‘Sick of this shtick’
With 70 days until the election, the Republican nominee continues to show voters he's unserious about attaining the nation’s highest office.
I recently witnessed one of the best takedowns of the former president I’ve seen yet. The rebuke, resulting from years of watching the childishness, mean-spiritedness, recklessness, and political malpractice on display, felt personal. It was as if the person delivering it had endured years of BS from the walking disaster known as the former president, and they lost it.
No, I’m not talking about former First Lady Michelle Obama’s indictment of Trump during her speech at the DNC last week. I’m referring to the article “Lazy, Stupid, Childish: Why Donald Trump is losing—again—to a barely competent nonentity, by Kevin D. Williamson of The Dispatch. He pulled no punches.
“Trump’s three big problems as a candidate are precisely the same qualities that mitigated the worst of what might have been a much worse Trump presidency the last time around: He is lazy, he is stupid, and he is childish.
“Right now, the laziness is hurting Trump most. There is a very good, credible political case to be made against Kamala Harris—but Trump is too lazy to make the case. As political scholars based at UCLA run the numbers, Harris’ record in 'the Senate was the second-most left-wing of any Democrat to serve in this century. That gives Trump a lot that he could talk about, if he could only get his mouth—and his brain—around the words “for instance.” Instead, he just talks in half-understood generalities, typically dishonest ones (e.g., telling Elon Musk, “She is considered more liberal, by far, than Bernie Sanders. She’s a radical left lunatic.”).
“There isn’t any serious person or analysis that finds Harris to be “by far” to the left of Bernie Sanders. But, even if there were, degrees of leftness or rightness are not especially useful in prosecuting a political case against a major-party nominee. Indictments of a candidate’s support of particular bad policies or opposition to particular good policies, however, really have to be answered.”
He continued:
“Trump’s stupidity is wrapped up in his laziness. Anyone who has heard Trump speak or read his unedited writing knows that he is not an especially intelligent man. But his native stupidity is compounded by his ignorance—which is to say, by the fact that he is too lazy to do his homework and acquire the kind of grasp of the issues that would make him a more effective candidate. … I am not quite sure that I believe the maxim that “character is destiny.” Stupidity, on the other hand …”
(You must become a member to read the entirety of the article, but this column alone is worth the price to become a subscriber of The Dispatch.)
Everyone is sick of this shtick
For as far back as I can remember, this is the time of the year, during general election cycles, that I’m most excited. The debates. The blunders. The ads. They all add up to create a fevered pitch of anticipation as my hope of things turning out in my party’s favor on election night grew.
That is, until this year. We have one candidate whose party and ideas I cannot support; the other candidate—well, see Williamson’s quotes above. I occasionally get grief from readers of this newsletter.
“You never point out what the Dems do wrong,” they say. “They’re the party of immorality. They are the ones ruining the economy. …”
I used to cite the chapter and verse why that statement is fiction. See: Dems didn’t mismanage the COVID-19 response, bringing the economy to a halt we have yet to recover from. Also, the president at the center of Jan. 6 was not a Dem. But I digress.
What I say now: “I have a vested interest in one party and not the other; it makes sense that I write more about elephants than donkeys.”
As one friend put it, “I’m sick of this shtick, or whatever you call what (the former president) engages in. We’re all sick of it, really.”
Obama’s revenge
“It’s over! Your boy is done. He can’t come back from this.”
I received those words on Tuesday night while at dinner in Austin after dropping my daughter off at college. The text message from a friend contained a link to Twitter/X. I opened it to see former First Lady Michelle Obama on stage at the DNC as she delivered the now-famous Black jobs line.
“Who’s gonna tell [Donald Trump] the job he is currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?”
I chuckled. Then I rewatched it several times. I still have not watched the entire speech, but I have thought a lot about why I imagine she said what she did. The former president’s birther campaign against President Obama had but one aim. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what it was. Politics is, yes, a dirty game, but that—to this Mississippi native—was about something more than playing fast and loose with the facts.
So, candidly, I was happy to hear Michelle Obama’s comments aimed at the former president. He’d worked to make their lives miserable; she was exacting a pound of flesh in return. I applaud her for doing so. I had not been shy in admitting that, while I did not vote for Obama in ‘08 or ‘12, I was proud that this country had elected its first Black president 60 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
And, for all the flaws I can found in his policies, Obama endured eight years in office without a hint of scandal involving moral failures. That means something.
So, is it over, as my friend texted? Hardly. Harris and Trump are neck and neck in the polls.
Only two things appear certain:
The next 70 days will be full or recriminations and poll watching,
Election day will be underwhelming.
I’m already looking ahead to 2028 when, hopefully, we can elect a sane, reliable, worthy-of-the-office Republican for president.
Really enjoyed this read.