All these heartburn-inducing concerns are preliminary to the Big Fear that Trump will find a way to slither across the finish line again in 2020, quite possibly by again putting together an Electoral College majority while losing the popular vote handily. Yes, we political writers are prone to treating every presidential election as momentous. But this one undoubtedly lives up to the hype. Back in March, I outlined seven hellish developments we can expect if Trump is reelected, ranging from an indelibly slanted federal judiciary and a shredded social safety net to a permanently Trumpist GOP and a shattered opposition party. But more terrifying than any of these specific possibilities is what a second “mandate” (following Trump’s all-but-certain acquittal on articles of impeachment) would do to the recklessness of a president who already believes the Constitution authorizes him to do any damn thing he pleases...
A year ago, and certainly two or three years ago, it was possible to envision 2020 as a less dire and dread-worthy election year. Perhaps Trump’s sloppy governing style, thuggish tendencies, and unpopular policies would make him all but un-reelectable. Or maybe he’d get tired of his own act and, with the encouragement of his Republican allies, begin to behave more like a conventional president and less like a cartoon villain. As recently as a few months ago, there was some reason to hope (though I never shared this particular view) that impeachment proceedings would bring down Trump just as they brought down Nixon, via a combination of disgusted public opinion and election fears among GOP pols.
But the arrival of 2020 is a reminder that none of these game-changing events have happened. For Trump critics like yours truly, it’s as though the combination of fear, confusion, and anger felt by so many on November 8, 2016, has never gone away and has never been completely resolved. Trump’s defenders are right that liberals are haunted by the outcome of the 2016 election and are determined to ensure it doesn’t happen again. But they are wrong in suggesting we don’t understand Trump supporters or the parts of the country (most intensely the southern part of the country, in which I was born and raised) where he is popular. I feel like I understand it entirely. But it remains hard to accept. Three years into his reign, it’s harder than ever to accept that so many wage earners lionize this billionaire surrounded by billionaires who has never sided with working people in any conflict with the malefactors of great wealth, or to accept that so many law-abiding people celebrate his lawlessness, or to accept that millions of Bible-believing Christians look at this heathenish bully who exemplifies every vice and form of idol worship the Good Book warns them about and see a redeemer...
The entirety of trump's first term reign has been an ungodly series of unforced errors - tariffs that cost American jobs, failures at diplomacy even with our traditional allies, an ongoing scandal of immigration enforcement that's STILL separating families and punishing babies (and where are the missing children, Republicans?!) - that would sink a normal politician's entire career, but trump gleefully defies the gravity of politics.
His polling across many of the approval trackers - give or take the more conservative-leaning ones - have never had trump polling above 45 percent because trump himself doesn't even try to campaign or speak to the nation as a Uniter... but it's never sunk below 35 percent either because his voting fanbase won't quit on him like they did for Nixon and Dubya. As a result, there's no real understanding of how the general voters will actually behave when it's November 2020 and there's a choice between trump and whichever Democratic candidate (which is currently looking to be Biden) is there.
(It also doesn't help that the Republican Party will happily collude with trump and his Russian buddies to cheat, because they'll profit from such cheating if they win)
In the face of all this dread, the Democrats both moderate and progressive - and the Independent voters who still care that honest American virtues like civil liberties and legal immigration and accountability in power should always be in effect - need to work harder than they've ever worked before to generate voter interest, voter registration, and above all voter turnout.
This year of election 2020 is right now the most vital election this nation's ever had since 1864 when we were in the midst of a bloody Civil War and the ideals of liberty for all were on the line.
Get the vote out, Democrats. Get the vote out, Americans.
And for the LOVE of a Kind and Giving God, do NOT vote for trump or ANY Republican who currently stands for corruption, collusion, and cruelty.
1 comment:
There are more of us than there are them. We must turn ALL of us out, and make sure we win winnable states so as not to be buggered by the electoral college again.
And, please, don't spread their propaganda. The propaganda war this time will make 2016 look polite and civil by comparison.
-Doug in Oakland
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