What Drives The Election Roller Coaster?

Posted on by under Election 2022, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

The upcoming elections remind me watching a game of tennis, or ping pong … back, forth, left, right, back, forth.  Round and round she goes, where she lands no one knows.  To say that it is stressful is an understatement!  Frank Bruni’s latest column sums it all up fairly nicely …

Live By the Trump, Die By the Trump

By Frank Bruni

8 September 2022

Democrats were doomed. We prediction-mad pundits felt predictable certainty about that. The recent history of midterm elections augured disaster for the party in power. Inflation would make the damage that much worse.

So why are Republicans sweating?

Their overreach on abortion and the subsequent mobilization of women voters explain a great deal but not everything. There’s another prominent plotline. Its protagonist is Donald Trump. And its possible moral is a sweet and overdue pileup of clichés — about reaping what you sow, paying the piper, lying in the bed you’ve made.

Republicans chose to kneel before him. Will he now bring them to their knees?

Thanks in large part to Trump, they’re stuck with Senate candidates — Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, Herschel Walker in Georgia, Blake Masters in Arizona — whose ineptness, inanity, immoderation or all three significantly diminish their chances in purple states at a propitious juncture.

Thanks in even larger part to Trump, voters ranked threats to democracy as the most pressing problem facing the country in a recent NBC News poll. That intensifying concern is among the reasons that President Biden went so big and bold last week in his intensely debated speech about extremism in America. He was eyeing the midterms, and he was wagering that Republican leaders’ indulgence of Trump’s foul play and fairy tales might finally cost them.

Trump is also a factor in Republicans’ vulnerability regarding abortion rights. For his own selfish political purposes, he made grand anti-abortion promises. He appointed decidedly anti-abortion judges, including three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. He as much as anyone fired up the anti-abortion movement to the point where Republicans may now get burned.

With two months until Election Day, Republicans want to focus voters’ attention on unaffordable housing, exorbitant grocery bills and the generally high cost of living. They want to instill deeper and broader fear about immigration and crime. They want to portray Democrats as the enemies of the American way.

But that’s more than a little tricky when Trump had America’s secrets strewn throughout the bowels of Mar-a-Loco. When his excuses for mishandling those classified documents change at a dizzying clip, contradict previous ones and often boil down to his typical infantile formula of I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I. When he uses Truth Social, the media penal colony to which Twitter and Facebook sentenced him, for all the old falsehoods plus new ones. When criminal charges against him aren’t out of the question.

The progressive excesses of some Democrats pale beside the madness of this would-be monarch.

Democrats could still have a bad, even brutal, November. That is indeed how the pendulum historically swings, and two months is plenty of time for political dynamics to change yet again. Biden could overplay his hand, a possibility suggested by that speech.

But for the moment, Republicans are spooked. Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, has decided to try to recapture the party’s long-ago Contract-With-America magic by detailing a “Commitment to America” that will no doubt omit what should be the most important commitment of all — to the truth. It also won’t erase the fact that 196 of the 529 Republican nominees running for the House, the Senate, governor, attorney general or secretary had “fully denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election,” according to a chilling FiveThirtyEight analysis of the party’s nominees as of Wednesday.

That morally corrupt position was probably a political asset in their primaries, just as having Trump’s endorsement usually was. But in the general election? As Republican nominees pivot toward that, at least a few of them are realizing that it’s a different ballgame — and that Trump is trouble. They’re taking baby steps away from the world’s biggest baby.

Good luck with that. He’ll never let them go, never muffle himself long enough or behave well enough for there to be a Republican narrative that doesn’t revolve around him. That was clear to Republicans from the start. To hang with him is to hang with him.

20 thoughts on “What Drives The Election Roller Coaster?”

  2. Jill, an excerpt from an interview between an attorney to the former president and Major Garrett of CBS News is not a surprise.

    “A lawyer who served in the White House during Donald Trump’s administration, said the ex-president is a ‘deeply wounded narcissist,’ claiming that’s one of the two toxic traits that dictate his actions and decision making.

    Ty Cobb, who stepped down in 2018 because of Trump’s disapproval of his ‘conciliatory’ approach, also said Trump is ‘incapable of acting other than in his perceived self-interest or for revenge.’”

    I truly think most elected Republican officials would concur with Cobb, yet they are still to scared to fully say it. There are the brave few who pull no punches and get vilified, as they are outnumbered by the Trump sycophants who keep saying “what iceberg?” Yet, those in the middle who try to play both ends against the middle are those who frustrate me most. They know better, but their lack of courage and allegiance to our country’s constitution are disheartening. Continuing the analogy, they are rearranging the deck chairs while their party is filling up with icy water below. Keith

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    • I find it interesting that people who had close relationships with Trump at one time, like Mr. Cobb, Michael Cohen, Bill Barr, John Bolton and many others, now tell the truth, that he is a narcissist, a megalomaniac with a fragile ego, and not an honest man. Where were their consciences back in the day, when their words might have saved the nation from 4 years of disaster? But, the bottom line is that the people of this nation need to wake up, take off their rosy-coloured specs, and see the reality that is Trump — a child’s mentality in an old man’s body without the education nor the desire to actually lead this nation. His love isn’t for We the People, but for his own power and wealth, both of which were greatly increased during his four years in office.

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    • You are exactly right! They get far too much attention, making them seem far more important than they actually are. But how? The media has a field day with this stuff, for it sells ads, and profit is their primary goal. And people … well, it seems that a large portion of people have forgotten how to think for themselves and are easily convinced to follow the pack, even if the pack is leading them over a steep cliff. Yes, I’ve been reading a bit about Ms. Truss’ cabinet appointments and as I told Clive, it reminds me of when Trump first took office and chose the very worst possible candidates for every cabinet position!

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    • I’d like to see the entire lot of them in prison for whatever remains of their corrupt little lives. Prison would be a much better punishment than hanging, which would bring an instant relief of their troubles and probably turn them into martyrs.
      Cwtch

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  6. Pingback: WHAT DRIVES THE ELECTION ROLLER COASTER? |jilldennison.com | Ramblings of an Occupy Liberal

    • I think so too, but the question is can they stick to those key issues and not be drawn into the three-ring circus the Republicans are putting on? And this year, in addition to the traditional voter apathy, we have new voter suppression laws in most states that will make it harder for many to vote. Still, I am encouraged by looking at some of the poll numbers, such as Mastriano in PA who is behind Shapiro by 7%.

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