So today the Trump administration hits a new low when it comes to doing anything even the slightest bit rational in political terms. Trump goes down to Georgia to campaign for the red team but has already told everyone that they’re wasting their vote.
How does someone who is allegedly the head of the Republican Party do his best to keep the party from retaining its majority status in the Upper House? You do what you’ve been doing for the last four years, namely, making decisions without even a shred of experience or understanding of how our two-party system actually works.
Trump wins a razor-thin victory in 2016, a victory only made possible because his opponent effectively ended her campaign about a month before the vote took place. In the three ‘battleground’ states (MI, PA, WI) whose shift from blue to red gave Trump the edge by one-half of 1 percent of the total votes in those three states, he showed up 12 times after September 1st, Hillary didn’t appear even once.
Now you would think that someone who eked out one of the smallest winning vote numbers of all time would sit down and try to figure out how to enlarge his victory margin the next time around. What was there to worry about? The economy was strong as blazes, the troops had things under control in Iraq.
The only problem was that the Democrats, led by Hillary, were still complaining that the Russians had compromised the vote. So, what does Trump do? Four months after his inauguration, he fires the head of the FBI. You don’t fire the head of the FBI. You don’t like him, you ignore him, but you don’t shove him out the door.
What did Trump get for doing something that stupid only four months into his first term? He got Bob Mueller appointed as Special Counsel who, by the way, happened to have been Comey’s former boss.
Know what would have happened otherwise to all that hot air and noise about Russian interference in 2016? Sooner or later, like every other story pursued by the mainstream media, it would have disappeared. Hear anything from Sarah Palin of late?
Then we have the mid-terms in 2018 and big surprise, the ‘out’ party in 2016 comes back to take charge of the House. Happens almost every time. Happened under Clinton, happened under Barack. Gee – what a surprise.
And what does Trump do when he wakes up and realizes that it’s Nancy Pelosi instead of Paul Ryan staring him in the face? He begins to get worried about his re-election and sends his TV lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, off to the Ukraine to dig up some dirt.
Now if you’re going to send someone on a quiet, fishing expedition, you send someone who knows how to move around without making any ripples in the pond. Take a look at some of Rudy’s public appearances over the last year or so. This is a guy you don’t send anywhere because sooner or later he’ll end up screaming into a microphone set up in across porn shop on the other side of the street.
I have friends, gun guys, who tell me that they don’t like the fact that the GOP didn’t really back up Trump when he began yelling about election ‘fraud.’ How do you support someone if it means you’ll be mentioned in the same news story with one lawyer who knows that the election software was actually being run from Venezuela and another lawyer who thinks he’s the second coming of Christ?
This country has always been comfortable with a political system in which executive and legislative authority swings back and forth between the two parties on more or less equal terms. Since 1895, the GOP has controlled the Senate 58 years, the Democrats have held control for 60 years. In the House, it’s been red team 56 years, blue team 70 years. As for the White House, since 1960 the Oval Office has been red 32 years, it’s been painted blue 28 years.
Trump has never understood the remarkable stability of our political system which is why he’s going to be spending a lot more time playing golf in just another three weeks.
Goodbye – good riddance.