The nomination of Secretary Hillary Clinton to be the Democrats 2016 presidential nominee on Tuesday night July 27th went extremely well; especially after a bad beginning on Monday, which began under the shadow of Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s resignation.  Chairwoman Schultz resigned under pressure as a result of leaked DNC emails that indicated that the DNC was favoring Secretary Clinton over Senator Bernie Sanders.

This further angered Sanders supporters many of whom were already either balking at supporting Secretary Clinton or altogether refusing to support her despite being urged to vote for her by Senator Sanders.  When he personally met with his delegates in an effort to get them to vote for her for the good of the country, he was roundly booed.  Then, on the day that Secretary Clinton was nominated some of the anti Clinton protestors took over a press tent and others got into confrontations with the police.  In some cases these confrontations were physical.

In light of the fact that the nomination of Secretary Clinton was a major history making event, it is likely that those anti Clinton delegates and others who participated in the protests of her nomination will regret their decision to do so.  That is because when it is chronicled for future generations to read about, they will be on the wrong side of this event that they were privileged to be a part of and, therefore, on the infamous side of history.  And if she is elected to the presidency in November, which will be another historical milestone, then that will only exacerbate their bad judgment in choosing to protest her nomination.

The following evening, Wednesday, almost completely brought all of those attending the convention together in unity.  The great majority of those Bernie Sanders supporters who had just the previous day rejected even the idea of a Hillary Clinton nomination settled down and listened while the speakers for the evening laid out numerous reasons as to why all Democrats should unite and support Secretary Clinton.  No one did a better job of making that argument than President Obama.  He delivered a brilliant speech.  By the time that he finished, everyone in the convention center seemed to be convinced that unity was the only answer.

On Thursday night, in accepting the nomination, Secretary Clinton gave a tremendous speech that sealed the deal.  The Democratic convention is now over, Hillary Clinton is the official nominee and the Democrats can now focus on defeating a very dangerous man in the general election who says that he alone can solve America’s problems.  That man is Donald J. Trump.

Eulus Dennis – author, Operation Rubik’s Cube and Living Between The Line

Back around January this year when Senator Bernie Sanders said that the DNC was not being fair to his campaign but instead was favoring presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton, he told the truth.  I must admit that, at the time, I thought that his complaint was nothing more than a sour grapes response to the fact that he was losing the race.  At the time, I also believed that his complaints about other facets of the DNC – like the rules committee – were just as baseless and should likewise be ignored.

However, with the recent leaks of the DNC emails by WikiLeaks my opinion has changed.  Although I strongly supported Secretary Clinton before these leaks and still do, this is a situation that the Democrats should thoroughly investigate and decide what steps they should take.  When I began writing this article I said that Senator Sanders is justified in calling for DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign.  Before I finished it, there was an article in the Washington Post that said she had resigned.  I think highly of Ms. Wasserman Schultz and respect all of the hard work that she has done since she became the Chair but if what these leaked emails suggest about the DNC and their efforts to sabotage the Sanders campaign is true then her resignation was warranted.

Before Ms. Wasserman Schultz resigned, when asked about the emails and how he felt about what they revealed, Senator Sanders said he was not surprised but he was disappointed.  I was both surprised and disappointed.  Again, if what these emails suggest prove to be true, because I – and without doubt many other Democrats hold Ms. Wasserman Schultz in such high esteem and think highly of her leadership of those on the DNC team, I hope that others like former Representative Barney Frank and Donna Brazile who are a part of the DNC were not involved in the effort to undermine Senator Sanders’ campaign.  And I certainly hope that Secretary Clinton is not in any way involved in this fiasco.

For Democrats, this is a terrible time for this information to surface but it needed to be brought out.  It is extremely damaging to the Democratic Party and its efforts to unite Democrats before the start of the general election.  One can only hope that WikiLeaks is neutral, was acting completely above board and is not, itself, favoring either party over the other in the upcoming general election.

There is no doubt that Republican standard bearer Donald Trump and the rest of the Republican Party will eagerly seize this information (the sharks smell blood in the water and are already circling).  Then they will use it to try to drive a wedge between Secretary Clinton’s supporters and Senator Sanders’ supporters to gain an edge in the upcoming general election.  Subsequently, Mr. Trump will use this information to try to persuade as many Democrats as possible, especially Sanders supporters, to join the Trump camp.

There is no doubt that Senator Sanders’ supporters are angry about what has come out in these already leaked emails and there are likely still more angering revelations to come.  Likewise there is no doubt that Clinton supporters are angry because of what has happened in general surrounding these leaked emails and the fact that it has forced Ms. Wasserman Schultz to resign from her position as DNC Chairwoman.

They likely lay a great deal of the blame for this situation at the feet of Senator Sanders because of his constant public complaints, even though they have now proven to be true, about the DNC running an unfair operation and that it was favoring Secretary Clinton.  The operative word in the previous sentence is ‘public’.  Many of them might believe that Senator Sanders is the catalyst that is driving this debacle.  Although his complaints are legitimate and justified, the fact that they were made public is devastating and could prove to be an intricate part of what could hand Donald Trump the presidency.  It could be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

Mr. Trump is dangerous because he is unqualified and unfit to hold the office of President of the United States.  All Democrats should seriously consider this fact before they cast their ballots in November.  Some will likely actually accept his invitation to shift to the Trump camp.  Those who choose this path should be given the benefit of the doubt and we should presume that they chose it because they honestly believe that Mr. Trump is qualified and fit to hold America’s highest office and not because they loathe Hillary Clinton and detest what the DNC did by treating Senator Sanders and his campaign unfairly.

Those who plan to not vote at all or are determined to vote for another candidate should consider that this would be almost as damaging to Secretary Clinton as it would be if they cast their vote for Donald Trump.  They should also consider how America will be impacted if Mr. Trump becomes president.  If after doing this they decide to move forward with their plans then there is likely nothing else that can be said that will change their minds.

Although most Americans probably believe that Donald Trump should never become president, those Democrats mentioned immediately above can be a part of making sure that he does not.  America is in a very precarious situation and Americans must make a decision as to who we really are, if we want to actually be who we really are, or whether we want to become who we appear to be right now.  This will be decided in November and we can determine which of the abovementioned paths we will take through our vote.

Your vote counts.  So whether you are a Democrat, Republican or Independent always remember, your vote is the most important one of all…unless you don’t use it!

Eulus Dennis – author, Operation Rubik’s Cube and Living Between The Line

Since the time that Donald Trump declared himself a candidate to be president of the United States, there has been a lot of talk about how bold and unyielding he is.  While there has also been a lot of talk about Senator Ted Cruz since the time that he became a senator, his speech at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday July 20, 2016 proved that he is just as bold and unyielding as Donald Trump.  His speech was unprecedented and will likely command a prominent place in American history books.  Ted Cruz has gone rogue!

In the event that you did not watch his speech or haven’t heard about it, he spoke during prime time at the convention and told delegates there and all of those who were watching the event on television to vote their conscience.  He refused to endorse soon-to-be Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.  He was booed as he left the stage and his wife, Heidi, was escorted from the convention floor amidst those boos for ‘her own safety.’

As I reflected upon what happened I was not completely surprised by what took place because Senator Cruz has conducted himself this way in Washington since he was elected despite the fact that all of his colleagues have grown to despise him.  But still, this move was somewhat unexpected because what he did at the convention versus how he conducts himself in the senate and during interviews increases his risk of damaging his political career exponentially.  As a matter of fact, refusing to endorse the presumptive nominee while on air at the Republican National Convention could actually cost him his political career.

Only he knows for sure whether what he did was a mistake or a calculated risk; and whether he will be rewarded for it or punished remains to be seen.  It is no surprise that those in the Trump campaign opted for the latter but the important response will come from Republicans in general.  His immediate concern will be with how those in his congressional district respond.  Then, if he survives that and still has aspirations to someday become president, he will need to mend fences where required and shore up his relationship with Republicans overall.

To paraphrase Speaker Paul Ryan when he was asked for his thoughts about presumptive nominee Donald Trump, Senator Ted Cruz is not my kind of human being.  But regardless of that, I still have to give him credit.  He is the only Republican among the 16 candidates that ran against Mr. Trump who accused him of being unqualified and unfit to hold the office of President of the United States that did not bow down and kiss his ring after dropping out of the race.  He said that he refused to do so because Mr. Trump made things personal by verbally attacking his father and his wife.  While that might be true – from the start, he did not want to endorse him – and perhaps would not have anyway – but Mr. Trump’s attack on his father and wife provided the perfect cover for him to avoid that endorsement.

Whether Senator Cruz made a mistake by doing what he did at the Republican National Convention or whether he decided to just roll the dice on the chance that he would receive great gains in his political career that he could later use to catapult him into the White House as POTUS at this point, from my perspective, is irrelevant.  What is relevant – again, from my perspective – is that what he did might convince Republicans to reassess whether or not they believe Mr. Trump is fit and qualified to be president before they cast their ballots: and if they reconsider, that there will be enough of them who decide that he is unfit and unqualified to prevent him from winning the general election.

We have had Republican presidents in the past who are good men that have run the country effectively (from Republicans’ point of view) and, to the best of their ability, based on principle and fairness.  They have put aside their personal thoughts and agenda, shunned divisive language and actions and worked to maintain our country’s commitment to unity.  That is not what Mr. Trump is doing.  He built his campaign on divisiveness and has openly spouted hatred and separatism in all forms throughout his primary campaign.  There were enough dog whistles in the language of his 1-hour-plus acceptance speech to satisfy the appetite of all of those who in anyway espouse some form or fashion of divisiveness.

To most Republicans, there were many candidates, in that group of 17 that began the race to become the 2016 Republican nominee who would make an excellent president.  There were two or perhaps even three among them that I would have been comfortable with and I felt could be a good president but Mr. Trump definitely was not in that number.  That is because I got the distinct feeling that he was more interested in pushing people of color back down and having the country stand on their backs in order to reach what he perceives to be its highest heights and achieve what he perceives to be its full potential.  Yes, “make America great again”!  You know, kind of like those ‘good ole days’ that he has lamented having passed America by.

I want a president who truly cares about America and who will represent all of the people.  I want a president who truly cares about America and who will be a voice for all of the people.  I want a president who truly cares about America and who will be the champion for all of the people.  I want a president who truly cares about America, who cares about me and who will represent me.  I want a president with compassion and a heart, one who not just knows the definition of empathy but who is capable of feeling and truly expressing it.  I want a president who is cerebral and has the good judgment to speak in measured words because he is intimately aware of the impact that the words of a person in their position can have.  I want a president that is worthy of holding the office of the President of the United States of America and who is worthy and capable of leading this great country.  I want a president who will make America proud!  That president is not Donald J. Trump.

Eulus Dennis – author, Operation Rubik’s Cube and Living Between The Line

Situation normal all screwed up (SNASU).  Police officers across America continue to kill Black citizens, Black citizens are beginning to kill more police officers, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump continues to spout words of divisiveness and hate, Republicans who in the past could be depended upon to be statesmen and do the right thing have put away their moral compasses and are supporting him for the sake of party unity despite their terrifying thoughts that if he wins the odds are extremely high that – based on countless examples from his campaign thus far – he could ruin America.  One can only hope that this putting away of moral compasses is just temporary.

On the flip side of the coin, Democrats are still squabbling and complaining about how they do not trust Hillary Clinton so they are struggling with deciding whether or not to vote for her and some of Senator Bernie Sanders’ supporters have even said that they will vote for Donald Trump.  Many Democrats – and likely the great majority of Republicans, are angry because she was not criminally indicted for her email fiasco and so are saying that they will not vote for her.

In the meantime, national polls are showing that these two presumptive nominees are in a virtual tie with regard to who would win the general election if it were held at the time of their polling.  For those who believe what Hillary Clinton has said about Donald Trump, and what Mr. Trump’s 16 Republican opponents said about him before they dropped out of the race to become president; which, was that he is unqualified and unfit to hold the office of President of the United States, that is a scary thought.

While congress continues to be inept at governing, America is becoming more polarized every day and the country is slowly falling apart.  Congress’s solution?  Let’s take a vacation.  They have left Washington and will not return until after Labor Day.  To make things worse, I read an article in Politico recently that said that the Senate was on track to work the fewest number of days in 60 years.  For far too long now, we have been paying our elected officials to do nothing more than vacation from their responsibilities.  The question is, if to vacation is their only job, why do we need them and why do we continue to pay them with tax dollars derived in large part from hardworking everyday Americans?

How can those elected officials who are supposed to be leading us take their responsibility to lead so lightly?  What have things come to in America when our politicians seem to feel that their greatest responsibility to their constituents is to get reelected?  Whatever happened to statesmanship and country first in American politics?

It does no good for an out of work politician like 2016 also ran presidential candidate Jeb Bush to write an op-ed stating that presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump does not represent the future of the country or the GOP, lightly brush over his faults and then, as usual, blame everything that has gone wrong and is continuing to go wrong in America and the world on President Obama and the Democrats.  And just like with Jeb Bush’s op-ed, what former Republican U.S Treasury Secretary and chief executive of Goldman Sacs Henry M. Paulson Jr. penned is almost just as ineffective.  Although he was more open in the article that he wrote about the havoc that Mr. Trump is likely to wreak if he is elected president, says that he will not vote for him and tells his fellow Republicans that it is now time to put country first, he too then goes on to blame President Obama and the Democrats for America’s problems.  The implication in his article is, oh, if we could just get a ‘real’ Republican (anyone other than Donald Trump) into office, America and the world would instantly become better and everything in it would be hunky-dory.

To continue to ignore the deterioration of our country in the hopes that the bad things will eventually go away on their own is ludicrous.  To bury our heads in the sand like this and refuse to acknowledge our faults when it comes to the ugly and despicable parts of American democracy will not fix our problems.  Instead, it has fostered the problems of divisiveness that we are now witnessing in our country.

We are all angry and mainly out of fear are tempted to separate into groups of those who look like us and protect “our” interest.  Rhetoric like that that we are hearing from Donald Trump is meant to stoke those fears.  Mr. Trump knows exactly what he is doing!  He is doing whatever it takes to be elected as president of the United States of America.  It does not matter to him that he is ripping America apart because, as usual, everything is all about Donald Trump.  Even if he does not truly espouse all of the divisive things that he is saying and has no intention of implementing them because he intends to put the country back together again after he is elected, should that happen; it could easily happen that he will find himself left with a “humpty dumpty” situation and America will suffer irreparable damage as a result.

There are far too many of those in America – Democrats and Republicans, those who range from the far left to the far right in their politics, people of all colors and ethnicities and males and females who are reasonable and have always managed to work together in the past to allow anyone to ruin that; especially someone as shallow and whose motives are as obvious as those of Mr. Trump.  I can’t recall which of our elected officials in Washington it was who said it recently but he said that if we decide to move forward with this eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth approach to America’s problems, we will ultimately be a blind and toothless nation.

It is understandable that those of us who do not hold elected office are all angry and frustrated right now but it is imperative that we stop, take a deep breath, regain our composure and attack America’s problems head-on with reasonable and well thought out rationale.  We must expect and demand this of ourselves if we are to demand it from those who hold elected office.  Once we get our own house in order then we can effectively demand the same thing of our elected officials because each of us will be able to effectively use the power of their vote as a means to reward those officials who respond appropriately and punish those who do not.

Your vote counts.  So whether you are a Democrat, Republican or Independent, always remember, your vote is the most important one of all…unless you don’t use it!

Eulus Dennis – author, Operation Rubik’s Cube and Living Between The Line