WORDS: 2,069 — Hope for the best, expect the worst, and prepare the best way you can. The next two years are going to certainly be different. We aren’t even out of the pandemic yet. The good news? The economy is coming back! Could that change things regarding our national trajectory?
So What Exactly Should We Expect to Happen Either in 2022 or 2024, or Both, and What Might Be the Trigger?
The trigger would be.. simply having the election(s) at all. Meaning, as it relates to the potential for violence, there is a good chance it will happen regardless of who wins.
We should expect rage from Trump supporters and contempt from non-Trump supporters. Perhaps another attempt at something one might want to interpret as an insurrection, likely coupled with various violent demonstrations, presumably at state capitols. If Trump wins and there is alleged legislative tinkering of vote counts in Red States, the Liberal side will grow more “assertive”, likely leading to confrontations with pro-Trump supporters who think they are “patriotically” defending something. If Biden wins.. the same formula of civil discontent and disobedience. Either way, this will of course draw out the extreme nutjobs.. and most assuredly people will die. If Biden wins I might actually expect a run on the White House itself as the Far Right assigns all ills to Biden and sees Biden illegitimate anyway. If Harris runs and wins, that’s less likely symbolic. Obviously, my definition of a “run on the White House” does not in the least suggest it would be anything like Jan. 6th and sacked or looted. Maybe nothing more than a typical demonstration at the White House.
What if the mid-term next year results in the Dems controlling both houses, with a fair enough margin to hold a consistent majority in future legislation? This could be a real table-turner event that will very likely sway the 2024 election. Even if Trump or some other GOP surrogate wins, he/she administration is nearly dead in the water in promoting their agenda for at least the next two years. A lot can happen in the meantime by a Dem Congress. But that’s the political part. What happens in the streets of America? The only thing I can draw on is the feeling across the land.. the morose dullness… the immense, surprising results of the 2016 election. There was crying. While it’s notable that given the huge disappointment in Trump winning… the public accepted the results of the vote counts without challenge. Trump and his supporters losing both houses in 2022 will make them… not sad or morose. There will be anger and complete disbelief. How would they release all that? Something will happen, but exactly what and how bad I can’t even surmise. Do I think the Dems could pull off a grand slam like this in 2022? No. Likely the Dems will retain the House with a larger margin, and slim the GOP Senate margin a bit. Not a bad showing in the least if they do.
Here’s the takeaway from all this palaver. Constantly focusing on the Trump lie that the last election was rigged means people are listening to him because of his bully pulpit for having been president, simply because a disgruntled faction of the public… some 40-45% faction… is actually believing that there was widespread fraud and corruption, which then feeds discontent, disharmony, and distrust in the confidence of our election system. This in turn fosters mistrust of those in power and feeds a perception that government itself, along with its institutions cannot be trusted. You have this large part of a populace feeling that way you end up with a percolating undercurrent of Right Wing Conservatism trusting more in their gun than the Constitution.
Can Any of This Be Avoided?
We have 12 months until the next election and 24 months until 2024. That’s a long time for external or internal events to affect change for the better or for the worse. In the meantime, things are simmering…. and the fuse has been lit. There is a possibility, slight as it might be, that Trump goes even more ridiculous to the point that even the Trump hardliners in Congress think he’s more a burden than an asset. Couple that with anything that results legally from the House’s Jan. 6th Committee investigation. He could end up having some legal judgement from some case that ends up disqualifying him from running. Let’s also keep in mind that whether you are Liberal or Conservative the pandemic and the effect on the economy happens to all parties. If the economy improves… if the Covid threat is reduced to a manageable level… the national stress levels might be reduced enough to make political confrontation less of an issue. One can only hope. But then you have this being quoted by McConnell just the last couple days…..
“I do think we need to be thinking about the future and not the past. I think the American people are focusing on this administration, what it’s doing to the country, and it’s my hope the ’22 election will be a referendum on the performance of the current administration, not a rehash of suggestions about what may have happened in 2020.”
Maybe McConnell is starting to come clean on Trump being a liability. You gotta think that McConnell has spent a life in Congress formulating policy legislation that favors the GOP (ok.. and maybe the country as well)… and Trump offers completely zero policy arguments to support any effort on the part of the GOP to actually try and win over voters. But to answer that question, can any of this be avoided, the sincere answer is.. I am not sure that we will not experience at least some level of national discontent overflowing into the streets somewhere across America… whether Trump (or a minion) wins or loses. But to me the right thing is not voting for Trump or any of his people… keep our belief in the Constitution, and ride out the storm.
What About Their Ages, and Mortality?
Trump and Biden are old guys and we can’t ignore a possible medical malady with either of them before 2022 or 2024. A stroke incapacitates, and certainly a risk of age-related death is an obvious political game-changer. Yes, we can qualify that we don’t wish bad things to befall other human beings. But death is a fact of life, and life moves on in spite of it. Given that, Trump himself has a number of lurking conditions such as a weight issue, and his diet of Big Macs doesn’t help either. As it relates to our tenuous politics we should wish Trump lives a long life without issues. His followers are volatile enough to suggest every conspiracy imaginable if his death is “unnatural”… and violence could follow in some quarters. Likely even more so if he does indeed succumb to an age-related malady, as the conspiracies will spawn all kinds of Hollywood plots of secret pacts and specialized undetectable poisons… the CIA… help from MI6… blah, blah. We should hope Trump stays healthy enough to fall from grace on his own. A martyr he should never be, for a cause that was meant to deny our Republic. But if anything occurs to take Trump out of politics, whether he runs or not, it’s difficult how his supporters will receive that and not be suspicious that it wasn’t just too many Big Macs.
This Is Entirely About The Constitution
The realization of what is happening and what might happen can be two different things. A while back in another post I made an observation about defending democracy. That concept is easy to understand because we naturally assume the connotation is that we defend ourselves from someone trying to conquer us in some fashion. We all unify ourselves against the enemy attacking us and we fight back to defend ourselves, our government, and our way of life. But defending ourselves from ourselves is an entirely different concept with greater repercussions toward the future… or “a” future. Our internal struggle portends to be a struggle to defend the Constitution, both sides of the Great Divide feeling they alone are making the effort; the other side being the “enemy”. My point is that all this talk of defending the Constitution is not really the problem simply because the Constitution easily defends itself when we, as We, the people... stick to following its precepts. The document exists solely based on the collective will of “We, the people….” to follow it. Our current national dilemma is that one side thinks the other side is the one side not following it, and the opposite side thinks they are. Now, ask yourself the question… how does one even defend the Constitution? The January 6th insurrection was one attempt to stop a Constitutional process… because “someone” spread a lie that the votes they were certifying were illegitimate and fraudulent. That lie was easy to spread among those disenfranchised Americans who feel threatened and not represented in government, hence not trusting government. The January 6th insurrection was purely a mob trying to overthrow the Constitutional process in motion… and inflict physical harm as a form of vengeance and retribution on those Constitutionally elected officials.
So.. what if they had been successful? What if the mob found Pelosi, Pence, and a number of others? A mob like that could easily overtake Pence’s Secret Service detail. Capitol police were spread far too thin to be of any good. Maybe Pence gets hanged out on the makeshift gallows, or maybe him and the rest are just shot or bludgeoned as the mob passed them by in the hallways. Surely the rabid crowd smelling blood would have attempted to set fire to the House chamber. Guaranteed.. as soon as the police radio chatter picked up on the mob killing anyone…. the police would simply assemble, en masse, and just going in shooting everyone in sight not wearing a suitcoat or office attire, perceiving everyone as a threat. A pretty high body count all the way around. One can surely expect a national rage against Trump and his supporters… letting out the nut jobs on both sides. Yep, had all the events of January 6th been successful for the insurgents… we’d be in a very different country right now. What’s a bit interesting is that since Jan. 6th I have not read anyone’s speculating, what if it had been successful. To me, THAT is the reality check… and the fact there’s been little or no speculation if the nation had not dodged-the-bullet that day, what would the country experience going forward.
Well, we may get another chance.. either in 2022 or 2024 because Trump and his minion buffoons are already setting up to declare the vote count fraudulent if the counts don’t go his way. By my prediction, the counts in 2024 will no way support Trump or any sycophants. There’s a number of fairly intuitive folks traversing the halls of power in D.C. who readily acknowledge that we indeed came close on Jan. 6th. to losing our collective faith in the Constitution… and the threat is not over.
While I seem rather.. restrained (comparatively speaking).. from the rank and file blogging “screamers”, this should not mask the idea that I feel a serious threat is upon the nation, and this is my “patriotic” attempt to express my concern to “fight back” using words to spread the nature of our national Constitutional threat, and my vote. I’ll reserve using my trigger finger until, say, the end of week one after food distribution stops in the country… politics isn’t a priority anymore… the Constitution is a fading past memory…. and I am forced to defend my last can of Beef-a-Roni at the price of your life or mine.
In the End….
What I am saying is that the next two elections are not about Trump, the ex-President. It is entirely about Trumpian Conservatism and retaining faith in the Constitution. Not policies. Not issues. This isn’t to suggest that his supporters do not have credible grievances on policies. But the voice they are listening to isn’t allowing them a voice they can trust with truth, facts, and a belief in the Constitution serving the people, and not as a self-serving instrument to dodge responsibility in defying its precepts. We have some difficult times ahead. Live life, but be prepared. These are surely “the times that try men’s [and women’s] souls.”
An excellent review, Doug……I wish I could be more optimistic about either election but I am not….I guess I am a cynic but I do not see the elections changing a thing….the Dems will pretend to be progressive and fail on the policies they pretend to care about….the Repups will continue obstructionism…and the voter will do what American voters do best….vote against their best wishes. chuq
I hear ya, old buddy. I can appreciate the cynicism.. and I do agree this current Congressional garbage will continue until the fault lines give way.. one way or the other,.
Doug,
Sad pessimistic outlook you presented for our Nation.
Best thing to do is to restore trust in our voting system. We learned from the Arizona Audit how impossible it is to verify mailed in ballots without contacting millions of voters and asking them to ident themselves and verify they voted the way the ballot indicated.
Best course is to return to voters presenting identification again at the ballot center and only allow mail in ballots for people who can be verified before being given a mail in ballot.
Why that should be a problem is beyond my comprehension.
Keep in mind, Greece and Rome superpowers failed in history because of lack of a breakdown in moral values and loyality to a central governing system..
If we allow immoral values to flourish, we lose trust in our central governing system.
If we trust but do not verify, we may experience again what happened in the past that a large percentage of voters will either believe or not believe the Big Lie was may have be the Big Truth?
Sad.
Regards and goodwill blogging.
“Best course is to return to voters presenting identification again at the ballot center and only allow mail in ballots for people who can be verified before being given a mail in ballot.”
To be sure I’ve lined up the signs that present a pessimistic outlook for the nation at least into the next two elections. But I’ve also included how fragile that outlook is to occurring based on any number to changing events in the next couple years. You’re an “issues” guy, Rudy… which boggles my mind that you think Trump represents your issues… when Trump is not issue-oriented at all. I expressly said across my two posts here that Trump supporters have genuine concerns on issues that bother them… but Trump is not on their side… your side… one bit. Find another spokesperson to whom you can assign some morality, acknowledges honor & tradition as part of the spirit of American institutions, and doesn’t use the justice represented in the Constitution as a dodge to allow impulsive, authoritarian behavior.
To your paragraph above, I honestly do not think the problem is entirely around providing an ID when voting. This last voting cycle, given all this scrutiny in the courts, and constant re-counts.. has been declared the tightest election in American history. There is NO problem… so why fix something that is not broke? Yet the GOP, red state GOP legislatures, have done nothing but initiate ridiculous oversight designed to do nothing but allow Trump Republicans to decide their own counts should real counts go against Trump. There is NO need for that.
So far, Biden has been a ‘bland’ president. It is easy to forget he is actually there, from a European perspective. When I see him being interviewed, his presence reminds me of a slightly confused old man resident in an old people’s home. He has done nothing spectacular, and nothing that bad either. The most anyone has to say about him here seems to be that he didn’t handle the withdrawal from Afghanistan too well. In short, as a president of America, he is already quite forgettable, and almost a non-event. If the Democrats are going to have any impact in the next presidential election, they really should be choosing someone younger. With years left to serve, and a convincing exterior persona. Make him a Christian white man with a young family, and they might beat whoever the Republicans put up.
**Disclaimer**
Only the opinion of an old and grumpy English guy who doesn’t support either the Democrats or Republicans.
Best wishes, Pete.
Ha! I always love your perspectives, Pete. You have far more interest in our political meandering than most Americans. In fact, I would actually agree with you on that Biden image being interpreted in Europe. It’s not all that far from the perception here in many corners. I voted for him just to not have another Trump term… not because Biden would be a popular president. But.. Biden likely was a fair selection given he is far more laid back and holds to more traditional norms and the honor of the office…. and in allowing our institutions to operate without chaos. You might say, after four years of Trumpian chaos we’ve done a good “180” in order to restore a bit of what once was our “normal”. But Biden is not ready to restore our international role, especially in Europe. We aren’t there yet. If Harris runs and wins.. no guarantees there either as she has zero diplomatic experience. But no question I will vote for her to avoid any Trump return or a Trumpian GOP minion.
I dunno what the political domestic climate is over in Britain (although some of your posts and replies suggest we live very similarly), but the mood is getting quite nasty here. Not dissimilar to the late 1850’s here. You might be studying yet another civil war.
The true “Big Lie’ is that dems are progressives….today the Dems are the conservs of the political spectrum….chuq
There was a time back in the day when Dems were for the working class and were the big party in the South and rural areas. How did it flip so badly?
Doug,
You stated, “There is NO problem… so why fix something that is not broke?”
I read this morning that in DuPage County, your hometown, they have identified over 1000 voters, in another close election, voted in districts they no longer lived in when their ballots were compared to Post Office records.
Shades of what was found in the Arizona Audit.
So much for your above “no problem,“ “not broke”??????????????
Regards and goodwill blogging.
hehehe.. you sure do try hard, Rudy. Actually you are referring to 1,343 alleged mis-votes due to people having moved yet still voted… according to the Tribune. The special audit count was done by a Republican funded organization.. no one impartial. In typical fashion the audit centered around the easy count to question the Republicans typically use to make “see we told you so” points…. people who have moved and change of address data. There’s no “widespread” voter fraud… in fact, Tribune didn’t report who all these people voted for anyway. If you missed this article.. try here…
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-voter-fraud-dupage-ives-kaczmarek-20211026-t2pimnhzo5cdloij5r36kkolxu-story.html
Apparently, just like Arizona.. it’s going nowhere.