Tag Archives: 2020 Election

Political Rants

Soft coup.

The president of the United States is not going to give this up. The party that made him president is not going to stop supporting him in his delusions. All you T.V. pundits and mainstream media commentators waiting with baited breath for Republican lawmakers to “pivot” or “come to their senses” or “admit in public what they acknowledge in private”, save your breath. Donald Trump is the chosen leader of the Republican Party – chosen because he encapsulates all that they stand for: celebration of greed, white aggrievement, authoritarianism, and destroying the useful parts of government (i.e. the parts that help people in some way). They can no more abandon him than a snake’s body can slither free of its head. And while they haven’t tried this blatantly in the past to steal an election by ignoring or invalidating millions of ballots that have already been counted and certified, they have always demonstrated their potential for doing so.

Let me be clear. As I have said in my podcast, Strange Sound, this is Trump returning to his original Plan A from back in 2016. I know that sounds like Plan 9 From Outer Space, but it’s true – Trump ran his 2016 campaign as a branding exercise, thinking that he would lose, cry foul, claim fraud, and use the resulting white outrage to build his new media empire. Things didn’t work out as planned, of course – Trump won, and had to resort to Plan B: milk the Presidency for all its worth, and as it turns out, it’s worth quite a bit. Now that he has obviously lost his bid for re-election, he’s resorting to Plan A, only it’s different than it would have been in 2016, because he is now President of the United States, and the power of that office amplifies everything you do to a level unobtainable via any other means. I think people tend to underestimate this dynamic, but it’s true – the Presidency has enormous influence, far beyond that of any cheesy reality show star or phony billionaire.

And so, unlike what would have happened four years ago if he had pulled this in the wake of an electoral defeat, his insistence that there was massive fraud is backed up by the United States Justice Department, all of the resources of the Executive Branch, and the entire spectrum of right-wing media. That amount of power and influence is enough to shake even the firmest of governmental foundations. Even if Trump’s lawsuits and challenges are vacuous, ill-constructed, and unsuccessful, the very attempt to overturn the results of this election is creating an indelible impression in the minds of millions upon millions of Americans. This, at best, will undermine the legitimacy of Biden’s administration and, at worst, will prompt political violence and mass unrest. What the president and his enablers are doing is profoundly irresponsible and detrimental to the stability of our democratic institutions. It is a kind of soft coup in that it robs the new administration of its ability to govern. Just as badly, it creates a playbook for future authoritarians of the right who will surely emerge from the GOP in the coming years.

Don’t treat this as a joke. That is not what this is. This is an attack on the administrative state, and it remains to be seen whether or not this attack will succeed.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Political Rants

Who won.

Well, wasn’t THAT a cluster fuck.

As I write this, the presidential race has not been called, but it is clear that the Biden campaign substantially under-performed expectations and that they dragged a lot of down-ballot races down with them. Even if Biden pulls it out, which he may have done by the time I post this, the Senate is basically lost – a tremendous lost opportunity in a year when Democrats had a lot of advantages going in to the election. Add to this the loss of a number of House seats – maybe ten – including, quite probably, Anthony Brindisi’s NY-22 seat to former Congresswoman and Trump acolyte Claudia Tenney. That is a terrible outcome by any measure, and I have little doubt that Republicans are high-fiving all over the place at having separated their fate from that of President Trump, with the help of a feckless Democratic party.

There’s no question but that incumbent presidents are traditionally hard to beat. More often than not, they fend off challengers, largely because of the enormous advantages conferred by that office. So as re-elects go, if Trump is successful in clinching an electoral college win (which at this point seems highly unlikely), this would be a remarkably poor performance for an incumbent who was ultimately allowed to retain his office. Then again, he is Donald Trump, and as such, the worst president not only in modern times but in the entire history of the United States. He has presided over a ham-fisted response to the coronavirus pandemic that has resulted in more than 230,000 dead Americans and a major economic contraction the dimensions of which have not been seen since the 1930s. By rights, the man should have been easy to beat, and even Biden should have been able to take this race in a walk. What went wrong?

I’m not the only one to point this out, obviously – far from it – but the Biden campaign was essentially a content-free enterprise. He is the UnCola, the antithesis of Donald Trump (except with respect to his old white man-itude), and his running mate the antimatter counterpart to Mike Pence. But that’s essentially selling a negative, right? What is the affirmative case for electing Joe Biden and, more broadly, the Democratic party? The activist base of the party, both affiliated and non-affiliated, has a clear idea of what they want to get out of a Biden administration – namely, something far more progressive than Biden would opt for without being pressured. But if elections are about convincing large numbers of people to vote in certain ways, that necessarily must include potential voters who are not activists and who do not think about politics and policy on a daily basis. What did Biden and the Democratic congress explicitly offer these people? What was their case for election, aside from “we’re better than Trump”?

There will be plenty of time to ponder the meaning of this race. The sad thing is, that will be time when we will not have the governmental power to slow down the climate crisis, protect people from COVID, improve access to health care, keep people in their homes, and more. And as Dylan once put it, lost time is not found again.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Lock X Up.

It’s full fledged campaign season again, folks – my very favorite time of every four year cycle … not. Elections are necessary but painful, essential but insufficient, and so on. I acknowledge all of that and will participate, as well as encourage others to do so, but god don’t they make it a pain in the ass? I don’t watch that much television, but I’m nevertheless being bombarded by ads for one candidate or the other. This week there was a Biden ad with a voiceover by Sam Elliott. (I was waiting for him to recommend a visit to Kinney Drugs. ) Then there’s the Trump ad that has Biden saying he’s going to raise taxes, cutting him off before he gets to the “on people making more than $400,000 a year” part. I guess when all else fails, Trump – like every other Republican – goes for pappy tax cut. Low hanging fruit.

Most of the GOP ads in my local Congressional district race (NY 22) are being pushed out either by the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee or third party, dark-money groups hoping for a return of my old high school classmate, Claudia Tenney, to the House of Representatives. Some of these ads are hilarious, calling out Rep. Anthony Brindisi, the incumbent, for not being a “centrist” as he claimed he would be. What’s particularly funny about that is the fact that Claudia is the farthest thing from a centrist that has ever represented this district, at least in living memory. She so closely clings to the fading shadow of Donald Trump that she (or, perhaps more likely, someone on her behalf) has distributed lawn signs that read “TRUMP / TENNEY”, as if she were running for Vice President. (Pro tip: she’s not.) A few of her own ads have shown up now that we’re in the closing weeks of the campaign, but they’re not all that memorable.

Of course, home-stretch Trump is worth ten Claudia Tenneys in terms of bombast and crazy-ass proclamations. As has been reported practically everywhere (on the basis of simple observation), the president is desperately trying to recreate the conditions of his 2016 electoral upset. The FBI probe into Hillary Clinton was a help, so he’s trying to get them to investigate Joe Biden. Actually, he’s calling on Bill Barr to arrest Joe Biden for crimes against the internet, I imagine, and has been leading his unprotected, non-socially distanced rally crowds in chants of “Lock Him Up” or “Lock Her Up”, which I assume is referencing VP candidate Kamala Harris, but which could also be Hillary, given the president’s and his followers’ obsession with the former Secretary of State. I’m not sure if what I hear rattling in Trump’s voice is COVID or extreme frustration at his attorney general for not following his autocratic directions. Either way, he’s riding the crazy train to election day, and we’re all in the passenger cars, chugging along right behind him all the way.

This can’t be over soon enough. Just don’t try to reach me on November 4 – I think one way or the other i’m going to be out for the count.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.