Trump versus Biden?

Voters want neither

Joe Biden has made it his mission to defeat Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election and made Trump his target of choice in his efforts to support Democrats in their mid-term campaigns. Ignore the fact that Trump is not on either ballot at this point and think about the millions of dollars Democrats have spent promoting Trump-linked Republicans in state primaries for this November’s election. That’s right, Democrats spending their donations to support Republican candidates! Their strategy seems to be to try to make sure that Trump-linked candidates are nominated believing that these will be easier for their Democrat nominees to beat in a few weeks time, hopefully to retain control of both houses of Congress or at least control over the Senate.

It is a silly strategy by a desperate Democrat party, or so it seems. Biden prefers to try to rally anti-Trump support for Democrats than to encourage November candidates to run on their own policy platforms since the performance of the Democrats first two years in power has been dismal at best. Debt is soaring, inflation is out of control, house prices are plummeting and crime is rampant in most Democrat-controlled cities while the Southern border has become a laughable fiction with thousands of migrants crossing daily and Washington and New York mayors bitching when Texas governor Abbot sends busloads of illegal immigrants to their cities to remind them how ineffective Biden’s immigration policy remains.

The mid-terms will be interesting with Democrats plugging the idea that a Supreme Court that upholds the Constitution is an illegitimate Republican-controlled institution and it is fine to threaten Supreme Court judges or protest outside their homes for doing their Constitutional duty. Democrats seem to wish Supreme Court judges would breach that duty and from the bench impose judge-made law to make killing unborn children a legitimate choice for healthy women in no economic distress simply because they thought having the baby they conceived was inconvenient. In an era where modern birth control is both safe and effective and widely available at little cost, this is an extreme interpretation of a “woman’s right to choose” that has little moral foundation and creates a society where the right to life is subordinate to a woman’s convenience. The decision must have been a difficult one for the Supreme Court since they decided Roe on the eve of their ranks being joined by a new Justice who says she is incapable of defining “woman” since she is not a biologist.

I had to laugh at gangs of left-wing protesters carrying signs and chanting the same refrain “my body, my choice” while their leaders in the Administration and Congress were imposing “vaccine mandates” and depriving citizens of their ability to travel or retain their employment if they didn’t submit to a medical procedure they preferred to avoid. Their typical response to criticism is that vaccine mandates were not only to protect the vaccinated person but also third parties and the imposition of a duty to be vaccinated was to save lives, while ignoring the plain fact that abortion ends another’s life. Go figure?

The informal polls I have taken and the formal ones I have read indicate that American voters want neither Biden nor Trump in 2024. Democrat mid-term candidates are trying to put as much distance between themselves and Biden as possible, and their Republican counterparts are similarly trying to avoid being seen as “Trumpist” candidates. Neither leader has much political capital left to spend.

Every now and then I am involved in conversations with left wing friends at regular morning coffee (I don’t bother with the coffee) at Starbucks who can’t seem to see the hypocriscy in the leftist views yet are intelligent, well-educated and accomplished persons. I admire and respect these friends but see them as part of the disease that has infected North American governments where individual rights are subject to political whim and logic is neither present nor necessary. The Canada I grew up in has disappeared into history and today’s Canada is like the United States - rife with the politicization of every aspect of day to day life, disrespect for the institutional foundations of our respective countries, and an emotional attachment (both love and hate) by voters to candidates they have never met over ideology they haven’t taken time to study, understand or subject to any critical analysis. Our elections have become little more than popularity contests. A pretty face and a smarmy speech have replaced knowledge and competence as the basis for choosing leaders.

I am not optimistic about the future of our country. The “woke” crap teachers try to indoctrinate into our children is toxic and dangerous and the focus of our educational system is to benefit teachers and teachers’ unions rather than students who now leave secondary and post-secondary education bereft of any understanding of our Constitution, the importance of an independent judiciary or free press, or the value of personal freedom tempered only with individual responsibility and the rule of law. Today’s kids also graduate with an almost trivial understanding of economics and finance, poor grammar and a constant struggle with arithmetic and spelling. My brilliant kids are an exception, likely the outcome of having equally brilliant mothers who saw a broad education as a fundamental need and made sure they grew up in a home where spelling, grammar, reading and writing were valued skills.

I am hoping Canadians rally around the new Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre who seems endowed with common sense and will have to endure relentless attack by left-wing politicians, journalists and voters who are desperate to hang on to the sad state of Canada they have created and seem to enjoy. And end to Trudeau’s vision of Canada cannot come too soon for me.