It’s certainly an election like no other for this newspaper.
This year, the Aurora Sentinel dramatically changed the structure of the media company, becoming a non-profit corporation. In February, the IRS granted Aurora Sentinel Community Media tax-exempt status.
And so for the first time in the newspaper’s 117-year history, the newspaper won’t be telling you and everyone who reads this paper’s opinion pages how to vote.
But I will.
For nearly 40 years, I’ve dutifully sat with editorial boards through hundreds of newspaper endorsement interviews, agonizing over campaign, candidate and ballot question details in order to offer credible and trusted advice to readers about how to mark their ballots.
We have endorsed Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, always based on the whole and not the part.
Like it or not, each year, dozens of readers call and say they don’t have time to read the Sentinel endorsements, and to please just tell them how they should vote on any number of questions or campaigns, and for president.
And, more than just a few readers call each year with the same question, explaining that they plan to vote opposite of the paper’s endorsements.
While it’s clear that all kinds of 501(C)(3) non-profit, “exempt” entities endorse in elections, such as endless numbers of churches and political committees, the courts, so far, have upheld the practice as verboten.
But the phone keeps ringing, and so I’m happy to, legally, tell readers there are no newspaper endorsements, and the following recommendation for president is all mine.
Top of the ballot: Democrat Kamala Harris.
Set aside, only briefly, that despite Trump’s endless bluster and self-aggrandizement, he never really did much of anything as president. Sure, he spent billions of tax dollars on parts of a border wall that doesn’t work. He gave wealthy Americans and corporations massive tax cuts, which have helped blow up the federal deficit. With the aid of a Republican Senate, he pushed through an army of far-right federal and Supreme Court judges, which have helped right-wing extremists across the country implement right-wing extremist policies.
But other than lying more than any human I know has ever lied in public, almost exclusively about what he has or hasn’t done, there’s not much he can take credit nor blame for.
Well, sure, Republicans and Democrats in Congress effectively convicted Trump for manufacturing the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. And there’s a long trail of bi-partisan proof showing that Trump actively and obsessively worked to overturn legitimate election results across the country.
But at the end of all that, and the last four years of him blaming other people for his own gaffes, crimes and failures, all this guy does is talk. And when he talks, he talks about how wonderful he is, and how horrible immigrants are, except for his wife and Elon Musk.
He talks about how he was able to restrict and even end reproductive and health care rights from hundreds of millions of American women and then tell all those women, that’s what they wanted. As if they wanted backward states like Arkansas, Texas and Florida to make pregnancy and healthcare decisions for women, and that it’s better this way.
Trump has worked feverishly and endlessly to hammer his fans with patently and provably false information and lies in an effort to undermine the public’s trust in journalism and the media. He works to persuade people that his seemingly endless appetite for lying is proof that the media can’t be trusted.
He just talks and talks and talks.
Now, he’s talking about how impressed he was with the size of golf legend Arnold Palmer’s genitals and how police need to assault people suspected of shoplifting. He talks about ordering the U.S. military to deploy against, “the enemy within,” people like Democratic U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff and journalists like me.
Now, Trump is talking about forcing the government to sue Google because if you “google” things like, “Trump” you get results like a Wikipedia entry about Trump, a link to his campaign website, a link to his Facebook page, a link to his Instagram page…
Trump did, however, quit talking a week ago during a campaign speech with South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, suddenly, and without explanation, and he just started swaying on stage to music, lovin’ him some YMCA beats.
He resumed talking to tell people that someone’s hydrogen car exploded, but, as usual, provided no facts or details.
Lost in the dust are his warnings about Black immigrants in Ohio eating dogs and cats, and brown people everywhere taking “Black jobs.”
There’s no real choice here. The world is a treacherous place right now.
The crux of the problem is that there are serious and valid conservative arguments to be made as the country navigates a tsunami of critical issues. Trump is not a conservative by real conservative standards, and his skillset in a crisis is already an argument against him.
Not only would Trump be pretty much the worst choice of anyone to run the country, but his second attempt at getting “all the best people” to do his bidding would be an even bigger disaster than the last time he recruited the likes of Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon and the Pillow Guy.
More than two dozen former Trump administration officials have gone public with their stories about what a dangerous and unpredictable, narcissistic and unintelligent man Trump really is.
They do, however, admit, the guy can talk and talk and talk.
Now he’s talking about the likes of Laura Loomer, Tina Peters, Lauren Boebert and Elon Musk as people he needs to listen to, or listen to him, in the White House.
Elon Musk? The same Elon Musk that believes the TikTok reels of Proud Boys and The Libs of TikTok provide the real news that the real news media doesn’t?
What about any and all of that, which is really all that fits on this page, says “sign me up?”
Vice President Kamala Harris is just a smart, well-meaning, experienced prosecutor and legislator who can smell Trump’s bull a mile away. Her biggest deficit is talking past the sale.
I’m sold. I’ll take smart, capable, honest and experienced over four years of Trump’s blustering locker-room shower observations and a lot of sleepless nights.
Of course, this is just my recommendation. You decide.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com
Yes, because only Orange Man Bad lies, ya ok.
The man himself is far less important than the policies he supports. Bear in mind that you are not voting for who should be your next boyfriend, in-law, team member, neighbor, best friend or partner. You are voting for the next “CEO” or our country. We have had four years of experience to see how well his policies worked to address the most important issues facing our country. We have also had four years of experience to see what the policies of his opponent have done to our country. You decide.
Yeah. A policy of “retribution”. Not for wrongs done to this country, but “wrongs” done to this egomaniac.
Elect Trump and you can kiss goodbye to our longstanding allies, and hello to every ha’penny dictator in the world who kisses his behind and pays him money. The previous four years of his incompetence and venality weren’t enough?
Or does the idea of a former prosecutor scare the bejeesus out of you,too? And if so, why?
No one with a lick of sense wants a red diaper baby like Kacklin’ Kammy in charge of a lemonade stand, much less the US, Jeffy-poo. Especially when people like you want to put resistors in prison for the sin of criticizing your dumb political theology.
And let’s get real, Perry would be endorsing the Democrat no matter who was running. So most of this article was nothing more than mental masturbation.
I’m sorry, you must think you’re at the children’s table. Most people know how to speak like adults.
Adults understand, btw, that forcibly and violently storming the United Sates Congress screaming for blood and threatening the lives of duly elected representatives of the people because an ignoramus is mad he lost reelection is an obscene display of the spoiled brat’s ignorance and defiance of law. It is the wail of the frustrated two-year-old whose toys have been taken away, not the heartfelt expression of “love of country” ignorant nimrods like you believe it to be. And it was criminal.
Oh, and pro tip: a person who protests the lawful exercise of political power may be called a “resister”. A “resistor” is an electrical device used in the field of electronics. And a “dictionary” is easily available on the internet.
“I’m sorry, you must think you’re at the children’s table. Most people know how to speak like adults.”
When are you going to start?
“Adults understand, btw, that forcibly and violently storming the United Sates Congress screaming for blood”
Your side bombed the building. Twice.
“Oh, and pro tip:”
Stop using Millennialisms, Boomer. You have enough issues not falling over and breaking a hip right now. Which is why you’re hilariously resorting to pedantry.
Can the paper do a equal on why Harris sucks…..nope…. this is a bias newspaper
I hope that some lawyer that doesn’t like the not for profit Sentinel Blog picks up on this editorial and through the IRS or courts makes a name for his/her firm by realizing your recommendations are illegal for a non for profit. Let’s hope.
Everyone with at least one half of a brain knows the Editor and Publisher of any publication is the same as the publication. Anyone out there want to take this on?
How about your opinions on all the other ballot issues. You know, not the Sentinel Blog’s but your own. We don’t really want to know as we already understand but it would certainly show your political bias on all subjects like for the past years.
As a final thought, I saw your problems before the last election when the Sentinel Blog made no political recommendations. So that’s a current implied lie in this editorial for you. All journalists lie now and again to make their points, don’t they?