RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/09/01/joe_bidens_three_risky_choices__144106.html

Joe Biden’s quick trip to Pittsburgh and his speech there Monday condemning urban violence show Democrats now recognize they made a major mistake in ignoring the problem at their convention. They’ve read the polls and finally realize voters care about the arson, shootings, and looting — and their own safety. That’s a problem for the Biden campaign, which had almost nothing to say about the violence all summer. Now, they are doing “cleanup on Aisle 6” and there’s a lot of broken glass around.

“Rioting is not protesting,” the Democrats’ presidential nominee told the Carnegie-Mellon University audience. “Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. … It’s lawlessness, plain and simple.” That’s true, but it was no less true two weeks or two months ago. Even now, Biden’s main thrust is less against the violence than against President Trump for “fomenting it” and “sowing chaos.” As Biden put it, “The simple truth is Donald Trump failed to protect America. So now he’s trying to scare America.”

That Biden was willing to leave home on short notice, fly to a swing state, and speak out about the rioting is the clearest indication yet that the election is tightening. Discussing the violence is one of three big, difficult decisions Biden faces as the campaign heats up. Each entails significant risks for a candidate who must hold together a fractious coalition and avoid major gaffes.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/08/29/what-trump-got-right-our-choic

Even today, we often hear there are no real differences between the two parties. They’re like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, we’re told. But hearing President Donald Trump’s lengthy, and detailed, acceptance speech Thursday night, we must agree: Never in modern history has there been a greater gap between the two major parties.

“Despite all of our greatness as a nation, everything we have achieved is now endangered. This is the most important election in the history of our country. At no time before have voters faced a clearer choice between two parties, two visions, two philosophies, or two agendas,” Trump told Americans.

“This election will decide whether we save the American Dream, or whether we allow a socialist agenda to demolish our cherished destiny.”

He’s right. And yes, the choice is that stark.

In the midst of an American cultural and political crisis, brought on by far-left inspired terrorism and rioting in the nation’s cities, it’s important to draw clear distinctions. And that’s exactly what Trump and others did in their convention speeches.

“The president and his surrogates boasted of replacing NAFTA with USMCA, passing criminal-justice reform, getting a significant tax cut through Congress (though this didn’t receive as much attention as usual for a GOP convention), destroying ISIS, and killing Qasem Soleimani, along with many less widely heralded achievements in foreign policy and regulatory reform,” as Daniel McCarthy of the Spectator USA magazine neatly summed it up.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-trump-disruption-11598570719?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

When Donald Trump won the Presidency four years ago, half of America gnashed its teeth or cried and even supporters who cheered weren’t sure what to expect. Four years later our verdict is that he has been better on policy than we feared but worse on personal behavior than we hoped. Whether Americans re-elect him depends on how they assess that political balance sheet.

We realize that even considering the Trump Presidency in these conventional terms is offensive to some readers. Don’t we get that he’s a would-be authoritarian, a Russian plant, or at least so deeply flawed as a human being that he can’t be trusted with power? Yet our democracy survives, and the Constitution’s checks and balances are intact. Americans who heard him ask for a second term Thursday night were trying to make sense of what has been a raucous and disruptive Presidency.**

This week’s virtual GOP convention has spent hours educating voters about Trump Administration successes, and many are real, starting with the pre-Covid-19 economy that we examined this week. The political irony is that this success was due to Mr. Trump’s adoption of conventional GOP economics, not his trade or immigration agenda.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-cant-restore-normalcy-11598483215?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

Donald Trump Jr. described Joe Biden as the Loch Ness Monster, a lifelong swamp creature. That was patty-cake compared with what Democrats think of and won’t stop saying about Donald J. Trump. Wash away the neurotic personal animus, and the Democratic case for Joe Biden is that by ending the nonstop Trump disruption, or “chaos,” Mr. Biden will restore the country to normalcy. He won’t.

Only the most sound-asleep voters can believe that with one day’s voting in November they can melt the Wicked Witch of Trumpland and dance down the yellow-brick road to more temperate times. Returning to pre-2020 normality anytime soon, no matter which candidate wins, is impossible.

Most people aren’t thinking about the next four years; they’re thinking about the next 12 to 18 months. They are wondering each day when or whether the pandemic will end and what the post-coronavirus world will mean for them and their families.

The economic and personal disruption has been immeasurable. Within weeks, daily economic activity went from normal to nearly nothing—an event with no precedent in modern history.

What comes next for the daily work people took for granted isn’t clear. At first, salaried workers were OK, but then the ranks of people on paychecks were thinned with furloughs and layoffs. American Airlines said this week it would unload 19,000 people. JPMorgan Chase says rotational work is likely to become permanent. Laying off unseen remote workers will be easier in the next recession.

A significant migration is occurring out of urban centers into the more predictable calm of suburban life. Younger people are choosing to live closer to where they grew up.

Normalcy? Joe Biden is running in an election year when liberals are fleeing New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and other cities overwhelmed with protests, homelessness and spreading disorder.