OK, it’s time for some straight talk, people.
If we’re being honest with ourselves, and I suggest at a bare minimum we do that, next year’s presidential race will most likely come down to a few votes, in a few counties, in a few battleground states, in a country with very few options left to save itself.
It should have never come to this, which I’ll briefly touch on in a minute, but here we are.
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The predominant reason we are staring straight down the barrel of a fight for our Democratic survival is that we simply are not a great country.
Frankly, I don’t think we ever were, which in no way makes us exceptional, because I’m not sure any country in history has ever been great. We’ve been very good at times, pretty good at others, and lately, despite trending upward a bit, pretty damn below average.
We’re being honest here, right?
I walk around with a certain degree of fear most of the time — fear, that whether it is good, bad or otherwise, my country is but one election away from being a place that I can openly criticize, to a place I can be jailed for expressing critical opinions like the ones here.
That is not a great country to live in. That is a country under extreme stress. That is a country that is beginning to crumble under all its dead weight.
And wouldn’t a great country be inhabited by predominantly great people?
MAGA Republicans aren’t great people, folks, and they makeup roughly 40 percent of our electorate. Hell, they aren’t even rational people. What kind of rational person supports an America-hating traitor like Trump, who just the other day launched another set of digital trading cards for purchase called the “mugshot edition” that feature his ugly face?
Who in God’s name would even consider buying that crap? Answer: most definitely not great people.
It never ends with this filthy schmuck, yet millions of un-great people literally love him.
Making matters worse is the fact that these un-great people are fed a never-ending stream of raw sewage from the Fox Network and other rightwing propaganda channels that spread lies to back the man who made lying easier than breathing while huffing and puffing his way to a documented 30,573 untruths during his failed presidency.
There’s nothing great about this.
These people are absolutely pathetic, and they aren’t going to be deprogrammed anytime soon, and most likely ever. Hell, the leaders in their own party like Lindsey Graham, who were warning us about Trump have now done swan dives into his greasy tank to glom onto him.
Even the people who are allegedly running against him in his own party are scared to death of offending his supporters, who they somehow think they can turn in their favor.
If the United States was a truly great country one of its two major parties wouldn’t be running a fascist like Trump, and I wouldn’t be sitting here writing with my hair on fire that the dirty son of a bitch could actually win.
I recently read a piece written by the great Thom Hartmann that made all the sense in the world. Essentially, Hartmann is saying that for all its grossness and warts, MAGA is a movement. And even if it’s a hideous bowel movement, it’s a movement nonetheless.
Movements by definition “move” people. They move people to act in good or terrible ways. You’ll never get a better example of that than January 6, 2021. You’d have thought that would have ended Trump forever. Thousands who attacked our country that day have gone to jail.
Except it hasn’t.
Millions of Republicans, many of them MAGA, watched that day in horror and knew good and damn well it all had finally gone too far. Hell, members of Trump’s repulsive family knew it had gone too far, and were begging their disgusting father to call off the dogs.
Instead, he did nothing but rage for three hours, while our Capitol burned and law enforcement officers were beaten with flags.
It should have all ended for MAGA at the end of that ice-cold January with a new administration, and a new Attorney General.
Instead, one of the greatest mistakes in American history slowly and painfully began to unfold.
Had Merrick Garland acted with the alacrity the moment demanded, and charged Trump and those in his crooked circle just as quickly as possible, it would have gone a long way in dousing the raging, anti-democratic rightwing fire, and put teeth into all his mumbling about law and order.
He didn’t, and now Garland’s special counsel, Jack Smith, has been forced to petition Trump’s Supreme Court to make it clear that their boss has no right to any presidential immunity when he does things like attempting a coup. They may yet rule in Smith’s favor, but good God, think of how long it has taken just to get to this place.
And even if Trump’s court rules against him, does anybody really believe with any certainty that the trials and ensuing appeals will be wrapped up before the 2024 elections?
By not taking Trump and his dangerous cult of Republicans seriously enough, Garland gave them plenty of air, freedom of movement, and a feeling of inevitability that there would be absolutely no consequences for their leaders’ brazen attack on America.
So here we are.
While I hate political polls almost as much as I hate MAGA, I do suspect the latest poll showing Biden’s approval among Democrats at only 78 percent to be right in the ballpark. By comparison, at this time in the campaign in 2019, 90 percent of Republicans approved of the craven Trump.
Trump’s supporters will never turn on him and will turn out to vote. Do you have as much confidence at this moment that as many Democrats have the same fervor to support Biden?
And if you think I’m making too big a deal about this, ask yourself how the party out of power has already galvanized around one candidate before the primary season has even started, while too large a portion of voters of the party in power are grousing about their candidate.
I realize this has a lot to do with how the Left is psychologically wired. We stubbornly expect better out of people, despite being constantly disappointed, while Republicans simply think the worst, and just get on with wrecking everybody’s day.
Makes it no less a reality, though.
Look, Joe Biden will be the Democrats’ candidate in 2024 and he damn well better win the presidency again, or we are through. Done. Over.
That is also a reality.
Which gets me to this final question: What do you plan to do to make sure Biden gets elected?
President Joe’s not all of a sudden gonna start sounding like a flamethrower on the campaign trail. He’s not Barack Obama or Bill Clinton. He doesn’t inspire with his words as much as he does his actions.
The man is solid as a rock.
Biden’s greatest strength is his integrity. He’s a man you can trust. He reads his national security briefings. He understands the history and complications of our world. He knows how to get legislation passed.
He’s a serious person.
And like our country, he’s not great. Hell, he’d be the first to tell you that. But he is a very good man, and our country has never needed very good men more.
Mostly, he’s not the reprehensible, lying, no-good, America-attacking, woman-grabbing, Trump.
People say being anti-Trump isn’t enough — that Biden will need to do more. Well, I strenuously disagree with that.
Biden has done enough, and dammit if you can’t see that by now, I can’t help you.
Unfortunately, it’s clear we are past the point in this country when a candidate can simply run on his or her accomplishments. If that was the case, Biden would win in a landslide.
If accomplishments won’t get us across the finish line, then running hard on the issues that get the base of our party’s blood boiling is paramount.
In 2018, then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi made it clear that if the Republicans won again, our right to healthcare was gone forever. Democrats delivered a Blue Wave, Pelosi became our Speaker, and Obamacare lives.
Well, Trump has once again said he’s coming after our healthcare if he wins. Others in his repulsive party are eyeing Social Security and Medicare for cuts. How does that make you feel?
Right now, a young mother of two in Texas has been forced to flee her state from the cannibals in the Republican Party, in order to save her life and get the medical treatment HER DOCTORS think she needs. Trump, the man who appointed the Supreme Court Justices who struck down Roe, and led to this gruesome event, is running again so that he can get one more crack at wiping out all of our rights.
He is literally telling us he will do this. This is another one of those stories that needs telling right now, and right on through the election 11 months from now.
If fear is ultimately the greatest motivator that drives people to the polls, so be it.
We’ve got one final shot to get this right, and protect our healthcare, our Social Security, the rights of women like Kate Cox in Texas, our civil rights, and the Democracy that stands all of it up.
We better not blow it.
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D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. Follow @EarlofEnough and on his website.
