Yesterday we learned that Rick Perry has “suspended” his campaign for president. This allows him to continue to raise money even though nobody really believes he’ll be president: any money he collects is donated by wealthy people who feel badly for him and don’t want him to be responsible for debts collected during his delusional belief that anyone would vote to make him president.

He’s the first of the GOP crowd to drop out and it doesn’t really surprise anyone. Rick did poorly four years ago in the last presidential race and many residents of Texas expressed embarrassment. When he declared his candidacy for 2016 most people hoped they could ignore him.

Enough did. His poll numbers never really made him a serious candidate and his decision to wear eyeglasses didn’t make him look smarter.

On August 10th his campaign admitted that they could no longer pay his campaign staffers. Some stayed, some left, but nobody could claim his campaign was viable.

In my last post I spoke of citizenship issues from a historical perspective. We really can’t have a full discussion about citizenship without speaking about the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

This amendment was passed on July 28, 1868 and it granted automatic citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.” Clearly this amendment was intended to grant citizenship to all the newly freed African slaves but its reach has proven much greater.

For the rest of the 19th Century and much of the 20th Century our nation found itself to be a land that others dreamed of. Immigrants from virtually every other nation on earth found their way here in the hopes that through hard work and dedication they could provide a better life for their children, grandchildren, etc. The 14th Amendment guaranteed that no matter how they got here, anyone born here could stay and enjoy the full privileges of citizenship. My father was one of those people (my grandparents came from Canada around 1915).

There have been challenges to this. Wong King Ark was born in San Francisco in 1873 to parents who lived here (but were not citizens). In 1894 he traveled to China for a visit but on his return to the US in 1895 was told he was not a citizen because of the Chinese Exclusion Act that I spoke about in the previous post.

The case of The United States vs. Wong Kim Ark went to the Supreme Court and on March 28, 1898 they decided on a 6-2 vote that Mr. Ark was indeed a U.S. citizen. The majority argued that someone born on U.S. soil could be denied citizenship for only 3 reasons:

• If the person was born of parents who were rulers or diplomats of a foreign country
• If the person was born on foreign public ships (I’m guessing they are talking about a child born on a ship in a U.S. port)
• If a person born to enemy forces who are here to to defeat the United States in war

And while Mr. Ark’s parents were here legally, that fact did not enter into the decision.

That’s right: nowhere does it base Mr. Ark’s citizenship on whether or not his parents were documented or undocumented.

But that appears to be the crux of Mr. Trump’s argument. You can read an article about an exchange between Mr. Trump and Bill O’Reilly.

With absolutely no analysis Mr. Trump insists that children born here of undocumented residents are not citizens. To be fair, he is a real estate developer with no legal training at all. He speaks of lawyers who insist that claims of these children “will not hold up in court.”

I disagree. If you were born here, you’re as much a US citizen as I am and I welcome you. I encourage you to stay in school, find your passion, and contribute as much to this blessed country as my father has.

Oh, and for my mother? Well, her father was born here in 1902 to Irish immigrants. Her mother was born in Massachusetts to a father who was born in Canada and a mother who (as far as we can tell) was born in Michigan. Her parents were born in Canada. In other words if you go back to 1850 nobody in my family was born in the US.

As for me, I love being an American and want that feeling to be passed on to anyone who is as fortunate as I was to be born here.

When Donald Trump announced he was a candidate for the Republican nomination for President in 2016 most Americans ignored him. He’s done this before. In 1999 he declared himself a candidate for the Reform Party, though he dropped out after a few months. After a few flirtations for the 2012 election he ended his candidacy.

But two months ago he announced his candidacy and it’s different now. It appears he’s serious and thinks he can win. The polls seem to back him up: as of right now he garners the support of 24% of Republican voters (Jeb Bush is in 2nd place with 13% of the vote) and in a head to head competition with Hillary Clinton he’s only 6 points behind.

We are a year away from the nominating conventions and fifteen months away from the election but already there is copious amounts of chatter that the Donald may be our next president. I have to confess a certain amount of amusement over this. Fringe candidates like Donald Trump and Rand Paul feed into the general discontent many voters feel. Fifteen months out it’s easy to express anger and frustration without having to worry about actually voting for these tangential candidates.

But the 24 hour news cycle is benefiting from this energy and projecting that our next president may be one of these. It won’t. The long journey to the White House demands a candidate who reflects the values, hopes, and dreams of the majority of Americans. It’s no coincidence that Ross Perot in 1992 and John Anderson in 1980 garnered more interest than votes.

These candidates and many others believe that a momentary spike in the polls will translate into a belief in their leadership. We American voters respond to pollsters in different ways: fifteen months out we express our fears and frustrations, and in the voting booth we vote for our dreams.

Many voters worry about the direction of our country and most of them are expressing their fears. But at the end of the conversation they’re not willing to entrust our future to someone who expresses only anger and no leadership. In November of 2016 we will all vote for the candidate who best expresses where we want to be in the future.

I believe most of us want a future where all of us have what we need, where we welcome those who want to join us in building a more perfect union. Where anyone who wants to advance has the opportunity to do so. Where all of us recognize that our ancestors came to this land with a determination to work and a hope to provide for us, their descendants. When we vote in November, 2016 we need to remember them.

I believe that all of us who will vote for our next president will recognize the candidates who share our values and support our descendants as much as our ancestors.

And more to the point I hope all of us will look at Donald Trump and the rest of his supporters and recognize that our nation will do well by choosing someone who will lead us from fear and toward inclusion. Donald won’t do that.

Every four years I give myself a self inflicted wound. I try to keep track of candidates for the next Presidential race. If that weren’t enough, once the delegate race begins I try to keep track of how many delegates are committed to each candidate.

This is more complicated that you might think. As I write this the “conventional wisdom” claims there are 15 running for the Republican nomination and 4 for the Democratic nomination.

That’s at least who I have listed on the left column of this blog. But if you go to the Republican web page there is a straw poll that includes Mark Everson (who has declared but is not taken seriously by most Republicans), Jim Gilmore (who hasn’t declared and doesn’t have a web page, only a facebook page), John Kasich (who also hasn’t declared and has only a facebook page and a twitter feed), and Peter King who hasn’t declared but does have a web page.

On top of that you can look at web pages that list Republican, Democrat candidates as well as candidates for other parties. These pages list dozens of other declared and potential candidates.

Both major parties will have to walk through the weeds and determine who are viable when they choose not only funding but also places at debates.

God it’s great fun to live in a democracy.