The Witness Chronicles, January 23, 2024

Happy New Hampshire Meaningless Primary Day

Photo by Billy Freeman on Unsplash

The Real Election Just Started

And Trump is not in it. Ranting, raving, and a confused mind…

Joe Biden and Nikki Haley are running on the exact same issue. The Biden campaign released an ad that features Haley questioning Trump’s sanity, after his repetition of her name over and over again when he meant Nancy Pelosi. It’s pretty damning.

This is the point where the gloves are taken off and the one getting the beat down is Trump, and he doesn’t know it. It highlights a major flaw in that man’s life, the failure to realize that everything he says and does is captured on video or audio.

To clarify, he knows that but it means nothing to him and this is his Achilles heel. He believes that simply opening his mouth and babbling wins him support and he does it everywhere he can. But the support he hears is coming from only his cult followers, not from additional voters.

Now both Biden and Haley are turning up the volume with Trump’s own words, and they have plenty of them to work with. At this point, Haley is running for backup position in case Trump implodes before the election, something that looks increasingly possible.

Ron DeSantis, in a fitting end to a terrible campaign built on censorship and fake anger, quit yesterday, giving us all a break from his constant annoying presence in the media. 

And we are hearing more Republican complaints about their own do-nothing Congress, and many of those complaints are coming from hardcore members of the Freedom Caucus, the group that is working hardest to keep doing nothing.

Apparently when they go home to their constituents they are learning that their voters want them to govern. It’s not entirely clear they have any idea how to actually do that. The party of No is having to learn to say Yes.

This election has never been about anyone other than Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Biden has been intentionally low key until the last two weeks. He knows, from decades of experience, that the economy is the strongest indicator of who will get elected. And he also knew that every early indicator was showing months ago what we are now seeing daily.

The economy is booming. And that is the trigger his campaign has been looking for before bringing out the big guns. And, just in time, Trump is gifting them a new issue; his own sanity in his own incoherent words.

Republicans rightly have believed that the immigration crisis would be the platform they could run against Biden on. It’s a giant mess with roots in both sides’ reluctance for years to try and do anything substantive to change it. The GOP’s plan has been to complain about it while doing nothing and blaming the President. 

A powerful strategy with two major problems. First, their own voters are asking them what actions they are taking now to fix things. Second, their candidate has given the Biden Campaign a brand new issue that will be front and center, Trump’s mental health.

Until a few months ago that issue was a fringe one that observers like me speculated could turn into a problem. With the election heating up and Trump’s very real legal problems hounding him daily, we are starting to see the man becoming totally unhinged and out of touch with reality.

He recently claimed you need an ID to buy bread. Not really sure where that came from.

His instability is so obvious that his main Republican opponent is using it against him.

So, imagine the two issues from a publicity point of view. An ongoing problem with no obvious solution, immigration, and an opponent apparently losing his marbles in public, daily.

The marbles win, hands down. 

The question is how far does he have to go before it is obvious to everyone that he has never been anything other than an egotistical kook? It looks like that fact might be sinking in with some of his Republican supporters. And they’re a rabid bunch who might well turn on him. Haley has.

This year was always going to be interesting, but for a lot of us it was also likely to be terrifying as Trump revealed his plans to crown himself a king, a man above the law who would wreak terrible vengeance on his perceived foes, regardless of party.

Now it may be turning out to be a little more entertaining than expected. If the Democrats are smart, they will start making fun of the man, something a narcissist cannot abide. And he is making that easy every time he opens his mouth in public.

The games have begun and they are already completely different than expected even a few months ago. Maybe a little more fun?

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The Fall and Rise of the Bipartisan State

Hope is not lost, there can be compromise

Both houses of the US Congress are each held by one of our two parties and only held by the slimmest of majorities. When no one has a clear majority, what used to be called a mandate, the only way things get done is to work with the other side in good faith.

Bipartisanship, in other words. For the entire history of our country, that is how things have become law. Until, that is, the Presidency of Donald Trump, a self-proclaimed expert on negotiation who doesn’t actually know anything about negotiating, because it necessitates compromise.

And compromise and bipartisanship became dirty words in the Republican Party under his leadership and for many in the far right wing of the Party they remain a sign of weakness. But their numbers are shrinking and this past week we saw their extremely conservative House Speaker embrace compromise, and work with the Democrats to temporarily keep the government open.

This was a crack in the control of the House Freedom Caucus, the hard core Trump believers whose intent is to keep the government from functioning, indeed even to take it all down. Despite their dire threats to remove the Speaker, nothing horrible happened to him.

But the cracking came much earlier when Joe Biden took office and, working in the wake of a deadly pandemic, managed to pass significant legislation with bipartisan support. That legislation was created to keep jobs and technology in the US and rebuild critical infrastructure across all fifty states, red, blue, and purple.

It was good for all of us and enough Republicans saw this to risk their careers in the Party and vote with the Democrats for the greater good. It was a massive success and a massive achievement for President Biden.

Now in an election year we would normally see this cooperation end as each side refuses to give the other successes to run on or avoid failures to run against. But the Speaker’s deal broke that logjam and enough people on both sides realized there were benefits to be realized by compromising and finding middle ground.

Middle ground. Those are also fighting words for extremists on both sides, dreaded territory when they might have to give up some of their cherished ideals. The reality is that we, as a country and as individuals have to make compromises all the time. It’s called being human, civil, and united for the greater good of all.

Division via fear and hatred and greed have been the basis of Republican strategy under Trump. He hates the idea of compromise, in part because in his worldview everything is either black or white, with him or against him. And bipartisan action is his greatest fear.

A fear which is becoming very real because a Republican who compromises is a Republican no longer cowering in fear of their thuggish leader and his minions. Cracks in the armor are appearing.

The New Hampshire primary is going to be interesting. If Haley can get close we are going to see a crazy Trump go even deeper into his paranoia and rants of conspiracy, racism, and misogyny. It will get even uglier and that will not help his cause.

It could trigger a bigger wave of rebellion in the party. Or not. I still believe Trump will be their candidate but I also believe as the year wears on, many on the right will realize what a liability that is. Add in his criminal indictments, the looming failure of his business, and his apparent inability to control himself and the Republicans may find themselves represented by a raving loon.

Governments exist to govern, to manage the public affairs and defense of a country and to enact and enforce the laws that keep things from dissolving into chaos. They serve a vital purpose, especially in a country as huge and diverse as the United States.

To blindly oppose all that and seek to install a dictator who is likely incompetent is itself insane. It’s nice to think that enough GOP members see this to go against the grain and act like adults and loyal citizens, not bullies in the schoolyard.

~ I write The Grasshopper, a letter for creatives, The Witness Chronicles, a place for my articles on politics and climate, and The Remarkable, a recovery letter, about my addiction and reentry experience. All are weekly and free, however this is how I live and I strongly believe all writers and creatives should get paid, if we provide value. Your upgrade to a paid subscription helps make that happen. 

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