The minutes are ticking down to Friday noon, the 20th of January when Donald John Trump will be sworn in as President of the United States.

Back on the 20th of January 1961, I was the 20-year-old president of the San Diego State Young Republicans and was the guest of the Del Cerro Republican Women’s’ Club. They had invited me to share my comments with them about the inauguration of John Fitzgerald Kennedy as president.

I was not a fan of Kennedy. I had knocked on doors, mailed brochures on behalf of Richard Nixon and debated Kennedy fans at the college. I was a Nixon man. Actually, I was an Eisenhower man. I was a California Young Republican and my party had run California for all but four years since 1900. Until Democrats carried the governorship and one U.S. Senate seat two years before the Nixon/Kennedy race they had never won a Senate seat at the polls and had only won one four-year term in the governor’s mansion (1938-1942).

California Republicans were so strong that under the peculiar open primary -- cross-filing -- system in California, Governor Earl Warren and many Republicans were nominated by both parties in the primary; e.g. Earl Warren was nominated for reelection in 1950 by both Republicans and Democrats, ditto most other statewide Republican officers.

Nixon carried California in 1960. He lost the presidency because more dead people than not voted for Kennedy in Chicago and dead Mexicans voted for Kennedy in Senator Lyndon Johnson’s Texas.

Nonetheless, there Nixon was, watching Kennedy take the oath. So were Republican congressmen and senators. Republican Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, a former candidate for president himself, swore Kennedy in. The 1960 election was clearly stolen by Democrats in Illinois and Texas. About 100,000 votes were the difference in the national vote. Had Nixon carried Texas and Illinois, states Eisenhower had carried handily, Nixon would have won. Nonetheless, Nixon did not contest the election. He thought the country didn’t need that controversy.

Fast forward to 2016, Donald Trump was smashed in the popular vote with opponent Hillary Clinton carrying my precious California by over four million votes. And though she has kept silent about why she lost, many of her supporters blame FBI Director James Comey and his less-than-exciting declaration that Clinton would not be charged with crimes despite her “recklessness,” more importantly, the complainers -- the whiners -- declare without any proof that the election was influenced by the Russians.

Though the FBI certainly had some effect on voters, it is hard to see how the Russians could affect any nationwide election in the United States unless they produced irrefutable photos of a presidential candidate in a sexual liaison with a little girl or boy.

Hillary Clinton lost the race because she was dumb to the core. She had no appeal. She lost because she had a fit of stupidity when she decided to avoid government Internet servers so that she could have her “privacy” and not be held accountable. She lost the race when she was caught lying about “secret” material in her e-mails. She lost when her office calendar showed people were granted private meetings with her when she was Secretary of State that had donated millions to the Clinton “foundation.” She lost when Black voters found more important things to do on Election Day. She lost when the geniuses in her campaign ignored Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.

Hillary Clinton lost because of her stupidity and that of her campaign geniuses. She didn’t lose because of the Russians; she didn’t lose because Trump is a genius or because he had a super-smart campaign staff. They were lucky.

Given these real facts, it is beyond this old politico’s imagination that an exceptional man like Georgia’s Democrat congressman John Lewis, who prior to the 2000 election was a personal hero of mine, is acting as dumb as Hillary Clinton. He is reliving his 2000 stupidity of boycotting the inauguration of George W. Bush. I was there.

He says he doesn’t consider Donald J. Trump’s election “legitimate” because the Russians were involved. His boycott of the inauguration is joined by (as of this minute, Tuesday) 47 other Democrats in Congress. One in five California House members are joining him. The Congressional Black Caucus is joining him in the boycott. Several Hispanic congressmen are also.

There is only one word to describe the inaugural boycott – STUPID, ESTUPIDO.

I didn’t approve what John F. Kennedy stood for but if I had had the opportunity to be in Washington D.C. on January 20, 1961, I would have been there. As it was, I attended the Inauguration of President Bill Clinton on January 20, 1997. I didn’t care for him either but I am a profound believer in the United States of America. I celebrate the United States of America. John Kennedy and Bill Clinton celebrated America, too. John Lewis and his very dumb boycotting cohorts are not celebrating the United States of America -- they are turning their backs on the great United States. Their constituents should retire them for being -- like Hillary Clinton -- stupid to the core.