This presidential election feels awfully familiar again

Published 2:32 pm Tuesday, October 27, 2020

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This current presidential race feels all so familiar. Like the 2016 race, the latest polls show Donald Trump significantly behind his Democratic opponent. Once again, the media is confidently predicting his demise and delighting in their dream of an upcoming Democratic victory.

The Democratic presidential candidate has a huge financial advantage in the final stage of the campaign. In 2016, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approximately twice the campaign funds of Donald Trump. In this race, Democratic presidential nominee, former vice president Joe Biden, has an extra $180 million in his campaign coffers. This will give him a tremendous boost in the final appeal to undecided voters in the battleground states.

While Donald Trump is creating enthusiasm and excitement with large crowds at rallies, the Democratic presidential candidate is drawing flies and has no energy. Hillary had smaller crowds than Donald Trump, but Biden only draws a handful of people in socially distant circles.

There are nagging questions about the health of the Democratic presidential candidate. In 2016, Hillary Clinton had frequent coughing fits and seemed quite sick on several occasions. In this race, Joe Biden has made memorable errors during speeches and interviews, leading some health experts to question his mental competence.

In the final days of the 2016 race, mysterious emails surfaced to cast doubt on the veracity of Hillary Clinton. After the FBI refused to charge her for the unforgivable handling of 30,000-plus emails sent from an unsafe home-based computer, the laptop of her assistant’s husband, Anthony Weiner, was discovered with even more emails to process. They were quickly reviewed, and no charges were issued, but the episode reminded Americans of Hillary’s previous scandal.

In the homestretch of this campaign, the laptop of Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son, was discovered at a Delaware computer repair shop. It contained thousands of emails linking Joe Biden to corrupt business dealings in China and Ukraine. It solidified the public’s impression of Joe Biden as a lying, crooked politician.

In this race, as in 2016, Trump’s opponents have thrown everything possible against him, hoping enough will stick to cause his downfall. Both Clinton and Biden enjoyed the enthusiastic support of a biased national media, which is virulently anti-Trump with no objectivity or fairness in their reporting.

Yes, the 2020 presidential race has striking similarities with the 2016 election. The key difference is former candidate Donald Trump is now president of the United States. He has a four-year record of success to showcase to the American electorate.

His 2016 opponent was a tired political hack. Hillary Clinton spent decades aspiring to become president, finally winning the Democratic Party nomination in a battle with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont). The same is true of Trump’s 2020 opponent, former vice president Joe Biden, who also bested Sanders in a nomination contest. However, Biden has been in the Washington D.C. swamp for even longer than Clinton.

Biden’s political career began in 1970 with a council district victory in Delaware and then he moved into the nation’s capital with a surprising U.S. Senate victory in 1972. Sadly, for the American people, and especially for the voters of Delaware, Biden never left.

In this race, Biden is offering an array of promises to the American people, but never accomplished any of them during his long five-decade career. In contrast, President Donald Trump fulfilled his campaign promises to the American people. He is the antithesis of Joe Biden, an outsider who is a man of action. Joe Biden is all talk, no action. What he did accomplish, such as the crime bill of 1994, has had devastating results for the country.

The record shows that Biden and his family have enriched themselves during “public service,” while President Trump and his family have lost billions of dollars during the past four years. While Biden and his family have made millions of dollars in the last four years, Trump is the first president since John F. Kennedy to refuse his salary while in office.

President Trump has donated his salary to worthy government agencies such as the National Park Service, the Veterans Administration, and the Small Business Administration. This selfless act has not received enough attention, but it shows the character of President Trump. He is suffering all this media, Democratic Party and Deep State abuse, for no financial compensation, to strictly benefit the American people.

At 10 days before the election, President Trump was behind by 8.1 percent in the Real Clear Politics average of polls. At this point in 2016, Hillary Clinton was only 3.8 percent ahead of Trump. If President Trump finds a way to win again, it will be even more of an upset than it was four years ago.

The odds are so stacked against him, that famed pollster Frank Luntz said, “If the numbers turn out to be wrong…if Donald Trump is right and these pollsters are wrong about this race, then people like me are going to have to find a new profession.”

It would be a tremendous benefit for the nation if these biased pollsters who use flawed methodology, skewed questioning and unfair sampling were wrong and had to vacate their profession. More importantly, the nation needs another four years of Donald Trump as president. The stakes of this election are immense, and the country cannot risk giving the presidency to a compromised, incompetent, and dangerously liberal career politician like Joe Biden.

For the benefit of our country, it is imperative that the American people prove the so-called experts wrong again. It would be a wonderful déjà vu for the United States of America. The alternative is both alarming and perilous and would be a nightmare for the country.

In this election, the contrast is stark, and the implications are massive. This incredibly important choice rests in the hands of the American people. Let us pray they make the only rational decision, the re-election of President Donald Trump.

Jeff Crouere is the host of “Ringside Politics,” which airs at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 10 p.m. Sunday on WLAE-TV 32, a PBS station, and 7 a.m. till 11 a.m. weekdays on WGSO 990 AM in New Orleans and the Northshore. He is the political analyst for WGNO-TV ABC 26 and a columnist for selected publications. For more information, visit his web site at RingsidePolitics.com. E-mail him at jeff@ringsidepolitics.com.