The Environmentalist by Nancy Ohanian The NY Times reported late yesterday that Señor T's "withdrawal from the second presidential debate led to the event’s cancellation. Now, three days ahead of the final debate, Mr. Trump’s campaign is demanding changes to the format and accusing the organizers of bias toward Joe Biden." Always so much drama with these people! Trump's campaign manager Bill Stepien posted the letter he sent to the debate commission on Twitter to refocus Thursday’s debate on the subject of foreign policy, rather than the six subjects announced last week by the moderator, Kristen Welker of NBC. They are "fighting Covid-19," "American families," "race in America," climate change, national security and leadership. He's accusing the debate commission that it had "promised" the debate would be about foreign policy and accused the members of "pro-Biden antics" that "have turned the entire debate season into a fiasco." On top of that, the debate commission adopted new rules to mute "anyone" who speaks during the other candidate's turn, something that Trump has said he will not accept. AP reported that "The commission has faced pressure from the Trump campaign to avoid changing the rules, while Biden’s team was hoping for a more ordered debate. In a statement, the commission said it 'had determined that it is appropriate to adopt measures intended to promote adherence to agreed upon rules and inappropriate to make changes to those rules." The Commission, under attack from Trump, who depends on making a circus out of everything as part of his brand, announced that "Both campaigns this week again reaffirmed their agreement to the two-minute, uninterrupted rule. The Commission is announcing today that in order to enforce this agreed upon rule, the only candidate whose microphone will be open during these two-minute periods is the candidate who has the floor under the rules." This morning former RNC chairman Michael Steele dropped a bombshell on Trump's head:
Rather than binding up the nation’s wounds, Trump exacerbates division. Rather than standing up to the world’s dictators, Trump cravenly seeks the favor of thugs. Rather than fostering free enterprise, Trump embraces economic principles not only outdated in Lincoln’s time, but made even worse today by a leader who lost close to a billion dollars in a single year running a casino. Rather than seeking to build on the legacy of the Republican Party’s founders, of which Trump is surely ignorant, Trump has posited a single purpose for the GOP-- the celebration of him. As I’ve reflected on matters of leadership, decency, and constitutional norms I am reminded of the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who said “a man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.” Character matters. Our vote matters. The leader we choose matters. I cannot be silent, and I hope neither can you because we know a vote for Joe Biden is what is best for our country-- because America matters.
Also this morning, USA Today made it's first-ever presidential endorsement. The editors wrote that "Biden is a worthy antidote to Trump’s unbounded narcissism and chronic chaos. Having surmounted heartbreaking personal loss-- his first wife and year-old daughter died in a car crash, and his son Beau died of brain cancer-- Biden exudes decency and empathy. Ask yourself: Can you imagine Joe Biden denigrating servicemembers as losers? Cozying up to autocrats abroad? Shaking down a foreign leader for dirt on a political opponent?... Biden is well positioned to repair the wreckage Trump has made of the federal government, from the foreign service to the science agencies Trump has tried to politicize. As vice president in the Obama administration, Biden played a central role in the last economic recovery and is equipped to handle another one.
If this were a choice between two capable major party nominees who happened to have opposing ideas, we wouldn’t choose sides. Different voters have different concerns. But this is not a normal election, and these are not normal times. This year, character, competence and credibility are on the ballot. Given Trump’s refusal to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power if he loses, so, too, is the future of America's democracy. For nearly four decades, the Editorial Board has stood for certain core values: truth, accountability, civility in public discourse, opposition to racism, common-ground solutions to the nation’s problems, and steadfast support for First Amendment rights. These aren’t partisan issues, or at least they shouldn’t be. Donald Trump has trampled each of these principles, making more than 20,000 false or misleading statements, ducking responsibility for his actions, spewing streams of invective at his critics, trafficking in racial fearmongering, governing more as the leader of the red states than of the United States, and relentlessly attacking the free press. Everything about Biden’s nearly half-century political career suggests he would do a far better job of respecting these values. “We need to revive the spirit of bipartisanship in this country, the spirit of being able to work with one another,” the Democratic nominee said in a recent speech in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.