Some Election Thoughts – Part 2

I wonder if TV sales are up lately because more people are throwing things through their sets.

To continue this dump of what happens when one is locked away too long and can’t get the social stabilization he needs…why I believe this election is so important.

Rampant Partisanship - We no longer elect people to solve problems. That has become standard campaign lip-service. If we didn’t fix anything, at least we prevented them from scoring points. Hyper-partisanship means using government to give YOUR people what they want AND prevent the other side from getting what THEY want. Yay Team! Your government at work.

Pearls Before Swine by Steven Pastis 

I believe we need to address what the GOP has succeeded in doing for the past 30 years. Republicans in general and conservatives/Tea Partiers/Rush/Fox News/etc. have preached that the biggest threats to our Exceptional way of life are Democrats, liberals and government. The targets of this effective strategy need better counter-arguments.

'Candorville’ by Darrin Bell 

Leadership - When it comes to the president, we might have forgotten how important that role is supposed to be when times are tough. The person we select to lead the nation must be able to express empathy, compassion and traits the Current Occupant is famous for lacking. Think FDR on the radio during the Great Depression, ‘W’ at the ruins of the World Trade Center or Obama at Mother Emanuel Church. Someone please remind me of any time our current leader has talked about faith and unity during a national challenge. What he does is blame others and make empty promises…because no one knows more about the issue than he does.

What’s wrong with this picture? - Recent discussion with a liberal friend who is in the therapy business: She knows people who are increasingly depressed and are thinking about leaving the country or even ending their lives because the future appears so bleak. This is what the country is coming to…when the right advances, the left thinks about killing themselves and when the left advances, the right buys more guns.

Flipping the Senate - When I think about it, the more cynical right-wing operatives might be willing to take that hit. They’ve already packed the Supreme Court and federal judiciary for a generation. They can regain the Senate majority when the Dems overplay their advantage and turn the voters off in time for the next election. I so much want them to win a huge, resounding repudiation of Trumpism but do not trust them to get it right going forward.

Who Else Can I Blame? - Back in May, I saw the GOP strategy document for the president’s 2020 campaign…written by some K Street slimeball law firm. It included a heavy emphasis on blaming China for all of our troubles including (and I’m paraphrasing here), “The Chinese took our jobs away.”

I don’t expect the Dems to have the stones to re-frame that into something more on point like, “American businesses actively (gleefully) sought to outsource as much labor as they could. They sprinted to China to replace American jobs with cheaper foreign labor. And when China started to become more developed and labor costs began to rise, American business went to even less developed countries to find cheaper labor.”
Another area where his base takes it in the shorts and still votes for him…amazing.

‘Candorville’ by Darrin Bell 

The GOP has been the party of voter suppression for many years - Sadly, the Democrats never raised holy hell about it when they should have. Voting roll purges. Eliminating polling places and early voting. Stricter voter ID requirements. The list of abuses is long.

Tom Toles, Washington Post (29 May 2020) 

These are among the miserable and desperate GOP and conservative efforts to suppress voting. For the life of me, I cannot understand how this strategy seems to be treated as just another political tactic and not the outrage that it is. In the “Land of the Free,” we’re supposed to be making it EASIER to vote, not harder. Preventing people from voting is an idea that should make every freedom-loving American scream. I want someone to explain to me what’s ‘conservative’ about that?

‘Candorville’ by Darrin Bell 

Another Fantasy – there has to be ONE reporter at the daily press fakery show who either [1] got a great job offer in another line of work or [2] came into a large inheritance or [3] is terminally ill…and at the right moment of presidential stupidity jumps to his/her feet and yells what so many want to hear – “You pompous ignorant windbag…you know NOTHING…you have disgraced the office of the president and set the nation back a generation. You wouldn’t know the Constitution if it came up and sat on your face. The James Buchanan Society is thrilled that you have moved him off the bottom as the WORST president in history.”

Something like that.

Vote.
If you do nothing else this year, vote.
Vote like your life depended on it.
Because it does.