It fills me with despair to think voters are so incredibly stupid.
I know that’s a combative way to start a piece, but let’s face it. We can’t get anything done in Washington because one party refuses to allow the other party to govern. Voters get angry at the governing party for what they see as ineptitude and decide the next change they get, they will turn things back over to the obstructionists.
Meanwhile, the obstructionists are working at the state level to make it more difficult for their opponents even to vote.
And of course, we have an ever-increasing number of complete morons who believe the most bizarre things. I’m sorry (actually I’m not), but anyone who really believed that John F. Kennedy Jr., who died more than 20 years ago, was going to show up in Dallas and someone reinstall Donald Trump as president should NEVER be allowed to vote again.
I suppose we ought to have expected the increasing obstructionism from Republicans. They are essentially the White People’s Party, and with people of other colors increasing their percentage in the population, the GOP is panicking.
In my own state of Georgia, they’re pretty much shameless. They stole a gubernatorial election in 2018, and the winner, Brian Kemp, actually said at one point that if they let everyone vote, Republicans would never win another election.
Wouldn’t you think voters would be ashamed to hear their guy saying something like that?
Well, what has apparently happed is that folks on one side — the all-white side — has decided that they need to win, no matter whether what they do is legal, ethical or moral.
Eventually they will lose, but it probably will cost us our political system as well. Democracy is in retreat around the world, and it’s approaching the critical list here. Republicans have won the popular vote in only one of the last eight presidential elections, and that was 17 years ago.
They justify their two victories in years they lost the popular vote — 2000 and 2016 — by praising the Electoral College, which has become ridiculously obsolete to the point where voters in tiny rural states have many times the influence of those living in urban areas.
It’s one reason Republicans have a built-in advantage in the Senate, making it almost impossible for Democrats to get the 60 votes required to defeat filibusters.
And voters — the stupid ones — are blaming Joe Biden and the Democrats for not being able to get things through the Senate. Polls show that looking ahead to the 2022 midterms, Republican candidates have a 10-point generic advantage in the polls. Couple that with Republican gerrymandering and obstructionism and the odds are very long for Democrats to be able to hold onto the House of Representatives.
Pundits say the odds are very good Donald Trump will regain the presidency in 2024, but I think the fact that he’ll be 78 years old and is facing all sorts of legal and financial problems make that relatively unlikely.
I also think that no matter how stupid voters may act, I think that would be a bridge too far.
At least I hope it would.