Fear Itself

If it's true that all we have to fear is fear itself then I'm afraid. I'm very afraid.

 

I said before that I believe Donald J. Trump will be our next president based on the premise that a people gets the government it deserves and as far as I can see, we've got this coming. We fear the others. We fear each other. We fear Muslims, people with guns, people who want to take our guns, Mexicans but not Canadians, gluten, science, the Russians, Beyoncé, gays, unisex bathrooms, our own government, big business and investment bankers but not John Galt. We fear the rich without commitment because we all hope to be rich someday.

Having said that, I must admit I do feel a glimmer of hope now that Jeb Bush had dropped out.

I'm not so sure I believe the establishment math but it's worth a look and it goes like this.

Trump took 33% of the vote in South Carolina while Marco Rubio finished with 23%. Give Jeb's 8% to Rubio and he's right in Trump's rear view with 31%. Promise the VP spot to John Kasich for his 8% and he beats Trump by 6 points.

Okay, those are fairly reasonable assumptions about the Bush and Kasich constituencies; not many of those voters had Trump as their second choice after all. If were giving Jeb and Kasich's votes to Rubio, let's give Carson's 7% to Trump and the Donald is back in the lead, if only by the narrowest of margins. And what's happening with Cruz's 22%? Harder to picture Cruz's supporters throwing in with Rubio than seeing them wanting to make America great again.

Perhaps Bob Schieffer is right; perhaps the Republican Party is tearing itself down right before our very eyes. There's a 60/40 split in the GOP in terms of the outsiders (Trump, Cruz and for the moment, Ben Carson) and the establishment (Rubio and Kasich – Bush's money men). The unintended consequences of Citizens United have come home to roost. Trump (or Michael Bloomberg should he not find anything better to spend his money on) aren't beholding to the party or need those Super PACs that serve as surrogates for the party and those establishment candidates. If money is free speech then nobody is going to make Donald J. Trump shut his pie-hole.

Should the Republican Party fragment into the party of angry white men and the party of angrier white men, a win for the Democratic party would seem inevitable.  

Except…

If Hillary Clinton wins the nomination – and I think and I hope she will – I fear Bernie Sanders' supporters will pout and stay home.

The thing that bugs me about Sanders' supporters is their condescension and sanctimony toward myself and other Hillary supporters. From my perspective, they came late to the party and didn't bring any beer or chips.

I was sent home early from school when John F. Kennedy was shot and I watched Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed while in police custody live on TV. I lived through the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. I watched kids just a few years older than me beaten by police with night sticks in the streets of Chicago during the Democratic National Convention. I registered for the draft during the Viet Nam war. I watched a president resign from office in shame and thought, now everything will change. But it didn't. I watched the towers come down on 9/11 and then I watched as we invaded the wrong country for the wrong reason and started the chain of events the led to the rise of ISUL and the civil war in Syria. I watched as we elected a black man president, then watched as progressives turned their backs on him and the worst of us depicted him as an un-American witch doctor with a Hitler mustache and the best of us said nothing.

Regardless of whatever else was happening, I voted. I voted not just in presidential elections, I voted in mid-terms. I voted in local elections. I attended town meetings and voted. I attended school board meetings and spoke out against cuts to programs for the arts and music.

And these free college-seeking hipsters want to look down on me because I value competency over idealism?

Yes, I feel uncomfortably close to yelling at those kids to get off my lawn.

There's another part of me that gets it because once upon a time I was young and idealistic in the worst and most destructive way possible.

There was a time when I too was an angry twenty-something voter, disillusioned with politics as usual. In 1980, long before the vast majority of Sanders' base were born, I voted for John Anderson.

What? Who?

John Anderson ran as an Independent in 1980. I was angry and disappointed and I wanted to make a statement. I couldn't bring myself to vote for a Republican but I felt like the Democratic Party had turned its back on me and foresworn its own ideals. Ronald Reagan would still have won had all of Anderson's votes gone to Jimmy Carter so that's all my vote was; a statement.

What did I get for that?

Nothing.

Nothing changed. Not fundamentally. Not for the better.

So, I'm afraid. I'm afraid of the fear.

Back in 2008 during the primary I had a Hillary Clinton sign in my front yard. An Obama supporter came to my door and asked me if I would vote for Obama if he won the nomination and I told him the same thing I said this year when a Sanders supporter came to my door.

Of course I will, I said.

Not because of hope but because I refuse to stay home. Politics may be transactional, but democracy shouldn't be. It's my duty as a citizen and really the very least any of us can and should do.

I fear a Sanders' nomination will lead to a Republican presidency with majorities in the House and Senate. I just don't think the United States and its God-fearing, gun-toting, get rich or die trying populace is ready to elect a Jewish socialist from Vermont. In some ways, I'm just as afraid of a Sanders' win because of the mid-term elections in 2018 that would almost certainly sweep a super majority into the House and a veto-proof majority into the Senate. The kids just don't vote in the mid-terms. Two years after that, disappointed progressives will turn their backs on Sanders and Marco Rubio will become the 46th President of the United States.

The revolution will be televised. It just might not be the revolution you expected.