MKTPeterson.blog: Make Women's history. Vote for Nicki Haley for president in 2024.

This isn’t the entry I wanted to write for Women’s history month.

March is known as Women’s history month. Like Black history month this event grew from a weeklong school project in Sonoma California to honor the contributions of women to US history to something that is now taking up the entire month as appropriate since a month doesn’t seem like enough time to honor women in history.[i] I like that brief video on History.com giving a list of American Women’s firsts and I’m sure if you Google Women’s History month there are plenty of study guides and factoid filled websites for you to explore.

As for myself, I was hoping instead of opining of the contributions of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to US history I was hoping maybe, naively, somehow Republican voters would realize that former South Carolina governor Nicki Haley was the best choice for President[ii] of the United States, or at least provide a better choice than the one most voters are ending up with in November, and go to the polls to make it happen. I like how she is pro-life but willing to compromise and understands sometimes Abortion is necessary.[iii] I know she know she’s against open borders but isn’t against immigration. And her rhetoric reminds me a bit of Ronald Regan but with more down to earth verbiage. I know she has a point about the national deficit but of course I would also encourage raising taxes particularly on the rich in addition to budget cuts[iv] to get us out of debt as a nation. So, yeah, I like Nicki Haley and I did vote for her for President, but my vote didn’t really matter in the Illinois Republican Primary I voted in.

Now Nicki Haley isn’t the 1^st woman to have run for president, that honor belongs to Victoria WoodHull who ran in 1872[v]. Nor would she be the 1^st female candidate to lead her party’s ticket if she became the Republican nominee for president. Charlene Mitchel of the US Communist Party beat Democratic nominee Hilary Clinton by 48 years for that 1^st. Nicky Haley would not have been the first female president in the world if she won with Iceland’s Vigdís Finnbogadóttir[vi] taking that honor 44 years ago. Furthermore, Nicky Halley would not even technically be the first woman President the United States since Vice President Kamala Harris acted as temporary US President under the 25^th amendment while President Biden was briefly under anesthesia[vii]. To me, stating Kamala Harris was President of the United States is akin to stating John Hanson was the 1^st President of the United States but only under the Articles of Confederation[viii]. Unfortunately, former South Carolina Governor Nicki Haley realized she was losing most of the Republican primaries, including her home state of South Carolina and dropped out of the race on March 6^th, 2024, leaving everyone to groan about a 2020 electoral rematch for 2024 no one wants at least if you watch the late-night talk show hosts.

So, instead of talking about how I was hoping Nicki Haley would make history as the first officially elected female president of the United Sates, I’m going to talk about how the YouTube algorithm recommended to me Staged Right’s video exploring the history of the musical “Cabaret”[ix] . (Gee, you Google one “Wicked” movie trailer…..).

Now, for those of you who aren’t musical theater devotes like myself (see my Jan 2023 MLK post or if you’re a true musical theater nerd you’ll realize I’ve stolen lines from Lerner and Loewe in my letter to Prince Harry in June 2023) , the 1966 Kander and Ebb musical “Cabaret” is an adaptation of the 1951 play “I am a camera” which was adapted from the semi-autobiographical novel by Christopher Isherwood called Goodbye to Berlin in which he chronicled his jazz era misadventures in Weimar Republic Germany before the Nazis began to take over in the 1930’s. [x] Now I watched the 1970’s Bob Fosse directed, Liza Minnelli/Michael York starring, nothing at all like the Broadway musical movie “Cabaret” long before I saw a live production of the actual “Cabaret” Broadway musical by a community theater group sometime in the 1990’s. The plot of the actual musical (whereas the movie is about the sexual misadventures of the main characters in Berlin) follows American Clifford Bradshaw arriving in Berlin and getting a deal on a boarding house room run by Frälein Schinder. Bradshaw spends his days teaching English to pay the bills while also writing the next American novel and his nights at the sleazy Kit Kat club where he befriends the club’s English star Sally Bowels who is desperate to hear some words of English in the land of Deutch. Eventually Bowles moves into the same boarding room with Bradshaw and ends up aborting Bradshaw’s baby at the end of the show preferring to live in a selfish fantasy world than the soon to be tragic real world thereby ending the romantic relationship that’s been the main driving plot point of the musical.

Meanwhile, in a sub-plot that weaves its way into the main plot, boarding house landlord Frälein Schinder develops a romantic relationship with a Jewish grocer/fellow boarding house resident Herr Schultz. All is lovey-dovey until the Nazis start taking over the country and Herr Schultz’s store is vandalized by the Nazis. Frälein Schinder ends up breaking up with this potential love of her life because she’s too afraid of being in a relationship with a Jewish man in Nazi Germany. In the musical Frälein Schinder sings a song to which legendary Broadway “Cabaret” producer/director Hal Prince said “(Schinder)sings an apology for not doing anything when the Nazi came to power….and if the audience asked themselves that question and if they were honest with themselves quite a number in the audience would have done nothing either.” Eventually Bradshaw and Herr Schultz escape to France and hopefully back to America since we all know what happened to France in the early 1940’s.

Now Hal Prince’s question leads me to another one. Why did Germany do nothing to stop Hitler and his evil goosestepping army before they all took power?

You could say it’s all World War I’s fault (most historians do) with that treaty of Versailles demanding Germany take full fiscal responsibility of the mine army manhood is bigger than your army manhood game all major early 20^th Century European leaders were eager to play with their men’s lives at that time. [xi] The subsequent hyperinflation that treaty caused suddenly had Germans paying a lot more for their wiener schnitzel which left many of them angry. Not to mention the hurt pride of the soldiers of the German WWI army who probably didn’t appreciate the way the rest of Europe was going “Ha Ha Looser” like Bart Simpson’s bully Nelson Munz and naively believed they could have won if their political leaders just backed them up. So, this made someone of Hitler’s satanic Ilk popular to them. [xii] It wasn’t all of Germany, but it was certainly a powerful vocal minority who thought Hitler was a great guy. The situation in German became worse once the Great Depression started to take hold in 1929 and Hitler did give these economically depressed unemployed men an outlet for their anger by giving them the phony sense of power bullying usually brings with it. Then you had Weimar president Paul von Hindenberg mistaking believing Hitler could be some kind of useful idiot[xiii] for his goals when he appointed Hitler as Chancelor, only to quickly realize Hitler was no idiot, von Hindenberg was for believing a power-hungry madman could be satisfied that way. Heck, I’m sure a majority of German Weimar elites probably thought Hitler was joking about killing every Jewish man, woman, and child on the planet. By the time the Nazi had taken power the German free press had been decimated and Germans began to worry they would be put into a concentration camp if they joked about how ugly Hitler’s funky mustache was let alone standing up for something as important as not seeing 6 million of their fellow countrymen and women being killed just because they happened to be Jewish.[xiv]

But this is history. I am talking about events that took place in Europe 90-100 years ago that have no relevance to the moment the USA is in right now. Right?

Well, as US philosopher George Santayana famously said “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”[xv]

So, let’s look at why and how Donald Trump became president of the United States in 2016.

Now, Hillary Clinton won the 2016 popular vote[xvi] and could still be president now (depending upon how she handled the Covid 19 Pandemic of 2020) if it weren’t for the electoral college. As you may recall from your 8^th grade civics class the founding fathers of the US didn’t completely trust a direct election of the president by the general public. So, they created the electoral college where every state is awarded two electoral votes each plus one vote for each US Congressional representative a state has in Congress. The idea is that these electors would gather in their respective state capitals, asses a candidates’ worthiness to be president, and vote for one candidate over another. Theoretically a wanna be US President would need to campaign in all of the U.S. states (and maybe suck up to potential would be electors) to win a majority of these electoral votes and get a chance to move to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Of course the reality is that Clinton/Trump concentrated their political attack ads in the swing states of [xvii] Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Wisconsin, and Michigan and trusted states like those in the northeastern US, the US west coast, and the great state of Chicagoland would gladly give abrasive but more than qualified Hilary an official term as president whereas the Bible Belt, most of the southwestern, and definitely the wide open US great plain states and a few of the mountainous ones didn’t care that Donald Trump didn’t practice the sexual morality(or quite frankly a lot of the other biblical morality) the Bible Belt preached, only became a Republican[xviii] to win the election and may or may not have cared about the core Republican values with perhaps the exception of lower taxes for someone like himself, an uber Richie Rich 1% er. He was the Republican nominee and Republicans hated Hillary that much.

But why would someone in a swing state go for Donald Trump?

Well, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan famously were better known as the Rust-Belt states. Pennsylvania was known for its steel mills which often went to Michigan to make the US cars in Detroit, Flint, and Dearborn and Ohio adding the tires and other auto parts as well[xix]. Now, the 1950’s [xx] was the golden age of US manufacturing but for the past 50 years of my life US Manufacturing has been in decline[xxi] . Union jobs have declined in quantity and status[xxii] and it didn’t help that NAFTA[xxiii] ratified by Hillary’s husband Bill then US President in 1993 made a lot of those manufacturer’s job easier to go to Mexico where wages were cheaper than the US. Add in how southeastern Ohio is in the middle of coal country who, while liking the Democrat pro union stance may not have liked the pro green stance. [xxiv] So, you have a popular guy saying the right things about “Making American Great Again” and those hardworking blue-collar workers eager to get a job that pays their bills and maybe a bit of dignity and it’s no wonder that Trump won.

However, just because Donald Trump won the Presidency didn’t mean that he was the best person for the job as we clearly witnessed.

Trump’s tax cuts did more to hurt those working-class people that adore him than his Mar-a-Lago golfing buddies. [xxv] [xxvi] But, you could argue George W Bush’s tax era cuts may have had a similar effect. [xxvii] Then, you have the fact the CDC, Homeland Security and Department of Health and Human Services had several vacancies at the start of the Covid Pandemic that a more competent leader, who didn’t love the phrase “You’re Fired”, [xxviii] would have made sure people were in those government positions to prevent the spread of Covid 19. Covid 19 caused many of those hard working blue-collar people to go on government assistance [xxix]. In fact, the Covid 19 pandemic had a disproportionate effect on the poor Americans who [xxx] disproportionately bore the brunt of the pandemic. They had to show up to work the essential jobs and may have had more deaths than someone who was a bit more well off and just had to figure out how to share bandwidth with their kids during their stay at home work/school hours. So, as former campaign manager for Bill Clinton James Carvel once said “It’s the economy stupid” and for better or worse a president bears the brunt of the American anger when the US economy goes bad. And I would say there were a lot of angry people in the US in 2020, especially in the state of Arizona.

Speaking of the new swing state of Arizona, you’d think Donald Trump would have had the decency as every President who went before him to revere and honor those US veterans who made sacrifices like former POW Vietnam Veteran war hero/Arizona Senator and former Republican presidential nominee John McCain[xxxi] . McCain suffered debilitating abuse to the point where he lost part of the use of his arm- a point Trump made fun of [xxxii] while out on the campaign trail and called him a looser because he was captured in Vietnam[xxxiii]. I think the citizens of Arizona decided to avenge their beloved former senator by going for Biden in droves in 2020, a state that had been consistently in the Republican block for decades. There are other incidents too like when he had the National Parks security forces tear-gas a group of protestors in Lafayette Square in Washington DC in 2020 just so he can have an awkward photo op of him holding a bible in front of St. John’s church[xxxiv]. He claimed there were “Some very fine people on both sides”[xxxv] during the Charlotteville, Virgina white supremacy protests and counter protest in August 2017 when James Alex Fields Jr. ran a bunch of the counter-protestors over who believed it was a good idea to remove a statue that lionized the general that lead the cause for slavery in America.[xxxvi]And let’s not forget Trump 1^st impeachment trial in 2019 where he asked Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to help him dig up dirt on Joe Biden[xxxvii] and then implied he would refuse the $391 million dollars in US aide Congress already promised Ukraine if Zelenskyy didn’t go along. Even if the cockamamy theory then Vice President Joe Biden used his influence to help his son Hunter Biden’s financing dealings in Ukraine is true, no previous president in their right mind would have jeopardized international relations by using the head of a foreign government to find dirt on a political opponent to help his own political campaign[xxxviii].

It’s clearly obvious Trump is a royal liar too. The Washington Post counted 30,573 false or misleading information during Trump’s presidency[xxxix] with the ultimate lie being the Presidential election was stolen from him. As stated before, every president knows “It’s the Economy Stupid” and everyone was holding Trump accountable for what happened during the 2020 pandemic and the subsequently voting for Biden in places like Arizona and Georga. Trump rallying of a mob to “Stop the Steal” [xl] of the certification of an election he clearly knew he had lost but his ego wouldn’t allow him to accept makes him a danger to the US! While the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled states like Colorado couldn’t kick Trump off of the ballot[xli] they certainly didn’t entirely disagree with the statement Trump may have led an insurrection on January 6^th, 2021[xlii] either. Everyone knows not everyone wins or wins all the time. Sometimes, you loose and you have to suck up the loss, shrug it off as best you can and try harder next time. Anyone who doesn’t believe in the cornerstone of our principles of democracy of going for what the vast majority of people want shouldn’t take public office. Heck Trump doesn’t want a democracy. He joked about being a dictator for one day[xliii] just so he can enforce is his anti-immigration policy and kill the world through oil pollution. I’m not sure if Trump is joking and most of the people who worked with President Trump knows he won’t be satisfied being a dictator for just one day. [xliv] Heck a recent book by former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly has him going on record of how Trump thought Hitler did some good things.[xlv] So,no! In no way shape or form should we let this wanna be dictator back into any office let alone the highest elected office in the land! This is one woman who’s seeing the rise of a dictator come to power and isn’t going to remain silent in the face of history. I’m coming out on record as being against Donald Trump!

Except, I fear that while I am personally against Donald Trump and don’t want to see him as president again, there are plenty of those who are also against Joe Biden at the moment and may have no choice but to favor a Trump dictatorship. [xlvi]

Here are some of the reasons why I could see someone feeling like they would need to go for Trump in 2024.

First, you have what I call the left-wing media crying Nazi and/or Hitler phenomenon, particularly during the presidency of George W. Bush. [xlvii] [xlviii] Some in the leftist media compared Bush to Hitler[xlix]along with anyone who is a Republican. Actually, really every president since JFK has been accused of being the next Hitler incarnate. But focusing on George W. Bush for the moment, the Anti-Defamation league honored George W. Bush[l] for making sure when 9/11/2001 happened the US would keep its focus on the terrorist and not the entire Muslim population of the United States. Donald Trump, meanwhile, wanted to ban all Muslims from entering the country[li]. Furthermore, Republicans might be correct in their views on some of their issues. Maybe the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun, who obviously doesn’t care about gun laws anyway, is a good guy with a gun, although I don’t know why a good guy would want to own a gun that could eliminate 600 bad guys in a minute[lii], I’m pretty sure, no pun intended, that’s overkill, but still I can concede at least in a fundamental right to own a gun. I could also see a fundamental right to refuse to bake a cake or arrange flowers for a same-sex wedding, especially if a good Christian feels they are going to hell for endorsing an activity God clearly bans in the bible. Maybe the philosophy of teaching a person to fish would be better than handing them fishes with the caveat that big oil/industrial pollution hasn’t destroyed the fish’s home to begin with. Just because you disagree with a point of view doesn’t automatically make you evil incarnate. The problem is that the term Nazi/Hitler has lost its shock value to the point where it becomes akin to the boy who cried wolf. The reason why we teach our children (or hopefully still teach our children) that fable[liii] is not just to show how dishonesty can have tragic consequences for the one who lies. I’m pretty sure some of those villagers may have also become a victim of that wolf as well when they chocked up the wolf warnings as fake media. So, now that we have a man who might be the USA equivalent of Hitler running for office the public is so numb to the charge that many people are going to shrug off those warning as left-wing media hyperbole whom they are still upset for going woke.

Then you have the typical dilemma a pro-life Catholic like me faces. While Biden/Democrats caring about the poor, the immigrant, the environment, and making sure everyone has an equal chance in America, President Biden and his fellow Democrats are still trying to get a woman’s right to an abortion enacted into law[liv]. I’m a bit flummoxed that Joe Biden, a fellow Roman Catholic and the 2^nd president of Catholic persuasion, feels that he personally doesn’t care for abortion but for some reason feels that a woman can and should still have them. To me, that’s akin to someone in 19^th century America prior to 1860 stating while they would never personally own a slave for various human right reasons, they have no qualms about someone else in the United States owning a slave and treating them badly as their personal property. Abortion is murder and must be stopped. Iif a fetus isn’t human why was Planned Parenthood selling various fetal body parts for medical research to improve fellow human lives?[lv] I can’t in good conscious go for a president who seems so gung-ho on this issue. And I am not the only American who faces this dilemma and may have to go for Trump.

Then there is the fact Biden is 82 years old and will be 87 years old by the time he finishes his 2^nd term as president if re-elected. Now Biden is already a decade older than the average male life expectancy in the US[lvi] and you could say the probability of someone his age killing over from a stroke, or fall or heart attack is greater than someone who is in their 50s[lvii]. The weird senior moment caught on camera put a strong spotlight on this when Biden mixed up[lviii] Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al Sisi with Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador. It probably was that opening up of the border comment that trigged the Freudian slip. This mix-up, while seemingly innocuous could have royally insulted al Sisi to the point where he would have started to bomb US ally Israel thus dragging the US into a war in the Middle East, and quite frankly the US’s track record on Middle East wars isn’t too good.

Speaking of the Middle East, there is plenty of anger, particularly in the middle eastern/Islamic community of Biden’s handling of the current war Israel is having against Hamas. Many see the images of the war and those in the Gaza strip and feel the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians what the world has done to the Jewish people for centuries. Many feel it’s genocide and many feel the US is complicit with it. [lix] Then again maybe it’s a retaliatory strike for a handful of Islamic extremists who wish genocide against the Israelis and innocent civilians are being caught in the crosshairs. Either way the Israeli army killing innocent Palestinian civilians, including children, doesn’t look good for a President that supports the state of Israel.

And of course, there’s the Carvel phrase “It’s the economy stupid” which reminds me of my family’s McDonnald’s order I enjoyed while growing up. My mom would go (or when I got older sent me with my dad) to pick up our McDonalds K.I.S.S. order. And no, to the best of my knowledge McDonalds never had a cross promotion with the rock band K.I.S.S. My dad just assumed everyone who worked at McDonalds was stupid, so we had to keep it simple. We would order four quarter pounders with cheese, four regular hamburgers, and four small fries. The meal was frequently under $20 and maybe buffered up against the $20 bill if we added on a 10 pc McNuggets or treated ourselves to the March minty green madness of the Shamrock shakes. Now if my husband and I want McDonalds’ it will cost a minimum of $20 and that’s just for the two of us. [lx] [lxi] So, if the US economy gets even slightly worse that makes Trump’s chances of becoming president again even better and the chances our country will be politically horrifically awful 100%.

Let’s face it, that’s the way the Presidential elections have been since 1860 when Democrats and Republicans have been facing off against each other[lxii] . Sure this year we’ve got Robert Kennedy Jr. running an independent campaign and I like his position on the environment and affordable housing. However, I can’t quite endorse a guy who doesn’t think kids should get measles vaccines especially with a measles outbreak breaking out in my sweet home Chicago.[lxiii][lxiv] If I really want a woman President I could vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein[lxv] but I’m not sure to what extent the practicality of the Green Party principles could be implemented on a nationwide level in a country with a strong car culture and feeling the necessity of having their Cokes in plastic not glass bottles. No other 3^rd or 4^th or 5^th party candidate has a chance with the dominance of the Republicans and the Democrats.

Yet, what if I proposed something else instead. Something I did when I faced a similar dilemma in 2016 and voted for Mitt Romney as president.

Wait, don’t you mean you voted for Mitt Romney for president in 2012 when he ran against incumbent president Barak Obama?

No, I mean I voted for him in 2016 when my choices were the definitely convinced it was a right for a woman to kill her unborn babies Hilary Clinton[lxvi] that I know isn’t right or Donald Trump who thought he had a right to grab women in their neither-regions and was forewarned by an article in The Atlantic Magazine in 2016 not to let the narcissist art of deal maker to win[lxvii].[lxviii] I didn’t want to decide who was the lesser of the two evils and I didn’t feel like completely going out there 3^rd candidate route. So, I exercised my option to vote by picking up the pen meant to blacken the oval of the candidate of my choice on the voter scantron sheet and wrote in a blank space that most ballots have Mitt Romney ‘s name for President. [lxix] I always feel writing in a candidate’s name is a way of stating none of the above. This way I could state I have exercised the right Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and thousands of other Suffragettes fought over a century for me as a woman to vote and still be pleased with myself when the winning candidate does something most voters, even the ones who voted for the candidate, disagree with. I can then brag “I didn’t vote for (him/her/them).”

Now in 2024 I know what the consequences of having a narcissist for president are and knowing babies lives are at stake if let Joe Biden back into office, I still am looking for a third option and that third best option is still Nicki Haley. She strikes me as someone who could bring out the best in people and this country if we give her a chance and I’m not sure the USA will be a democracy in 4 years. So, I’m encouraging everyone to write in Nicki Haley’s name for President, now in 2024 in November.

There are some obvious flaws to my proposal. Each state is different when it comes to write in candidates. AR, HI, LA, MS, NV NM, OK, SD and Nicki Haley homes sate of SC won’t allow write in so that may come to be an electoral college problem down the road with 63 electoral votes having to go with other candidates, but then the backup plan of Congress voting on one of the top 3 candidates who split the electoral college vote might kick in[lxx]. Hopefully if Nicki Haley can edge out enough votes from Donald Trump the Republicans who remember running for their lives on January 6^th, 2021, may go for a more stable minded and younger candidate than the current Republican frontrunner right now. Another thing is a write in candidate needs to certify they are an official write in candidate (or a real person, rumor has it some people have voted for Mickey Mouse for president in years past), but still, writing in could be an option if maybe my idea has traction and enough people view/share my blog maybe Nicki Haley could use some of her new PAC money to allow her name to be written on the other 42 state’s ballots.

So, please what does everyone think of my idea of writing Nicki Haley’s name for President of the USA in November? I realize that my last idea when I was urging those who read this blog to give Dallas Jenkins $25 bucks didn’t go so well and I’m sure Dallas Jenkins will be the first to admit it’s better to read the book that you can get for free or dirt cheap[lxxi] (boy I hate being Jenkins’ Cassandra, see post on July 23^rd, 2023 and follow Jenkins’ recent YouTube Post)[lxxii] than watch his show. With me proposing writing in Nicki Haley’s name for president of the United States in 2024, there is no money to spend and I’m not sure what freebie social media things I can use to promote the campaign. I really don’t want to deal with another lesser of two presidential evils at the polls. I really think it’s best we decide as the people of the United States of America the kind of candidate who is ideal not one who is completely detached from reality.