Quentin Kopp Should Fear Felon Trump’s Veneer, Not Kamala Harris’

Please Don’t Repeat My 2016 Foolish Mistake!

Trump Was Found Guilty of Sexual Abuse, Felony Fraud, and Faces Felony Racketeering Charges. By contrast, Kamala Harris’ Campaign Finance and Double-Dipping Salary Violations Weren’t Felonies. Their “Veneers” Are Quite Different

Our Democracy is at stake. It’s worth saving from Trump.

Editor’s Note:The Westside Observer does not endorse candidates or issues, opinions of its authors and reporters are their own, not the Westside Observer.

by Patrick Monette-Shaw

• • • • • • • • • • August 28, 2024 • • • • • • • • • •

No matter how much my esteemed colleague at the Westside Observer, Quentin Kopp, wants to quibble over Kamala Harris’s “veneer,” it’s unambiguous that we have just one choice for casting our ballots on November 5.

In Kopp’s August 6, 2024, Westside Observer article “Kamala Harris – Beyond the Veneer“ he wrote:

“Visualizing Ms. Harris as president of these United States makes me fear for the future of our country. Coupled with the Republican Party’s candidate, convicted felon Donald J. Trump, we Americans possess little choice on November 5, 2024.”

Like Kopp, I, too, was troubled that Kamala Harris received a paltry $34,000 fine from San Francisco’s Ethics Commission rather than the $275,000 fine she could — and should — have been assessed. Had Kopp, Peter Keane, and Larry Bush served on the Ethics Commission at the time, Harris may have had to pay the maximum fine allowed.

Visualizing Trump in a second term as President should scare the poop out of everyone! The contrast between Trump and Harris is like night vs. day. Or like “Felon vs. Prosecutor.”

The bigger fear we must face is that Trump is the mastermind of Project 2025, despite his false disavowal he knows nothing about Project 2025, an obvious mea culpa. If you believe that, I have an estate near Mar-a-Lago I’d be happy to sell you.

After all, we all know nearly every word out of Trump’s mouth is one lie, or another. Does Quentin Kopp must know this?

Among many other horrors, Project 2025 includes:

• Allowing government databases to monitor women’s pregnancies.

• Imposing a “biblically-based definition of marriage and families.” That would essentially end decades of protections for our LGBT+ brothers and sisters, and effectively end gay marriage, a Supreme Court ruling the current crop of Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justices are already poised to overturn.
• Placing the Justice Department under the President’s direct control, Trump’s wet dream to end his federal prosecutions of stealing classified documents and his role in the January 6 insurrection.

But for all we know, Project 2025 may go further and try overturning decades of civil rights progress and potentially overturning the Voting Rights Act nationwide. What’s more, Project 2025 calls for massive deregulation of Medicare Advantage plans that could affect retirees’ choices of primary care doctors if they are deemed as “out-of-network” physicians by unscrupulous insurance companies. Hundreds of millions of Americans from all walks of life have a direct stake in ensuring Donald Trump’s Project 2025 is dead on arrival!

And there’s a corollary fear that Trump would be able to appoint a seventh Republican to the U.S. Supreme Court. Kopp must know (as a former judge himself) that another Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justice poses an existential threat to Democracy and good government across these United States — a graver threat for the future of our country than Harris’ “veneer”!

So, I heartily disagree with Kopp! The choice voters face is crystal clear: We must vigorously choose not to elect the Felon named Trump, whose own “veneer” is shellacked with felonies! Just as his hair and orange glow are shellacked or airbrushed into place.

I’ve long respected Kopp as a former State Senator, retired Superior Court Judge, and former San Francisco Supervisor. He also served admirably on the San Francisco Ethics Commission alongside Peter Keane, a former Dean of Golden Gate University School of Law. I admired Keane immensely. And I’ve long admired Kopp’s dedication to open public government and the same commitment of Kopp’s wife, Mara, who was affiliated with San Francisco’s Good Government Alliance.

Kopp is an elder statesman, entitled to his opinions, as we all are. But Kopp is wrong about the November presidential election and the choice we face between Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party presidential nominee, and Donald Trump, the Republican Party nominee.

Kopp is wrong. Period. The choice between Harris and Trump is the difference between a moderate (whom I don’t much respect, either) — and a convicted felon. Our choice couldn’t be clearer. After all, our Democracy is at stake.

Wishful Thinking

After Kopp said he realizes California is a one-party state and his vote means nothing as an Independent, he wrote: “I seek suggestions,” rhetorically asking if he should write himself in as president. Then he pivoted to maybe a “third party” aspirant might make the ballot. There’s no way that could possibly happen in all 50 states with less than 90 days to go following publication of his article. He tossed out another pipe dream, writing “Maybe another American [candidate]will appear.” Then wrote, “For now, it’s bleak.”

Yes. It remains “bleak” between Trump and the Democrat’s replacement candidate, Kamala Harris.

Mr. Kopp concluded his article quoting Victor Marani, chairman of the California chapter of the American Independent Party, who recently said “It’s time for California to declare independence from the antiquated two-party system … and join the American Independent Party of California today!”

Mr. Kopp bemoaned that California’s Secretary of State had apparently ruled four years ago that you can’t qualify another political party for the California ballot with the word “Independent” in the party’s name.

While I sympathize with Mr. Kopp and Mr. Marani, and have long considered switching my own party registration to “No Party Preference,” now is not the time to quibble about “bleak” or “veneers.”

Although some hope an aspirational miracle might occur in 2024, they may be forgetting that in the 2016 presidential election, between the Democrat and Republican candidates, they snagged 94.3% of the nationwide popular vote, while the three main alternative parties — the Green, Libertarian, and Independent parties — ended up with a mere 4.9% of the popular votes. The three alternative parties didn’t manage to block Hillary from winning the popular vote; they just made a small dent in her popular vote victory. Somehow, Trump snagged winning the Electoral College vote and became president, shocking everyone — especially shocking me.

And between her official campaign committee and outside groups, Hillary outspent Trump by $350.5 million (with Hillary spending $790.7 million and Trump spending $440.2 million). But her outsized spending advantage didn’t sway the Electoral College vote. We wound up suffering through four long years of Trump telling us to inject bleach as a COVID cure, among Trump’s other disastrous actions as president, including the assault on the nation’s Capitol on January 6, 2021, and Trump’s appointment of three Justices to the U.S. Supreme Court!

There is a lesson in there for all of us. First, alternative parties to our two main political parties stand no realistic snowball in hell chance of ever winning a presidential election. Alternative party “protest” votes in 2024, like the protest vote I cast in 2016, are essentially votes dumped into a trash bin. And second, casting votes for an alternative political party or a write-in vote in November 2024 heightens the risk of Trump appointing another Supreme Court justice to the bench.

Surely, Mr. Kopp — as a retired judge himself — can’t want another Trump-appointed Supreme Court Judge!

My 2016 Mistake

Back in 2016, when the choice was between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, I seem to recall having voted for Jill Stein. I was unable to bring myself to vote for Clinton, even though I’ve been a registered Democrat for the past 23 years since I turned 20 and gained the right to vote after the 26th Amendment was passed in July 1971.

But in 2016, I couldn’t stomach Clinton’s smug assertions that she was “entitled” to become president, and the first woman president at that.

That’s because I couldn’t stand her self-entitled tone; I also couldn’t vote for her “hawkish” worldview when she served as Secretary of State. Moreover, I knew that her husband, Bill Clinton, had relied on his wife’s political advice, as many male politicians do. And I absolutely loathed Bill Clinton for — among things — his lengthy laundry list of sins (the least of which was cheating on his wife, Hillary, during his disgusting, sordid cigar affair with Monica Lewinsky). That long laundry list included:

“Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”(DADT) Bill Clinton’s invention of the military’s DADT (Public Law 103-160) policy as a compromise measure that Clinton signed it into law in 1993 after he had campaigned in 1992 on his promise to allow all citizens to serve in the armed forces regardless of sexual orientation, was offensive to me. Because by that point I had been “out” for 23 years and had served in the U.S. Army for five-and-a-half years alongside gay captains, lieutenants, and enlisted members like me, and had received an honorable discharge. Perhaps because Clinton studiously avoided military service and never served in the military, he may not have known how pervasive gays and lesbians were in the military. We were everywhere!
Clinton ultimately violated his own campaign promise at a time when gay people were still derisively called “homosexuals.” DADT prohibited any non-heterosexual person from disclosing their sexual orientation, or even from speaking about any same-sex relationships. DADT mandated (no pun intended) that service members who didvoluntarily “Tell” (disclose) that they were homosexual or engaged in homosexual conduct should be discharged from the armed services.

• A July 6, 2011 ruling from a federal appeals court finally barred further enforcement of the DADT ban on openly gay service members, until then President Barrack Obama’s administration — including the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chief’s of Staff — finally certified that DADT’s repeal would not harm military readiness. DADT ended on September 20, 2011, after almost two decades. But an indelible stain had been left on Bill Clinton: Cowardice.

“Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA)was another U.S. federal law passed by the U.S. Congress that Clinton signed into law on September 21, 1996. DOMA banned federal recognition of same-sex marriage by limiting the definition of marriage to the union of one man and one woman. Despicably, DOMA went so far as to further allow states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages granted under the laws of other states.
In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court finally declared in a 5-to-4 ruling in United States v. Windsor that Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional and, therefore, required the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages conducted by the states. It took the U.S. Supreme Court another two years before it issued Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, holding that same-sex marriage was a fundamental right. The ruling required all states to perform and recognize the marriages of same-sex couples who had married in other states. (I remember hearing the family story of my parents running off to get married in Kentucky in 1946 when my mother was just 16. Their marriage was recognized in Illinois, where it was then illegal for a teenager to marry! So they had run off to Kentucky to tie the knot.)
Again, Hillary’s advice to her husband, Bill, was rooted in her Methodist faith. It took forever before the United Methodist Church reversed its 40-year ban on allowing LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriage. As late as 2016, the Church’s “Book of Discipline” had stated that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching” — despite the two Supreme Court rulings in 2013 and 2015. It took the Methodist Church another year after the two Supreme Court rulings to pull its head out of the sand.
DOMA wasn’t formally repealed until the federal “Respect for Marriage Act of 2022” was passed, and signed into law by President Joe Biden, almost a decade after the U.S. v. Windsor ruling affected DOMA.
So, it took almost three decades — between 1993 and 2022 — before the DOMA damage caused by Bill and Hillary Clinton that had delayed the advancement of gay rights was undone. It was the pair’s three-decade sin! Clearly, during the 2016 presidential election, I couldn’t support Hillary, in part due to the damage caused by DOMA and the delay of a basic civil right for gays and lesbian couples.
“Communications Decency Act” (CDA) was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on February 8, 1996.
Just three-and-a-half months after Bill signed it, on June 12, 1996, a panel of federal judges in Philadelphia blocked part of the “CDA,” saying it would infringe upon adults’ free speech rights. The next month, another federal court in New York struck down the portion of the CDA intended to protect children from indecent speech as too broad. On June 26, 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Philadelphia court, stating that the indecency provisions in the CDA were an unconstitutional abridgment of the First Amendment because the provisions:

• Didn’t permit parents to decide for themselves what material was acceptable for their children.
• Extended to non-commercial speech.
• Didn’t carefully define the words “indecent” and “offensive.

Both the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundationhad opposed the CDA. The Supreme Court had unanimously struck down the CDA’s anti-indecency provisions. Today, it’s unlikely Trump’s three Supreme Court appointees would have joined the unanimous CDAruling.
The Supreme Court’s ruling was another damning indictment that Bill and Hillary Clinton, both of whom had earned their law degrees from Yale Law School, as did felon Donald Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance — as opposed to Barrack Obama who had graduated from Harvard Law School and went on to teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School — had been OK with signing the CDA into law. However, Bill and Hillary should have known that the CDA would eventually be struck down unanimously as unconstitutional. Apparently, neither Bill nor Hillary, being Yale-trained lawyers, cared — given they were “moderates.” I was appalled that both of them cared so little about the First Amendment and couldn’t discern unconstitutional when they saw it! Perhaps they never practiced First Amendment law as lawyers.
[Of note, Quentin Kopp also earned his law degree from Harvard’s Law School.]
Repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 In 1999, Bill Clinton signed into law the repeal of the 1933 Banking Act known as “Glass Steagall.” It was arguably Clinton’s worst sin. Hillary had to have known what her husband was up to.
During the 66 years Glass-Steagall Act was in effect—before Bill signed a law repealing it—Glass-Stegal had prevented commercial banks from speculative risk-taking to avoid another financial crisis like the 1930s Great Depression that my mother experienced growing up in Chicago as a three-year-old. Banks were limited to earning 10% of their income from investments. With the stroke of his presidential pen, Clinton erased those risk-taking Glass-Steagall protections, with Hillary looking on as Bill’s advisor-in-chief as he flashed his pen in 1999, just two years after Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress was stained in 1997. There was Hillary “standing by her man” in 1999, after Bill had falsely claimed, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” in January 1998.

Knowledgeable financial experts accurately argue that Clinton’s repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act’s restrictions against affiliations between commercial and investment banks in 1999 sparked the 2008 financial meltdown crisis and its subsequent collapse of the sub-prime mortgage industry President Barack Obama inherited when he became president, following George W. Bush’s disastrous two-term, eight-year presidency, between Clinton and Obama.

My concerns about Bill and Hillary’s positions on these four issues weren’t made up in a vacuum. There were many other contributing factors, and a broad swath of middle-class voters like me felt that they had been sold out by the Clintons, too.

Bill Clinton’s repositioning of the Democratic Party two decades ago was a disaster when he led the pivot to the center. That begat an avalanche of other democratic politicians to follow suit — like lemmings rushing to the “moderates” reddish sea.

The Clintons — both Bill and Hillary — have long been seen as centrist Democrats, politicians willing to work with Republicans to strike compromise deals. And thereby compromise our values. The Clintons essentially pushed the Democratic party into migrating to electing so-called “moderates,” a term I’ve come to loathe.

On September 10, 2015, Hillary Clinton confessed to being something liberals had long suspected: Being a moderate Democrat. “You know, I get accused of being kind of moderate and center,” Clinton reportedly told an audience at a Women for Hillary event in Ohio. “I plead guilty.” Her 2015 “guilty” plea was the nail-in-the-coffin that prevented me from voting for her a year later in November 2016. I recall having voted for progressive Bernie Sanders in the June 2016 primary.

In February 2016, CNN reported that Bill and Hillary Clinton had been paid a combined $153 million in speeches from 2001 until Hillary launched her presidential campaign in May 2015.

In April 2016, the Associated Press (AP) reported that of the nearly $22 million Hillary had been paid in speaking fees, most was from groups that had recently lobbied the government, including firms that had lobbied the U.S. State Department when she served as Secretary of State. Notably, speaking fees from pharmaceutical, healthcare, and banking companies — including banks who stood to profit handsomely after Bill had “deregulated” banks when he signed the repeal of the “Glass-Segal Act” into law in 1999.

I just couldn’t bring myself to vote for Hillary Clinton with a clear conscience. I’ve forgotten whether I voted for Bernie Sanders as a write-in candidate or for Green Party candidate Jill Stein in the November 2016 general election. Either way, I remember rationalizing my vote under the impression that Donald Trump could never possibly win California’s 54 Electoral College votes since California was an Electoral College winner-take-all state.

That provided more “cover” for my decision not to vote for Hillary. Unfortunately, we wound up with Donald Trump’s disastrous four-year term as U.S. President anyway. So, I made a huge mistake voting for Stein or Sanders in 2016.

Do you remember when Trump recommended we inject bleach into our arms in 2020 to prevent contracting COVID? And inspired a coup on January 6 to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to president-elect Joe Biden and urged his basement-dwelling “base” to search out and hang Vice President Mike Pence from the gallows and do God-only-knows-what to then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi because Trump couldn’t acknowledge (let alone handle) news that voters had rejected him at the ballot box and that he himself was a “loser.” And then he spawned his “Big Lie.”

My Aversion to So-Called Moderates

Despite my “mistake” voting for Sanders or Stein rather than Hillary Clinton in 2016, for the past eight years I have consistently refused to vote for “moderates” in state and local elections.

Ever since Kamala Harris was elected as San Francisco’s District Attorney, I have refused to vote for her ascension to higher elected office. I refused to vote for her in her elections to California Attorney General and her election to the U.S. Senate.

Similarly, I have refused to vote for a long list of “moderates” who began their political careers in San Francisco’s politics that I can’t, haven’t, and won’t ever vote for, including Gavin Newsom, London Breed, Matt Haney, and several others. Before she died, Dianne Feinstein was on my “no vote” list, too.

Last June, I added California Congressman Adam Schiff to my list, too, after his despicable stunt propping up Republican Steve Garvey in the June 2024 run-off election against Congresswoman Katie Porter. Schiff reportedly feared that if Porter appeared on the November run-off ballot to replace Senator Diane Feinstein, he (Schiff) would lose to Porter because she was probably the better-liked Democrat. Congressman Schiff and his allies spent $11 million to elevate Garvey in the high-profile race, pushing Porter out and off of the November ballot. Schiff appeared to fear losing to a female candidate, just as Donald Trump fears losing to women candidates. There’s palpable misogyny for you.

It was the most underhanded thing I’ve witnessed Schiff do. Although I had previously donated significantly to Schiff’s campaigns, I’ll never do so again.

I’ve also recently added Supervisor Aaron Peskin to my list of people I will no longer vote for even if he is a “progressive” rather than a “moderate,” because of Peskin’s underhanded and misguided ending in January 2024 of taking remote call-in public testimony during Board of Supervisors meetings, which lead to many Boards and Commissions in The City following Mayor Breed’s subsequent “directive” that they should also end taking remote public testimony over the phone. Peskin had done so, claiming it would end antisemitism during City Hall hearings, but there was already a mechanism in place to cut off abusive speaker’s microphones when testifying in person and over the phone.

Life and Elections Are About Choices

As freelance journalist Danielle Campoamor, recently wrote on August 13:

“As Republicans continue to attack abortion rights and champion a nationwide abortion ban, Harris and her running mate are providing the country with an alternative — one that trusts pregnant people to make their own decisions about their bodies, pregnancies and families; that empowers physicians to do their jobs and adhere to their Hippocratic oaths; that continues to ensure parenthood is not a punishment for having sex but one of life’s overwhelming, joyful, scary, wonderful decisions.”

Elsewhere, Campoamor noted she had teared up listening to Governor Tim Walz describe his experience with IVF as a man, husband, and human yearning to be a parent. Campoamor noted Walz had acknowledged reproductive justice is not just a woman’s issue; it’s a man’s issue, a family issue, and a human rights issue. Trump is incapable of acknowledging that!

Life is about choices. Let’s hope that, come November, voters across this country make the right one.

Kopp needs to stop equivocating over whether he should consider an alternative to Harris. It’s time Kopp — and everyone else sitting on the fence as “undecided” or “independent,” whether that’s the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, or the American Independent Party — and start putting “country over political party.” After all, if Trump is not resoundingly defeated at the ballot box, Kopp has a lot more to fear from a second Trump presidency because the autocracy Trump will completely unmoor any sense of what our Country stands for anymore, eviscerating Kopp’s “good government alliance,” and our Democracy itself.

Trump poses more than just potentially existential threats to constitutional Democracy in the United States. Trump’s acts of betrayal and every single thing he’s done in the past are so profound they shatter almost everyone’s ability to trust him ever again.

As an e-mail I received from Politico on August 23, 2024 noted: “Some third-party presidential campaigns are noble endeavors driven by the loftiest of principles. Others are vanity projects, exercises in cynicism that leave our politics slightly more soiled for the experience.” I can’t agree more. As much as Mr. Kopp would like some unknown savior to suddenly appear as an alternative to Kamala Harris, a third-party push to get the “American Independent Party” to put forth a viable candidate is just a “vanity project” — a project doomed to fail and a project that could help Felon Trump win the Oval Office again.

We can’t afford that. We can’t afford “to go back” and hand Trump another four years to implement his Project 2025.

Join Independents, Undecided’s, Democrats … and Yes, Republicans

During last week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, notable Democrats, Republicans, and Independents strongly advocated for electing Kamala Harris, stating, in part:

Trump’s former press secretaryStephanie Grisham, a Republican, said Trump “has no empathy, no morals, and no fidelity to the truth.” Grisham said she’s casting her vote for Harris.

Republican Adam Kinzinger, the former U.S. Congressman from Illinois and a member of the January 6th Committee, said, “Trump is a weak man pretending to be strong. He is a small man pretending to be big.” Kinzinger went further, stating, “We must put country first. Democracy knows no party.” He added, “Donald Trump has suffocated the soul of the Republican Party. All we’re asked to do is to summon the courage to stand up to one weak man[Trump].”
He said he’ll be voting for Kamla Harris and encouraged his fellow Republicans who wish to “defend democracy and decency” to do the same. Kinzinger ended, saying: “Make the right choice. Vote. Vote for our bedrock values. And vote for Kamala Harris.”

Former first lady Michelle Obama said: “Who’s going to tell [Trump] that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs’?”

She masterfully noted, “If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top,” taking a jab at Trump coming down a golden escalator in 2015 to announce his first run for the presidency.

Deftly, Mrs. Obama said, “Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us [her and her husband, Barrack]. See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black.”

As for former President Obama, he rightly noted Trump’s “act” has gotten pretty stale. Barrack said: “We don’t need four more years of bluster and chaos. We’ve seen that movie — and we all know that the sequel’s usually worse. America is ready for a new chapter. America’s ready for a better story.”

Barrack is right: We must avoid a sequel of another four years with Trump “sitting on the throne” in the Oval Office.

On night three of the DNC’s convention in Chicago — where I lived for a decade — Oprah Winfrey, who had broadcast her “Oprah Winfrey Show” from Chicago for 25 years (which was long home to Barrack and Michelle Obama) and who has been a registered Independent for years, rightly noted that we voters need to stand up to bullies like Trump! She said: “This election isn’t about us versus them. It’s about you and me.” Oprah urged voters to choose common sense over Trump’s nonsense. She — like other speakers — declared, “We’re not going back” — to Trump.

• For his part, former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, currently the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation, noted: “Darkness is what[Trump] is selling you.”

The Obamas, Oprah, Mr. Kinzinger, Ms. Grisham, Mr. Buttigieg — and above all, Minnesota Tim Walz among many others — are right. If it’s good enough for them and others like them, it should be good enough for all of us.

We need to listen to each of them! It’s time we all put our country over party and elect Kamla Harris to prevent another Trump presidency.

Voters need to fight back and help convince persuadable, open-minded, independent voters who might be trying to make up their minds about how to cast their votes by refuting every chance we get that claims Vice President Kamala Harris is a Marxist, Israel-hating, open-borders-advocating, cop-criminalizing supervillain is a myth. She’s none of those things. Nor should Kamala’s “veneer” prevent anyone from voting for her.

By way of contrast, Donald J. Trump is undoubtedly a convicted felon. There’s no way to ignore his felonious behavior. Otherwise, he will bankrupt America, just as he has bankrupted his casinos in the past and almost bankrupted our Democracy.

It’s painfully clear Trump convinced Congress to kill the bi-partisan border immigration “deal” Republicans had recently helped negotiate, because Trump knew that if Congress had passed it, President Joe Biden would have signed into law an immigration reform deal. This would have been a victory for Biden — and now Kamla Harris — but it would have stripped Trump of a campaign issue he is praying will help him win re-election in November.

Unfortunately, there’s credible speculation that “Bibi” Netanyahu pulled out of the most recent settlement talks for peace in Israel and Gaza because Trump feared it would take away another election issue that might cost him the November 5 election. If it is proved “Bibi” did pull out of the most recent deal to release Israel’s hostages and end the conflict at Trump’s request, then Trump clearly violated the Logan Act by interfering in U.S. policy negotiations! Another reason Trump should be thrown in jail and the key thrown away.

If Trump wins on November 5, it will bring a crashing end to any “two-state solution” proposed by the Oslo Accords for Palestinians to achieve self-determination. Once again, because Trump’s damaged, infantile brain can only view an end to the war in Israel as depriving him of another election “issue” that might prevent him from winning! That’s how twisted Trump’s worldview is, only able to focus on “me, me, me.” It’s another signal of just how desperate Felon Trump is to prevent Jack Smith from prosecuting and putting him in prison — where he belongs.

Similarly, if Trump wins in November, he will let his hero and mentor, Vladimir Putin, do “whatever the hell he wants” — not only with Ukraine but also with any NATO country that doesn’t spend “enough” on defense, which would threaten America’s own Democracy, as much as it would threaten Ukraine’s and other democracies throughout Europe. That may lead to the end of NATO as we know it. And, of course, Trump is so stupid he leaves the adjective “enough” undefined. (It’s not clear Trump even knows what adjectives are since he never writes clear sentences.)

Obviously, as one observer noted, a vote for Trump is a vote to roll the dice on a drastically different vision of free speech in the United States — one that bears no resemblance to the not-so-distant past and would resemble nothing most modern-day Americans have experienced.

On-the-fence voters must not forget that if Trump is elected to another term in the White House, he will not only become a dictator for day one (or longer), he will more than likely have an opportunity to appoint even more right-wing nutcases to the U.S. Supreme Court — an institution already hell bent on altering First Amendment free speech protections that my friend retired Judge Quentin Kopp surely must know is a huge liability and distinct possibility. If for no other reason, he should stop “seeking suggestions” on how to cast his vote on November 5.

I can’t make the same mistake again, which I made in November 2016. Collectively, “we” can’t afford to make that mistake again. Nor should you.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will get my vote — more for Tim than for Kamala (since he’s more of a “progressive” than Kamala, who is a Clintonesque “moderate”). I’m hoping Walz may have a crack in 2028 or 2032 to run for president himself (hopefully to help keep Gavin Newsom out of the White House, too).

After all of these years, I may now follow Oprah Winfrey’s lead and become a registered Independent — but only if I am allowed to vote in Democratic primaries to stop a future Trump clone. But if Trump runs again in 2028 — as a really, really, old man in his mid-eighties — I’ll vote again for any Democrat to keep Trump from returning to the White House!

After all, if Democratic nominees Harris and Walz are so awful, why are their Republican critics stuck peddling nonsense, along with Mr. Kopp pondering whether an “Independent” white knight might ride in on a white horse at the last moment?

In the end, Harris’ Vice-Presidential running mate, Tim Walz, has the right “Golden Rule” response to standing up to bullies: “Mind your own damn business,” a battle cry you likely are never going to hear come out of Gavin Newsom’s mouth.

Hold your nose if you must — like I will. Vote Blue! That may help Tim Walz advance in 2028 or 2032 — and hopefully help prevent Gavin Newsom from running for U.S. President. I prefer Walz any day over Newsom, and prefer Kamala over Trump.

Vote for Kamla Harris and Tim Walz on November 5!

Monette-Shaw is a columnist for San Francisco’s Westside Observer newspaper, and a member of the California First Amendment Coalition (FAC) and the ACLU. He operates stopLHHdownsize.com. Contact him at monette-shaw@westsideobserver.com.

Monette-Shaw is a columnist for San Francisco’s Westside Observer newspaper, and a member of the California First Amendment Coalition (FAC) and the ACLU. He operates stopLHHdownsize.com. Contact him at monette-shaw@westsideobserver.com.

August 28, 2024