TRUMP-SANDERS? Maybe We Need a Bipartisan Presidential Ticket, Why Not?

September 16, 2015
By: Dave Rogers

"The country is so deeply divided that the media have color-coded the map of the United States to indicate the partisan chasm -- one color covers the South and most of the border states, the other drenches the North." -- Lanny Davis, The Washington Post, 2007.

How to bridge the partisan divide has baffled the nation ever since Abraham Lincoln tried it by naming a vice president of the opposite party in 1864 and soon after was assassinated.

As you may recall, that is if you are 150 years old, Abe dumped his veep from the first four years, Hannibal Hamlin, and enlisted Democrat Andrew Johnson to fill out the ticket. The ploy worked, although not reuniting the desperately divided country, helped Lincoln defeat dissident general George McClellan.

Davis, the Washington Post writer, suggested a McCain-Clinton or an Obama-Hagel bipartisan ticket in 2008. Neither idea took root, but the suggestion got political folks thinking for the past seven years.

Now the two most unlikely candidates -- that nobody gave a chance to emerge from the political maelstrom -- have risen to the tops of their respective parties.

Donald Trump, the boastful, blathering New York bigshot, has grabbed his party's lead with three ideas: 1-"Make America great again" -- 2-"I'm not taking donations from corrupting big money forces" and 3-"Stop illegal immigration."

Pretty powerful basic gut issues that are baffling the beltway pundits but really shouldn't surprise anyone. Trump is rated a good chance to sweep to the White House unless, he, Trump, loses his nerve and bumbles away from his mantra.

None of the other 15 GOP hopefuls has grabbed the brass ring of American opinion so startlingly, especially Scott Walker who is hoping to swim upstream by escalating his anti-union stand to near fascism.

Few political observers seem to recall that it was the Republican Party that rode union coat-tails, and abolitionism, into the Presidency in 1860. Unions became the heart and soul of the middle class that almost everyone -- except Walker and others of his ilk -- says is necessary to return to viability to strengthen the national economy.

Bernie Sanders, Vermont senator who is bidding to become America's first Jewish President, is riding a wave of egalitarian sentiment that has been branded "Socialism" but is not, according to European standards, but is common sense elevation of the middle class.

Sanders makes the telling point that not just the 1 percent, but one-tenth of one percent, (about 200 individuals) make more money than the bottom 90 percent of income earners!

Even the Republican Trump recognizes the power in opposing the rich, railing about CEO salaries much like Sanders does.

It's not hard to argue that this nation is as split ideologically as during Civil War days; the only difference is the lack of shooting. And some might argue the murders of blacks and cops parallels the vituperation of the 1860s.

Stay tuned for this nation's most enduring side show -- the Presidential election campaign. Only 19 months to go. Be ready for anything, but don't expect anything so uniting as a bipartisan ticket to emerge.

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