(September 14, 2020 at 10:41 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Let's Talk About a Bigger Problem Than Trump
I'll never forget election night of 2008, when it became official that we succeeded in sending Barack Obama to the White House. I was hosting an election party that night and so many people around me were jubilantly celebrating. But for me, it was like that moment in the movies where the background celebrations are muted to a dull hum, overtaken by ominous music in the foreground as the protagonist stares ahead in horror at an oncoming problem not yet recognized by the others.
I was looking at the final numbers.
McCain/Palin still managed to secure 45% of the vote. Nearly 60 million Americans, about 9 out of 20, still voted for them. This was after Obama had run the most flawless campaign I'd ever witnessed, after McCain the most gaffe-ridden campaign I'd seen in a long time and how the GOP's leadership had just wrecked the entire country.
"Relax" said an online friend, "We won. Breathe."
But I couldn't relax because the numbers were sobering. They told me where the absolute, rock-bottom floor was for the GOP and it wasn't much deeper than half the country. They told me that 60 million of my fellow Americans are thoroughly brainwashed and they can be depended upon to mindlessly pull the lever for the GOP no matter what.
In 2004, they re-elected a president that had just lied us into a war.
In 2008, that president that lied us into a war had just crashed the entire economy and they still tried to elect his successor in the GOP.
In 2016, they elected a spectacularly unqualified con-artist to the White House. Despite how that buffoon has botched the Covid crisis, crashed our economy and acts like a puppet of a foreign dictator, these idiots still think he's doing a great job and want to re-elect him.
They are 60 million strong.
They're not sorry.
They haven't learned anything.
They can't be reasoned with.
They're going to do it again and again, mindlessly electing incompetent Republicans that will repeatedly wreck our country.
So I hope we can get rid of Trump this November but, make no mistake, we will still have the problem of 60 million Fox viewers that will be looking for his successor. That's some big, toxic real-estate that someone just as bad as Trump will build their home upon. What can be done about that problem?
As I see it, the only thing we can do is mobilize enough sane voters to keep them suppressed while we wait for them to die off and take their alternative-facts with them to their unquiet graves.
We have our work cut out for us.
If it helps at all, try to remember that the GOP that elected Bush and voted for Romney and McCain isn’t the same GOP that exists today. Given the erosion of Trump’s support among moderates, independents, and centrists, it’s difficult to imagine the RNC running another Trump-like candidate.
That being said, I’m not an American and have a lousy track record of picking your winners.
Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
