This isn’t a political blog and this isn’t a news blog, but I feel compelled to comment on the state of American Presidential politics today.
I totally recognize that ‘polls’ are almost always ideology driven. Whey are made by political parties, it is obvious. When they are made by news organizations, it is less so. In the days of Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley, national TV network news was considered more of a public service (and required to be so by the FCC). Now those rules are relaxed and news networks are profit centers. That means that there is an interest in generating views which means that careful reporting is increasingly rare.
News reporting of elections have been reduced to talking about ‘the race’. Breathless discussions of who’s ahead and who’s behind are everywhere. Issues? Whatever.
In this context, the Republican party is led by a man whose name I will not put in this blog. He’s been saying things for weeks that are either crude playground bullying, meandering off-topic statements, or outright lies. Often all three. He talks openly about using the US military to hunt down ‘enemies of the state’ (inside America) who he defines as anyone who disagrees with him. The Democratic candidate is a mainstream politician. She generally speaks coherently and has an actual platform that she tries to present to the electorate.
The Republican candidate for President was President before and his term was roiled by chaos, culminating in a loss in his attempt to be re-elected. Now, despite many legal decisions to the contrary, he claims that the election was ‘stolen’.
Now he is laying the groundwork for claiming the same thing again even though recent polls have shown him winning. What is he going to say if he wins? It was all a joke?
Whatever the actual numbers are, it is clearly a close race. I am frankly astounded that he has the support of as many people as he does. (I’m setting aside the issue of the Electoral College, which is why we’re even having this discussion. No one is expecting the Republicans to win the popular vote nationwide. A few thousand people in a few key locations will decide who the next President will be. My vote in California is essentially meaningless.)
So, I’m terrified. If he wins, he’ll go on a witch hunt against his political opposition. He has no interest in governing. If he loses, he’ll scream bloody murder that he was screwed, file hundreds of lawsuits against election boards all over the country and, worst of all, his followers who love guns and violence, will come out in the streets again.
The zeitgeist is funny. Who can say what makes people do what they do? A lot of people in America clearly think this behavior is ok for our leaders. We may be living in a new chapter of Barbara Tuchman’s book March of Folly. I’m not a praying man, but I hope that somehow the numbers come up such that he is turned away. Praying couldn’t hurt.