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Part One:
HOW WILL HISTORY VIEW OUR PRESIDENT AND OUR COUNTRY? We talk to John Nichols, national affairs correspondent for The Nation, about Pres. Trump’s decision to order American troops to stand aside while Turkish aggressors invade Syria and try to wipe out the Kurds. The sheer inhumanity of America seemingly condoning genocide has brought criticism — for the first time — from Republicans in the Senate and the House, as well as many voters in Trump’s political base.
Even though Trump’s complicity with Turkey may not be one of the “high crimes and misdemeanors” investigated and/or approved by the House of Representatives in a potential bill of impeachment, the legal requirements for actual impeachment are not required for the majority of American voters to have their eyes opened to Trump’s unfitness for office.
Part Two:
CAN ANY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD AS “THE SOLUTION”? We visit again with “Dr. Politics,” Steffen Schmidt, professor of political science at Iowa State University. We theorize that Pres. Trump got elected because many voters were upset that, in eight years, the Obama administration was unable to solve the deep systemic problems that had been afflicting people’s lives: economic insecurity, lack of access to affordable health care, climate change, inadequate and unaffordable housing.
Trump made promises to solve these problems but has failed to do so. Now, any rival candidate must show the voters why he or she is “the” one person who can achieve the public’s goals.
THE DEBATES ARE NOT HELPING THE PROCESS, because they rely so heavily on meaningless polls. At this early stage of the election, voters don’t know enough about the candidates to make an informed choice among them. So the polls reflect name recognition, superficial traits (“I like his hair,” “I don’t think she looks presidential enough.”), which (we hope!) will not end up being the factors that motivate voters’ actual decisions once election day rolls around.
Additionally, at the debates, the questioners pay far more attention to “the frontrunners,” leaving the voters without information about what their lower-polling rivals are proposing to do to improve the country. We all should listen more deeply to each candidate’s substantive proposals, before we start ruling out one or more candidate as “unelectable.”
