Post-Trump, America Needs Something Better Than Another Back To Normalcy President

It would be a tragic mistake for Democrats to pick a 2020 nominee based solely on ousting Trump. Electability is always an important consideration but it should never-- not even now-- be the only consideration. Almost any reasonably decent candidate should be able to beat Trump. It's not about them; it's not even about Trump. It's about us. Is there a candidate offering us something we want from our government? Chances are, whomever can get it together to win the primary is going to beat Trump.

Right now wikipedia is keeping a running list of potential Democratic nominees. 6 have declared: ridiculous New Dem multimillionaire ex-Congressman John Delaney, Richard Ojeda, Michael Arth, Ken Nwadike (the Free Hugs Guy), Robby Wells and Andrew Yang. Washington Governor Jay Inslee and spiritual teacher and author Marianne Williamson have exploratory committees. And then there are two dozen who have "expressed interest," from Bernie and Biden to Oscar De La Hoya, Michael Bloomberg and Tracy Flick.

On CNN Sunday, the Democrats' great GOP ally Rick Santorum warned Jake Tapper that Democrats have to pick someone unexpected to win-- he'd probably like Beto or Alexandria, or maybe Richard Ojeda, Pete Buttigieg, or Julian Castro to be the nominee-- and not someone "expected." He said "When the Democrats win, they pick someone unexpected. Or someone that is not the favorite-- Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter-- when they pick John Kerry or Al Gore or Hillary Clinton, they lose. So I'm hoping for Bernie [Sanders] or Elizabeth [Warren] or somebody like that. Some tired, old-- Joe Biden, put them out there and we'll win. If they pick someone new then I think they have a chance." Another Tapper guest, Illinois Republican Adam Kinzinger, said it couldn't be anyone "far left" and then went on to define Nancy Pelosi and anyone who isn't from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party as being far left. He's sad that it's taking too long for the Democrats to transform themselves into the Eisenhower Republican Party while the GOP has moved so rapidly and decisively transforming themselves into a Hitlerite fascist party. Kinzinger was pumping for a nice safe corporate whore, Joe Biden and said he could beat Trump. "He can attract the kind of people voting for Donald Trump, the middle class, the blue-collar workers. I think he's the one that can take that away. If you put somebody like Bernie Sanders up, it's just out of the stream of what people want." Luckily Nina Turner was on the panel as well and she corrected both GOP doofuses: "Let me tell you something, wanting people to have a $15 an hour minimum wage, wanting to make sure that people have Medicare for all... there is no far-left, so don't paint Sanders and other people like that." Sure they do. Turner wants Democrats to win; Kinzinger and Santorium want Republicans to win. Is that so complicated?

2020 isn't just an opportunity to get rid of Trump. It's also an opportunity to replace him with someone as good as he is horrible-- with the great president America hasn't seen in over 7 decades! It's a chance to pick a candidate based on a vision for moving America forward. In 1920-- exactly a century ago-- the country went for a schlemiel who had a campaign theme everyone get behind: a return to normalcy (after the Great War). They wound up with a catastrophe: Warren G. Harding, the beginning of a downward spiral that led directly to the Great Depression and World War II. The Return to Normalcy candidate for the centenary is of course Joe Biden, the ultimate status quo or status quo ante candidate with nothing to offer except "not Trump."

Well-meaning Republicans-- not just sneaking partisans like Santorum-- will also be urging Democrats to nominate Biden or one of the other blind establishment centrists (say a Hickenlooper or, worse stir, a Bloomberg). Sunday night, at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, 2 "good" Republicans-- James Comey and Nicolle Wallace-- begged Democrats for a back to normalcy candidate. They hate Trump, although perhaps for somewhat different reasons than normal people hate Trump. They think he stole their putrid conservative party. They just want to bring back more putrid conservatism. That isn't what we want though, is it.

When CNN reports that "former FBI Director James Comey asked American voters Sunday night to end Donald Trump's presidency with a 'landslide' victory for his opponent in 2020," it sounds sweet to us. "All of us should use every breath we have to make sure the lies stop on January 20, 2021," said Comey, who "all but begged Democrats to set aside their ideological differences and nominate the person best suited to defeating Trump in an election. 'I understand the Democrats have important debates now over who their candidate should be,' Comey told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace, 'but they have to win. They have to win.'" We know that but what comes after we win is important to us too.

Over the course of more than an hour, Comey repeatedly derided Trump's character, again likening the atmosphere around the President to what he saw in prosecuting mafia figures and suggested that Trump's tweets could eventually amount to witness tampering. Asked if Trump might be an unindicted co-conspirator in some of the crimes recently described by special counsel Robert Mueller, Comey said he didn't know, "but if he's not there, he's certainly close."

Still, Comey said he hoped that Trump would be swept out of office without being impeached. Framing the rise of Trumpism as a political ill the country needed to exorcise at the ballot, he expressed a hope that Americans would "in a landslide rid ourselves of this attack on our values."

"Removal by impeachment would muddy that," he said, and potentially leave a third of the country feeling like their chosen leader had been removed in a "coup."

Trump's decision to fire Comey in May 2017 was a key factor in the appointment of Mueller, who was handed the job by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in the aftermath of Comey's dismissal and the subsequent leak of a memo in which he recounted Trump asking that he end an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. In a book and in public statements, Comey has become a leading critic of Trump-- and Trump has berated him in turn, relentlessly and usually on Twitter.

Hours earlier, Trump attacked Comey in a pair of testy morning tweets, claiming without evidence that the former FBI chief had lied on Friday in his testimony to the House Judiciary and Oversight committees.

Comey laughed at the idea Trump had even looked over the actual testimony, joking to Wallace before she could read the tweets, "He's finished reading the 253 pages?"

After hearing the words out loud, he turned serious.

"My reaction to it is actually disturbing to me, which is kind of, 'Eh, there he goes again.' I thought I was 'Lyin' James Comey' now I'm 'Leakin' James Comey'. But I kind of shrug and sometimes smile and laugh about it and then I have a secondary reaction, which is to be horrified at my own numb reaction," Comey said. "We have to remind ourselves the President of the United States of America is publicly announcing that people are committing crimes, that they should be in jail."

Asked if Trump's tweets could be viewed as witness tampering, Comey answered carefully-- insisting he had no insight into Mueller's thinking.

"I'm not prepared to judge it," Comey said, "but again, if I were prosecuting a case in the Southern District of New York and a prominent person started attacking my witnesses, I'd want to know so what's going on there and does that cross the line from free speech, which we have to keep protected, into something else?"

Speaking about the period before the 2016 election, Comey was unsparing of Republican congressional leaders who he said opposed making public intelligence community concerns over Russian interference.

"To their everlasting shame, the leaders-- (Senate Majority Leader Mitch) McConnell, (House Speaker Paul) Ryan-- refused," Comey said. "I think they're going to have a hard time explaining that to history."

He had kinder words for former President Barack Obama, describing the Democrat as a foil to Trump in almost every way.

"I was struck that Barack Obama is the best listener as a leader I had ever seen and Donald Trump is the worst I've ever seen," Comey said. "Obama had the confidence to be quiet and try and get that. Donald Trump is a deeply, deeply insecure person, so I don't see any prospect that he would be able to be quiet for long enough to hear the truth."

Speaker... 2020?

Hillary surrogates used to whisper that if were was elected president he wouldn't be able to get anything through Congress because he hand allies there (other than Raul Grijalva, Keith Ellison, Tulsi Gabbard, Ro Khanna and Alan Grayson). Now there are way more than that behind Bernie and his programs and in 2020 there should enough to swing Congress towards the widely popular ideas he's running on, from Medicare-for-All and Job Guarantee to Free state universities and the Green New Deal. In 2020, we need to elect Bernie and and House ready for his programs. No more New Dems and Blue Dogs from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.

Two silly-as-whoopie-cushions updates (a little early morning humor): Third Way wants Beto-- imagine a BETO/Lieberman ticket!!-- and, even more hilarious, Biden has been hiring DCCC staffers... which should be enough to guarantee him a sad, sad DOA campaign.