What Trump has been doing since the Mount Rushmore speech—stupidly dismissed by woke media—is to try and cast this election as a battle between anarchy and the forces of law and order, between a radical dystopia laced with violence and the America we know. He’s trying to jujitsu the plague-fueled revolt into a winning campaign issue. He can’t exactly run on his record of double digit unemployment and an epidemic raging out of control. So this is his instinct. And politically, it’s not a bad one. In an environment where people are afraid and uncertain, authoritarianism has an edge. The more some cities descend into lawlessness and violence this summer, the edgier, and more popular, that performative authoritarianism could get.
He is a tyrant and he thinks he IS the law. He thinks he has the power to executive order anything he wants in or out of being. If he can’t, or is challenged, he becomes a bully. Unfortunately, his followers agree with him. They want him to push and create elaborate stages to stand on. When he rallies his base, they become rabid and definitely will get out and vote. On the other end of the spectrum, you have voters like me, that hate his politics and see him for what he is, but Biden can’t even rally me. I have to vote for him, but the only person I want to vote for less is Trump.
I do not support Trump nor will I vote for him. I may vote for Kanye West if he can get on the ballot, because he’s neither Trump nor Biden. I refuse to diagnose Biden because I’ve never met him. Were I still practicing medicine, I would refer him to a neurologist to rule out any number of disorders.
The opposition to Trump is primarily style over substance. He’s rude, crude, aggressive and does not represent our country well. Biden has been a creature of the Democratic Party for half a century, and has no policies other than “say what I’m told.” If America is waiting on Obama’s third term, it’s unlikely to happen. Obama was sold to the country as JFK with a great tan, turned out to be Jimmy Carter Redux. I typically vote for the candidate who makes decisions based on a set of principles, rather than ad hoc short-term benefit, whether I agree on issues or not. The most important issues of a presidency are never on the radar on election day. What was Clinton’s position on a pandemic from China? What was Jill Stein’s position on mass lawlessness across the country? Thus, I favored Harold Ford, Jr, a principled pragmatist.
Jill Biden has an opportunity to run the country, and it’s probably the best we can do.