Category: 2020 Election

2020 Election, Politics, Uncategorized

An American Nationalist Voting Index

Bob Claude |

This campaign song title from the 1912 presidential election is nostalgic for reasons other than the obvious. Many historians believe the race between Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Taft to be among the most informative and substantive in American history, pitting several different visions of federal and state economic policy against each other for the American people’s consideration.  Wilson won with a plurality of the vote and his program became the model for our current regulatory system.

Today the American people need and deserve a similar debate that both illuminates relevant differences and unifies us behind policy choices. That debate should center on the choice between nationalism vs. globalism and it would appear that the Trump vs. Biden race would epitomize that choice. Appearances, however, can be deceiving, and a close examination of their records may show less of a difference than the media and campaigns portray.  This website will classify the issues from the standpoint of Theodore Roosevelt and identify the policy choices from a nationalist vs. globalist perspective.  Those categories are

  • Political Reform
  • Foreign Policy
  • Antitrust & Trade Regulation
  • Environment & Climate Change
  • A Strong America
  • Character

I will include specific issues that have been featured at some point in the campaign as well as key nationalist issues that have been largely ignored by candidates and the media.  While the analysis will focus on records of action or inaction, the ratings will also consider their current party ideologies.  The candidates will be rated on a plus or minus 3-point scale with a positive score indicating a nationalist position and a negative score indicating a globalist stance.

I hope you find this index helpful in analyzing congressional candidates as well. Please feel free to comment on and criticize the system as we move forward. 

2020 Election, General, Politics

Fighting the Foreign Trolls

Bob Claude |

I wish that all Americans would realize that American politics is world politics.

Theodore Roosevelt

Labor Day traditionally marks the beginning of the general election season.  After the revelations about Russian interference in the 2016 election, we now know that our political discourse is dangerously open to manipulation by malignant foreign governments.  The good news is that the US is becoming better at identifying and countering these trolls through the new US Cyber Command, which successfully took down the Russian Internet Security Agency’s effort to influence the 2018 midterm elections (see this article from the Council on Foreign Relations).  Nevertheless, Theodore Roosevelt’s advice should always be on our minds. More than ever, American politics is world politics, and all Americans need to see themselves as the first line of defense against attacks against our democracy and be informed on how to identify them.

The Alliance for Securing Democracy recently produced a helpful guide on the methods and messages authoritarian regimes like Russia, China and Iran may use in such attacks.  It points out that while their foreign policies may differ, all three see the US as their enemy and peddle misinformation that converges in various ways.  The difference between their messages and the legitimate criticism that is a hallmark of a free election is that our adversaries seek to sow despair and division, not hope and positive solutions.  Social media platforms definitely need to do more to identify and take down these trolls.  However, each of us will have an important daily role in rejecting these attacks against America and our democratic values here at home in the upcoming 2020 campaign.