Watch Joe Biden's Gettysburg Speech - October 6, 2020 - "Again we are a house divided"

I'm sure that I'm not the only one who missed seeing Joe Biden's speech on the Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, battlefield yesterday. It was easy for the media and voters to be distracted by the steroid-fueled tweetstorm from the recently-dehospitalized White House resident trying to divide us further with strings of short all-caps tweets while Biden was speaking about bringing us together (without mentioning his opponent's name).

I did miss the speech when it was being delivered live on a Tuesday during a work week, but the beauty of the internet is that I can watch it now -- and so can you, if you have 22 free minutes. You don't need my commentary; just watch it.

Is there any proof that Donald Trump ever voted (before voting for himself)?

Trump on Facebook, 13 August 2016, promising to
change system from "Rigged" to "Fixed."

It was strange when Ivanka and Eric Trump couldn't figure out the rules for voting as Republicans in this spring's New York primary (I figured out how to switch from "No Party" to "Democratic" even without my father running), but maybe voting has never been a high priority within the Trump family before 2016.

This feeling was reinforced when Donald Trump said the following to Bill O'Reilly as he started his latest free-fall in the polls:

“The whole thing with voter ID identification I think is really — I mean people are going to walk in, they are going to vote 10 times maybe. Who knows? They are going to vote 10 times. I am very concerned and I hope the Republicans are going to be very watchful and I hope the authorities are going to be very watchful.” --Trump on Fox News, August 2

Who knows? Anyone who has ever been at an actual local polling station knows that this sort of casual "going to vote 10 times maybe" would be impossible. I've only voted in five different places in two states (New York and New Jersey). None of them ever required photo IDs, but once you signed your name in the book, there would be no way to sign twice (or ten times) without having created multiple identities at multiple addresses in advance. How could a significant number of people be recruited to commit these crimes?

By this week in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump was keeping the same conspiracy theories alive, though now admitting that the thousands or millions of vote fraudsters might only be voting half as many times:

"We're gonna watch Pennsylvania. Go down to certain areas and watch and study and make sure other people don't come in and vote five times. ... The only way we can lose, in my opinion -- and I really mean this, Pennsylvania -- is if cheating goes on. I really believe it." --Trump in Altoona, Pennsylvania, August 12

Trump is currently down by more than 9 points in the latest Keystone State polls, and he has never led there, but if he loses in November it will only be due to "those people" voting 5 or 10 times? This is dangerous anti-democratic and anti-American demagoguery aimed at the most credulous elements of his uneducated base of supporters, and it will be amplified by the Republican spokespeople of Fox News who still harbor fictions about Romney losing Pennsylvania because of fraud.

Now, even though every polling place already has official poll watchers from both parties at every local site (something that most 70-year-olds with a lifetime of voting behind them would probably know), Donald J. Trump is asking supporters on his website today to volunteer as "Trump Election Observers" to "Help Me Stop Crooked Hillary From Rigging This Election!"

As seen on donaldjtrump.com on August 13, 2016.

There has never been more of a need for an absolute landslide for Hillary Clinton. Every vote in every state counts in 2016. A decisive electoral college victory will not be enough to convince the most hardcore conspiracy theorists, but a popular vote burial of trumpism will insure that the conspiracy theorists might remain a very small nutcase fringe rather than a main current of Republican thought.

And are we ever going to see any documentary proof that Donald Trump visited an actual polling place before he voted for himself in 2016?
(UPDATE 10/21/16: Click to see video of DJT and Billy Bush voting in 2004.)

Hey, White Guys from Pennsylvania! Do You Know What "They" Are Saying About You?

I'm one of you . . .

This map shows the surname distribution of the writer of TrueBlueLiberal.org.
Create a map with your surname's distribution at www.gens-us.net.

I may live in the state to your east now, but I'm one of you (a ninth-generation Pennsylvanian) and I'm pissed that the editorial writers and Sunday morning talking heads are all parroting a variation of the same line about Barack Obama's historic speech (which will be known in America's future textbooks as "A More Perfect Union"). Not to oversimplify too much, but the argument with which "they" all agree seems to go like this: "This may have been one of the most eloquent speeches delivered in the United States in half a century -- certainly the most eloquent speech of this young century -- but Tom Sixpack, Dick Beergut, and Hardhat Harry of Pennsylvania only have the attention span to watch short out-of-context clips of Jeremiah Wright sermons on Fox News; they will never watch or read the entire Barack Obama speech on race delivered in Philadelphia. And if Pennsylvania's Toms, Dicks, & Harrys do somehow accidentally read the words, they won't understand or be moved by them."
Please prove them wrong on April 22nd!

If you can't see the video up above, please read the transcript, in which the words lose none of their power.

Barack Obama gives Tom, Dick, and Harry a lot more credit for understanding these issues and these arguments than those who try to mediate (or influence) the conversation between candidate and voter. Read and listen to some of his words directly:

"Like the anger within the black community, these resentments [of the white working and middle class] aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
"Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding."

--Barack Obama
Philadelphia, March 18, 2008

If anyone forwards you a video or transcript of an out-of-context Jeremiah Wright sermon, send them the links to the transcript and video of "A More Perfect Union." How much better will this country be if we start to assume that every citizen can read and appreciate a well-reasoned, well-written, and soberly-delivered speech that treats us like adults and partners in running (and improving) this nation?

Just asking,
True Blue (Pennsylvania) Liberal

North of the Mason-Dixon Line? or will the real Pennsylvania please stand up on April 22!

James Carville is a Clinton adviser well-versed in the old 20th-century techniques of identity politics. His famous characterization of rural Pennsylvania as an extension of the deep south is one that I've repeated over the years, but it seems to have a variety of citations.
These are the variations on the theme collected at Wikiquote:

• Between Paoli (one of Philadelphia's westernmost suburbs) and Penn Hills (one of Pittsburgh's easternmost suburbs), Pennsylvania is Alabama without the blacks. They didn't film "The Deerhunter" there for nothing -- the state has the second-highest concentration of NRA members, behind Texas.
• Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh on one end, Philadelphia on the other, and Alabama in between. (Alternate)
  
• Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with Alabama stuffed between them. (Alternate)
• During the 1992 presidential campaign, Democratic political consultant James Carville described Pennsylvania as "Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with Alabama in between."
• Pennsylvania is "two cities separated by Alabama."

The first variant, with its specificity and its qualification of rural PA as "Alabama without the blacks" has the truest ring to it even though I wasn't familiar with that version. Alabama with its African-American population would, of course, give Obama an absolute landslide.

I'm a native of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia is my birthplace and was my home for the first eight years of my life; before that, eight generations of my father's family lived toward that maligned center of the state (my unusual last name is almost common in the Lancaster, Gettysburg, and Harrisburg area). There's nothing I want more than to have the good people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania -- not just those in the Steel City and the City of Brotherly Love -- prove that the politics of racial division don't work anymore. I want my home state surprising the rest of the country with a resounding victory for Obama that effectively ends this primary campaign. If my bumper stickers ever arrive from the BarackObama.com store (the demand is very high), I'll slap them on the back of my car just to drive back and forth along the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

-True Blue Pennsylvania Liberal