By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on June 5, 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" money from any candidate running for political office. I have supported Democrats, Republicans, and Independents who have run for various federal, state, and local offices.
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 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 cheerleaders. These charlatans, who represent 95% of all political candidates in America today, are mostly lazy, selfish, limited in their thinking abilities, and dangerous in their unguided thoughts.
I am looking for the "One-Percenters" of national politics -- those who have demonstrated the skills, knowledge, abilities, courage, vision, and intellectual capacity to lead the nation in solving the growing list of problems facing ordinary Americans. Whenever I find them, I will support them with individual campaign contributions and donations from a new political action committee (PAC) that is being formed. The PAC will also finance nationwide voter registration drives and "get-out-the-vote" (GOTV) campaigns that target a growing national pool of potential Independent voters.
Joe Biden Should Not Run for Re-Election 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 only because 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, and megalomania.
In 2018, Vice President Mike Pence, along with several White House staffers and cabinet members, believed that Trump was too "unstable" and "unfit" to continue serving as President. This group of plotters planned to remove Trump from office by invoking the disability clause of the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution. "Anonymous" alluded to this 25th Amendment vehicle for this Republican-led coup d'etat in his September 5, 2018 Op-Ed article published in the New York Times. This ill-fated plan failed only because then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions lost his nerve and backed out.
I reported on the Pence-Sessions coup d'etat plot in a February 26, 2020 article titled, "Trump Has a 'Judas Iscariot' in His Inner Circle." Mike Pence was Trump's "Judas Iscariot." On January 6, 2021, Trump's diehard supporters in Washington called for Mike Pence to be hung. Trump now views Pence and Jeff Sessions as enemies.
Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden. 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. Even Clarence Thomas, the most right-wing justice on the Supreme Court, declined to hear Trump's election challenge. Thomas is well-known in Washington for French-kissing the smelly political asses of top Republicans.
Why the Biden/Harris Team Must Go
The qualities that made Joe Biden an unattractive presidential candidate in 2020 are present today. Biden is probably a great guy to have a beer with while listening to old war stories about his glory days in the U.S. Senate. However, Biden does not embody the presidential leadership qualities Americans need today. The Biden thrill is gone.
Additionally, Biden is too old, slow, and weak to lead America in a fast-paced, rapidly changing world. What is worse, 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. America is out of baby formula. Gas prices are skyrocketing. No practical, non-racist solution to the migration crisis at America's southern border has been offered by the Biden administration. Biden's troop withdrawal from Afghanistan was an unmitigated disaster. Biden's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine was too little, too late. New 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. Gun reform is beyond Biden's political reach. Biden still has "burrowed-in" Donald Trump political appointees running important government agencies. The list of 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 initiative Biden entrusted to her. She failed to deliver the votes necessary to pass Biden's new 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 is 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, she functions more like a glorified Biden cheerleader. While Harris' intellectual capacity is probably higher than former Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's, her ability to perform as a strong leader in the office has often been embarrassing and frustrating.
The Republican Party Offers More Trumpism in 2024
It is clear today that the Republican Party will be offering more Trumpism in 2024. The former president has a death-grip on the Party. Nearly every Republican running for office in America sounds like a clone of Donald Trump.
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 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 adequate medical care to them, (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 everything, including the nature and scope of a January 6, 2021 Insurrection at the National Capitol that was captured on hours of videotape.
Sadly, the Republican Party has morphed into a modern-day, national version of the Old South's "White Citizens Council" that dominated politics in Old Confederate states during the civil rights era of the 1960s. The presence of U.S. Senators of color like Tim Scott (S. Carolina), Ted Cruz (Texas), and Marco Rubio (Florida) in the Party does not fumigate the insidious racism that has infected the Party's political direction, spirit, and soul.
Furthermore, any political party that places the financial interests of gun manufacturers over the lives and safety of school children is unfit to govern.
Epilogue
As an Independent voter activist, I have been working very hard during the last three years to prepare for the 2024 presidential election. In a February 27, 2022 article titled, "Independent Voters Must Save American Democracy in 2024," I set forth a common sense political agenda that most Independent voters nationwide seem to agree upon.
My friends and I will be forming a Super-PAC for Independent voters in time for the 2024 presidential elections. Right now, we already have financial commitments to fund the PAC up to $25 million. We will try to increase the PAC's war chest to $50 million between now and the 2024 elections. We will not accept campaign donations from candidates or political parties.
From this $25 to $50 million amount, the PAC will support voter registration and GOTV activities in six swing states. We will also allocate $20 to $40 million for political ads that support the PAC's preferred presidential candidate.
We are targeting Americans of color, women who value their constitutional rights, young Americans between 18 and 35 years of age, and Independent voters across America as the recipients of our voter education messaging and political agenda.
If there is a "rising star" in the Democratic or Republican Party who is running for president and who agrees to advance and protect the articulated political agenda of Independent voters, we may allocate $2 to $4 million to benefit this candidate's campaign during the primary election races. This amount would be in addition to the $20 to $40 million the Super-PAC plans to spend in the November 2024 general election.
However, the "rising star" candidate must demonstrate to our PAC that his/her campaign has national viability and that he/she has personal electability. We will not be financing the raw political ego or naked personal ambition of a presidential candidate who is un-electable.
Our PAC prefers a presidential candidate in his/her 40s or 50s. It would be great if the candidate of choice for Independent voters is a woman or person of color. We have little interest in supporting and electing another old, tired, cranky, longtime beneficiary of "white male privilege" as the next president of the United States.
