Okay, so I’ve been following the impeachment hearings on Daily Kos. It’s exciting and damning stuff, and the mainstream media has been very good about covering it and getting the salient details out. Yet all over Daily Kos is doom and gloom because 538 shows support for impeachment “declining” (by a couple of points or whatever). Mitch McConnell and his toadies have made up their minds. Lindsay Graham is going to do more butt-kissing and start a Biden investigation of his own. And if the Senate acquits, a likely prospect, Trump will trumpet about how he was fully exonerated….
...and somehow that will cause him to be re-elected. You get a really devoted doom-and-gloomer, you might even get the phrase “Trump will win by a landslide.” A bonus cookie if the comment ends with “Democrats are bad at messaging.”
And I’ve just been thinking… how, exactly?
“We didn’t think he’d win in 2016!” Okay; first of all, let’s get over 2016, shall we? Obama was president. America was complacent. Trump was just this guy, you know? Things were going smoothly and the general populace took for granted a lot of the accomplishments that had been achieved, like the ACA, gay marriage and the roaring economy. The climate was different. We didn’t think about the Presidency. We didn’t all lose sleep over what Trump would do or say next, or what inhumane policy he would enact next. The general populace had been lulled to sleep by the country’s relative stability.
Well, it’s different now. A lot of us are driven to clutching the walls with out fingernails by every movement Trump and the GOP have made. Many people are furious, fighting mad, willing to do anything to get this horrible nightmare to end. And many of those people… are activists. Organizers. EXTROVERTS. The kind of people who campaigned for Doug Jones. The kind of people who knocked on doors for Andy Beshear. The kind of people who did outreach for John Bel Edwards. These people… and other like-minded activists… will be motivated, times 1000, to fight Trump and his cronies.
And if you think “winning” the impeachment battle will make Trump look attractive… have you been paying attention to him the last three years? He has no grace. He has no dignity. He can’t do anything without looking like a massive asshole. While his base is there for him through thick and thin, Trump won’t make the kind of inroads into the rest of the electorate that he’d need in order to duplicate the 80,000 vote win he achieved in 2016… when America was napping.
America’s wide awake now. Those people who didn’t go into Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to help make the difference in 2016 are making massive plans now. The impeachment hearings are a wake-up call and a motivator and no number of distracting Facebook ads, Breitbots and not-so-bright-bots are going to stem their drive, enthusiasm and perseverance.
“But the divisive primary!” To begin with, Democrats are, by nature, open-minded. Too open-minded for many, but they are open. Obama brought on Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State in 2008, after all, with no hard feelings, because they were essentially on the same team. The candidates we have in the race are powerful and motivated. The strength that each candidate brings to the current primary fray is the strength they will use to HELP each other when one candidate arises victorious. Sure, you will have the various dogs in the manger on the left (no names no pack drill) that might try to pout and throw tantrums… but Trump’s disgusting, vile and oppressive voice will drown them all out. “I want him gone. I want things to be normal again.” It will be very convincing and very alluring to many, even if activists weren’t engaging with the public and the candidates weren’t working their asses off greeting voters like it was going out style.
“But the election will be stolen!” I’m not sure how Trump whining to his rallygoers about “ya gotta give me this win” and then having his guy lose by 40,000 votes in a red state works for the theory that Republicans are stealing elections right and left. Seems to me a very odd way to assert the inevitability of your authority.
I may have written this for myself; I may have written it because I felt I needed to counter the doominess that attacks this site once in a while. But I know one thing; I wrote it because it’s common sense to me that Trump is not a uniter candidate in any way. He motivates more people on our side not to take elections lightly. Polls don’t allow for that. Polls don’t allow for how another year of this guy will drive us to distraction. We’re not giving this up without a fight. The election will be decided by those who are fiercely motivated to bring decency and goodness back to the country to love.
We’ll kick his racist, misogynist, feeble-minded, hateful ass out of the White House and into a hell of his own making.
