Dear Friends,
‘No!’ they said. ‘We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.’ 1 Samuel 8:20.
So much for an interesting election year. Somehow both political parties have managed to orchestrate the dumbest spectacle: a rematch between the most unpopular incumbent in U.S. history (33% approval!) and one of the most hated public figures in the country. Okay, well, it is interesting in the way a car crash is interesting.
MAGA world is happy, of course. But the euphoria will wear off later this year when they realize that their guy is going to need more votes than he got last time and he will certainly get less. I nearly wrote “almost certainly,” but decided on “certainly.” He is not an “expand the voter base” kind of guy. It is very much shrinking. As the law of diminishing returns kicks in, they will find that trying to brow-beat and manipulate people with their many stale rationalizations for Trump fail to persuade.
Progressives are happy, too, because Trump is the only person their nursing home resident of a candidate can beat. Why? Because Donald Trump is a one-man Democrat turnout machine.
Anyway, take all those polls showing Trump beating Biden with a grain of salt. Once the race coalesces and it slowly dawns on the American consciousness that we really are, really, truly are going to do this again those numbers will move.
Charlie Cooke speaks a sentiment shared by a lot of GOP voters. After noting that the rhetoric will amp up this fall to get on the Trump Train and to just “Do it!” he writes:
But I won’t. I won’t ‘do it.’ And nor, I suspect, will a lot of other people. Businesses that offer terrible products deserve to go out of business. Parties that offer terrible candidates deserve to lose. The Republicans know what the country thinks of Donald Trump. They know who Donald Trump is. And yet, inexplicably, they are in the process of choosing him nevertheless. They, like the Democrats, must face the consequences of that choice.
I get the sense that both parties think that the public is bluffing. I don’t think it is. Joe Biden really is fatally unpopular. Donald Trump really is hated. Shout at me if you wish, but I relate all this calmly — as a matter of dull fact. I understand that I have no right to a political party that shares my worldview, or to a presidential candidate whom I find acceptable. I also understand that this works both ways. Over the last eight years or so, I have been told repeatedly by Republicans that they don’t want my type in the coalition. Once again, they’ve got their wish. Congratulations! You don’t want me; I don’t want you; let’s call the whole thing off.
This, of course, has basically been my view since 2016, so take it for whatever it is worth. My point here is that more people are converting to my point of view than are moving the other direction. Just as a matter of personal anecdote, there was a moment in the summer of 2020 when the Left was so noxious—I’m sure it was some outrageous story involving the Alphabet Brigade—that I had the conscious thought: You know what? I think I’m going to vote for Donald Trump. The next day Trump got up to the podium for one of his daily COVID briefings (remember those circus acts?) and started talking like a raving lunatic and I came back to my senses. There’s no way I am voting for this guy. So I didn’t. Ben Sasse got his second write-in vote in a row. But that little window of opportunity for Donald Trump to win my (granted, inconsequential in Montana) vote is never, ever coming back. There are countless reasons and I won’t rehash them here except to give you just one: not only is he a loser, he is the sorest of losers. And the four-year temper-tantrum we have just endured is simply intolerable, and casting a vote for this man-child is, at its most basic level, a concession or affirmation of some kind. I am not in the habit of buying the piece of candy for the screaming brat in the grocery store. So, yes, I’m with Charlie: I won’t.
I am sure this upsets many of you. One cannot talk about these things at all without upsetting someone, and I think we should maybe reflect on why that is. My vote and my perspective is not intended to insult or demean or disparage people who voted for Donald Trump. There are a variety of categories of people in MAGA world, so my evaluations depend on what kind of MAGA person we are talking about. But I fully expect that this year will bring the familiar manipulative catastrophism from a certain type that this is the most important election of our lifetimes and the fate of our country is at stake and this is a ‘Flight 93’ election and if Biden wins again it’s all over!
This sort of apocalyptic rhetoric does not really move me, because I do not believe that the United States of America is going to end with a bang. If it ends, it will end with a whimper. We are a nation in decline. (I mean, have you seen the likely nominees for President!?) The decline of an empire usually takes place over pretty long timeframes. And the victory of either one of these truly pathetic candidates will produce—in the absence of a world war or something worse—four lame-duck years in which very little changes, very little is done, and nobody “wins” anything of lasting value. I could be wrong, but that’s what I think is likely at stake: very little. Alternatively, we could, of course, nominate a candidate with energy and enthusiasm and actual plans and proven leadership skills, in which case there could be a lot of positive things “at stake,” but that does not appear to be in the cards.
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