February Horserace Update
The horserace is getting interesting now with Valentines Day around the corner. The Republicans are facing armegeddon, the Democrats facing deja-vu.
On the redneck side there’s donny wreaking havoc. He’s bullied his way to the front of the pack, and since rednecks love a bully and worship money they are delirious with “pussy” taunts and the reality TV fodder of this carnival barker.
No matter that he’s a pro-choice, womanizing billionaire New York liberal that speaks with the cadence, and often content of, a 4th grade rich little fuck.
No matter he’s been called the white Don King, or charges $400 for room service in his hotels, or is on his 3rd trophy wife, or prefers immigrants to both marry and hire under the table, or promises nothing more than “it will be great, you’ll see – so great, greater than ever before!”, nothing political stops him because he’s an entertainment show.
Most rednecks are xenophobic emotional types that respond to authoritarianism, and he’s giving it to them more than perhaps any presidential candidate ever. The new brownshirts – ignorant, racist, and demanding to be entertained. These are not political people or concerned citizens.
So it’s a full scale wrestling match now between donny and every ounce of republican establishment remaining. He’s winning the popular vote easily but has almost no congressional support. He’s winning the media game but almost all of it is negative.
I foresee a brokered convention: Cruz/Rubio and donny battle it out to a near draw as the chaos continues. The GOP is fractured, reeling, and desperate. Backroom politics goes around the donny show and nominates speaker of the house Paul Ryan with someone like Bush or Fiorina as VP. The Cleveland convention goes down in history.
Of course, this forces donny to run 3rd party and he attempts to sue his way onto state ballots way beyond the deadline. He does his usual victim/bully 2-step, claiming it is un-american that he can’t run 3rd party and screams and shouts until his face is red and his hair goes crazy. His people scream and scare everyone. Oh wait….
With the blueberries we have a near repeat of 2008. Hillary Clinton is the established moderate democratic candidate – socially moderate, hawkish on war, and in bed with the media and the unions. Old news. Very hard to trust, in a vintage 20th century politician sort of way.
From left field comes a new, charming face that uses populist plain-talk and truth-telling to shine the light on the broken promises of the american dream. Other countries have better services and better responses to citizens needs! Other countries can do it, so can we! It’s the lefty version of Make America Great Again, but the model isn’t 1920’s america it’s 2020’s northern Europe.
Bernie is old, grumpy, and doesn’t always have specifics for how to move the country further to the left. He’s talking about some free college education for every citizen, he’s talking about single-payer healthcare (medicare for all), he’s talking about direct investments in infrastructure and cleaner power sources. He’s talking like Obama talked but wasn’t able to deliver. He would be the first jewish president, at least as big of a deal as being the first woman president.
No matter how many incredulous times FoxNews sneers socialist? like we’re in 1915 Russia – people want their government to serve them, not corporations and foreign conflicts.
My crystal ball is foggy here. I don’t know if Bernie has the stamina, chops, and overall appeal to knock off Hillary. Her inevitability is there, both helping to hold ground and hurting the overall package. It feels like we already had the Clinton thing, and while it was good for what it was, this ain’t the 1990’s anymore.
But I’m not ready to feel the Bern, which basically means going after Hillary. I hope those two save their powder to decimate whatever disaster represents the rednecks this time. At least Bernie is starting the discussion about modern democratic-socialist government and hopefully educating americans on the reality of the world.
We are stuck in the two party system and things like democratic-socialism (and the Tea Party, if that still existed) help us break the grip of the 2 parties.
I don’t believe R & D are a mono-party but I think they make more easy money in a stalemate, easily achieved with only 2 powers.