Well, today was the day that Jeb Bush announced his candidacy, and predictably, his accompanying speech was heavy on rhetoric, light on policy, and chock-full of soundbites and one-liners. At one moment, a group of immigrant rights activists stood up to chant, "Legal-status isn't enough" answered swiftly and adeptly with a condemnation on President Obama's executive action on illegals and a declaration that Mr. Bush will be the President whom passes a bill on immigration reform. What ends up in Mr. Bush's 'Immigration Reform' and how he plans on getting House Republicans to bring it to a vote, let alone passing it, remains a mystery.
Now that Jeb Bush has 'Officially' announced his candidacy, we can finally get to asking substantive questions of the candidate Bush, that non-candidate Bush flatly refused to answer. Such questions as, how his Foreign Policy will differ from the disaster that was his older brother George W. Bush's' Foreign Policy. Or whether Jeb Bush was flouting Election Finance Laws by delaying his announcement until he couldn't avoid the awkward questions anymore.
Likely, he'll squirm his way out of such lines of questioning, or the media will avoid asking them. And what should we expect from our Elite One-percenters? Honesty? Integrity? Nah, just the run-around and rhetoric that Republicans are quick to spout but somehow gets redneck middle-aged white men from Texas so excited.
As is the norm, the last six years have been clean-up duty for Democrats after George W. Bush and Congressional Republicans along with their Wall Street buddies, managed to crash the economy in spectacular fashion. Meanwhile, the tea-party backlash against the all-too-generous TARP Program for the rich and Obamacare (which definitely wasn't Universal healthcare) disgusted the majority of the nation, while serving Republicans a major victory in the 2010 and 2014 mid-term elections.
So now, after thousands of hours of tax-payer funded filibustering later, Republicans have reeked havoc on our political system and equally so on our economic recovery, but still they badly want to steer the boat from 2016 on. They are even willing to lock-out millions of voters through suspicious new Voter ID Laws that conveniently also roll-back early voting in swing-states and block College Students from using their Student IDs to vote. This, alongside astonishing levels of district gerrymandering, makes it all the more likely that they will be able to reach that goal.
Yet, here we are, dealing with problems within our own Party, as our once-anti-Trade Democratic President tries to stuff a triage of Trade Deals (TPP, TTIP, and TiSA) down our throat by demanding Trade Promotion Authority. Which, conveniently, would last six years, well beyond Mr. Obama's time in office. So either the President is a Republican in disguise (he has sided with Mitch McConnell and John Boehner) or he is curiously confident in Secretary Clinton's ability to win the 2016 Presidential election, which isn't certain by any means or measure.
All of this flies in the face of middle and working-class voters, who's eroding opportunities are becoming more obvious by the day, even to the laziest of pundits and politicians. The worlds largest Multi-National Corporations are sitting on nearly $2 Trillion dollars while most of us can barely find a minimum-wage job so we can enjoy a pizza one night a week.
The CEO's of these Corporations, we learned recently, earn on average three hundred something percent more than the average earner. Yeah, these are the guys who are asking for another round of Global Trade, Privatization, and the whole-sale elimination of the Commons. This time, the Trade deal would cover nearly two-thirds of Global GDP. And yes, that is President Obama offering it to the one percent on a silver platter.
Somehow miraculously, there are a handful of House Democrats, led by the uber-popular Senator Elizabeth Warren, that are fighting the Administration and it's bizarre deal-with-the-devil Republican allies; most of whom, have sworn the demise of any legacy Mr. Obama may leave behind ( Ex. Dodd-Frank, Obamacare).
Their bravery in standing with the working and middle-classes deserves our attention and respect; if not for them, than for the fight they represent. How can we expect responsive politics if we don't reward politicians who do fight for us?
Jeb Bush may have announced his candidacy for the Republican Presidential Nomination, but he's quite far from deserving the respect of the American people. Until such a time that a candidate tells us how she or he will break the power that Corporations and their armies of lobbyists hold in the halls on Congress, or how to beat back the revolving-door from Politics/Government to Lobbyists and CEO, No candidate deserves our respect, nor our vote. Not Jeb, Not Hillary.