Post Election Trauma

So we had the primaries in New Hampshire the other night and there were very few surprises. Bernie beat Hillary, maybe by more than most people thought, and Trump led the GOP candidates by a good margin. Just about the only surprise was the rise of John Kasich to second place in the GOP race. Kasich would seem to be far too qualified to be a true candidate in this field of damaged goods but he is beginning to surface. Why?

Well it probably had a lot to do with the fact that nobody really wants another Bush in the White House and just as much to do with Marco Rubio’s almost complete collapse at the last debate when Christie absolutely dismembered him. Rubio has now proven that he has nothing to offer the country. He folds in the tight spots, has no resiliency and really no ability to produce off the top of his head. He is completely scripted and does bear a strong resemblance to the robot people that his opponents dragged out for the election.

There were two more desertions or as the politically correct like to call them, suspensions. That’s an interesting word, suspensions. I get this picture of them dangling like laundry on a clothesline for the rest of their lives or until someone admits that they just quit. Anyway, it was Fiorina who had not been above 2% since the second debate and Chris Christie who at a couple of points looked like he could make a race of it, but was never able to close the deal. At least he has a day job waiting for him in Jersey. I’m referring to clogging traffic, not running the state, but Carly has to go back to the empty void she has been existing in, ever since she got canned at HP. Christie had a lot of fun saying he was going to prosecute Hillary’s ass. Maybe he should be worrying about his own, fat ass. Bridgegate isn’t over yet.

And then there’s Ben Carson who hasn’t quit yet but can’t be far from it. The former front runner, (Don’t ask me why) has been very busy the last few weeks, losing his party’s nomination for the Presidency. It appears to have a lot to do with his inability to tell the truth- about anything. He has dropped from second in most polls to a distant 2% in the New Hampshire primary.

It isn’t that we don’t expect people, and especially politicians, to lie or to embellish whatever they have done in their lives that might sound special. What’s funny is that nothing he lied about is even close to important; not the scholarship to West Point, not the rescue of the white kids during the riots, not the stabbing of his friend Bobby or hitting his mother with a hammer or even standing up to the guy who attacked him in a fast food restaurant. None of those little fictions, or any of the others, are important in and of themselves. It was the volume. This guy lies about everything that comes up in conversation. Each of these items individually, is not important. None of them were big lies, they’re just embellishments, just a guy who needs an ego jolt, trying to look like something bigger and better in front of the world. But cumulatively… Wow! And his drop in the polls shows it. Yeah, he should be president – of Ghana.

There is still one major difference between how the Republicans are conducting their campaigns and how the Democrats are conducting theirs. Compare what the Republican candidates are saying in their speeches to what the Democrats are talking about.   Bush talks about Rubio’s heels while Sanders talks about jobs. Christie talks about how he’s tougher than Trump while Clinton talks about the mess in the Middle East and how we can create a peace there. Cruz talks about keeping everybody but him out of the country while Clinton talks about how we can change the immigration laws to better reflect a country built on immigrants. What we’re seeing is the difference between people who want to govern a country and people who want a well paying job with lots of perks and power.

If Trump is right and there is something wrong with this country, it is certainly due to the people we have been electing to congress.

One of my favorite Republican commentators Kristen Soltis Anderson put a name on what is supposed to be Donald Trumps appeal to the middle aged and older women who follow him. It’s that he’s a tough, standup guy who takes no crap and no matter how much he breaks the rules he still seems different from other politicians.

So it would seem until you realize that he, like all bullies, is really a coward. No matter how he spins it, Megyn Kelly ran him out of town on the next to last debate. He claimed Fox hadn’t been fair to him. Fair? There’s no fair in politics. How fair will other world leaders be to him when they get him in negotiations and realize that his only plan involves bribery and bullshit?

Trump is working very hard to get the Evangelist vote. He even carries a bible around to prove what a good Christian he is. I wonder how those nude pictures of his wife; the ones that are all over the Internet, will work as page markers in the Bible Belt? To most of us Melania posing nude is no big deal. She’s an attractive woman with a good body so why not? But first lady? This is a violation of everything the Evangelists cling to, as is Trumps penchant of cheating his fellow investors by filing for bankruptcy, a coward’s way out of a business problem. For most of us, filing for bankruptcy is a last ditch way of saving yourself and your family from being destroyed, for Trump it’s just another business tactic and a way to screw his creditors out of what he owes them.

Trump talks at length about the fact that Ted Cruz hasn’t gotten one endorsement from another senator, not one. Then he goes on to brag about his list of endorsers led by Sara Palin, Gerry Falwell Jr and Sheriff Joe Arpaio. A crazy lady, a religious thief and a world class bigot are the people who want Trump. And he’s proud of it?

Trump brags about the fact that he will get New York in the election. Maybe, if he were running for dogcatcher. The people of New York know Trump and to know him is to despise him.

You want to see the weakness and shortcomings of the various Republican candidates? It isn’t the Democrats who are slinging the mud. It’s their fellow candidates. Marco Rubio spent ten minutes this morning trying to eviscerate Ted Cruz on every aspect of his campaign. Rubio lies so much it’s hard to find the truth in what he was saying but it was certainly hard hitting. Then there’s Christie’s decimation of Rubio on the last debate, Trump’s attacks on Bush and Cruz’s on Carson.

Isn’t it interesting how the Wounded Warrior rally, the one that was supposed to cover his cut and run from that night’s debates has highlighted two of Trumps biggest weaknesses? He was afraid of Megyn Kelly so he instituted this other show which only reminded us that when it came to his own war service, his old man bought him out of the draft. So now, probably out of guilt, maybe to cover his own cowardice, he makes a big deal about the Vets. He should. He owes them big time!

While at the rally, Trump stated that he was, in fact a greedy person but he now wanted to be greedy for the country. This was greeted by roars of approval from the true believers, many of them union men. Those pathetic fools don’t realize that what they are cheering, is actually a demagogue who achieved his billions by underpaying non-union workers and by battling unions on every job. We know Trump is greedy and we also know he has never fought for anyone but himself.

All the Republicans attack each other about not being conservative enough when they all want to lower taxes and spend billions more on the toys of war. Is that really important in a country where hundreds of thousand of children live in poverty?

If you don’t understand the concept of blind political panic, if you don’t know what it’s like to see your party going down under the weight of one bad decision after the other, if you are facing the onslaught of a madman from outside the political structure demagogging the process and running away with the nut case voters then perhaps you can understand the terror running through the Republican party during this election season.

You will also understand the reason that all of a sudden, so many of them are taking such a deep interest in the Democratic primary and suddenly coming up with so many alternatives to Hillary Clinton, the lady currently scheduled to beat their brains out next November.

Forget polls. The news has come out of Vegas; the betting line has Hillary creaming all GOP candidates by over 14 points. That my friends, is an out bet. That is something that you can take to the bank over all the polls that every useless organization keeps publishing. These are guys who are ready to put their money where their mouths are. The line is reality. Everything else is bullshit.

That’s why all the Right Wing pundits and talk show hosts are coming up with new candidates for the Democrats, candidates that can run against Hillary. Joe Biden came and went. It was amusing to watch the GOP pundits all practically begging Joe to run. That was after they were laughed out of whatever show they were on for suggesting the likes of Al Gore. Sure, that’s a good idea, why not Herbert Hoover?

Right now, the Dems look like an avalanche rolling down the mountain, preparing to inundate the pathetic little GOP candidates. If Hillary falters, Bernie will step in and eviscerate the opposition and the boys in Vegas have already taken that to the bank.