Presidential elections are generally overrated.  The federal government has vast powers over our lives, but it is questionable just how much the president plays into this.  As long as there isn’t a hardcore libertarian president, it seems that not much will change.

The wars overseas continue.  The so-called entitlement programs continue.  The massive spending continues.  The deficit spending continues and is getting worse.  The unfunded liabilities keep going higher.  To top it off, we live in an administrative state where alphabet agencies with little oversight write the regulations that we are required to follow.

The best I can say for Trump is that he hasn’t started any new major wars, although you never know what tomorrow may bring.  Trump has also helped expose the deep state for what it is (sometimes inadvertently) for those who care to pay attention.  Aside from this, Trump has been mostly a mess.  He does provide some entertainment value, but that can only make up for so much.

I have already made a case for not wanting Trump to be re-elected.  If I thought that the mask mandates and lockdowns would end soon after Trump losing the election, then I want him to lose.  Maybe the establishment would loosen its grip and stop punishing the gullible American people for Trump being in office.

With everything that has happened in 2020 so far, presidential politics has largely taken a back seat since March.  Now we await Joe Biden’s choice for running mate.  It is perhaps the most important vice presidential pick ever.  If Biden makes it to Election Day and actually wins, then I don’t know if he will take office.  I put the odds of him actually being president for a full 4-year term very low.

All three presidential candidates have a major marketing problem.  I refer to Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Jo Jorgensen.  These are the three I am following.  They are the three that will get the most votes, assuming that Biden is the nominee.  There will be other third-party candidates, but I don’t think they carry much weight.

Joe Biden

I will start with the easy one.  Biden’s whole personality is a marketing problem.  His cognitive abilities (or lack of) are a major marketing problem.  He can barely put together a coherent sentence.  Bernie Sanders, who is slightly older than Joe Biden, is far more charismatic, energetic, and coherent.

This is why Joe Biden has been locked up in his house.  The less he says, the better it is for his campaign.

Even when he puts out a YouTube video, he is tripping over his words.  These are not recorded live.  Does his mean his advisors don’t want to tell him to re-record some of these segments?  Worse, does it mean that Biden is recording several takes and the bad ones we see are the least bad of the bunch?

Now we’re hearing that Biden might try to avoid debating Trump.  If they use the coronavirus as an excuse, I don’t think that will play well with the American people.  You can easily have a debate and distance the candidates and the moderators.  Obviously, the Biden campaign would prefer not to have debates because it means fewer opportunities for Biden to mess up and stick his foot in his mouth.

Maybe it doesn’t matter though.  The people voting for Biden know he’s incoherent.  They aren’t really voting for Biden.  They are voting against Trump.

Donald Trump

The establishment has been throwing everything at Trump for over 4 years now.  For half the country, not much stuck.  The other half hates him or doesn’t really care about him.  The establishment finally nailed him in 2020 with the coronavirus.  They were able to decimate the American economy, which took away Trump’s number one issue to run on.

Trump hasn’t been the same since.  He also doesn’t have rallies now with tens of thousands of people.  This has taken away some of his spunk.

Trump sometimes has some decent things to say on the coronavirus and the lockdowns.  But he waffles a lot.  He tries to play both sides.  I don’t think that will work.

Trump hasn’t had a primetime speech to the nation in quite a while.  I believe the last time was in March when the hysteria had just taken hold.  I don’t understand why he doesn’t call a primetime speech that the media is essentially forced to cover.  He could bring out a lot of statistics showing the absurdity of shutting down the American economy because of a bad flu season.

He should have had primetime speeches explaining the Russia hoax when that happened.  He should have explained that it originated from a dossier that was linked to the Clinton campaign.  He should have explained that the FBI never actually verified that Russia stole emails from the DNC and that the story just came from a company contracting with the DNC.

He should have done the same with Ukraine.  In fact, he should be running commercials showing Joe Biden bragging about threatening to withhold foreign aid to Ukraine in order to get the prosecutor fired who was investigating the company his son worked for.

But Trump doesn’t do any of that.  Instead, he is too busy trying to blame China for his problems and banning the popular Tik Tok app. Yeah Donald, that’ll get you some votes.  Try to shut down a private company just because it is a Chinese company.  That should be popular with the young people who actually use the app.

It is amazing how politically stupid he is these days.  Maybe he’ll figure things out in the next few months.  Maybe he’ll turn it around like he did after his first debate with Hillary in 2016.  He needs to throw punches.

Unfortunately, some of those punches need to be thrown at his own cabinet members.  They also need to be thrown more at people like Fauci, the chief propagandist of the coronavirus.

When he throws punches at Biden, it shouldn’t come across as low blows.  He has many legitimate things in which to attack Biden. Trump doesn’t need to point out his cognitive problems.  People can figure that out on their own.  He does need to point out Biden’s involvement with Ukraine and getting that prosecutor fired.  He needs to point to his long record of big government.

Trump has been thrown off his game with the coronavirus.  I don’t know how much of this was planned by the powers-that-be, but they finally got something to work against him.  If Trump doesn’t come back swinging soon, he will be defeated, even by an incoherent Biden.

Jo Jorgensen

She has no chance of winning this race, but I still like to follow the Libertarian Party candidate. I think she is the best candidate the party has had since 2004, but that isn’t saying much.

I wanted her to run a campaign something along the lines of Ron Paul in 2007/ 2008 and again in 2011/ 2012.  She does sometimes have some good things to say.

Unfortunately, Jo has gone astray too.  She is allowing the establishment media to dictate what is important. That’s why she is trying to reach out to Black Lives Matter.

Now, I think there is nothing wrong with reaching out to people with different viewpoints, but it is coming across as pandering to me.  And I highly doubt it will do any good.

By pandering to Black Lives Matter, she is just turning off libertarians like me.  And while there aren’t a ton of hardcore libertarians, there are probably a few hundred thousand of them.  It is a lot more than any votes she will get from Black Lives Matter.

I would be surprised if she gets a couple of dozen people who identify as BLM to actually vote for her.  I am not counting people who already call themselves libertarians or Libertarians who may be sympathetic to BLM.

I think it would have been fine to state that libertarians have been advocating for the elimination of qualified immunity for police and an end to the federal war on drugs for a long time.  There are things where libertarians can agree with BLM.

At the same time, let’s acknowledge that most of the BLM people are not friends to liberty, and I don’t see many changing their minds just because Jo is pandering to them. A lot of them are self-identified socialists.  They have little respect for private property, which is why most of them will not repudiate the property destruction that has gone on with the protesting.  Most of these people either want a free handout in the name of reparations, or they want to be part of this “hip” movement where white people can relieve some of their collective guilt.

Overall, it is just a bad idea.  She is pandering, and it is to a very small minority of people who have loud voices.  Those loud voices are amplified by the establishment media, but police brutality towards black people isn’t the number one issue on the mind of most Americans.  It shouldn’t be the number one issue for most black people either.  You could magically end all police brutality tomorrow, and it wouldn’t solve most of the problems for black people.

Jo should learn the 80/20 Pareto principle.  Why is she spending time concerning herself with an issue where it isn’t that important to the vast majority of people?  And to the people who hold it as a top issue, they are highly unlikely to ever support Jo for president.

Meanwhile, she is mostly ignoring the tens of millions of middle class Americans, including many black people, who are getting completely screwed over by their government. There are tens of millions of people who have been forced into unemployment and the federal government and central bank think they can just solve it all by creating money out of thin air and handing it out.

She should be continually pointing out that the American middle class is getting screwed over by the elitists.  The answer is to vastly reduce the size and scope of government power.  We need less government in every area of our lives.

In fact, this is the message that all of the candidates should be selling.  They may not favor reducing government, but they should all be empathizing with the American middle class.  Joe Biden is too busy pandering to the so-called progressives.  Trump is too busy blaming China for everything.  And Jo Jorgensen is too busy attending BLM rallies.

They all have a major marketing problem.  Trump got the Republican nomination in 2016 largely because he tapped into this. Maybe he will figure out that he has to do it again.  He won the election because of states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.  He appealed to the working middle class.

It is painful to watch the Libertarian candidate throw away this opportunity by pandering to a bunch of self-identified socialists.  We need all of the libertarians we can get at this point, and I don’t think she’s converting a lot of people right now.

Conclusion

Regardless of who wins, at least half the country will be mad.  The establishment will cheer if Trump loses, but the 60 million people who vote for him are not going away.  If Trump wins, then the establishment and its propaganda are not going away, and I fear they’ll make us pay dearly for the next four years by selling viruses to the American people.