Let me start by making one thing very clear.
I can understand the people who hate Democrats, who would prefer almost anyone to Joe Biden.
I don’t agree with them, but I understand them. I personally think Biden has done a good job, although I wish he wasn’t running for re-election. I am not at all thrilled with the prospect of having a president who will be 86 years old at the end of this second term.
That said …
I am a Democrat and it would take a lot for me to vote for any Republican, let alone Donald Trump.
As for Trump himself. It took me a few minutes to come up with anything that could make me pull the level for Orange Julius. In the end, all I could figure was if someone were in the booth with me, holding a gun to the head of one of the people I love dearly, that would probably make me vote for him.
More than probably. E.M. Forster once said that if he “had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.”
In some respects, Trump is the sad result of a political “perfect storm” created by terrorism, income inequality and fundamentalist religion. There are just too many people on the outside of happiness and prosperity who don’t really believe in our system anymore. The real problems of our society are so far beyond their ability to solve that they obsess about the little things.
It should come as no surprise that when Trump was running for president in 2016, one of his quotes that stood out the most was, “I love the poorly educated.”
Without them, he never would have been president.
Combine them with the fundamentalists who literally believe we are living in the Biblical End Times and you have Trump’s base. Someone came out with a video called “God Made Trump,” which describes someone who literally does not exist and you have Trump’s base.
We sarcastically say people who are overly egotistical think they are “God’s gift to mankind,” but the fundies who love Trump believe he actually is God’s gift to mankind.
God made Trump? Well, his nemesis the Lincoln Project responded to that with a video called “God Made a Dictator,” comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Un. Orange Julius is reportedly furious.
I remain optimistic in at least one respect. In a free and fair election, I believe there is simply no way the American people would vote for anyone as dishonest and boorish as Donald Trump.
In 2016, the election he won thanks tothe Electoral College, he got 3 million fewer votes than his opponent.
In 2020, he got 7 million votes fewer than his opponent.
Unless his supporters suppress the vote, this time it will be 10 million or more.
There just aren’t enough poorly educated religious fanatics to get it done for America’s would-be dictator.
Thank God.