By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on January 16, 2022
An Editorial Opinion
I have been a declared political Independent since 2001. I have never taken campaign cash or accepted "get-out-the-vote"(GOTV) money from any candidate running for political office.
Over the last five decades, I have supported Democrats, Republicans, and Independents who ran for various federal, state, and local offices. I am a social moderate, fiscal conservative, and fierce advocate of a strong national defense (against domestic and foreign enemies). I focus primarily on "pocketbook" issues. Economic empowerment if my thing.
Between 2001 and 2010, I raised and contributed more than $1 million in campaign donations to support these political candidates. My support for a candidate cannot be bought. It must be earned.
On March 11, 2020, I published an article titled, "The Joy of Being a Political Independent." The article describes why I cannot live and work on any political party's plantation. Both of the country's major political parties are deeply flawed in many respects. As such, I tend to look at the individual candidates themselves to see if they embody the qualities I seek in an elected official.
I try to avoid political ass-kissers and mindless partisan hacks. These machine politicians, who comprise about 99% of all political candidates in America today, are often lazy, self-centered, limited in their thinking abilities, lacking in their cognitive abilities, and dangerous in their unguided thoughts.
I am looking for the "One-Percenters" of national politics -- those who have demonstrated the knowledge, skills, abilities, courage, vision, and intellectual capacity to lead the nation in solving the growing list of complex problems facing ordinary Americans. Whenever I find them, I will support them in very meaningful ways.
Democrats Need a New Presidential Nominee in 2024
On March 29, 2020, I published an article titled, "Democrats Must Draft a New Presidential Nominee." In the article, I warned Democrats that they needed a presidential nominee other than Joe Biden.
The Party ignored my advice and allowed the Bill/Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama loyalists to pick Joe Biden as the Party's 2020 nominee. In turn, Biden picked California freshman U.S. Senator Kamala Harris as his Vice Presidential running mate.
Biden won the 2020 election primarily because former president Donald Trump demonstrated his colossal incompetence during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Americans were also tired of Trump's non-stop daily drama, buffoonery in office, braggadocios conduct, constant chess-pounding, narcissism, and megalomania. Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden. The election was not stolen. There was no massive fraud in the nationwide voting, as alleged by Trump and his minions in over 60 court cases that he lost. In many of these cases, Trump-appointed federal judges ruled against him.
The qualities that made Joe Biden an unattractive presidential candidate in 2020 are worse today. Biden does not embody the presidential leadership qualities Americans need today.
Additionally, Biden is too old, slow, and weak to lead America in today's fast-paced, rapidly changing world. It is also apparent to me and other objective observers that Biden is suffering from senility, which worsens with the passage of time.
Biden's approval rating is underwater in 40 states. Here are some of the reasons why:
Inflation is out of control. The nation is on the verge of a recession. Gas, food, and housing costs are still sky high.
Biden’s absent mindedness caused him to leave classified national security documents at three separate locations. There is no excuse for this kind of reckless and dangerous conduct, whether it was perpetrated by Donald Trump or Joe Biden.
The Biden administration has offered no practical, workable, non-racist solution to the migration crisis at America's southern border.
Biden's hasty troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 was an unmitigated disaster. Additionally, Biden's initial response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was too little, too late.
Biden’s voting rights protection legislation sank like the Titanic in 2022. Long-established constitutional rights of women are being ripped from them without a real presidential fight to protect them. Biden's Attorney General is doing nothing to stop the wholesale dismantlement of constitutional protections for women.
Biden still has "burrowed-in" Donald Trump political appointees running the U.S. Department of Justice in Southern states, with no plan to replace them.
The list of Biden’s presidential leadership failures goes on and on.
Kamala Harris is NOT the Answer in 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris is NOT the answer for Democrats in 2024. Harris has failed to deliver on every major initiative Biden entrusted to her. She failed to deliver the votes necessary to pass Biden's voting rights legislation. She has shown no ability to lead the Biden administration's efforts to solve the crisis at our southern border.
The same holds true for Biden's clean energy initiatives. Harris simply does not understand the world of clean energy or electric vehicles beyond what she reads from the teleprompter during White House press conferences.
If Kamala Harris has an area of problem-solving expertise, I have not seen it. Today, Harris functions more like a glorified Biden cheerleader.
The Republican Party Remains Under the Spell of Trumpism
It is clear that today’s Republican Party will offer more Trumpism in 2024, whether Donald Trump becomes the GOP nominee, or not.
Just to be clear, Trump can hold GOP nominee status even after he is indicted by Special Counsel Jack Smith. Only a criminal conviction would bar Trump from holding public office.
The Republican Party is minting political candidates who: (a) have no respect for the constitutional rights of women, (b) do not care one iota about the health, safety, and lives of school children beyond their immediate family members, (c) will fight to protect fetuses in the womb, while refusing to combat rising infant mortality among new born babies and young infants by providing them adequate medical care, (d) zealously guard the financial interests of the Wall Street "One Percenters," while ignoring the diminishing financial security for "Main Street," (e) are willing to overthrow a duly elected government in order to install "white minority rule," and (f) will lie about any and everything, including the true nature and scope of a January 6, 2021 Insurrection at the National Capitol that was captured on hours of videotape.
House members Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), George Santos (R-New York), Margorie Taylor Green (R-Georgia), and Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) have risen from political obscurity to become the new vanguard of the National Republican Party. None of these GOP leaders embodies my political or personal values.
Epilogue
My West Coast friends and I are forming a Super-PAC for Independent voters in time for the 2024 presidential elections. We have financial commitments to fund the PAC up to the $100 million level between now and the 2024 elections. We will not accept campaign donations from political candidates or PACs that are money laundering fronts for political parties.
The PAC will finance nationwide voter registration drives and "get-out-the-vote" (GOTV) campaigns that target the growing pool of Independent voters in swing states. We will also advertise our political agenda for Independent voters on nationwide TV during the run-up to the 2024 presidential election.
We are targeting Americans of color, women who value their constitutional rights, young Americans between 18 and 35 years of age, and potential Independent voters across America as the recipients of our voter education messaging, voter registration activities, and GOTV initiatives.
We prefer a presidential candidate in his/her 40s or 50s. It would be great if the candidate of choice for Independent voters is a woman, but this is not a requirement. We have little appetite for supporting and electing another old, tired, cranky, longtime beneficiary of "white male privilege" as the next president of the United States.