Mike Pence wore his bestest pants, and probably magic underwear too, Tuesday night in Mesa, AZ at something billed as the Latter-day Saints for Trump Coalition. After tossing down a big bowl of fruit Jell-O, he began his speech by noting that Joe Biden has selected Kamala Harris for his running mate.
The crowd responded with boos, which isn’t surprising considering this is a group that until 1978 forbid African Americans from participating in most church activities, and many LDS members still don’t see women as deserving of much except popping out babies. So a woman of color on the ticket? Nah, not a lot of votes in this crowd.
"As you all know, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party have been overtaken by the radical left," [Pence] said. "So given their promises of higher taxes, open borders, socialized medicine, and abortion on demand, it's no surprise that he chose Senator Harris."
He’s already got the playbook memorized: radical, taxes, borders, socialism, abortion. Trump can’t memorize more than five words, so there’s their campaign strategy. Boo! Scary antifa! Scary brown people! Scary Marxists! Pay no attention to the 165,000 dead people behind the curtain, or the tens of millions out of work.
Now anything to the left of James Inhofe and Louie Gohmert is “radical” for these boobs, but Biden and Harris, nope. Yes, “higher taxes” on the one-percenters whose taxes Trump et al. evaporated, blowing a $2.3 trillion hole in the federal budget. I don’t know about you but I’m not hearing “open borders” from Biden-Harris; I am hearing don’t rip children from their parents and put them in cages. And “socialize medicine,” okay, sure, join the rest of the world, and most of the oldsters in Pence’s audience on Medicare. And if he wants to run on overturning Roe, go for it, you lose.
Pence did get one thing absolutely right:
"The choice in this election is whether America remains America," he said.
I could not agree more. Trump-Pence and the rest of their crooked administration have undermined nearly every principle, value, law, and relationship that defines progress in the American tradition: speech, assembly, civil rights, elections, public lands, foreign policy, education, health care, and good jobs.
Trump has issued executive orders, signed legislation, and canceled treaties that upend almost every American tenet. His lawyers are in court regularly seeking to squelch the possibly that all Americans are treated fairly and have equal opportunity. Trump toadies on TV promote an America run for and by privileged white men. And the goobers in Pence’s audience last night envision a theocracy that the nation’s founders would vomit on.
So, yeah, this is an election that determines “whether America remains America.” Not only would a Trump victory drag the nation deeper into a Dante-esque hell of unimaginable consequences, but if Pence remains in charge of battling the pandemic, that friggin’ dominionist just might kill us all.