Cagle World

Making Sense By Michael Reagan

What’s the use of living in sunny L.A.?

It’s bad enough that it has been raining for what seems like months.

Now I have a mayor, Eric Garcetti, telling me I’m not even allowed to go out of my house on Easter weekend.

Garcetti has been holding daily press conferences to update the local battle with the coronavirus and to scare us into obeying his stricter mitigation edicts like we’re his misbehaving children.

He’s just told me if I go grocery shopping this weekend, I’m going to die.

If I go to a park this weekend, I’m going to die.

If I go out of my house this weekend, I’m going to die.

And if I don’t follow the city’s “guidelines” and wear a mask or a bandana when I shop, I’m going to kill people.

Give me a break.

Just about everything that makes life worth living is already closed. Now Garcetti has ordered grocery stores and everything else that’s still open to close Easter Saturday and Sunday.

I understand we have to keep our social distance, wash our hands and do the right things to stop the spread.

But Garcetti’s press conferences are so negative they make me want to climb up on my roof and jump.

Already I can’t see my grandkids except on Facetime. I can’t get a haircut. I can’t play golf. I can’t get a massage. I can’t go to church – even on Easter Sunday.

What’s worse is that everyone in authority is so negative. It’s all pain and sacrifice and what you can’t do, not what you can do.

The only glimmer of hope I found this week that had anything to do with the coronavirus was contained in what my daughter Ashley wrote on my Facebook page, based on a viral post on the Altogether Mostly website.

Ashley is a kindergarten teacher in the San Fernando Valley. Also speaking for some of her fellow teachers, she thinks that young children whose formal classroom educations have been disrupted by the virus might be able to learn some valuable life lessons while they are stuck at home.

Here’s what she wrote:

“What if???” by Ashley Reagan

If school reopens May 1, students would have been out for over six weeks.

If school doesn’t resume until fall, they would have missed two and a half months of classroom education.

Many parents and educators are rightly concerned about students falling behind if they have to stay home during the coronavirus crisis.

But what if …

What if instead of falling “behind,” these kids are ADVANCED because of their long break from school?

What if they learn to have more empathy, enjoy their family connections more and be more creative?

What if they learn to entertain themselves and learn to love reading and expressing themselves in writing?

What if they learn to enjoy the simple things, like their own backyard and sitting near a window in the quiet?

What if they notice birds building their nests, the dates when different flowers emerge and the calming renewal of a gentle rain shower?

What if they learn to cook, organize their space, do their laundry and keep a well-run home?

What if they learn to stretch a dollar and to live better with less – the practical economic education that is so lacking in the U.S.?

What if they learn to plan shopping trips and eat healthy meals at home?

What if they learn the value of eating together as a family and finding the good to share in the small delights of the everyday?

What if they are the generation who learn to place great value on our teachers and educational professionals, librarians, public servants and the previously invisible essential workers like truck drivers, grocers, cashiers, custodians and health care workers and their supporting staff?

What if among these children whose education has been disrupted, a great leader emerges who had the benefit of a slower pace and a simpler life to truly learn what really matters in this life?

What if when they return to school they are, in reality, AHEAD?

Happy Easter.

–

Copyright 2020 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to [email protected]. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using columns contact Sales at [email protected].

Making Sense By Michael Reagan

It’s lucky I’m being such a good American and sheltering at home.

Every day I’ve been able to watch President Trump’s coronavirus White House press briefings and the press conferences of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

It’s been tough keeping up with all the scientific, financial and political twists and turns of our national war on the coronavirus.

On Monday, I was ready to dump all my stocks and start hoarding cash when I heard predictions of 37 million unemployed and concerns about the coming of another Great Depression.

But I calmed down after watching the president and his medical experts at their Tuesday press conference.

There were a lot of crazy charts with curves and coronavirus numbers flying around.

And to be honest, I’m not sure I remember exactly what Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx said, other than that the latest real-time data on the virus shows the U.S. death toll will be much lower than originally projected by the doomsayers – between 100,000 and 200,000, maybe even lower.

That good news for our spooked and shut-down country did little to reduce the number of gotcha questions from the liberal media rats in the White House press room, who spend most of their time trying to trip up Trump.

It’s fine for journalists to be critical, probing and even adversarial. That’s their job.

And nobody expects the liberal media to applaud Trump for little miracles, like slashing bureaucratic red tape at the FDA or getting private companies like GM and Libby to quickly crank out stockpiles of ventilators and instant COVID-19 test kits.

But unless you’re hopelessly blinded by “Trump derangement syndrome,” as too many liberal journalists still are, you have to admit that President Trump has become a pretty good “war general.”

He’s made several huge strategic decisions, unleashed trillions of federal dollars, put together important public-private partnerships, delegated lots of power to governors and surrounded himself with some of the best medical and health experts in the country.

In fact, if you ask me, we’re lucky we have Trump as president.

He’s a lifelong businessman – not a lifelong politician – and he acts that way, thank God, for good and bad… but mostly good.

Can you imagine if an aging swamp creature like Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden were our president right now?

Hillary would have appointed Bill head of the Coronavirus Task Force in February and he’d still be out in Las Vegas interviewing show girls for his staff.

OK, that might be a little unfair to what’s left of Clinton Inc. But can anyone imagine President Joe Biden as our coronavirus-killer-in-chief?

Before he took any action, to appease the AOC-Sanders wing of his party, Biden would form an ethnically diverse, politically correct and perfectly color-balanced 35-person commission composed of union bosses, Yale law professors, illegal immigrants, Nation magazine editorial writers and Mr. and Mrs. Joe Scarborough.

Then before the commission did anything, it’d take two months to decide if it was really fair of us to blame the global spread of the coronavirus on the lies and secrecy of China’s communist government without more proof from the World Health Organization.

Seriously, though. Nobody saw this new coronavirus pandemic coming in time.

Not President Trump. Not the CDC. Not Dr. Fauci. Not Dr. Pelosi. Not even the brilliant Dr. Rachel Maddow.

Shutting down the country so quickly and tightly may turn out to have been a gigantic blunder caused by a perfect storm of bad data, bad modeling, bad journalism, bad politics and bad decision-making by the people in charge.

But it’s too late to turn back the clock. We did what we did and now we’ll have to pay the steep price.

But if your state doesn’t have enough ventilators and masks, it’s not Trump’s fault.

It isn’t the federal government’s fault, either. Or your state’s fault. Or Gov. Cuomo’s fault. No one was ready for this pandemic, so let’s quit pointing fingers.

And another thing.

Until this nightmare ends, which I hope is very soon, please don’t just shelter in your home. Shelter in your own state.

–

Copyright 2020 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to [email protected]. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using columns contact Sales at [email protected].

I sure hope this coronavirus crisis comes to an end soon.

I sure hope the millions of people thrown out of work get their jobs back soon.

I sure hope the major league baseball season opens, not to mention our schools and restaurants.

Oh, excuse me. I’m terribly sorry I used that dirty word “hope.”

It’s become the new n-word for leftwing Democrats ever since Donald Trump said he is hoping to get the economy back to normal again by April 12.

The president gave everyone in America a day to look forward to – Easter Sunday — but Democrats and half the liberal media acted like he had committed another impeachable offense.

Easter Sunday!? No way! What’s he thinking?

He’s not a scientist! Did he check with Dr. Fauci and the other doctors on his coronavirus task force?

What happened to practicing social distancing and shelter in place?

What about testing millions for the virus? What about the high infection rate in New York City?

Despite the kneejerk hysteria of the media and the selfish and cynical behavior of the Democrats in Congress, the president did exactly what a leader is supposed to do in a crisis.

He bucked up the country’s morale. Looked on the bright side. Set a national goal to shoot for.

Imagine if President Trump had taken the gloomy route. 

How would his critics have reacted if he said something like, “Man, there’s no hope.”

“The experts tell me we have to keep the country shut down for at least six months to completely win our war against this killer virus.”

American people would be jumping off their roofs by now. We’d be putting suicide nets on our buildings. We’d have rioting in the streets.

Instead, he took the right position and acted like a leader.

He got top scientists and VP Mike Pence to help him.

He explained what he was going to do and then did it. Every day he’s had to put up with the Democrats’ sniping and a liberal media that hates him and questions everything he does.

To repair the damage to the economy from the coronavirus pandemic as fast as possible, President Trump and his financial guys put together a massive $2 trillion stimulus package that will help big corporations, small businesses and working people.

Maybe it won’t be enough.

Maybe when we get to April 12, we’ll have to push back the re-boot of the crashed economy for another week or two.

Maybe we’ll be able to let life return to normal in some places but we’ll have to continue the shutdowns in New York City or elsewhere.

Maybe the coronavirus pandemic will turn out to be not as widespread or as deadly as we were first led to believe.

Nobody knows how it’ll turn out. Not Dr. Fauci. Not even Gov. Cuomo or the New York Times. 

But President Trump says he hopes to “open up the country” by April 12. The brilliant doctors say, “We don’t know yet … let’s see what the data tells us.”

Doctors look at things a lot differently than a president does. As he has said, if he listened only to the doctors he’d have to close up the country for a year.

So the president has the toughest job.

He has to balance what the doctors tell him with his own optimism and common sense, which tell him we have the brains, money and will power to defeat the virus and revive the economy at the same time.

So April 12 is a reasonable goal for the country to shoot for. It might take longer to return to normal, but so what?

The important thing is that the president gave us hope, not despair. And God forbid you have no hope.

–

Copyright 2020 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to [email protected]. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using columns contact Sales at [email protected].

Every four-year-old knows the official coronavirus drill by now.

Wash your hands often, cover your coughs and sneezes and don’t touch your face.

And also practice “social distancing,” stay away from large crowds and especially stay away from those who are most likely to die if they catch the virus – the very old and the already weak or very sick.

That’s always been excellent advice for everyone to follow during any “normal” flu season, which for decades has been killing tens of thousands of us each year without media fanfare or public panic.

But the coronavirus is a scary new flu that threatens the health of millions of people around the world.

In two weeks it has shut down most of the social and economic life in our country and many others.

To slow its spread and “flatten the curve” so that hospitals and medical facilities aren’t overwhelmed and unable to treat its victims, we’ve had to close schools, restaurants, arenas and even beaches and golf courses.

The coronavirus is a global pandemic, a national emergency, but it’s not the end of the world.

Thousands of brilliant scientists around the world are working feverishly to come up with a vaccine – which will probably happen faster than everyone thinks.

Until the danger of contracting the coronavirus passes, I think the best way to make sure you don’t get it is to become as healthy as you can, so that you don’t get it in the first place.

I can’t remember when I last had the regular flu, which is a good thing because I’m a 75-year-old guy with some serious underlying medical conditions.

I may still catch the coronavirus, but for years I’ve been taking good care of myself and doing things to improve my chances of fighting the flu.

To build up my immune system, each day I take Emergen.C and Counter Attack, supplements that give me heavy doses of Vitamin C and other antioxidants and B Vitamins.

To keep my body strong, I exercise regularly. I work out in the gym three or four days a week. I walk the dog around the block for half an hour. I play golf – when the courses are open.

My resting heart rate is 41, which is an athlete’s number, and I’m proud to report I have the bone density of a 30-year-old.

Being in decent physical condition matters. It definitely saved my life five years ago, when I had two strokes, quadruple bypass surgery and a pacemaker installed in my chest.

These days it’s not hard for someone to find ways to exercise, even when confined to your own home.

The SilverSneakers fitness program has a workout for seniors on Facebook and you can find all kinds of workouts on Google, which is what my wife and daughter stream on our TV.

Meanwhile, here in LA my wife Colleen and I have been waiting it out in our house.

We’re staying as isolated as possible, having no contact with our grand kids, watching news reports about college yahoos defying the rules and partying on the Florida beaches – and not fixing blame on President Trump for anything.

Actually, God bless the president.

It doesn’t matter what you think of him personally or if you don’t like everything he’s said or done regarding the coronavirus.

If other countries had followed his example and shut down flights from China in January, there likely would be no worldwide pandemic.

So if you want to point the finger of blame in the right direction, point it right at China.

That’s where the coronavirus came from, and that’s where the communist regime tried to keep it secret for so long.

It’s really pretty simple – China lied and people died.

And now our lives – and our country – will never be the same.

–
Copyright 2020 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to [email protected]. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter.
Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using columns contact Sales at [email protected].

There’s a virus threatening the health of America, all right.

But it’s not new, not from a foreign country and it’s not the coronavirus.

The virus Americans need to fear the most today is the political left.

The Pelosi-Schumer Democrats and their permanently distraught soulmates in the Trump-hating liberal mainstream media are trying harder than ever to hurt the president at every turn.

The president has been doing his best to protect us from the coronavirus without sowing panic in the streets and in the toilet paper aisles  at Costco.

He acted decisively in late January when he shut down travel from China, where the virus apparently was born late last year.

This week he announced a temporary ban on travel to the U.S. for most Europeans – and rightly so, because their governments had not acted quickly enough to block the spread of the virus to their countries from China.

But no matter what Trump does or doesn’t do, the left and the liberal media try to blame him for infecting the entire world.

Covid-19 is obviously a serious national health problem that will only get worse as many more older and already sick people get infected and have to be treated.

It’s already slammed the economy, crashed the stock market, closed college campus, forced sports leagues to cancel or suspend their seasons, crushed the oil and travel industries, spooked local politicians and turned airports, malls and other parts of America into ghost towns.

But unlike previous deadly viruses like the swine flu pandemic of 2009-2010, Covid-19 is being politicized and weaponized by the left.

You probably don’t remember the details of the swine flu, which infected 60 million Americans and killed over 12,000 without panicking everyone and wrecking the economy.

That’s because President Obama and his administration were not blamed for the virus by Republicans or a biased and hysterical media.

Plus the media did not over-play the swine flu pandemic 24/7 as it slowly spread, peaked and then died away.

The media coverage of this dangerous virus is semi-hysterical and has a much different spin – a partisan one.

Over at CNN and MSNBC, they’re virtually asking why the president hasn’t personally cured the coronavirus yet and charging that he doesn’t care about people dying at all.

That’s sub-par for the course for the hardcore Trump-hate media.

Meanwhile, you’d think Democrats in Congress would, just once, think of the good of the entire country and work with Republicans.

But no.

Democrats have made it clear they don’t want to work together with Republicans on anything if Trump is taking the lead on it.

They don’t like how Trump is handling things, but of course they can’t come up with anything better. All they can think of doing is finding new things to blame on the president.

But if they want to fix blame on someone who deserves it, let them fix it on our brilliant leaders who gave China the authority to make almost all of our antibiotics.

We’ve been yelling and screaming about becoming oil independent for decades. We finally did it – and now we find out we’re not pill independent?

We actually turned over the manufacture of our pills to a Communist country that lies and steals from us.

Whose brainstorm was that? Republicans or Democrats, I don’t care. It’s outrageous.

Thanks to them, now the older generation who is most likely to die from the effects of the Covid-19 have to get the pills they need from the same country that manufactured the virus.

–

Copyright 2020 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to [email protected]. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using columns contact Sales at [email protected].

Everyone talks about the power of the Republican and Democrat party establishments.

It’s real – just ask Bernie.

He quickly found out how powerful the Democrat establishment is this week when Mayor Pete and Amy Klobuchar both called it quits just in time to help Joe Biden rack up some impressive primary wins on Super Tuesday.

Bernie Sanders is a socialist, an outsider.

Outsiders always have a tough time. But good, likable candidates like my father in 1980 can defeat the party establishment.

Bernie isn’t exactly likable, but he was looking pretty strong there for a while – almost unstoppable.

He had a lot going for him.

Big, energetic crowds. A clear and unchanging message calling for bigger government, radical economic change and social justice. Lots of campaign money rolling in. Friendly coverage by the liberal mainstream media.

But his big mistake – the one that caused Democrat powerbrokers to quickly crush him just as he seemed to be cruising to the nomination – was when he went on “60 Minutes” and staunchly defended Fidel Castro’s literacy and educational programs.

The Democrat establishment woke up and said, “Whoa, wait a minute. We just lost Florida in the fall.”

Bernie had to know that with half a million Cubans living in Miami, a presidential candidate in a general election who says nice things about Cuba’s communist government is committing political suicide.

But “principled” Bernie couldn’t help himself.

He’s a living ideological relic of the 1960s, when leftists like him excused, justified and even applauded the oppressive, impoverished and primitive dictatorships of Cuba and the Soviet Union.

Half a century later, with the USSR’s evil empire long gone and Eastern Europe free, Bernie still actually believes all that 1960s leftwing claptrap.

He’s one of the reasons the Cold War lasted so damn long.

When the Democrat bigshots heard Bernie praising his hero Fidel – and stubbornly refusing to pull it back – it scared the bejesus out of them.

Biden was getting weaker and goofier every day, but to the party establishment he was suddenly again looking like their only hope to beat Trump.

So the Democrats – the party of diversity – got rid of the rest of their women candidates, their young candidates, their billionaire candidates and their candidates of color and ended up with two very old white guys.

Anything could happen, but Biden now looks like he’ll win the nomination unless he completely goes off the rails – which might happen in the next CNN debate on March 15.

By then Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and Washington will have held their March 10 Democrat primaries and half of all delegates will have been chosen.

Biden and Bernie will debate one-on-one for two whole hours – if the old coots can last that long.

Both of them are going to need extra doses of vitamin B-12. Instead of water on his podium, Biden will be swigging Red Bull.

Whoever wins their debates, Bernie is never going make the Democrat establishment happy by obediently dropping out of the race like Mike Bloomberg and the others did.

That means it’s going to be hot and nasty at the Democrat National Convention in Milwaukee this July.

If Biden wins the nomination, according to the Democrat establishment’s plans, the party’s big problem will be getting Bernie’s young army of left-wingers to get out of bed and vote for Biden on Election Day.

Good luck with that.

In the general election, no matter which woman he picks as his VP, old Joe Biden and his stale, “moderate,” leftover Obama-era policy ideas will be a longshot to beat Donald Trump.

But the Republican Party and the Trump campaign better be careful.

Voters don’t always vote on policy. They often vote on personality – “Do I like you?”

That “likability” advantage helped Donald Trump pull off his upset of Hillary. But whatever weaknesses Biden has, he will never be as unlikable as she is.

–

Copyright 2020 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to [email protected]. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using columns contact Sales at [email protected].

Two weeks ago, I was happily sailing on a huge cruise ship in the Indian Ocean.

My wife Collen is a travel agent and I was tagging along with her and her group on a Celebrity Cruise Line ship as it sailed from Dubai to Singapore and back with 2,300 souls aboard.

Everyone on board our ship knew what was happening that same week to the unlucky people stuck on the Diamond Princess cruise liner docked offshore Tokyo.

Because a passenger who left Diamond Princess nine days earlier in Hong Kong had tested positive for the new coronavirus sweeping China, the Japanese government had ordered everyone to stay aboard the luxury cruise ship.

We weren’t doctors or epidemiologists, just vacationers.

But we knew that cooping  2,666 people  together on the Diamond Princess for 14 days was going to be trouble – and it was.

Because Japanese officials dithered around and then screwed up their containment measures on the ship for two weeks, the Diamond Princess became what the New York Times called “a floating epidemiological disaster.”

According to the Times, “with 634 infections and two deaths, the cruise ship represents the largest concentration of coronavirus cases outside China.”

We were a lot luckier, even though we never made it all the way to Singapore.

Our wise captain decided it wasn’t worth the risk of getting any closer to the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak and we turned back to Dubai after stopping at Sri Lanka.

The Celebrity Cruise Line people did everything right. Everyone was compensated for their lost cruise time and given $500 to pay for straightening up their travel arrangements.

Most important, as far as I know no one on our cruise ship caught the flu.

Since I’ve been back in Southern California, however, I’ve been getting sick watching the mainstream media sensationalize the dangers of the coronavirus.

Every time another country like Brazil gets its first official coronovirus case, they throw up another panicky headline about how the deadly pandemic is putting every human on the planet at risk.

The mainstream media rarely take the trouble to point out that it is the already sick, the very old and the very young who are most likely to die from flu-caused problems like pneumonia, strokes and heart attacks.

The coronavirus may yet live up to its media hype and become a true pandemic in the United States or elsewhere that kills hundreds of thousands.

But as the stock market dropped a few thousand points this week on the Dow Jones, it’d be a nice public service if the media put the death toll of the coronavirus in the proper perspective.

President Trump did exactly that during his press conference on Wednesday.

He pointed out to the entire country that old-fashioned Asian flu – the regular kind of constantly changing viruses that many of us take shots for every year – kills from 25,000 to 69,000 Americans a year.

Every year after every year after every year.

When President Trump admitted he was “shocked” to learn that the “regular” flu was so deadly, he was of course mocked for his ignorance by the mainstream liberal media and their Democrat pals.

They would like you to think President Trump is the only person in America who wasn’t up to speed on America’s annual flu deaths, which actually are statistical estimates made by the Centers for Disease Control.

But I bet most Republicans and Democrats were unaware of how deadly the “regular” flu is.

For example, did you know that 2017-2018 was one of the deadliest flu seasons in our history?

Did you know that 80,000 Americans – older, younger, sicker Americans — died that flu season, the most since the mid-1970s?

Do you remember the scary media stories, the doomsday predictions, the panic in the streets, the stock market crash of early 2018, the soccer games played in empty stadiums, the closing of public schools?

Neither do I — and neither do the media.

–

Copyright 2020 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to [email protected]. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using columns contact Sales at [email protected].

I never thought I’d feel sorry for a billionaire – a $60 billion billionaire.

But watching Mike Bloomberg getting beat up in the Democrat debate in Vegas Wednesday night was almost tragic.

It was like watching a old boxer who gets clocked early in Round 1 and then wobbles around the ring in a daze for the rest of the fight while he’s pounded unmercifully.

Mike never recovered from the opening series of left hooks and below-the belt punches delivered by Bernie, Liz, Pete, Amy and old Joe.

For two hours he was slapped around and bullied by his much taller, much poorer and much better-prepared opponents.

Mini-Mike found out fast that he was definitely not among friends.

For millionaire socialists like Bernie and Liz, simply being a multi-billionaire capitalist was an unforgivable original sin – no matter how self-made he was, how hard or smart he worked or how much of his wealth he’s given away.

And thanks to the accusations about his sexist tongue, his allegedly racist remarks about New York’s stop-and-frisk crime policy and his arrogant quest to buy the Democrat Party presidential nomination, Mike was put on the defensive all night.

Even the refs – NBC’s all-liberal moderators – had no mercy.

They didn’t challenge Mike’s opponents’ low blows or question their ludicrous plans to have the federal government fix everything wrong with America.

By now everyone in the country knows that Mike’s debate debut was a total disaster. Like Governor Perry and Mayor Giuliani in 2016, he turned out to be all media hype and hope.

Along with his advisers, even his makeup person fell down on the job. Mike didn’t appear anywhere near as youthful or sharp-minded as he does in his slick TV ads.

Mini-Mike’s failure reminds me of what Homer Simpson said to his daughter Lisa after she asked him how she did when she sang at a school concert.

“Honey,” Homer said, “you tried your best. You failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.”

Homer would give the same advice today to Mike, who spent more time apologizing than explaining how his policies differ from his competitors.

He did get off a few sarcastic quips. But apparently he was so afraid of stepping into a politically incorrect hole he didn’t take ownership of the good things he’s accomplished or get even a little bit mad at being a public punching bag.

Liz, Pete, Amy and Joe all got their jollies taking cheap shots at Mike and his fat wallet.

But they did nothing to stop the juggernaut that is going to run all of them over in the coming primaries – Bernie Sanders.

Bernie was stronger than ever in Vegas. He looked crazy and sounded great as usual.

And no matter what the issue was, he always managed to end up on the same ideological soapbox shouting for more socialism, more taxes and stricter government control over evil capitalism.

Liz was tougher than usual and quick on her feet.

But she was also her annoying professorial self – a tiresome know-it-all and a leftwing moral scold who along with Bernie wants to save the planet by implementing the Green New Deal and outlawing fossil fuels.

Mayor Pete – the youngest and poorest candidate – did pretty well. When he wasn’t having a high school lunchroom catfight with Amy, his fellow moderate, he seemed to be the only adult on stage. She did her standard third-place job.

Poor Joe. No one picked on him or paid much attention to him because his candidacy is in a death spiral. He was not as incoherent as usual. But he embarrassed himself by bragging so much about how much experience he’s had in DC that he made it sound like President Obama had been his VP.

So the consensus is clear.The big loser of the night – other than the Democratic Party – was Mini-Mike and the big winner was Bernie.

But we all know that in the long run the real winner – for the ninth Democrat debate in a row – was Donald Trump.

–

Copyright 2020 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to [email protected]. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using columns contact Sales at [email protected].

Editor’s note: Michael Reagan is on vacation this week. He will return with a new column on Friday, Feb. 21.

If you’re looking for a conservative column to replace Reagan this week, consider “Science Discovers Benefits of Christianity” by Michael Shannon or “Maga Companies Power Trump Stock Boom” by Phil Kerpen.

It started Sunday night with an exciting and hard-fought Super Bowl game, which I was happy to see end with the Kansas City Chiefs defeating the San Francisco 49ers.

Then the next day came the Iowa caucus, aka the Democrat Party’s Iowa fiasco.

For weeks, the liberal mainstream media and cable TV had been building up the importance of a win in Iowa.

They treated the state’s obsolete caucus process like a sacred ceremony of grassroots democracy that was going to play a crucial role in deciding the Democrats’ choice to dethrone President Trump.

The caucus was over on Monday.

As of Thursday afternoon, we still didn’t know who won, thanks to the incompetence and serial screw-ups of the state’s Democrat Party election officials.

The two “winners” – Mayor Pete and Bernie Sanders – are essentially tied. But since those results were riddled with many inconsistencies, the final score can never be trusted.

At this point, though, Iowa doesn’t matter. No one cares.

The candidates and the media already have flown off in their private jets to New Hampshire for next week’s primary.

While Democrats were still re-counting in Iowa, President Trump was winning the 2020 election.

On Tuesday night his State of the Union address got high marks from Republicans for content, tone and a handful of emotional stories from special guests, while the Democrats in Congress showed what losers they are.

A bunch of them sat on their hands, made sour faces, yelled comments, stared into their phones and acted like bratty high school girls.

If Stuntwoman of the House Nancy Pelosi hadn’t torn up her copy of the president’s speech, the rude and childish behavior of her young Democrats might have been a bigger story.

On Wednesday, President Trump had another pretty good day. He was easily acquitted by the Senate of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in his impeachment trial.

With a two-thirds majority needed to remove him from office, everyone on the planet had known for months that he would be acquitted in a walk. We just had to wait to see what the official final score would be.

The only “news” made at the impeachment trial was Mitt Romney’s split vote on the two articles of impeachment.

He voted guilty on abuse of power, becoming the only Republican in the trial to vote to remove the president, and not guilty on obstruction of Congress.

It was typical Mitt.

He’s always standing in the middle of the road – and then wonders why he gets run over. That was his big problem in 2012 when he ran against President Obama as a wishy-washy conservative.

Looking back over the week’s wild events, I think the craziest one was the halftime show put on by Shakira and Jennifer Lopez at the Super Bowl.

I enjoyed it. The dancing was great. The Latin music was great, though I don’t remember what J.Lo was singing – or if she even was.

But excuse me, isn’t the Super Bowl supposed to be family entertainment?

As a male I was perfectly OK with watching two Latina superstars performing 15-minutes of seductive hip-shaking, butt-shaking, crotch-thrusting and pole dancing.

But should nine-year-old boys or girls or teenagers with raging hormones have been watching J.Lo shake her booty and everything else in their faces?

Was the NFL really OK with what she and Shakira were essentially doing – selling simulated sex to the guys watching football?

I thought that kind of stuff was in violation of the #MeToo Movement. Or is it OK as long as women do it?

I don’t know the answers to those questions.

But I do know if a male responded to J.Lo’s seductive sales pitch in a natural way and said something like “Great legs” or “Nice butt he might find himself looking for a new job.

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Copyright 2020 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to [email protected]. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

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