Dear America,
I don't recall the Republicans wringing their hands over Trump's loss in 2020 the way that the Democrats did in 2016 and are now after the 2024 election. Trump lost in 2020 no matter what the bloviator in chief insists, and even though they failed to retake control of The Senate, the Republicans concentrated their puling on the fraud claims despite the complete lack of evidence to support it. They simply went forward and when Trump declared he intended to return for 2024, they missed not a step in moving toward what ultimately became their victory: Trump beat Harris, the Republicans retook the Senate and, while their hegemony in The House turned out to be by as slim a margin as would allow them to maintain control, they wound up in complete control of our national government.
Meanwhile, the Democrats are doing their own puling about their loss in 2024 as they did in 2016, but just as was the case in 2016, they are misguided in doing so and thus failing to appropriately survey their party and capitalize on its strengths. Don't get me wrong; there are reasons for Democratic hand wringing, but they are behind us, not an element of the future. For example, Joe Biden is probably the central cause of the Democrats' losses in both the executive and the legislative branches. His procrastination in facing what would have certainly been his humiliating defeat in the presidential election cost the Democrats the opportunity to nominate a formidable candidate to run against Trump. Because he saw the light just a little more than a hundred days before the election, Harris took the nomination by default, and she was clearly not the best choice for the party. Of all the dubious claims Trump made during the campaign, there was one that had some merit. Harris is not that formidable intellectually. I don't say that out of spite or even sarcasm, but I remember her on a senate committee questioning a Trump operative and asking him about conversations he had had with a group associated in some way with Trump and asking the witness if during his interview with them they had "inferred" anything on a given subject. What she meant was implied, or even intimated, but not inferred. The point is that much of what she did to evince formidability as a senator was superficial, not substantial. That showed in the way in which she clung to her allegiance to Biden when it was at best imprudent, and in her reluctance to be interviewed by the media. Her weak performance when she finally opted to take the opportunity to demonstrate formidability was more like a death knell than a declaration of adequacy for the challenge that is the presidency. My purpose is not to be cruel or contemning but rather to point out that Harris' loss wasn't what her party is intimating it to be. Consider these facts.
Trump has claimed an enormous victory in the 2024 popular election, but he beat Harris by less than Hillary Clinton beat Trump by. Biden, on the other hand, a somewhat compromise candidate as a function not of superiority but rather of political savvy in his campaign organization and the concession (on which he tried to renege) that he was a "transitional" candidate, beat Trump in what looks in retrospect like the landslide that Trump claims, but never won, over Harris. And all the while Trump ignores the fact that if he trounced Harris, Clinton trounced him, and we all know how Trump hates to admit when he loses. But setting the Trump debacle aside, Clinton won everything in 2016 but the electoral college, and the Democrats gained seats in both houses of congress, so while her party was whining about the future of the party, the effect of their effort was to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Similarly, in 2024 when the Democrats were hamstrung by a leader afflicted with an unmerited ego, the reason that their presidential opponent won was probably by default rather than the merit of his ideas.
The fact is that the income divide between the top of our economic pyramid, overpaid corporate executives for example, has grown under Republican leadership to the point that those who actually work for a living can't earn an adequate wage because the plutocracy controls everything from the board room to the annual corporate share holders' meeting by dint of law that locks them in when votes are taken. The most remunerated executive in this country made $6.7 billion last year. That's obscene, especially when you consider that the people who keep their houses clean can't afford houses of their own. Democrats should be talking about that. And the insistence of the Republicans on further fattening the purses of those rich and powerful gluttons by reducing their taxes does not redound to the benefit of anyone other than the greedy who already can't spend all they have but who insist that they get more, including Donald Trump and his meretricious sons. That's another point the Democrats should be making. And this business about the disenfranchised middle-class work force who think that the Democrats have done them no service is nothing but self-serving drivel propounded by those who can't come up with a better campaign strategy. All in all, what the Democrats' ineptitude at this point in time demonstrates is that they insist on keeping their heads up in a very dark place, if you know what I mean, and refuse to go out and make the point: the other party is robbing the people blind and running up the kind of debt for us as a nation that almost crippled Greece a few years ago. Trump once declared himself the "king of debt" as if going bankrupt and leaving others holding the bag is some kind of virtue. Why don't you make that point, Democrats? And there're lots more where those came from.
Your friend,
Mike
I don't recall the Republicans wringing their hands over Trump's loss in 2020 the way that the Democrats did in 2016 and are now after the 2024 election. Trump lost in 2020 no matter what the bloviator in chief insists, and even though they failed to retake control of The Senate, the Republicans concentrated their puling on the fraud claims despite the complete lack of evidence to support it. They simply went forward and when Trump declared he intended to return for 2024, they missed not a step in moving toward what ultimately became their victory: Trump beat Harris, the Republicans retook the Senate and, while their hegemony in The House turned out to be by as slim a margin as would allow them to maintain control, they wound up in complete control of our national government.
Meanwhile, the Democrats are doing their own puling about their loss in 2024 as they did in 2016, but just as was the case in 2016, they are misguided in doing so and thus failing to appropriately survey their party and capitalize on its strengths. Don't get me wrong; there are reasons for Democratic hand wringing, but they are behind us, not an element of the future. For example, Joe Biden is probably the central cause of the Democrats' losses in both the executive and the legislative branches. His procrastination in facing what would have certainly been his humiliating defeat in the presidential election cost the Democrats the opportunity to nominate a formidable candidate to run against Trump. Because he saw the light just a little more than a hundred days before the election, Harris took the nomination by default, and she was clearly not the best choice for the party. Of all the dubious claims Trump made during the campaign, there was one that had some merit. Harris is not that formidable intellectually. I don't say that out of spite or even sarcasm, but I remember her on a senate committee questioning a Trump operative and asking him about conversations he had had with a group associated in some way with Trump and asking the witness if during his interview with them they had "inferred" anything on a given subject. What she meant was implied, or even intimated, but not inferred. The point is that much of what she did to evince formidability as a senator was superficial, not substantial. That showed in the way in which she clung to her allegiance to Biden when it was at best imprudent, and in her reluctance to be interviewed by the media. Her weak performance when she finally opted to take the opportunity to demonstrate formidability was more like a death knell than a declaration of adequacy for the challenge that is the presidency. My purpose is not to be cruel or contemning but rather to point out that Harris' loss wasn't what her party is intimating it to be. Consider these facts.
Trump has claimed an enormous victory in the 2024 popular election, but he beat Harris by less than Hillary Clinton beat Trump by. Biden, on the other hand, a somewhat compromise candidate as a function not of superiority but rather of political savvy in his campaign organization and the concession (on which he tried to renege) that he was a "transitional" candidate, beat Trump in what looks in retrospect like the landslide that Trump claims, but never won, over Harris. And all the while Trump ignores the fact that if he trounced Harris, Clinton trounced him, and we all know how Trump hates to admit when he loses. But setting the Trump debacle aside, Clinton won everything in 2016 but the electoral college, and the Democrats gained seats in both houses of congress, so while her party was whining about the future of the party, the effect of their effort was to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Similarly, in 2024 when the Democrats were hamstrung by a leader afflicted with an unmerited ego, the reason that their presidential opponent won was probably by default rather than the merit of his ideas.
The fact is that the income divide between the top of our economic pyramid, overpaid corporate executives for example, has grown under Republican leadership to the point that those who actually work for a living can't earn an adequate wage because the plutocracy controls everything from the board room to the annual corporate share holders' meeting by dint of law that locks them in when votes are taken. The most remunerated executive in this country made $6.7 billion last year. That's obscene, especially when you consider that the people who keep their houses clean can't afford houses of their own. Democrats should be talking about that. And the insistence of the Republicans on further fattening the purses of those rich and powerful gluttons by reducing their taxes does not redound to the benefit of anyone other than the greedy who already can't spend all they have but who insist that they get more, including Donald Trump and his meretricious sons. That's another point the Democrats should be making. And this business about the disenfranchised middle-class work force who think that the Democrats have done them no service is nothing but self-serving drivel propounded by those who can't come up with a better campaign strategy. All in all, what the Democrats' ineptitude at this point in time demonstrates is that they insist on keeping their heads up in a very dark place, if you know what I mean, and refuse to go out and make the point: the other party is robbing the people blind and running up the kind of debt for us as a nation that almost crippled Greece a few years ago. Trump once declared himself the "king of debt" as if going bankrupt and leaving others holding the bag is some kind of virtue. Why don't you make that point, Democrats? And there're lots more where those came from.
Your friend,
Mike
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