While listening to a podcast of the musical career of Simon and Garfunkel, up popped a segment of their song “Mrs. Robinson”. The verse struck me as oddly reminiscent of today. Think of the looming contest between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The verse:
“Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon
Going to the candidates’ debate
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you’ve got to choose
Every way you look at it, you lose”
I don’t expect much practical wisdom from rock stars, but this verse hits a chord. A verse from 1968 comes full circle to meet 2024.
A week ago, I happened to be watching an episode of Fox News’s “The Five”. A new Fox News poll had just been released showing Donald Trump ahead of Joe Biden. Four of the five hosts were almost dancing a jig on the table about the results, as if votes had already been counted and Trump was preparing his coronation speech. Is Trump becoming popular, or, more likely, is this a choice between the most abhorrent candidates of all time?
Look at the candidates’ negatives. They are far and away more detested than loved. A smattering of polls from the Nov. 8-14 shows these guys to be stinkers (see below). Biden’s detestability hovers between 53% and 59%. Trump’s swings from 54% to 56%. Biden has achieved a level of loathsomeness slightly greater than Trump’s. And the hosts of The Five are dancing a jig over this?
The contest is a consequence of the parties foisting on the general voting public execrable nominees. The Democrats can’t come around to jettisoning their enfeebled sellout to the party’s neo-Marxist Left. The Republicans can’t shake their enchantment with a narcissistic lunatic. Now, the public has experienced both behind the Resolute desk and the bully pulpit. If the contest is reduced to this binary, then the choice is about the least reviled.
So, why does Trump appear to be allegedly riding high? Biden is in the seat of power, more immediate, before cameras, at the head of the nightly newscast, the subject of much conversation, and people get a daily dose of the failures of the party’s neo-Marxism: an overrun border, inflation, climate-change central planning, the unraveling of civilization, the group-guilt shaming, the international scene coming unglued, etc. The present soon overwhelms the past. Trump slides into background noise amid court appearances. As a consequence, if the election were held today, the possibility of a president taking the oath while wearing an ankle bracelet looms large.
What’s there to like?
It is said by many that people prefer Trump’s policies but personally dislike Trump. There’s a lot to that, but those cherished policies are a reflection of longstanding GOP platforms. Prior to 2015 and Trump’s grandstanding on Obama’s birth certificate, Trump had few if any policy ideas other than the border and trade protectionism. His ignorance was profound. In a 2016 debate, he couldn’t name the legs of the strategic triad. He was befuddled by the term “triad”. When he amazingly got elected as a Republican, he not surprisingly turned to Republicans to fill out his administration. From a guy who was a policy empty suit, many of his “wins” were crafted by the input of others who would later be insulted into oblivion. Bill Barr, John Bolton, Mike Pence, Kelly, McMaster, et al, and the congressional leadership who were the fount of these ideas such as Paul Ryan, won’t be around for a Trump second bite at the apple.
In a Trump term #2, who will he turn to, the clown caucus of Matt Gaetz and company? A person still possessing their wits would be a fool to get too close to Trump. Expect any future Trump presidency to be filled with “fighters”, fighters who are a bit too punch drunk: the clown car caucus moves from Congress to the executive branch; the extended universe of isolationists and sycophants; and the rule of the Democrats’ craziness would be replaced by those who romanticize 1932’s Smoot-Hawley Tariff and the American Firsters of 1940. Mmmm. What would that world look like?
I have to amend my prediction that Trump is a loser. Er, he is; you just might have to look down ballot for the misery. The guy has no coattails because he’s kryptonite at the state and local level. As long as Trump is far from you, he might be tolerable, even if you’ll only see him on parole or probation. Yet don’t count out that Democrat vote-harvesting machine so quickly, or the possibility that they’ll do a switcheroo replacing the enfeebled with a fresh-faced, milquetoast neo-Marxist from the party’s ranks.
RogerG
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* For the latest polls turn to https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/
** Also in my Substack feed, The Golden Mean, at https://rogerlgraf.substack.com/publish/home