The Hard Pessimism of the Race to the Bottom...

or why i stopped worrying and started looking at Portuguese real estate.

My knack for understanding this country's political zeitgeist is well established. I saw the danger in Trump before most did. It's a gift, really. Or perhaps a curse. 

I'm so good at it, in fact, that I'm loath to make any predictions about the upcoming midterm elections for fear they'll come true. (There's a non-prediction prediction in there if you can read the runes.)

So this post isn't really a midterm preview. More along the lines of a lament, a continuation of a theme. To be blunt, we're even more fucked today than we were after the 2016 Presidential election, and for the life of me, I don't see a way out. At least not for the country. (Foreshadowing? Foreshadowing!)

Robby Mook was Hillary
Clinton's campaign manager
in 2016. Ironic, no?

We no longer have two functioning political parties. That was made manifestly obvious (if it wasn't already so) in the wake of the January 6 fuckflagration when nearly two-thirds of GOP House members voted not to accept the results of the Electoral College in defiance of common sense, scores of court cases showing no voting irregularities, and centuries of American history. It is impossible to negotiate with terrorists, even if the Democrats weren't feckless mooks.

The Republican Party used to stand for things, even if I didn't generally agree with those things. Small government, robust defense, fiscal conservatism, etc. Today's national GOP has no platform other than power so they can punish their enemies. This sounds insane, and yet it's accurate. Inchoate anti-Democrat/Let's Go Brandon rage is the modus operandi of the party of Lincoln, from backing Putin's war in the Ukraine for...reasons, to Don't Say Gay educational policies, to election denial and now ballot box intimidation, to Supreme Court Justices lying to gain their seats and tossing decades of settled law that will harm women, to...name the issue, and whatever the Democrats are for is satanic and must be burned at the stake.

There is no more visible and concrete evidence of the party's descent into unserious madness than its willingness to elevate the most ill-prepared and uninformed voices to serve as flagbearers for the movement. The only qualifications people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, and their ilk seem to have is their gleeful willingness to own the libs. Sending out Senate candidates like Herschel Walker and Mehmet Oz betrays a different kind of cynicism, a belief that celebrity matters far more than substance, and the fact that both of those clowns are within the margin of error in their contests with proven public servants is sad and embarrassing in equal measure.

For their part, the Democrats in all their earnest do-goodery have proven absolutely not up to the task ofcombatting the aggressive lunacy of their opponents. They're playing by Marquess of Queensbury rules while the GOP is using dragons. And regardless of the nobility of one's cause, dragons are motherfuckers on the battlefield. The GOP is fighting with fire while the Dems reply with whimpering, simpering wishcasting. To wit, here's a sampling of the emails I've received from Dem pols this week:

• "This is concerning, Rob." 
• "I have nowhere else to turn."
• "our ONLY chance"
• "The absolute last thing I want to write to you about is Donald J. Trump, but..."
• President Biden has emailed you. Speaker Pelosi has emailed you. Hillary Clinton has emailed you. Jamie Raskin has emailed you. Mary Trump has emailed you. Adam Schiff has emailed you. Martin Sheen has emailed you. And now we’re emailing again -- because with just 14 days left in this monumental election, things have taken a rough turn." [I do kinda like hearing from all these famous folks.]

In so many cases, Dems let the GOP dictate the terms of engagement. To be fair, a political media conditioned to focus on the optics of the horserace rather than substance is a willing, if inept, accomplice. Dems scream that the media should talk about the issues. The GOP sees the world as it is, adapts, and overperforms the electoral fundamentals. Over and over again. 

I don't have high hopes for next month's elections, for all of the above reasons. We're gonna wind up with 2020 election deniers in charge of elections in more than one state. We'll likely have at least a couple of January 6 insurrectionists in the goddamn U.S. House of Representatives. They say it gets darkest before dawn. 

Dawn in Lisbon sure does look appealing, no?