Election 2020: A Real Shit Show
I feel like an image speaks 1,000 words in this case. These two buffoons are really the two best candidates we could find for what was once the most prestigious office in the country?
Where to begin?
We all have seen swaths of evidence that Trump is unfit for the job. For starters, he’s been impeached. Recently, Steve Bannon, once Trump’s right hand, was just arrested, becoming the seventh (7th!!!!!) member of Trump’s staff to be arrested or indicted, joining Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen and George Papadopoulos. I have no doubt that their misdeeds started at the top, and they took the fall, so to speak. And let’s play devil’s advocate and assume that Trump was completely oblivious to their multiple counts of illegal actions—then we must conclude that he’s hired one of the all-time worst staffs in any realm of government or business. This should bring his business acumen and judge of character into serious question (as if Trump Steaks or Trump University weren’t big enough red flags). Wasn’t he supposed to be the savvy business man who was going to drain the swamp? I feel like he is draining a swamp somewhere. I imagine a giant hose just sucking all the shit and refuse and storing it in his gut somewhere. And then he speaks, and releases all that bullshit upon the world.
For example, there’s Trump’s odd relationship with admitted close friends Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. The fact that he “wished her well” when he should be decrying their actions as disgusting and immoral is telling. If he had a clean history with this type of thing, we might be able to forgive, but when we watch him place his tiny hands suggestively on his daughter and openly talk about her in a sexual way, … I get the creeps. Then, we remember what should have been political suicide—a gaffe about grabbing women by the pussies or moving in on them like a bitch— I marvel how this guy was ever elected in the first place and why (all instead of most) Americans aren’t disgusted by his continued shenanigans. Remember when Dan Quayle’s career basically ended when he did the unspeakable—misspelling potato. Simpler times, I suppose.
It shouldn’t be too much to ask for a presidential candidate who hasn’t been accused of the following: obstructing justice, profiting from the presidency, soliciting foreign interference in a US election, advocating for political and police violence, abuse of power, engaging in reckless conduct, persecuting political opponents, attacking the free press, violating immigrants’ right to due process, and violating campaign finance laws. (If you’d like to read more, check out https://www.needtoimpeach.com/impeachable-offenses/ where they’ve collected information on all of these offenses).
So, all the Democrats would have to do is roll someone (anyone!) out there on stage as long as he or she was a morally upstanding individual who had mostly a clean record. Bonus points if he or she was an eloquent speaker. Yeah…about that. So the best they can do is Joe Biden, whose best character attribute was that he was in some funny memes with President Obama.
Funny? Yes.
For one, it’s hard for Biden to take the moral high ground when it comes to sexual misconduct when he has also been accused of some inappropriate touching and advances by as many as eight women. Video surfaced of some of these encounters. And while some seemed innocent enough, others were like your drunk uncle at Thanksgiving who keeps patting his third cousin on the shoulder as she inches uncomfortably away while he breathes French onion casserole down her neck. Granted, it may not be as extreme as Trump’s admitted grabbing of pussies, but it’s still inappropriate and unwanted touching. The leader of the free world should NOT have to register as a sex offender.
Most of the time, Biden could speak circles around Trump, whose vocabulary is nuzzled somewhere between the 4th and 5th grade level, but then at times he’ll produce a gem like this: “Covid has taken this year, just since the outbreak, has taken more than 100 years... Look. Here’s... The lives... It’s just... I mean, think about it.” I’ve only heard two people speak that poorly—Trump, and post-stroke Lou Holtz when he used to get overly excited after a big college football play as a TV analyst. Oddly enough, Holtz has recently outed himself as a huge Trump supporter. I know the former Notre Dame coach is a man of devout Christian faith. I wonder how he and other conservative Christians convince themselves to passionately follow a man who is basically the physical embodiment of everything the Bible preaches against. I’d love to be a fly on the wall to hear Trump lie his way out of those questions as Holtz lies himself into believing them.
The hundred adequate speeches from Biden will be ignored, and the few of him sounding like he’s had an aneurysm will get constant play on the Twitter feed of Trump and all of his cult, and it helps convince those on the fence that maybe these two guys are cut from the same cloth. And I don’t use the word cult lightly. When did it become treason in this country to vote for someone from the other party? Isn’t voting for who you think is best a Constitutional right and the whole point of all this? According to Trump’s followers, anyone who disagrees with him is attacking the sanctity of America. There’s no middle ground. Take this recent tweet from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as an example:
Courage, humanity, empathy, strength, kindness, and respect. Sounds reasonable to me.
In response to that, there were hundreds of messages from Trump followers like this one, who I’ll identify as Karen:
“Unfortunately everyone I know is about to turn our backs to the Rock. We used to be huge fans. My children have already started burning his movie’s (sic). Such a sad day to hear rock say this. My teen’s (sic) took this really hard. Figured he was smarter than this.”
There were hundreds more like this, and while many were angrier, or more filled with curses, I felt this one matched the whiny tone and poor grammar that Trump himself employs. When did America become so divided? I can remember where a split began after all the uncertainty in the 2000 election between Bush and Gore. But even with all the hanging chads and delays, people didn’t hate someone for voting for the other party. I remember being at an election party that night waiting on the results (it finally ended at around 4:00 a.m. when we realized a winner wouldn’t be announced that evening), and all the conversations were civil, even though the attendees were a healthy mix of liberals and conservatives. No one then was indoctrinating their children and having them burn discount copies of The Scorpion King because they supported a different candidate. Trump and his divisive speeches have driven the spike farther and farther into the hearts of Americans, and the divide is as great as it’s ever been.
To my point, a few years ago, speeches like Biden’s stumbling over Covid numbers would be enough to end a career (remember Howard Dean’s crazy yeaaaaaah yell back in 2004? He just made a funny sound, and people decided— “no, we don’t want that guy!” Compare that to anything we’ve seen the last 4 years, and it doesn’t even register a blip on the radar). Nowadays, it seems like Biden’s supporters could just pass his slurred ramblings off as the type of speech and “rough around the edges” approach that Trump has normalized, which is sad for the state of our country’s politics and the public’s standards, honestly.
And then there’s information about Biden’s son, Hunter, and his alleged role in the Ukraine. Just when you thought you’d had enough of a president involved in Russian interference…
The point is that this could have been the easiest slam dunk, landslide election in the history of this country, and perhaps it still could be, but by granting Biden the nomination when there seemed to be at least five better candidates (and certainly many with fewer red flags), the Democratic party turned this into a race again. Now, Biden selected Kamala Harris as his running mate. Biden’s no spring chicken. If he doesn’t make it through the presidency, at least we’ll get the joy of watching the heads of nearly half the country explode as they come to grips with the fact that not only do we have a female president, but we have a black female president—and no amount of gerrymandering or voter suppression can prevent it.
The bottom line is that both of these guys need to be flushed. Americans are tired of living in the toilet. I look forward to the days when we have at least one nominee (more than one would be a blessing) who we could wholeheartedly support. For the most prestigious office in the land, we should never have to choose the lesser of two evils.
Am I doing that this election? Sure. I don’t see how anyone can look at 2020 and go, “Yeah, I want 4 more years of that!” I’m giving Biden a try just like we did for Trump. If you’re going to burn my books or art because of that, just make sure you buy several copies to burn. That’ll really show me.
