It’s 3 days until voting starts, or rather, until lines start forming to vote in the US. Early voting, mail-in ballots, absentee votes et cetera have been pouring in for weeks, but the tally won’t be done until November 8th. Despite the media’s glee at a race where they are now using words like “tightening” and “horserace” and even “toss up,” the real political animals know that the race was over last Spring.
But the media needs it to look closer because they die without viewers, so they’re playing up any glimmer for Trump. The rest of us know that there is no glimmer, but Trump voters are the most gullible section of American society, thus they are the most susceptible to stay glued to their screens large and small. But, just in case you are among the gullible, the rest of us need you to know, beforehand, that it was never close. It was never a horserace. It was a mule wandering onto a track and a racehorse whizzed by it. The mule said “Hey, what?”
There’s no problem with that. America needs her gullibles. We need people to read celebrity igs, and to eat a sandwich with 2000 mg of salt just because something in it was once “organic”. We need people who think a cocktail is better when chilled to -273ยบ, just like we need people to do hilarious things on webvids. It’s a social contract. They provide services, and in return they get middle-class money and a right to vote. The only problem is that the gullibles are now being told that a mule really could have beaten a thoroughbred. And, since they’re gullible, they can tend to believe it.
Plenty of non-gullible people have been squawking about how much damage Trump would do to the US and to the international community, if he won. The real problem, however, is that he has already damaged the world and nation. Luckily he won’t do any more damage past mid-November, but unluckily, the damage already done will take years to clean up. The real problem is what to do with a few million gullible people in 2017, the people who really believed that mules could run.
“As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.” –Arthur Carlson
One plan might be to shame them, to heckle Trump voters as “losers” and let your dog pee on lawn signs. Make sure that throughout November and December too, they can’t forget how gullible they were. But that would not work out like you think it would. Failure does not cure gullibility. Pestering former trumpites would only open a door in their souls, where an even nuttier idea can walk right in. Trump TV won’t need any help getting viewers.
Speaking of which, the most predictable thing about his new channel is that they will increase viewership by reporting stories about how current viewers are being persecuted. That’s an old, old story, and it always works on a portion of the population, no matter what century it is. Insert PT Barnum quote here, you know the one.
The other plan might be to shake hands with the trumpites you know, mumble something about Trump’s forthrightness, and say “She won’t be so bad, you’ll see. We’ve had worse, eh?” Accept the trumpites back into civil society, and we’ll lose fewer of them to the online wonderland of conspiracies. Shiny objects, and all that.
But there is a third option, for dealing with the losing side this time around. Deny everything. Deny anything happened. Don’t talk about the election at all, and when asked, just say “Oh, I’m glad that’s over, I was getting tired of the ads.” Act like it was no big deal, it happens every four years, w-ever. Tuesday? Oh yeah, but Wednesday is a favorite show. Or a recent liked restaurant has a twofer on Wednesdays. Any cover story you like, just deflect any suggestion that there was ever an election this year.
After a week of this, former trumpers will start to wonder what they were all worked up over. When everyone seems to be ok with whatever happened last week, and if volcanoes have not broken out all over the world on Wednesday November 9th, then maybe. Maybe they’ll insist that they’ll sit back and suffer for four years, but maybe they’ll have a wider view now. A step back and a fuller picture now: this is America and we do this every four years. We go a little nuts, so sue us. But afterwards we get back to work.
Every time a partisan’s candidate loses, they think it’s a cataclysm. Hound them and they’ll cabalize. Console them and they’ll think they were doing something good, and it went south only on a fluke. But if you pretend nothing ever happened, gullible people will start to believe that’s true too. No news here, move along folks. Look over there, a celebrity divorce!
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That’s what to do about the grumpers, but what about the shambles left of the Republican party? Reince Priebus is obviously out of the top chair, it’s a miracle if he hangs on until Christmas. That’s when the real fun starts. The various factions which make up the rightwards coalition now, will all vie for control. If they had compatible aims, there would emerge a consensus faction. Trouble is, there are divergent aims among the rightward factions, which each now blames the others for thwarting.
Who is the rightward today? You have the fiscal conservatives who basically want lower taxes, and see smaller government as logical to get that. Then you have the christian conservatives who would appreciate having the government establish Christian Sharia Law, minus the headgear of course. Then there’s a farther right pocket who wants radical curtailing of federalism to parallel the literal Constitution. And another pocket which wants social programs ended, because black people exist. And others, you know, browns too, most of them fersure.
Sheesh, i know it hurts to say it, but the US still suffers from crappy ideas like that. But here’s the thing, when the south flipped from Democratic to Republican in the late 1900’s, the racists flipped too. Cause/effect, chicken/egg? You call it. The result is that most of America’s real dooshes are more comfortable with Republicans.
Trump didn’t ‘splain ’nuff to gain America’s confidence, but he will peel off one or two of those constituencies to the Trump TV Party. Obviously, the racist wing will be the first of them. The remainder of the Republican party will publicy be glad of the riddance, but internally will be surprised at the number of defections. Who else will switch to the Trump TV Party?
We know it won’t be the social conservatives, because of faith and perseverance and the conviction of conversion. The hard Constitutional fringe is likely to gravitate trumpwards, if only to have a home at last for such a politically nebulous collection. Will it be the fiscals to join Trump? If so, the Republican party splits wide open. It becomes the Trump Party and the God Party, in a threeway slaughter against the Democratic Party.
This fact is not lost on fiscal conservatives, and yet, they can no longer hitch their wagons to the christian wing, because the science of demographics exists. 2016 is the year that the christian right bloc loses power. Either they swallow hyssop and join Trump, or they accept a meek role as Republicans, or they go it alone. In any case, they become a free bloc and whoever they align with will have to become a coalition. The devil’s bargain, religious support is great in local races but a hindrance on larger scales. Again, those pesky demographics.
While all of this is going on, Hillary’s transition team will be massaging the media with gushing positivity. To the general observer it will look like the Republican party is changing were-something on a full moon. In a tragically hilarious completion of a small cycle, the Republicans in the House who have atrophied their muscle of compromise over the last eight years, will be unable to name a Speaker in 2017. That is, until one side asks for the help of the Democrats.
And that’s the flare over the ocean, thence the business wing of the Republican party defects. Just like in 1993, they go blue. The difference between now and 1993, is that there is no backstop. There won’t be a recognizable Republican party to return to. No Plan B. Other difference is that in 1993, there was no Twitter. Instead of being big news, the defection of the business bloc from red to blue will be a peppering of little news.