Expectations

By Hank Silverberg

Here we are, exactly where I predicted we would be weeks ago. And I am certainly not alone in that forecast.

By mid-week the Senate will have voted to acquit Donald J. Trump on the two articles of impeachment, and he will then be free to do whatever he wants for at least another year. There are those who will say the U.S. Constitution worked. But did it?

I say no. It stopped working the minute the Republicans in the Senate voted to deny new witnesses or new evidence to be admitted to the trial, making the whole Senate procedure useless! Trump won’t be removed from office, but the trial certainly did not exonerate him. We are right where we were after the release of the Mueller Report. He has NOT been exonerated. WE know something smells, but the GOP is throwing out the rubbish and covering it up with soil before we can get to the bottom of the the garbage can. 

But at least we can get back to the election campaign, which pretty much stopped during the Senate proceedings.

Iowa won’t decide anything. New Hampshire is next. The Democratic field will be narrowed and within a few months there will be ONE candidate to face Trump in November.

Who that candidate will be is far from certain, but one thing is for sure. If the remaining months of the primary campaign leaves the Democrats fragmented, Trump will be re-elected.

His base is solid and nothing will break it up. The decision who our next president will be sits with Independent voters and a large number of Democrats who will sit out the primaries. If they sit out the election too, Trump gets re-elected.

That said, I will NEVER understand a Trump voter.

I suppose they came into it looking for an alternative to “business as usual” in Washington. And to that extent, they got what they asked for. Trump has torn down the authority of the Congress and much of the professional, mostly non-partisan bureaucracy that makes the government work. He has emasculated our intelligence agencies by continuing to ignore them or berate them, and he has wiped out anything loosely connected to Barrak Obama. 

He didn’t drain the swamp. He just killed everything in it and then restocked it with his own lemmings.

Trump voters apparently don’t care about decency, honesty or hard work. What's the count now? Sixteen thousand public lies in three years?  In many cases, the Trump base supports a government that would take away much of what they and millions of others benefit from. The targets of this administration have been long.  Health care is on top, but a roll-back in EPA regulations, dropping out of the Climate Change Accords and proposed cuts in Social Security are right behind. Trump could not even get more roads built because he won't work with the Democrats. And, of course, there's the skyrocketing national debt which he had promised to eliminate.  (The National Debt exploded in 2019 and the federal budget deficit hit $1 trillion dollars for the first time largely because of the Trump tax cuts)
   

It is way too early to predict the election results. The wild card is Mike Bloomberg. He seems to have unlimited funds of his own to go after Trump now in his campaign ads. He did not compete in the Iowa caucuses and may not show up in double digits until Super Tuesday on March 3.

 

(Map of  Super Tuesday Primaries, March 3, 2020)

 I used to have a pretty good record in predicting winners. After 40 years of political reporting, by the time past Novembers rolled around, I knew the winner before the vote. But the ability of many to predict a winner was dashed in 2016 when all of the rules changed. It has cast a long shadow over the election process. Now I feel like Punxsutawney Phil, whose prediction on Groundhog Day is wrong most of the time. (He predicted an early spring this year.)

News Briefs:

Old McDonald had a farm, E-I- E-I- Ohhh no!  

This past year was not a good one down on the farm. Bankruptcies were up 20% even though the Trump administration allocated $28 billion to help farmers. The American Farm Bureau says that’s the highest rate of bankruptcy since 2011.  As many people predicted, the tariffs imposed on China and Mexico during Trump’s trade war were devastating for family farms. Soybean exports dropped significantly because of retaliatory tariffs from China. Other crop exports were impacted by the slowness of a new trade deal with Mexico. These are the same farmers Trump promised to help. What’s not clear is if that will have any effect on voters in farm states where Trump did well in 2016.  Common sense analysis doesn’t seem to apply any more.

https://thehill.com/policy/international/trade/480713-us-farm-bankruptcies-jumped-20-percent-in-2019-despite-federal-aid

One thing is for certain, Virginia’s GOT MILK.  

The House of Delegates has approved a bill that clearly defines “milk” as a “lacteal secretion obtained by the complete milking of a healthy hooved animal.” https://legiscan.com/VA/bill/HB119/2020       

(Courtesy of Virginia Tech) 

That means no “soy" milk or "almond" milk, or whatever. If it says milk in Virginia, it means milk, at least once the State Senate passes the Bill and the Governor signs it.

The state’s farmers have been trying to moooove this bill for years.  People who are lactose intolerant, dairy farmers, and their cows love this Bill. There is one exemption: human breast secretions can be called milk.

"Ok, boomer!"

If you were born between 1946 and 1964 and haven’t had that insulting term thrown at you yet, consider yourself lucky. Ageism, which is becoming more and more common, has produced this term to denigrate what has been the most influential generation in the last millennium. We were the biggest ever. We changed how cars were made and sold, how homes were produced, what consumer products were successful and how many schools were needed.

 We voted in large numbers and still do. And it’s that last part that has irritated GenXers and Millennials. There are still 74 million Baby Boomers alive, though Millennials (the second largest generation ever) are close to overtaking us as we die off.

So, as you would expect from the younger generation, they want to nudge us out of the way.

That has produced a list, which has been circulating for a few months on the Internet now by Expatmagazine. 
https://www.thexpatmagazine.com/

It’s supposed to be a list of things that THEY say we (Boomers) think are cool. Now mind you, this magazine is written by ex-patriots, people who for the most part grew up here, but prefer to spend a majority of their time now in other countries. Judging by the list they have been out of the country too long.

I won’t annoy you with the whole list, but let’s take just a few to show how out of touch these Millennials are with their parents and grandparents, and maybe with our elections and politics, too.

Golf-- They say we are crazy about golf. They say it isn’t exercise and can hurt your back. Apparently, they have never walked all 18 holes. But you know what? Many Boomers never played the game and never cared too.

The Mall—Most Millennials spent their high school years at the mall. But it was their idea, often dragging their parents along. The Boomers preferred the small-town Main Street shopping we grew up with.

24-hour news networks  CNN, the first of those networks, came on the air in 1980, when Boomers were all adults and yes, we watched. But like much of the population, we have moved on to the Internet now, too. The 24-hour networks seem old and worn out to us as well. Not cool. (Roger Ailes, who was NOT a Boomer, created Fox News)

Also on their list of things they think Boomers find cool is ironing.  Is there anybody anywhere who finds ironing cool? This is the most ludicrous of them all.  

Paper bills—that implies that Millennials find on-line bills cool. Well, I've got news for you kids. Bills in general are not cool. Especially those credit card bills you have a hard time paying for.    

     

Retirement funds and Social Security. —Yes, THEY are cool. We earned them. Too bad you won’t have Social Security unless you get out and vote for people who want to restore the trust fund. In case you don’t know, we did not create Social Security. That came from the Greatest Generation, your grandparents.  And we helped support them. You owe it to us to pass it down.  

They also think we find Tax Cuts for the Rich cool. We have bad news for you. That concept predates our generation, and we never found it cool at all.

I won’t bore my readers with the rest of this ridiculous list. There are probably many Millennials who think it is stupid, too. I will NOT provide a link, either. 

But here is one important note. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 50% of Millennials voted in the presidential election in 2016.  Here’s the “cool” part. Baby Boomers voting rate was 68%. Boomers DO find voting cool. 

 I suggest the Ex-pats who wrote this very fraudulent list come home and rediscover America.   

(Your comments and suggestions are welcome)

(Copies of my book are available at BN.com, Amazon.com or by emailing me at hanksilverberg@gmail.com for directions on how to get a signed copy at a reduced price.)