Back in 2016, this feature's political stance was NeverTrump. Once the election was decided, it no longer made any sense to hold that stance. Never was negated. So it was, at least in my mind, time to judge Trump on his performance in office, rather than his uncorrected personality traits.
We now have a 3+ year sample size of Trump as president. He's had successes -- the economy is generally going well, but it's not perfect. He's done less war mongering than any of his predecessors going back to Grover Cleveland. He's worked with Mitch McConnell to largely remake the federal judiciary, including adding two new justices to the Supreme Court. And he's spent much of his time dealing with a political opposition that has come at him with relentless ferocity. He's been impeached, but to no effect. If anything, impeachment has made Trump marginally more popular, because the behavior of his tormentors has been on prominent display and hasn't been a good look for any of them.
Trump would like a second term in office. Although I approve in broad outline of Trump's performance in office, even now I could be persuaded to vote for someone else, mostly because I tire of the drama. Yet, none of the current candidates on offer are even close to acceptable substitutes. It's increasingly possible the Democrats will undergo a hostile takeover by Bernie Sanders and his Jacobin followers. The other Democrats are mediocrities -- Biden was found wanting 32 years ago, Warren is a fraud on various levels, Buttigieg is a marketing campaign disguised as a candidacy, and no one else has any traction, including our local Senator of Small Things. Meanwhile two plutocrats even more dire than the Bad Orange Man, Nanny Bloomberg and the environmental grifter Tom Steyer, flood the airwaves with focus group invective.
If you want to get rid of Trump, I understand -- I really do. But do you see a plausible alternative? If so, it's time to make your case. Get to it.
7 comments:
It has been said more times than I can recall, all the Democratic Party needs to do to beat President Trump is to find a rational candidate who doesn't threaten to take away all the rights we currently have and in so doing destroy the economy.
So far out of roughly 340,000,000 possible alternatives, they can't offer a single acceptable choice.
I enjoyed your posting and agree completely.
I still insist that Trump's greatest achievement is to annoy the H**l out of all the right people. The incessant wailing from the Left is music to the ears, and it seems only Trump can do it, mostly by doing all the RIGHT things for the country. It seems they hate him for doing, apparently, the opposite of what THEY would do, which disqualifies every last one of them.
I don't see Trump as different than W. I just don't see him as doing anything that W wouldn't have done, or not doing things that W would have done. Or McCain, or Romney for that matter. The only thing is what he says, or how he says it. And most of them wish they could have in probably a more polite manner.
This is just another case of anyone but Bush. We can call it anyone but any Republican. There actually isn't a real alternative. Maybe someone decent runs third party, but it wouldn't be decent if a republican ran just to hand things over to the democrat nominee. We're all aware that we aren't living in decent times.
The democrats are so out of touch that they haven't learned anything from 2016. They are still trying to figure out which side will be sitting in their throne. The republican light democrats just can't seem to fend off the liberal democrats. All the RLD has to do is thank the lib dems for always being on the wrong side of history like with alcohol prohibition, Bolsheviks, and revolution in Iran, or being at the party late such as in civil rights, and this is just off of the top of my head.
Warren has finally shown her true colors by calling Sanders a sexist. Bern can be called many things, but a sexist isn't one of them. Pete also has shown that he'll be carrying a suitcase with him with every appointment unless he can get the nomination. Biden is just Biden, but he does move up in the polls when he shows some fight. I hope that I wouldn't challenge a guy who looks to be out of and in worse shape than I am to a push up contest, but it actually sent him up a few percentage points.
Amy is just way too vanilla. Even when she's trying to show personality, it's way too forced to fool anyone who's really watching her. Yang just doesn't have it. And he isn't aware that he doesn't. Tulsi may be the best of them, but it's not her time. Anyone that makes Hillary mad that hasn't run against her has to be doing something correctly.
Steyer is not worth mentioning. I should've known that his impeach campaign was just a start up to a failed presidential run. Bloomberg would be scary if he could do more than purchase the nomination. He can't beat Trump. He'd lose worse than most of these whatever you'd like to refer to them as. He'd lose almost every single liberal democrat that can or would be voting as they'd stay home, or vote for a third partyer.
Bern is probably the most honest of all of them. But he's too liberal for most of the country. He couldn't do too much if he did win. But people wouldn't see that. He'd have very little support in the house or in the senate. But that doesn't matter when a guy's saying that he'd bring European style to the country, but it hasn't worked outside of a few small countries in that part of the world. And it's enough when social democracy hasn't worked out very well in the backyard.
I can't argue with your assessment of individual Democrat Lilliputian candidates, but mostly I don't care and have tuned them out already. I am not sure I quite agree with your assessment of Trump. I think he is doing things that W, McCain, Romney might have wanted to do, but would have failed to do simply because only Trump is Trump. Part of his success is not what he says, but how he says it. Immigration problem? Build the wall, go around Congress to find the money, tell Mexico to stop it, put in a travel ban, step up enforcement, and on and on. He doesn't let up, doesn't compromise, and the only people he ticks off are America's enemies or those crazy Democrats and their media sycophants.
See also, Iran, the Paris Agreement, North Korea, NAFTA, China trade, taxes, regulations, judges... All told, an exceptional 3+ years and counting.
anybody who thinks Bernie is a liberal needs to check who he looks up to. not a lot liberalism in Cuba or the former USSR.
as for Trump, and the GOP... the reasons why Democrats hate him is because he stole the issues of the working class. both, the GOP and the DNC have long passed on the working class... being safe enough to mouth certain platitudes to get their share of the votes needed, but doing nothing for them.
in effect, he jacked the union vote from the DNC, and brought working class to the forefront of the GOP, and the GOP really didnt much like those people anyway.
when the Pelosi clan and Bush clan both hate you, you are doing something right.
I remain EverTrump.
Our system has evolved beyond the quaint notion of voting for the person you like; it's now all about voting against the person you hate. That's essentially the entire Dem platform for 2020 as none of the remaining candidates are commendable or compelling in style or policy, and the hope is people will vote for them just to make the screaming stop. This parallels the Republican primaries leading up to 2016 as a multitude of dwarfs tried to convince us they were Prince Charming. We ended up with Prince Crude Rude Obnoxious (And Surprisingly Effective). It reminds me of the great Sontag line from "Into the Woods" when Prince Charming confesses, "I'm sorry, I was raised to be charming, not sincere." Poor Jeb.
There are a lot of pundits talking about how Bernie (Three Dachas) Sanders can't win. Nearly as many who were saying Trump couldn't win. Both projections come/came with predictions of intra-party bloodletting and destruction. On the Republican side, though, the Never Trumpers are merely the deadest branch on all but dead tree in the middle of the swamp; the only sprig of green is that, outside of the MSM and the Swamp, people kind of like what Trump is doing. If the Dems can leverage enough outrage, Bernie could win, in which case the flag the Dems hoist should feature a petard. Win or lose, Nancy Pelosi and the old-line is likely bound for a gulag or an ice floe as the children will no doubt take over the grown-ups table.
It's hilarious that the youth vote is going to 78-yr-old Sanders. Of course he never grew up, so...
Post a Comment