Okay, I think Judge Kavanaugh is on his way to Senate confirmation as the newest member of the U.S. Supreme Court. The number will probably be well beyond what is necessary, not news to me as it mostly reflects the political breakdown of the Senate. Media is easily misled and loves drama, which is why this has been so nerve-wracking.
This has been an intensely partisan experience with a judicial candidate squeezed in between the Trumpian right wing, which wants what it wants, and the Democrats, leaning ever leftward and determined to rid the nation of a pestilent president.
The process itself was terrible.
Witness the way it all played out. A leaked letter and a college professor with a story to tell from decades ago became the center of focus of the nomination of a candidate for the Supreme Court. It brought out the worst in everyone, not the least of those, President Trump, who keeps his worst nearby on a leash to call into service whenever he can.
A lot of incensed women cried “near rape” and accepted everything the aggrieved woman testified to. A lot of men thought it was just more of that “woman” stuff they have been hearing about all over the place.
Some of the thoughtless described it as “typical boy behavior,” as though all of us men pinned women down and held our hands over their mouths at one point or another (NOT!).
Trump was decent for a few days then went on a full Trumpian romp down in Mississippi, a digression aimed at, perhaps, shining a bright light in some other direction that did not lead to his bank accounts and stinky financial history.
Trump’s performance was among the very worst of his presidency, and that’s saying a lot for a man who can’t seem to say enough bad things about his opponents. Not even his enemies, of which there are many. His opponents get treatment that is just the same. They become somehow evil and foolish and unworthy. That’s because they disagree with a man who cannot make his mind up about anything and who is deeply insecure.
Give him a mob and he will stir it up. The opponents don’t even have to be real. They are rhetorical devices for him, a man who probably could not define “rhetorical devices” if you handed him a dictionary. He is like Mussolini without the garlic, puffing himself up and blathering on and on.
But enough about that.
What I am most interested in at this stage is a lecture on mathematics and politics. We always forget that in the heat of battle, thinking our passions can boil up such a fever that even our opponents will be bubbled into our camp.
It doesn’t work that way. It hasn’t worked that way. It can’t work that way.
Don’t get angry about the wrong thing. We have had enough of that. It makes us perfect targets for manipulation. Get angry about the right thing, which in this case, is the people who didn’t vote a couple of years back, either because they were lazy slugs or pissed off Bernie Sanders supporters or Democrats who thought Hillary Clinton was as stinky as her stinky husband. (And I voted for HIM TWICE!)
We have about two and a half political parties these days, Republicans, Democrats and even more Democraty Democrats who are playing with some ideas borrowed from socialists and others on the far left. That’s actually a great thing, because stagnation is bad for political thought and the nation, too. No one ever solved a problem by sitting back and being stagnant.
But none of that can translate an electoral vote minority on election day into a majority.
Through some mysterious math and manipulation by who knows who, Trump became president by an electoral college vote even as Hillary Clinton was defeating him by millions of votes in the popular count. It’s a tainted presidency for sure, but a legal presidency that created a huge block of unusual voters who found themselves agreeing with whatever this bloviating crap belcher presented, not to put too fine a point on it.
I love calling him names, but, even though it’s fun, it’s not going to get rid of him. The only thing that can get rid of him is voting behavior that piles huge numbers up against him, the way you might pile books or bricks or something against a door you want to make certain contains the evil that screams just on the other side.
A lot has been written about the Republicans being “revived” by this fight and now ready for the midterm election, as though they were going to wear, “I did it for Kav!” T-shirts to the polls. That’s not going to happen. If Trump backers had any memory to speak of, they would seem him as the same mendacious gas bag the rest of us see. But they don’t.
They still love him.
On the other hand, every time he opens his mouth, which is a lot, more and more people realize what a douf he is.
So come forward all ye fair maidens, your time is at hand!
Vote. Vote. Vote.
Madigan’s Gleaner 