Billions Needed To Become President
From Girish Modi, Decatur, GA
America is the only country in the world which spends two years of time and billions of dollars on presidential campaigning, not counting continuous media reporting of various candidates.
This year’s presidential election is no different. Candidates like Ron DeSantis, Nikky Haley and Ramaswami had been campaigning for over a year after spending millions of dollars. The amount spent is not their own but raised from donors. When they performed poorly and ran out of money, they had no choice but to drop out of the race.
Now the contest is between Biden and Trump. It has become clear in past few days that Biden is too old and has memory problem. Still, his campaign is going to raise $2 billion to fight the election. Trump, on the other hand, will also raise lot of money and continue his campaign despite his legal problems.
I wonder if democracy is worth all this waste of money and time, because after the election, nobody gives damn about the people’s problems and campaign promises will be forgotten.
(This submission is not edited.)
Pradeep Srivastava
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Trump too is 77 years old, as opposed to Biden being 81 years old. They both make gaffes.
According to the February 13, 2024 article, “ Press: In keeping score of mental gaffes, Donald Trump is ahead“, published by Bill Press in thehill.com, Trump has made more gaffes than Biden. See below.
“ Everything the White House says about special counsel Robert Hur’s report is true. First, Hur did exonerate President Biden from any criminal acts related to classified documents found in his possession. Sloppy, yes; but criminal, no. “No criminal charges are warranted in this matter,” Hur concluded. Good for Biden.
Second, Hur did point out that Biden cooperated with the Justice Department, unlike Donald Trump, who undermined the government’s investigation into presidential documents hustled off to Mar-a-Lago. Good for Biden.
Third. Robert Hur — like James Comey before him — did go over the line. Unable to find any reason to charge Biden with a crime, he took off his special prosecutor hat and put on his MAGA hat, painting Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” The White House is right.
Those comments had nothing to do with the facts of the case. They amounted to little more than a political hit job. Bad for Biden.
Again, everything the White House says about the Hur report is true. Unfortunately for Biden, however, the good stuff about Biden will soon be forgotten. All the media’s talking about and will continue to talk about is the bad stuff: questions about Biden’s mental acuity. These concerns have already been raised before, but they now have added significance due to the special counsel’s report. And they are concerns which the White House can no longer ignore.
As unfair as it may be, polls show that voters are not focused on Biden’s legislative record, the strength of the economy or his leadership on the world stage. They’re worried about only one thing: Is Biden starting to lose it? Or is he already too old for the job?
These are fair questions. For Joe Biden, who is 81. But also for Donald Trump, who is 77 — and seems to be showing signs of his own diminished mental capacity.
More often, in fact, than Biden. Surprised? Let’s check the record.
As widely reported, Biden’s made several gaffes in the last couple of weeks. He confused the late German Chancellor Helmut Kohl with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, confused the late French President Francois Mitterrand with current French President Emmanuel Macron and misidentified Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi as the president of Mexico, not Egypt.
These, while worrisome, are dwarfed by Trump’s recent gaffes. I’m not talking about the big lies he often makes: that he actually won the 2020 election; that he presided over the strongest economy in history; that he was once named Michigan Man of the Year; that windmills cause cancer, and so many more. Nor the dangerous policy pronouncements he’s made, like encouraging Russia to invade any country that doesn’t pay its full share of NATO dues.
No, we’re talking about gaffes, the same kind of mental hiccups Joe Biden’s under fire for. Multiple times, in a January rant, Trump confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi. He praised Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban as “the leader of Turkey.” He bragged about beating Barack Obama in 2016 in “an election that everyone said couldn’t be won” and bragged about leading Obama “by a lot” in 2024. He claimed that Joe Biden would get us “into World War II.” And he blamed Jeb Bush, not his brother George W., for starting the War in Iraq.
This election should be about important policy differences and the future of democracy. But if it’s really going to be decided, instead, by gaffes — and which candidate makes fewer of them — Joe Biden will win in a landslide.”
February 14, 2024