2024 is proving the nation to be rudderless. Much of what is happening must seem befuddling to the mass of adults still in possession of their wits. Our upper crust has merged with the Left, aligning with neo-Marxists without necessarily realizing it. The reaction on the Right is a vulgar gesture in the person of Donald Trump. Much of the media is an accelerant to both sides alongside dominant cultural institutions – the schools in particular, which are groomers of the Left. Much of the media has become unwatchable and unlistenable. The year 2024 is a time of the vulgar gesture versus the Left’s scheme of national extinction.
The nation’s suicide begins in the culture, especially cultural curators in the media. It’s easy to write off much of the legacy media for their convergence with the progressive Left. But the media on the Right has its own problems. As stated before, I listen to Hugh Hewitt in podcast form more regularly than any other, but even he has become increasingly disappointing. He’s a Republican booster, no holds barred, and that means a near subservience to Donald Trump if he is the nominee. It leads to stunted conversation and information.
Let me explain. A party is deserving of loyalty only if it remains respectable. The vileness of Trump is beyond question; it’s part of his schtick (Trump being Trump). Trump is disgracing the Republican Party making Hewitt’s subservience disgraceful for a now disgraced GOP. So, this plays out on Hewitt’s show by his steering of interviews, conversations, and information away from criticism of Trump, even among guests who are well-known for blasting the mercurial man of Mar-a-Lago. Airtime is almost exclusively filled with the monotony of anti-Biden banter to the exclusion of everything else. Trump’s and the GOP’s complicity in many of these matters is absent.
The stance of right-leaning media is probably a commercial decision. The talk radio audience is Trumpy in the extreme. Speaking of suicide, it’s commercial self-murder to tick off an audience that’s mostly limited to spewing Hannity or Tucker Carlson talking points. This crowd dominates the talk radio listenership and the GOP. At this juncture, the party and its fellow-travelling talk radio base has made itself unrespectable and undeserving of Hewitt’s kid-gloves treatment, which only ends up soiling Hewitt as he does it.
Don’t think for a moment that the Democrats are a respectable alternative. It used to be said that America is alone in not having a viable socialist party like the Labor Party in the UK or the social democratic party clones throughout Europe. Wrong. We’ve got the Democratic Party. An American social democratic wannabe will remain a nonentity because that space is occupied by the sprawling donkey party. Socialism has a following in the muddled brains of adolescents and among the party’s base and leadership. Peddling an ideological poison pill isn’t a prescription for respectability.
Now, let’s take a look at the latest Marquette Law School Poll. What does it say about the state of the race? Trumpers are giddy about Trump being up by 4 over Biden nationally. But Haley sends Biden packing by 16 (see #1 below). There’s more to this race than the betting-line favorites, much more.
The poll-takers asked a push question to force more of the fence-sitters into a choice between the two leading contenders. From the poll summary:
“These results include voters who initially said they would vote for someone else or would not vote but were then asked their preference if they had to choose one of the two candidates. In the initial question, 13 percent said ‘someone else’ or that they would not vote.” (see #1 below)
Got it? 13% had to be cajoled into embracing one or the other. How much of the rest of the 52% for Trump or 48% for Biden actually were facing the same dilemma but made a choice just to send the polltakers packing? These guys, both of them, are castor oil to the public.
Age is one problem . . . for both. In an ABC News poll, 86% of respondents say that Biden is too old to be president. No surprise there. It also applies to Trump. At an age of 77 at the time of inauguration, 62% think that Trump is aged out. Octogenarians behind the Resolute Desk doesn’t present a pleasing prospect for most Americans (see #3 below).
The reason is obvious. Biden is going from infirmity to dementia before our eyes, while Trump is getting cruder and more caustic by the day. Both are exhibiting crotchety-old-man syndrome. Biden leaves the podium in a daze after regaling us in slurred and attenuated speech and mangled memories. Trump has mentally locked himself into a junior high locker room.
If either one gets elected, will they survive the full four years? Biden has already had one massive stroke. Given his current semi-functional status, another one wouldn’t be surprising. Then, we’ve got Kamala, polling worse than Biden. She could amaze us, but nothing in her years in the public eye is encouraging.
Trump is different. He may serve in leg irons, which will present an interesting conundrum for the Congressional Republican Caucus. The Democrats’ lawfare stable has 91 whacks at him from Jack Smith to DAs and AGs in New York and Georgia. Do you want to bet that at least one of them won’t be made to stick by some dim-witted jury? A mass of the charges is despicable, agreed. But it’s a reality.
Think of it: America not much different from Nicaragua, or taking a page from Putin’s playbook. But I digress.
Anyway, Trump could free himself of the evil Jack Smith with a pardon, unseemly as it will be. Federal charges are within the president’s purview. State and local actions are an entirely different matter. We are probably on untrodden ground here. Since legal actions began before the inauguration, or sentencing awaits, what will happen if a felonious and possibly convicted defendant were to win the Electoral College? The Republican Caucus may have to decide if they really want to shield a convicted defendant from impeachment and removal from office. As for the Democrats, they stand in the wings in glee.
Sir Walter Scott, 19th century Scottish author, said it best: “Oh what a tangled web we weave/When first we practice to deceive”. Are Democrats and the Trump gaggle in the GOP deceiving us as they make a clown car of our politics? We may have to replace the eagle with Bozo as our national symbol.
Trump is slightly up, Haley trounces Biden, but so what. She won’t get the nomination; Trump may serve in an ankle bracelet; or Biden will have to serve from a chronic care facility. When you think about it, nobody is doing it to us. We are doing it to ourselves. It’s a democratic republic; we are responsible.
How responsible? Each Republican primary, including the recent one in South Carolina, is proving that the rot has deep roots beyond the muckety-mucks. The parties are marching toward a general election ballot that I will leave blank at the top, and maybe elsewhere. No neo-Marxists and no Trumpers.
RogerG
Sources:
1. “New Marquette Law School Poll national survey finds Trump at 51%, Biden at 49% in head-to-head matchup; each leads primary challenger by more than 50 points”, 2/21/24, at https://law.marquette.edu/poll/2024/02/21/new-marquette-law-school-poll-national-survey-finds-trump-at-51-biden-at-49-in-head-to-head-matchup-each-leads-primary-challenger-by-more-than-50-points/
2. Thanks to Jim Geraghty of National Review for bringing the poll to my attention, “Oh, No Big Deal, Just a Survey Showing Haley Beating Biden, 58 Percent to 42 Percent”, 2/22/24, at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/oh-no-big-deal-just-a-survey-showing-haley-beating-biden-58-percent-to-42-percent/
3. “Overwhelming majority of Americans think Biden is too old for another term: POLL”, Meredith Deliso, ABC News, 2/11/24, at https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/poll-americans-on-biden-age/story?id=107126589
4. Thanks to Christian Schneider for additional information in “America Is Running Two Presidential Elections at Once”, National Review, 2/22/24, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/02/america-is-running-two-presidential-elections-at-once/