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Donny Slade

Opinion

Tulsi Gabbard would have made a fantastic opponent to Donald Trump

Note: you can read this opinion piece, even if you don’t align with my political viewpoints. If you disagree with me on politics, it’s probably especially important that you read it.

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An Important announcement from Tulsi Gabbard. That spells out a suspended campaign, surely.

Tulsi Gabbard bows out?

That’s the thought that went through my head when I saw it come up on my feed. Who is Tulsi Gabbard, you might ask?

Let’s give some background. I try to remain as unbiased as possible in my job – sales, with a side of writing.

I’m not a huge fan of Donald Trump, though, fiscally, I tend to align with his policies. His social policies on the other hand, I’m not always in love with. The problem with Trump isn’t that he’s confident. It’s that no one else can be right, even if they are right. I believe you shouldn’t be right unless you’re actually right. If you can demonstrably be proven to be wrong, even if it wasn’t your intent, or it is painful, you should make it right and admit you were wrong.

It bothers me that he cannot do that. Mostly because I think he could be a good leader. Not particularly based on what he ran on, but that he has the capability, if only he was flexible. Notice I didn’t say more flexible. He is stubborn like my brother’s teenage kids. They refuse to be wrong even with proof that they are wrong.

They want to be right for the sake of being right. It’s a teenager thing.

So of course, in my desire to retain my ability to say that I am truly unbiased, I like to follow both sides of the political spectrum. That, so I don’t get caught up in an echo chamber, despite my mostly leaning right on the political scale.

Here’s the problem. Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders aren’t likeable. Elizabeth Warren isn’t likeable either. Hilary certainly wasn’t likeable. Andrew Yang had no chance. Pete Buttigieg wasn’t mainstream enough for most of America, despite being pretty likeable. There are others that could have made sense if they had put in more pre-work.

Kamala Harris is too tainted from her time in California in various public-facing offices – she’ll probably never be able to run for President and do well, though I do like the idea of a woman of color being a legitimate candidate on the final ticket – as long as she has the experience and composure that a President should have (A female Trump wouldn’t be a good final ticket candidate in my mind).

Cory Booker wasn’t believable and didn’t command the same speaking prowess as is necessary. Amy Klobuchar was very likeable, certainly very human, but had no chance, and a realistic lack of experience in all the areas I personally believe need to be high on the list for a potential president.

Michael Bloomberg is way off on guns, he’d have too much pressure as a result. He also has social skills on the level just barely above Mark Zuckerberg. Buying $600+ million dollars’ worth of ads to prove a point puts him out of the realm of being able to connect with normal folks. He would have also set the bar pretty high for future campaigns on a spending perspective. A few Billion dollars would have been a minimum spend and completely ludicrous.  

Tulsi Gabbard said everything right for a moderate candidate. She looks the part. She’s graceful and distinguished, and it’s not hard to get fringe conservatives to agree with most of her positions. She’s like a democrat Rand Paul. And that ultimately is the problem.  She’s too eager to actually work at fixing problems, so her political warfare standard is lower than that of her opponents who are strictly there to garner political favor.

She is also willing to get serious when asking people to be accountable. She isn’t afraid to call people out, but she’s more respectful than most politicians.

Tulsi Gabbard doesn’t want to just run to war the first time we see aggression from another country. She wants to listen to what people have to say. She is a legitimate patriot and still serves in the Hawaii National Guard.

She has real chops in foreign policy, despite taking a lot of flack for having met with some controversial international figures. Think Syria.

She is a real person, who, if you give her five minutes to talk, she will have you actually listening.

She’s also the anti-Trump. So, she is a much more interesting matchup to the current president. Who in my opinion, if it weren’t for his ego, might not have done a very bad job What are your thoughts? Am I way out in left field? Did I get this one wrong? Did I say something too sensitive? Let me know thus far. It just doesn’t help that the guy distances himself from people every day trying to always be the only person who is right in the world.

I actually don’t have a problem with his record, as long as I don’t have to listen to him talk about it.

That said, I lean right, and I actually like listening to what Tulsi Gabbard has to say.

I’d be a voter that potentially moved my vote from historically Conservative to Moderate Democrat if the other candidate was Tulsi Gabbard.

But alas, it wasn’t to be. She bowed out gracefully and threw her hat in the ring for Joe Biden, who is cringeworthy at best.

He picks fights with veterans and lies about being arrested trying to visit Nelson Mandela and has a problem with touching women awkwardly every single time he’s on camera it seems. He also says really ridiculous things. Like when he made a comment about working with the only Black female senator… when there was another one in the same room as him, and he didn’t even mention her name (Kamala Harris), on a national televised debate. Awkward.

He’s also a paper tiger. He doesn’t seem real. He seems miffed at the simplest things and always takes it too far for the sake of looking tough. It’s tiresome.

I’m not trying to tell you who to vote for or what politics to have, I’m just trying to say it would have been a legitimate fight if democrats could have coalesced behind a centrist type instead of a revolutionary hard progressive, or a socialist. Even better if they forgot to get behind the longest serving potential candidate just because he served as VP to Barack Obama.

Talk about milquetoast, with a side of cringe. That’s what I see when the chosen candidate is Joe Biden.

Tulsi Gabbard would have been female, strong willed, well spoken, proven in important matters and American as apple pie. She’s also not a weakling but answers and asks questions based on substance not talking points.

The fact that Biden has overtaken Sanders after a strong start for Bernie, makes me realize we aren’t ready as a nation for a self-proclaimed democratic socialist. That’s a sigh of relive for someone who believes the Constitution deserves to be conserved. We need a return to strong 4^th and 9^th and 10^th amendment stances. We need legitimate protection in certain areas against erosion of Second Amendment rights. You don’t have to agree with all my politics to agree with some of them. Remember that’s what elections and campaigning are supposed to be about.

I don’t like Tulsi Gabbard’s specific stance on the 2^nd amendment, but that doesn’t stop me from recognizing that she was easily the best candidate to take out Trump for those who oppose him.

Unfortunately for those who want Trump out, no one is jumping from Trump to Biden or Sanders (who may not even be the chosen candidate in the end). Furthermore, if both of them enter the final ticket as potential presidents, say, if Sanders went to an independent ticket or something like that, then it all but guarantees a landslide by Trump.

I want to be clear: I am a conservative in all fiscal policies. I am also trending right on most social issues, with some exceptions.

That said, I am not for or against Trump.

I would rather vote for Trump than for a Biden or a Sanders. But I could have been swayed by a Tulsi Gabbard. I hope she considers running in the future and evolving on her stances to meet the needs of important historical documents that amazingly still have the utmost of relevance, but also the constituents of the United States of America.  

For me it’s not about Conservative vs. Democrat, it’s about who can best take us forward. And even if I liked Trump, which is up in the air as a politician (I’m not in love with him as a “persona” and I don’t’ know him personally to say whether he is a good person or not) I’m not sure he’s the right guy. Sometimes you need to change your mindset to serve people the right way – he seems resistant to change.

We have to stop looking at this political thing as ME vs. THEM and look at it as: where can we go from here with the right person, and how can that person best serve the collective of people in the United States?

For all that, I’m a bit sad today, as, even though she was a longshot with no chance of the White House this election (BECAUSE OF THE PRIMARIES – NOT THE GENERAL ELECTION), she was probably the best candidate that the Democrats have fielded, if even in passing, since JFK. And I don’t take saying that statement lightly.

What are your thoughts? Am I way out in left field? Did I get this one wrong? Did I say something too sensitive? Let me know.

The post OPINION: Donny Slade – Tulsi Gabbard was the best chance Democrats had – now what? appeared first on Easy Ad - Local Small Business Resources.

What you may not have noticed, is that an interesting thing is happening. If you are a previously unaffiliated voter (meaning you had not selected a specific party), or what is known as a NPP (no party preference) voter, you might have to request a secondary ballot or elect a party to continue with a vote.

In an election cycle that perhaps sees a more divided electorate than ever for the top elected job in the nation, this is a bit of an awkward situation for voters who were probably very legitimately undecided.

By virtue of the moniker, NPP voters are by definition a group that would be influencing the election the greatest by percentage of decision power considering the group is so small. In California this might not mean that the group wields real power historically, as the Blue representation in the state has far exceeded the Red contingent for decades now. That doesn’t mean they cannot have an impact. This is particularly true in Congressional races.

But there is perhaps a problem that runs much deeper for voters who care. In a primary run-up that is more polarized than ever, the Democratic party has a group of establishment favorites; a group that favors a much more radical approach to progressive politics and a third group of moderates. Within those ranks, it even features a small contingency of wildcard candidates that seem to have done quite well on the national stage without any real institutional backing.

What does this mean? It means that there isn’t a real frontrunner at this point in time. For previously undecided voters in California, this is the most important election in many years. The time when the moderate candidates (those most likely to appeal to undecided party voters) need the electorate most, the electorate has to go out of its way to cast a primary vote.

It goes without saying too: in a state where the voting is overwhelmingly lopsided, it doesn’t incentivize voters who would otherwise vote for a moderate democrat to get out and vote.

The GOP favoring communities already know they won’t win. But now the areas that trend purple, might not be able to effectively utilize those 5million some odd votes to help impact the primary outcomes.

That means that promising candidates are going to have a doubly difficult time persuading the California voter to buoy them up in the primary. This is complicated by the fact that these 5.3million or so voters will not be able to vote for President in the election unless they request a special ballot, or they swap parties to a more conservative-leaning ballot which includes the GOP.   

Yes, you can vote in the Democratic Primary as a NPP voter, but you’ll need to request that special ballot. And with little impetus to do so, as an already middle aligned voter (most likely) in a state that leans heavily left, it’s going to be even more work to do so. That means by default, establishment candidates and those with multi-year-long name recognition spells are bound to do better and have a better shot at the national election.

The Tulsi Gabbard’s and Pete Buttigieg’s and Andrew Yang’s of the World are likely to have their media play diluted by this interesting scenario playing out in California Absentee ballots. These 5 million voters have a real opportunity to challenge election outcomes in a Primary scenario, where historical numbers are low enough to be impacted by those 5 million. In 2016, only 5,173,338 people voted in total for the California Democratic Primary: with only 14,181,595 voting on election night for President. Obviously these 5.3 million votes could make a huge difference. Only about 400,000 votes separated the primary #1 and #2 contenders in 2016.

You should go to RegisterToVote.ca.gov before the February 18^th, 2020 deadline to register; or contact your county office for a specific ballot or to declare for a different party option. Otherwise, you won’t be able to influence the Presidential election in 2020.

The March 3^rd Primary is less than a month away.

The post California Primary Election – DID YOU KNOW? For NPP Voters this information is crucial! appeared first on Easy Ad - Local Small Business Resources.