About Me

My photo
Jack is a graduate of Rutgers University where he majored in history. His career in the life and health insurance industry involved medical risk selection and brokerage management. Retired in Florida for over two decades after many years in NJ and NY, he occasionally writes, paints, plays poker, participates in play readings and is catching up on Shakespeare, Melville and Joyce, etc.

Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Today I'm a Pessimist

A Two-Pronged Road to Democratic Defeat


Today I am a pessimist.  Maybe tomorrow things will look a bit better.  We'll see.

I fear it is already too late.  The harm done to the United States of America by Donald J. Trump, the totally incompetent huckster the Republicans prostituted themselves to by giving him their Presidential nomination in 2016 is almost irreparable.   The rightwing extremists, the greedy, the bigots, the “Ayn Rand” libertarians and the deluded neo-Nazis have gotten what they wanted due to the unbelievable ignorance and gullibility of the American voter.  This has been locked in with Trumpublican court appointments which will doom the United States to a half-century of darkness.

I do not doubt that Roe vs. Wade will soon be reversed, along with the Affordable Care Act, and other laws that the voters are too dumb to fight to preserve.  Democrats should recognize that the normal election process will no longer exist in the future as we know it to remedy this situation. If Trump is re-elected in 2020, bringing with him a fully Republican Congress and greater control of State legislatures, voter-repressive State legislation and further gerrymandering will assure that.  The American public is not mature enough to be able to make the right decisions necessary to preserve a democracy in this country.  We are not yet ready for it.  The “founding fathers” were far too optimistic.

The only solution might be for the Democrats to win the Presidency and both Houses of Congress in November but I do not think that will happen, unless all Democrats unite to make it happen.  (And even that won’t remedy the harm already inflicted on the judicial system by the lifetime appointment of conservative lifetime judgeships.) 

The two prongs of a Democratic defeat: (1) A Sanders candidacy is one certain route to total defeat and must be prevented.  And if Sanders is denied the nomination, as I see it, (2) Sanders' supporters will probably not back whomever else the Democrats might nominate, another guarantee of their defeat ... unless of course, Sanders throws his full and wholehearted support, bringing along all his supporters and well-oiled organization, to the ultimate Democratic nominee.  Do you think that will happen?  I don’t.  So, it is already too late.  But as I said, 

Today I am a pessimist.  Maybe tomorrow things will look a bit better.  We'll see.
JL

No comments: