Tidings of Discomfort and Dread

 

By Political Correspondent Isidore F. Stone with
Leo Frank, Georgia Correspondent

As the fight to reverse the results of the Presidential election collapses into a black hole of paranoid conspiracy theories and dripping mascara, Democrats are slowly coming to the realization that in fact the Tangerine-Faced Loser will be chucked out of the White House on his ass on January 20 if he has not already retreated to Mar-a-Elba in a snit.

Some pundits have even gone so far as to claim that the 6 million plus popular vote majority constitutes a repudiation of not only the Soon-to-be-ex-Grifter-in-Chief but the evil for which he sits.  The data is sadly not so sanguine.  Not only did the Democrats fail to take the Senate or the many state legislatures where they could have stood as a bulwark against upcoming Republican efforts to steal future elections, they lost much of their House majority.

So what happened? Some of the House members were in heavily Republican districts where they were swamped by very fine people thrilled to be able to vote for the Loser-in-Chief.  But there may be another more distressing explanation, which also calls the Democrats' chances of taking the Senate into question:

Across the country, suburban voters’ disgust with Mr. Trump — the key to Mr. Biden’s election — did not translate into a wide rebuke of other Republicans, as Democrats had expected after the party made significant gains in suburban areas in the 2018 midterm elections. From the top of the party down to the state level, Democratic officials are awakening to the reality that voters may have delivered a one-time verdict on Mr. Trump that does not equal ongoing support for center-left policies.

. . . .Ms. Skopov, the losing candidate in suburban Pittsburgh, was quick to tell voters while knocking on doors before the election: “I’m a fan of our police. I’m not looking to defund police.”

Still, she was hammered in mailings by Republicans who portrayed her as having an anti-law-enforcement position, which her campaign manager, Ms. Remmert, said did great damage.

So can Democrats win over those crucial white suburban voters who delivered Georgia for Biden but seem inclined to go with more, um, wholesome Republicans like David Perdue and Kelley Loeffler? 

Privately Democratic strategists fear that
Sen. Kelly Loeffler may be hard to beat

You may have difficulty seeing the distinction between the corrupt bigoted Loser-in-Chief and someone like David Perdue, a grifting venture capitalist who delights in fluffing the white racists of his state by pretending he can't remember the first name of the Vice-President-Elect, with whom he served in the Senate.  But nice white suburban ladies do.

Now there isn't, to use an expression favored by a legendarily astute Southern politician, a dime's worth of difference between the views of the two white Republican plutocrats running for Senate in Georgia and those of the Soon-to-be-Ex-Bigot-in-Chief.  

A nation felled by a pandemic and the consequent economic collapse cries out for financial help for those who have lost the livelihoods (like restaurant proprietors) or their access to food and shelter.  Yet Kelley Loeffler (estimated net worth: north of $250 million) and David Purdue (a pauper by comparison at $43 million) have consistently followed the Republican line of no serious stimulus, a position that tickles the Republican sweet spot: not only is it cruel in itself, but it helps cripple the incoming Democratic Administration so that Republicans can hold it responsible for the dud economy.

Our Constitutional order was almost felled by corruption and subversion at the top.  You don't hear the two Republican candidates saying boo.  

We are running out of time to get a grip on global warming yet with sea water sloshing over the streets of Miami and California aflame, they don't dare speak up.

And of course in a country where persons of color fear that they or their children will be killed either by racist police or vigilantes (as happened in . . . Georgia), these two clowns offer the usual racist bromides about law and order and supporting our shooters in blue.

What then might persuade a rational voter to oppose the Tangerine-Faced Loser and yet support unprincipled Republican goons who support everything he does?  We have a theory, which has the advantage of being supported by the facts on the ground.

It might be that what nice Republican suburban voters didn't like wasn't the incompetence, corruption, racism, and cruelty of the Corrupt Loser.  Maybe they just didn't like his style.  Maybe if he hadn't been credibly accused of 26 acts of sexual violence, spread batsh*t crazy conspiracy theories, mocked the disabled, or smeared anyone who dared to cross him, they might have voted for him because they liked what he had to say

Indeed, it's possible that these white suburban voters like the racism and the anger of threatened white privilege, and don't care about the corruption, the subversion of democratic values, the climate catastrophe, or the other 21,980 terrible policies endorsed by the Republican Party.

Good news: Kevin Dowd's back!

Let's ask a typical white Republican voter, Maureen Dowd's undoubtedly real brother “Kevin,” why he's still loyal to the Loser-in-Chief and all he represents.  We've met “Kevin,” before, so we're not going to dilate too long at this fire pit of white rage.

Despite the Corrupt Loser's inept handling of the pandemic that has led to the preventable deaths of 200,000 or more Americans, his divisive and racist opposition to the idea that Black Lives Matter, his ignorance of the real danger of global warming, his embrace of tax breaks for the rich and tormenting the poor, and his use of the Presidency solely as a tool to enrich himself and feed his vanity, Kevin sums up the undying loyalty of angry white bigots: [no link to racist drivel; this isn't Facebook]:

Democrats have been quick to dismiss any Trump supporter as a racist, homophobe or redneck, but they all shared a common trait with him, an unapologetic love of America.

This love finds its expression in the Cowardly Loser's successful avoidance of military service in the defense of his country on the basis of a phony medical deferment claim and his 40 years of cheating on the taxes that keep America functioning.  His supporters show their love by defacing the flag as a sign of their support for racist, homophobe and redneck politics, threatening lawfully elected public officials for carrying out their duties of counting votes and certifying the winner, and supporting the subversion of the American Constitution.  

“Kevin'”s hate filled cry of threatened white male privilege does contain one true claim: the 73,980,000 who voted for this catastrophe are unapologetic. 

Another possibility is that the fine suburban white Republican base believes that there is some huge gap between the screaming Tangerine-Faced Loser and prim and proper real Republicans like Loeffler and Purdue because they have been told that repeatedly by media savants eager to lionize Republicans whose conduct has cleared the one-inch bar of total disgrace.  For example, the same New York Times that told us about the continued romance between white suburbanites and Republicans asked us to admire the heroism of Republicans who bravely – allowed election returns to stand:

In Key States, Republicans Were Critical in Resisting Trump’s Election Narrative

They refuted conspiracy theories, certified results, dismissed lawsuits and repudiated a president of their own party.

Gee, thanks, fellas.  Of course if you read down to paragraph 9, you learn that maybe the Republican Party generally didn't heroically take a stand for democracy and Constitutional order:

Unfounded as it is, the president’s campaign against the results may leave lasting scars. With much of the Republican establishment endorsing or staying silent on Mr. Trump’s claims, and polls indicating that tens of millions of Republicans believe the election was somehow rigged, faith in American democracy, the fundamental tenet of the social contract established by the framers, has eroded in a dangerous way. And Mr. Biden, the incoming president, now faces a country where many of his constituents consider him illegitimate. 

Many of his Republican constituents, that is.  

And it's not just the media, but superannuated Democratic gasbags eager to spread the glad tidings that there so many good Republicans out there if you know where to look:

I once helped run a campaign against @MittRomney. I still disagree with him on many things but have come to know and admire him as a person. On the #AxeFiles, we spoke about this and the need to reduce the venom in our politics.
Full pod here👉 https://t.co/U35ayZNfrV pic.twitter.com/30g158Arnu

— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) November 25, 2020

Wilfred M. Romney? The Republican who stood up and bravely did nothing when Republicans refused to take up a bill to rush emergency aid to Americans in agony during a pandemic? Who boasted about sneaking on to the Supreme Court an insane cultist after millions of American had already voted?  Who loyally supported burying the John Lewis Voting Rights Act? Who built his entire fortune on stripping and flipping companies and shipping American jobs overseas?  Who tied his crated dog to the roof of his car?  That Mitt Romney?

If we're going to peddle the ridiculous fiction that there's a meaningful difference between lethal plutocrats like Romney, Loeffler, and Perdue and corrupt bigots like the Tangerine-Faced Loser, we shouldn't be surprised if very fine white suburban voters believe us.  

So let's not.