I received a note from a friend reminding me that simply trashing Trump will not necessarily win an election. This is a very good point that deserves some exploration.

There’s a LOT more Republican candidates appearing, too many to eviscerate in this missive, but the truly scary reality is that Trump is likely to be nominated for a lot of scary reasons. In a binary election, there must be a better deal on the table than just pointing out how bad the other side is. An alternative must be a better deal and in 2024.  So initially, before I get to Biden, it’s necessary to briefly run through a few of the likely Democratic alternatives.

1.  Kamala Harris- Possibly the worse potential POTUS in several generations. Listening to her give speeches is an exercise in forced cognizance. She generally has only a passing knowledge of what she’s talking about. It’s well known in California that shall we say, she made good use of feminine wiles to the to the top. That won’t fly in 2024.

2.  Gavin Newsome has seemingly good street cred, but Californians loathe him. As Mayor of San Francisco, then Lt .Gov., then a 2-term governor, He has avoided any responsibility for most of his failed policies. Homelessness in California has staggered the imagination and nothing credible is being done about it. Over 800,000 people left California last year, not including major corporations. 

3.  Robert F. Kennedy Jr, is a nightmare that has his father spinning like a lathe in his grave. Full of BS conspiracy theories, he’s disavowed by members of his own family. He sounds more like a red hat Republican than a democrat.

The rest of the Democratic candidates don’t really appear on the screen. The mind boggles.

Now for Biden. Yes, Biden has a bit of a soft brain from old age and previous brain injury. But is simply age-related cognitive dysfunction all there is? Pure and simple age-related brain dysfunction is not necessarily a debilitating disease. It mainly just slows down the process and the affected individual learns to get around it. There are a LOT of persons in their 80s that learn to get around short term memory deficits and word searching, (including the author of this missive) preserving their ability to reason adequately. 

Biden has not pulled any seriously bone headed maneuvers.  Yes, the Afghanistan debacle was a highly publicized mess, but the reality is that pulling out of that endless nightmare would never yield anything but a train wreck no matter who oversaw it. It was really time to finally do whatever it took to get out. A hard bullet to bite on but a needed and necessary chomp, no matter what CNN opined. The immigration and border control mess? A nightmare that’s been going on for decades and all the Presidents from 1950 on refused to grapple with, because there is no practical way to resolve it and virtually any maneuver was guaranteed to produce bad press. Biden didn’t separate thousands of kids from their parents and put them in cages. Sending migrants unannounced to Martha’s VInyard?

So, in a binary election where the only two choices are between a sociopathic narcissist bent on destroying our democratic process and a bumbling nabob that must work his way around the “normal” age related attributes of a shrinking brain, which is the “better” choice if there are only two? Third party?  Maybe find a party that makes a big production of… helping the homeless. Offer an alternative to voters that don’t care much about either of the major candidates. They can vote for the party that will support the homeless and feel better about it. That party won’t win the election but can throw a win to someone no one likes. Remember Ross Perot in 1992?

A binary election! Only two choices! Does everyone understand that such a situation guarantees most voters will vote for the least dangerous candidate? Sooner or later, many of the faithful will hold their noses and vote for Trump because they’re Republicans and voting for any Democrat is a sin punishable by entry into one of the inner Circles of Hell. But look around you. Is the current Republican Party your fathers party? My father’s party? Republicans are going to have to deal with a BINARY ELECTION and it isn’t going to be an easy decision. 

We’re going to have to talk about whether Republicans should vote at all. If they refuse to vote so as to avoid any culpability for putting a monster into office and witnessing our society go over the cliff shortly thereafter, they can say “can’t blame me”. But absence of blame doesn’t necessarily mean absence of liability. 

Sadly, more to come.

DC