I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that,
and I’ll tell you why in a minute.
For those of you who have forgotten, our National Nightmare
1.0 ended in 1974 when, with those very words, President Gerald Ford was inaugurated following the resignation of Richard Nixon. A month later, Ford pardoned Nixon for the crimes that led to his resignation as he was on the verge
of being impeached.
Nightmare 2.0, of course, was the election of Donald J.
Trump in November 2016. We’re still dealing with that one and we will be for
some time, unless you believe the Esquire
article, which puts forth this theory:
“The
country’s head is clearing. The country’s vision is coming back into focus and
it can see for the first time the length and breadth of the damage it has done
to itself. The country is hearing the voices that the cacophony of fear and
anger had drowned out for almost three years. The spell, such as it was, and in
most places, may be wearing off at last. The hallucinatory effect of a
reality-show presidency is dispersing like a foul, smoky mist over a muddy
battlefield.”
Heady stuff, that. A nice collection of words.
Now I hate to be that grumpy old man (again), but the fact is, I
don't believe those words for one minute. To the contrary, I believe the 35% of Americans
who still idolize con man Trump are even more empowered, more excited and more
supportive than ever before...and growing stronger every day. And THEY turn out
to vote.
Just today, for example, Trump went to Brussels with a roomful
of our closest friends and instead took the opportunity to mock Germany and our
NATO allies while cameras clicked and the whole world watched. I’ll spare you
the details, but I could almost hear the Trumpeteers back home saying, “Oh,
hell yeah. You tell ‘em, Mr. President. We love you. America first!”
These are the people who got him elected once which, in
turn, got two far-right radicals appointed or nominated to the U.S. Supreme
Court (so far), proving what I keep saying about elections and their
consequences. We won't recover from Trump’s court appointments and the fallout
that’s certain to occur from them for at least the next 40 years, if we ever do.
Meanwhile, Democrats still can’t decide who they are as a
party. A lot of them think Bernie Sanders should be their next nominee for
president, despite the fact that (1) he’ll be 78 years old in 2020 and (2) he’s
not even a Democrat. So if they don’t sort themselves out pretty soon and
develop some legitimate candidates and a platform they can sell – and if the other
65% don't get off their asses in every election and vote out the spineless
Trump tagalongs – the Republicans will do it all again in the mid-terms and
beyond and we’ll be screwed for at least another four years.
Democrats like to say there’s a “blue wave” coming this fall
that’s going to sweep the trash out of Congress, and I hope they’re right, but
in my mind, they’ve got to overcome blue apathy first. Color me hopeful but not
optimistic.
Getting back to the Esquire
article, it was written nearly a month ago when the crisis at the border
was front and center in our media coverage. But things change. What’s the top
of today’s news? Is it still the immigrant children? Or is it the newest Supreme Court nominee? Or
a mentally deficient president overseas? Or some other shiny object?
Bottom line: Republicans have gotten frighteningly
proficient at lying, cheating, stealing, gerrymandering, disenfranchising and
obstructing their way into positions of power. They know the significance of
packing the courts and they’re doing a damn fine job of it all around the
country as well as on the SCOTUS bench. They are much better at low-ball
politics than Democrats, who still think “going high” is the way to win.
Politics isn't bean bag, someone once said. I think it was a
Republican who said that, but he was right. The Dems have to get tougher,
smarter, more united and a little more creative if they expect to win over an
election map that is blindingly red from top to bottom and down the middle.
Winning little blue clusters in massively red states will get you popular votes
but won’t ring the bell in the Electoral College.
And let’s face it. As my good friend correctly pointed out, the
Electoral College is here to stay, because regardless of which party is in
power, they will have gotten there because they collected the most Electoral College
votes. There will never be an incentive to abolish it from the party that it
placed in power, so we might as learn to live with it – and figure out a way to
win it.
So when Esquire posits that the political fog is lifting and we can all see clearly now, I'd argue that I could see pretty clearly on November 9, 2016, when the shock of a Trump presidency hit me like a swift kick in the groin, and my vision hasn't changed at all since then. I can clearly see what's happening, where we've been and where we're headed, but unfortunately, they only allow me to vote one time each election, and my state is still ruby red.
I'd also argue that in my experience, that "mist over a muddy battlefield" that Esquire talks about is likely to return at any given time...like, say, just before Election Day 2018. It's like any fog I've ever seen. Just because it's gone today doesn't mean it won't come back tomorrow. You just have to find a way to navigate through it to get where you want to go.
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