There Once Was a Time…

There once was a time when neither major political party would unhesitatingly eject a presidential candidate if he was caught having an affair, as happened to Democrat Gary Hart in 1987.  Today, even though Donald Trump has been convicted of sexually molesting a woman (the judge flatly said he raped her), and even though he has had several affairs, and even though he has bragged about grabbing women by their crotches, it seems nearly half the nation wants him to be our president.

There once was a time when neither major party would put up a person for president who has been convicted of a crime.  Donald Trump has been convicted of 34 felonies and stands credibly charged with 54 more – not including that rape adjudication – and even so it seems nearly half the  nation wants him to be our president.

There once was a time when telling a lie could get a president tossed from the White House, as happened to Richard Nixon in 1974.  Today, you know Donald
Trump is lying if his lips are moving.  Washington Post fact checkers counted 30,573 lies or misstatements he made during his term in office, and he has been increasingly spewing lies like a fire hose ever since.  Even so, it seems nearly half the nation wants him to be our president.

Trump has promised that, if elected, he will impose the death penalty on drug dealers even though it would mean more than 200,000 persons would be executed every year; pardon “a large portion” of the 600-plus rioters who assaulted the Capitol in 2021 even though they injured 140 police officers and killed four of the five persons who died as a result; arrest and deport millions of undocumented residents even though that would shrink the middle class, make the rich richer, the poor poorer, and destroy our economy; impose tariffs as high as 100 percent on imported goods even though that also would shrink the middle class, make the rich richer, the poor poorer, and destroy our economy.

Trump also has promised to suspend  the Constitution on his first day in office, become a dictator, require (!) police officers to “stop  and frisk” (even though the Supreme Court declared that unconstitutional because it discriminates against Black people), make Project 2025 his guiding star (he denies it, but that’s plainly just another one of his tens of thousands of lies), and so, so, so much more.

And still it seems nearly half the nation wants him to be our president.

Even The New York Times, which until recently has been infuriatingly blind to Trump’s lunacies and anti-American stands, has awakened to his nuttiness.  On Sunday it published an above-the-fold article under the headline “Trump’s Speeches, Increasingly Angry and Rambling, Ignite the Question of Age.”  The article included this paragraph:

“He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought – some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical. He voices outlandish claims that seem to be made up out of whole cloth.  He digresses into bizarre tangents about golf, about sharks, about his own ‘beautiful’ body.  He relishes ‘a great day in Louisiana’ after spending the day in Georgia.  He expresses fear that North Korea is ‘trying to kill me’ when he presumably means Iran.”

A few days before that The Times published an editorial that began:

“It is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States than Donald Trump.  He has proved himself morally unfit for an office that asks its occupant to put the  good of the nation above self-interest.  He has proved himself temperamentally unfit for a role that requires the very qualities – wisdom, honesty, empathy, courage, restraint, humility, discipline – that he most lacks.

“Those disqualifying characteristics are compounded by everything else that limits his ability to fulfill the duties of president: his many criminal charges, his advancing age, his fundamental lack of interest in policy, and his increasingly bizarre cast of associates.

“This unequivocal, dispiriting truth – Donald Trump is not fit to  be president – should be enough for any voter who cares about the health of our country  and the stability of our democracy to deny hilm re-election.

“For this reason, regardless of any political disagreements voters might have with her, Kamala Harris is the only patriotic choice for president.”

Yet, even so, it still seems nearly half the nation wants Trump to be our president.

But it seems that way only if you believe the polls, which in the recent past have been far from accurate, and only if you do not believe in the American people, who in the past have done a pretty good job of holding our democracy together despite our differences.

Personally, I distrust the polls enough, and I do trust the American voters enough, to believe a blue tsunami is coming in November.  I see us winning the White House, Senate, House of Representatives, and gaining seats in state legislatures across the nation despite their horribly gerrymandered districts.

Why do I believe that?  Because people are beginning to connect Trump with the horrors promised by Project 2025 despite his obvious lies that he has nothing to do with it.  Because 60 percent of Americans believe women should have full control over their bodies and Trump has bragged that his Supreme Court appointees overturned Roe vs. Wade.  Because Trump is on the short end of a yawning 20-point gender gap.  Because Kamala Harris’ candidacy has electrified youth and they are expected to turn out in record numbers to vote for her.  Because Taylor Swift is urging her millions of worshipers to vote for Harris.  Because Black people who were drifting toward the Republican Party are seeing Trump as the racist bigot pig that he is and are coming back.  Because scores of leading Republicans have said they are voting for Harris and urging their compatriots to do likewise.  Because people are increasingly seeing climate change as a real threat (think Hurricanes Helene and Milton) and Trump says he believes climate threat is a hoax.  Because Americans do not want to be ruled by a dictator, especially one who studied, believes in and mimics Hitler’s instructions.  Because Americans don’t like communists and Trump is a Putin puppet (Bob Woodward  recently reported that as the coronavirus tore through the world in 2020, and the United States and other countries confronted a shortage of tests designed to detect the illness, then-President Trump secretly sent coveted tests to Putin for his personal use).  Because as the election approaches people are paying more attention.  Because because because!

But Democrats will win only if we get off our behinds, get to the polls, and vote the entire ticket – which we don’t always do.  We have a habit of staying home on election day, and those who do go to the polls often vote only for the president and leave the rest of the ticket blank, thus giving House and Senate votes to Republicans – except that if we do it this year we will be giving our votes to (shudder) MAGA Republicans.

We not only need to win, but we need to win big, with huge margins.  The reason is that MAGAs recently have been filing tons of election-centered lawsuits, especially in the swing states, that will be decided by the courts after the election is decided.  If these suits reach the Supreme Court, and at least some of them are bound to, we’re in trouble.  After all, Trump virtually owns that court  so we can count on it to continue doing his will.

But the court won’t matter if the victory margins are big enough.  They will speak for themselves.

Bottom line:  We will win and we will win big – but only if we vote, and only if we vote the whole ticket.

It is up to each one of us to make certain that everyone we know understands that, and that everyone votes.