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Silverfiddle Rant! |
Clarity
Every now and then, some reality pokes through the "mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia." This rare event has happened twice in four years, and both times, Donald Trump was the catalyst.
He shocked the world four years ago and shook the arrogant progressive class from its confident perch upon the arc of history, and he instigated teeth-gnashing turmoil on the right.
El Donaldo struck again this election, with a different result and different realities surfacing. The margins in the upper Midwest that swept him to victory four years ago are not so different this time, but the President is on the losing side, no Jill Stein to siphon Democrat votes.
Here are the realities as I see them:
Both parties continue their unholy alliance with global corporations and international finance, but The Democrat Party is becoming the party of upscale elitists, while the GOP is looking more like the party of rural folks and the working class. The GOP is now the America First party, and the Democrats are the standard bearers of globalism and interventionist foreign policy.
Demographics is not destiny. Hispanics are now the nation's largest minority group, but they don't herd easily and they are not a homogenous group. Donald Trump won between a third and a half of them, doubled his black vote and saw a solid increase of the LGBTQ+ community voting for him. Will the Republicans pay attention and build on that?
We are a divided nation. Working class whites and working class people of color have more in common with each other than each group does with its professional, university educated class.
Biden did not restore the upper Midwest "Blue Firewall." Those are now battleground states.
The South is no longer solid red. Georgia is now a purple battleground state, and North Carolina is four to eight years behind Georgia, on the same trajectory.
Biden's margin of victory came from people who just wanted this four year national heart attack and leftwing toddler temper tantrum to end. He is the calming Mr. Rodgers, here to soothe the nation, turn down the volume, use nice words and restore sanity and civility. I think those people are delusional, but I understand them.
The sole Democrat win of Election 2020 was the presidency: a pyrrhic victory that will produce two years of gridlock. Republicans will hold the Senate (even a tie would produce gridlock), and the GOP has taken 9-12 seats (at least two in California) from Democrats, trimming Empress Pelosi's majority to a threadbare margin, and ending all that foolish talk about what a political genius she is.
The Democrat political strategery will be to promise everybody everything: Full bailouts for businesses and corrupt, fiscally criminal blue states and municipalities; student loan forgiveness; free college; "green jobs" for everybody who wants one and Lord knows what else. This will force the GOP to be the party of No and make them look hypocritical, coming off a multi-year, multi-trillion dollar spending jag.
Census 2020: People are voting with their feet. For the first time ever, California will not gain a congressional seat. New York, Illinois and other creaky blue Midwest and east coast states will lose seats. Texas could gain three.
Republicans will dominate redistricting at the state level, so prepare yourself for tortured screams of "Gerrymandering!" from the left.
My conclusion is, a bare majority of voters wanted Trumpism without the bombast, vulgarity and gratuitous insults of Trump himself. Republicans can build on this GOP big tent, if they are smart.
All the entertainment this next two years will be on the Democrat side. The loony lefties and the sensible Democrats will be in open warfare.
This is America, a vibrant and diverse nation. The map is never static.
Quotations:
"The People have Spoken... The Bastards!" --
Dick Tuck
George Orwell:
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia."