Long time Star editorialist turned blogger Yael Abouhalkah believes that former Missouri secretary of state Jason Kander is presidential timber (or “timbre,” reader’s call).
“Jason Kander is a young, articulate, thoughtful, progressive Democrat and, yes, he might be presidential in 2020,” writes Abouhalkah, presumably with a straight face. He believes that Kander’s 79,000 vote shortfall to Roy Blunt in the 2016 Missouri Senate race is a sign of Kander’s popularity.
Abouhalkah is also impressed with Kander’s bluntness. He quotes Kander as telling MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell in regard to President Trump’s claim of massive vote fraud, “The president is lying. This is something that the president made up and a lie that he told himself, that he needed to hear about his loss of the popular vote.”
Not so fast.
Abouhalkah overlooks the fact that the president Kander slandered won the popular vote in the state he hopes to represent by 19 percent. Abouhalkah fails to note too that Blunt was not wildly popular among Missouri Republicans, many seeing him as exactly the kind of swamp creature whose habitat Trump hopes to drain.
If Kander does run again, he can expect a much more formidable foe, maybe even one whose military exploits far exceed his own.
