Democratic Presidential debates

                                  Big Brother is watching and tweeting

        The first of the Democratic Presidential debates are near. With a crowd of two dozen or more prospective candidates, this will turn out to be more of a contestant beauty pageant than any kind of substantial, in depth discussion of issues. Still, it is a start to the 14-moth process that will select the eventual challenger to Donald Trump, in the 2020 presidential election.

       I was mildly taken aback by comments of the current President regarding the debate. Mr. Trump said that he would be watching the debates and critiquing them by twitter. Huh? Isn’t that like having an electronic heckler throwing mud balls at all of the candidates, from the safety of his 1600 Pennsylvania lair? I know that Fox News, like all state-run television stations, will gleefully cover the twitter comments at length. I hope the real television stations and free press will concentrate their coverage on the men and women involved, offer analysis on their thoughts on the issues. That is the raison d’etre for the whole cumbersome process.

      It reminded me of a time in the late 1960’s at the State University of New York at Geneseo. Like most college students of the era, I was a liberal democrat at the time. A political Science professor on campus had formed up a dozen or so of us into the town’s first functioning democratic, town committee. It was more of an anomaly than it sounds. At the time, this was horse country, blue-blooded and rural, Republican to the max.

     We would meet monthly, in a town meeting room, to discuss matters of the day. The town’s Mayor, a cigar chomping and portly defender of all things Republican, would come and sit at the back of the hall, watching what transpired. I don’t know if he was observing these radical, left-wing minions for anti-American activities, or maybe he was just plain curious as to what the heck a “democrat” was and what they had to say about things political. We paid him no mind, but thought it curious that he would attend a meeting of the “opposite party.” Perhaps all small-town and small-minded officials like this have a proprietary instinct when it came to matter that occur in “their town.”    

     I will watch the coming debates and be thinking of that portly, cigar-chomping, small-town Mayor and wondering what he would have to say about this gang of democratic conspirators who were so bold in their opposition to an elected president. And, I will occasionally tune in to state run t.v., Fox News, to see just how one-sided and awful a production they make of the whole affair.

                                                                  -30-

                                                            (445 words)

                                                      Joseph Xavier Martin