Pardon my crudeness, but I personally still feel like I have a case of political blue-balls. In 2016, much as I was eager to be rid of his obnoxious voice and punchable face, there was something else I was craving even more than this.
Because back then, Trump had nowhere near the support among the party and its establishment that four ye…
Pardon my crudeness, but I personally still feel like I have a case of political blue-balls. In 2016, much as I was eager to be rid of his obnoxious voice and punchable face, there was something else I was craving even more than this.
Because back then, Trump had nowhere near the support among the party and its establishment that four years of the Presidency would buy him. I was actually impressed by the initial vigor of the Never Trump movement. For a moment, it renewed my faith in humanity. Maybe all those Republicans I derided for years weren't so bad after all. Losing *that* election would have almost certainly put a quick end to the Trump experiment.
And that's what I was looking forward to the most. First would have been the appetizer: the moment when the Republican Party blamed him for losing a very winnable election and giving them President Hillary Clinton. Having made the most promising field of Republican candidates in a generation look like a bunch of unelectable dopes on his way to costing them the presidency, he would have been among the most hated people in Washington, on both sides of the aisle (even if some Democrats might have been secretly happy that he sunk the Republican ticket).
But then would have come the main course.
The moment when the Republican Party was forced to take a good look in the mirror and realize what it almost enabled. The 2012 autopsy report would have been vindicated, and our political machinery, for all of its flaws, would have chewed up and spat out this rancid human pork rind. The talking heads of right-wing media, at the very least, would have had a decision to make - double down on Trump's bile and attempt to grow his movement into something that might eventually become politically viable (if dangerously unmanageable) at the national level, or use their influence to push back and expand their tent toward the center.
The upshot may very well have been a healthier Republican Party. There still would have been a large chunk of Americans - primarily fundamentalist Evangelicals and assorted tinfoil-hat loonies, who felt resentment toward the American mainstream and the political establishment. But with luck they'd have felt discouraged and crawled back into their comfortable middle class existences, their brief foray into civic engagement having failed to deliver the necessary gratification to justify actually bothering to vote again. As for the increasingly toxic "pro-life" movement, having the court stacked with justices uninterested in their decades long project of overturning Roe vs Wade would have dashed their efforts before their eyes, forcing them to embrace the power of persuasion over coercion.
Furthermore, the American left would have been in a far better position to be clear-eyed about the growing toxicity of social media and the progressive illiberalism being fed by our obsession with identity politics. Having come so close to the unthinkable, but without the actual threat of Trump to occupy our priorities, the navel gazing and soul searching that took place in 2017 might actually have produced something worthwhile. All of the media visits to midwestern diners and rural enclaves might have engendered actual sympathy instead of the resentment that resulted from Trump's support continuing to grow as his conduct worsened.
All of this was going to be soooo great. I couldn't wait. Six years later, I'm still waiting. But now it's going to be a little different. So be it.
Pardon my crudeness, but I personally still feel like I have a case of political blue-balls. In 2016, much as I was eager to be rid of his obnoxious voice and punchable face, there was something else I was craving even more than this.
Because back then, Trump had nowhere near the support among the party and its establishment that four years of the Presidency would buy him. I was actually impressed by the initial vigor of the Never Trump movement. For a moment, it renewed my faith in humanity. Maybe all those Republicans I derided for years weren't so bad after all. Losing *that* election would have almost certainly put a quick end to the Trump experiment.
And that's what I was looking forward to the most. First would have been the appetizer: the moment when the Republican Party blamed him for losing a very winnable election and giving them President Hillary Clinton. Having made the most promising field of Republican candidates in a generation look like a bunch of unelectable dopes on his way to costing them the presidency, he would have been among the most hated people in Washington, on both sides of the aisle (even if some Democrats might have been secretly happy that he sunk the Republican ticket).
But then would have come the main course.
The moment when the Republican Party was forced to take a good look in the mirror and realize what it almost enabled. The 2012 autopsy report would have been vindicated, and our political machinery, for all of its flaws, would have chewed up and spat out this rancid human pork rind. The talking heads of right-wing media, at the very least, would have had a decision to make - double down on Trump's bile and attempt to grow his movement into something that might eventually become politically viable (if dangerously unmanageable) at the national level, or use their influence to push back and expand their tent toward the center.
The upshot may very well have been a healthier Republican Party. There still would have been a large chunk of Americans - primarily fundamentalist Evangelicals and assorted tinfoil-hat loonies, who felt resentment toward the American mainstream and the political establishment. But with luck they'd have felt discouraged and crawled back into their comfortable middle class existences, their brief foray into civic engagement having failed to deliver the necessary gratification to justify actually bothering to vote again. As for the increasingly toxic "pro-life" movement, having the court stacked with justices uninterested in their decades long project of overturning Roe vs Wade would have dashed their efforts before their eyes, forcing them to embrace the power of persuasion over coercion.
Furthermore, the American left would have been in a far better position to be clear-eyed about the growing toxicity of social media and the progressive illiberalism being fed by our obsession with identity politics. Having come so close to the unthinkable, but without the actual threat of Trump to occupy our priorities, the navel gazing and soul searching that took place in 2017 might actually have produced something worthwhile. All of the media visits to midwestern diners and rural enclaves might have engendered actual sympathy instead of the resentment that resulted from Trump's support continuing to grow as his conduct worsened.
All of this was going to be soooo great. I couldn't wait. Six years later, I'm still waiting. But now it's going to be a little different. So be it.
LOCK. HIM. UP.
The road not taken - for an entire country.