a beacon setting the standard for elections around the world, not a third world laughing stock where voters don’t know the official results for days, or even weeks into the future. The process from start to finish must be chicanery free.
Sadly, the process of selecting candidates did not lack chicanery. Noting there are myriad minor party candidates sprinkled throughout the ballots in all 50 states, the focal point is on the Republican and Democrat candidates, former President Donald Trump and sitting Vice President Kamala Harris, respectively. While Trump opted not to face his 10 GOP opponents in any of the numerous debates held, he did face the voters on primary ballots in all 50 states, even after several challenges to his candidacy failed in places like Colorado and Maine.
One by one the Trump challengers dropped off the radar and out of the race. Former South Carolina Governor and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley remained the last woman standing until March 6 when she finally bowed out. Although tensions between Trump and Haley continued down a path of contentiousness through the spring and into the summer, Haley gave an excellent speech at the Republican National Convention in July in Milwaukee helping to coalesce the party. The RNC was a patriotic love fest with America and Trump - especially just days after the first assassination attempt on Trump. He appeared on the first night triumphant with a bandage on his gunshot wounded ear like a red badge of courage.
On the flip side, the Democrats lacked courage and confidence. They lacked the courage to keep their renominated candidate on the general election ballot who actually faced the voters, sitting President Joe Biden, who received more than 14 million primary votes. The Democrats lacked the confidence to stand by their legally renominated candidate because they knew the addleminded Biden had slipped too far from being capable of running and serving for another four years. A palace coup, or in this case, a White House coup, orchestrated by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former President Barack Obama, and a cast of other undemocratic Democrats didn’t even bother to stab Biden in the back; they plunged the knife into his chest as they anointed Harris the party nominee.
This from the party calling the Republicans and Trump a threat to democracy. That has been part of the Harris mantra as to why she should get the votes of the people - she’s not Trump (or Biden), and Trump is a threat to democracy. Harris stood for exactly zero primaries and earned exactly zero primary votes. And while not being Trump is satisfactory enough for some of the lemmings, what case has Harris made for herself?
Harris has announced more flip-flops on issues than could fit into a shoe store - and in her own words filmed and used in Trump commercials. First Harris is against fracking, then she is for fracking. First Harris wants to defund ICE, then she is calling for increased border patrol and supports building the very wall she castigated as being stupid and a “vanity project” of Trump’s. First Harris wants to confiscate the guns of American citizens, then she brags about being a gun owner.
Harris supports abortion through birth and is seeking to codify it federally - at taxpayer’s expense, as well as transition surgeries for prisoners and illegals - as she bragged about changing the law in California to support these insane ideas. Harris accuses Trump of seeking an all out total ban on abortion, which he has said repeatedly is untrue. Trump does take pride in orchestrating the overturning of Roe v. Wade during his first term in the White House, appropriately returning abortion policy to the several states, where it should have remained in the first place. Trump has repeatedly said he supports the traditional exceptions regarding abortion - rape, incest, and the life of the mother, much to the chagrin of more than a few Evangelicals. So much so, there’s a fair contingent of Evangelicals who plan to stay home on Election Day. What they seem to have forgotten is Ronald Reagan’s 80-20 Rule. Just because a group of voters disagree with a candidate 20 percent of the time, does not mean they should discard that candidate when they still support that candidate the other 80 percent of the time.
Of course abortion is not the only issue at hand in the 2024 presidential election. The struggling economy and the border invasion are huge - the two biggest issues confronting the voters. Harris talks about all the changes she will make once she is inaugurated, yet has had just short of four years in the White House as VP to effect change. Why should she be believed now? And yet, when asked repeatedly what she would do differently than Biden, Harris responded, “nothing specific comes to mind,” on numerous occasions.
Trump oversaw a solid economy, save for the Covid period, where prices of food, automobiles, gas/oil, housing, interest rates, inflation, and energy independence all experienced positive trends. Trump posed the same question Ronald Reagan asked the American people during the 1980 campaign: Are you better off today than you were four years ago? The answer then, as it is today, is a resounding NO.
The “better off” question is not just about the economy. The United States has been under invasion since Biden-Harris took office in 2021, ending Trump’s building of the border wall, shutting down the Keystone Pipeline while supporting Russia’s pipeline, and just about any other Trump policy that had been helping the American people. The invasion of upward of 12-20 million illegal aliens, depending upon which government source one wishes to believe, has created an increase in crime - gang related and non-gang related. The number of innocent young women and children raped and murdered at the hands of illegal aliens continues rising exponentially. People simply do not feel safe in the United States.
People, specifically, Jewish students do not feel safe on their college and university campuses. The marches and protests supporting Hamas and other terrorist organizations, the call to boycott Israel, the extreme rise in antisemitism on and off campuses are making Jewish students and non-students alike feel as though they are living in 1938 Germany. Biden and Harris have done practically nothing other than provide disingenuous lip service attempting to placate Jewish voters - failing miserably - while attempting to handcuff Israel at every turn. Harris has gone so far as to say she understands the emotions and feelings of the campus denizens supporting Hamas.
Harris has repeatedly called for ceasefire after ceasefire when it is not in Israel’s best interest. She wants the war to end regardless of who wins or loses simply to tell voters she is responsible for the ending of the war. More than likely, the invasion by Hamas on October 7, 2023 slaughtering more than 1,200 innocent Israeli men, women, and children would not have occurred had Trump been in office. This was the greatest loss of Jewish life in any single day since the Holocaust.
Nor would Putin have invaded Ukraine during a Trump administration. From the embarrassing Afghanistan exit which witnessed the murder of 13 American servicemen and women, to the wars that have begun during the Biden-Harris administration, the financial support of the Islamic Republic of Iran, America looks and is weaker at home and abroad. Military recruitment is down, there is support for social and cultural engineering within the military which Harris seeks to continue. While Harris calls for more spending on Ukraine, she has made threats of withholding aid to Israel. There is a lack of respect for America not seen probably since the Vietnam era.
Under Trump no new foreign wars exploded. His relationship with Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu was and is strong. The Abraham Accords brought new peaceful alliances to the Middle East after the successful move of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to where it belongs in Jerusalem. Trump will continue down that path.
Then there’s the culture of castigation. The Democrats like to deflect when they accuse Trump and the GOP of doing what they themselves are doing. There has been a constant barrage of insulting voters en masse by the Democrats. From Hillary Clinton putting Trump supporters in her “basket of deplorables,” in 2016, to Biden just last week calling Trump supporters “garbage,” to Harris surrogate Mark Cuban denigrating and insulting women - surprising the Democrats could even define what a woman is - saying Trump has never surrounded himself with smart, strong, accomplished women. Apparently Cuban has never heard of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kayleigh McEnany, Kellyanne Conway, Linda McMahon, Alina Habba, Tulsi Gabbard, Elise Stefanik, Kristi Noem, among many others.
Harris even took to insulting a Christian attending one of Harris’s rallies. At a recent rally, an audience member shouted out “Jesus is L-rd.” Harris responded, “you must be at the wrong rally,” to a huge burst of applause. And after all the Democrat insults, including calling Trump Hitler and his supporters Nazis, there’s Harris calling for national unity. Pure hypocrisy.
Clinton, Kamala, Cuban, and others have repeatedly deprecated and defamed all Trump supporters while Trump saves his barbs for specific Democrat candidates or officeholders, not an entire group of supporters. Disparaging Harris, Biden, Pelosi, Doug Emhoff, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, is standard fare in politics. Would it be better if no one insulted anyone? Yes, in politics and in life in general. But we live in the real world - political insults are as old as politics themselves. Perhaps a bit more sophisticated, but maybe not. Political opponents maligned Grover Cleveland for allegedly fathering an illegitimate child, with “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa?” during the 1884 campaign.
The Kamala Harris campaign runs on not being Biden, not being Trump, and so much word salad, extra ranch dressing has been ordered. She picked a buffoon of a governor in “Tampon” Tim Walz of Minnesota who watched Minneapolis burn after the death of George Floyd. Makes sense, Harris supported the rioters offering bail money. He earned the nickname for signing into law the placement of feminine hygiene products in boy’s and men’s bathrooms. This ticket is so incompetent, even the liberal media, safely ensconced in the Democrat’s pockets, have taken to shedding some light on this frightening pair.
Trump is about as transparent as they get. He has outlined his plans for the new administration, starting with putting America first. Closing the border - again, returning to the days of energy independence, renewing good relations with allies - but still demanding they pay their fair share for what the United States provides them, supporting allies like Israel, working to bring down inflation and interest rates to where they were during his first term in office, restoring a strong military, ensuring biological males do not invade women’s sports, locker rooms, bathrooms, and spaces, including not allowing them to take scholarship and economic opportunities away from women.
Trump is a microcosm of America. His opponents have attempted to remove him from office - twice, indict him, imprison him, and even assassinate him - twice, and yet, like the Phoenix, Trump rises from the ashes, as will the United States when Trump is reelected on November 5, and sworn in on January 20. As he ends all his rallies, Trump will make America safe again. He will make America strong again. He will make America healthy again. He will make America wealthy again. He will make America proud again. He will make America free again. And, Donald Trump will Make America Great Again! (Cue “YMCA,” by The Village People.)
Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN.
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