I not only found Joe Biden’s speech about MAGA long overdue, but I thought his denunciation of the MAGA movement both restrained and rather polite.
Did I expect the usual ‘it’s not our fault, it’s your fault’ response from GOP noisemakers like Lindsay Graham, who said the American people were ‘hurting’ because of Joe’s failure to stop ‘rampant inflation and out-of-control crime?’ What else could Graham say?
But when the all the primary votes are tallied up, with the final two state primaries (DE and NH) on September 13, the great red wave that was going to demolish the blue team and restore America to its path towards greatness again under Donald Trump, seems to have pretty well rippled itself away.
Now if you don’t mind, a slight digression to put all of this in a proper perspective.
In June 1992 I spent several hours talking one-on-one with Newt Gingrich, who was beginning to put together the “Contract with America’ 1994 campaign that would give the House back to the GOP and install Newt in the Speaker’s seat.
Newt and I both came from an academic background. He had gone into politics as a candidate, I had gotten involved doing fundraising for political campaigns.
In those respects, we were similar. Where we differed was ideologically – I was a red-diaper baby of the Left, Newt was trailer-park Right.
Although he had never held a private sector job, Newt believed that government needed to be managed and run like a business and if you didn’t have enough money to purchase the government services you needed, you did without.
Newt’s favorite example was the fact that it took the Post Office three or four days to get a letter from one coast to the other, but FedEx delivered the same letter overnight. When I pointed out that the Post Office charged 40 cents for the same service that FedEx was charging $16.95, Newt’s answer was: “That’s too bad for the person who doesn’t have the money. He can wait a couple of weeks until his letter arrives.”
If we get anything out of a Democrat(ic) victory or near-victory in November, the election might prove to be the swan song for Donald Trump. Because if the GOP begins to deal with the fact that voters come out in larger numbers to vote against Trump, then he can forget running again in 2024. So, we’ll see.
But meanwhile, more important than Trump no longer being a GOP headliner will be the collapse of the GOP maxim about how much the government needs to be run like a private business, which was Trump’s bottom line rationale for his 2016 campaign.
How many times in every speech did Trump pat himself on the back for knowing how to make a deal? How many times did he brag about how much he was worth because his business ventures were such a success?
Trump was a guy who didn’t have one, single minute of political experience which only made it even better that he would run the government, at least according to him.
And by the way, in certain respects he was a very unique business guy who wasn’t afraid to take risks in real estate which is probably the riskiest business of all.
What’s that got to do with running the Executive Branch of the United States government? Not one, GD thing. Not one.
Don’t get me wrong. A successful politician has to learn the art of telling people what they want to hear as well as telling them what they need to hear. This is exactly what Biden said last Thursday night and between now and Election Day in November you’ll hear him say it again. And if the best the GOP can come up with in response is some worn-out claptrap about ‘culture wars’ or how the inflation is causing so much ‘pain,’ I’m ready to take the short odds over whether the House and the Senate will still be painted blue in 2023.
The GA Senate race is getting too close to call. SEND WARNOCK SOME BUCKS – NOW.
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