It only takes a small clump of snowflakes to start an avalanche
It’s impossible to overstate the seismic shift that has occurred in American politics over the last 96 hours or so. In that time frame, we transitioned from a race where a doddering autocrat seemed an odds on bet to end democracy as we know it, and in one announcement, gave American democracy a better than fighting chance.
In one selfless, patriotic gesture, President Joe Biden showed the Democratic party that the time to transition to the new, younger generation of progressive leaders was now. And he handed the torch of leadership over to his Vice President Kamala Harris to lead that vanguard. And the result since has been nothing less than transformational. The party is united, and the electorate is energized.
Harris either will or won’t win on November 5th, and my early hunch is that she’ll win convincingly enough that its all over late on election night. The Democrats hold the swing states, and North Carolina flips blue.
Look, Harris either will or won’t draw support from disgruntled soft Democratic, GOP and Independent voters. But the Democratic base is energized in a way I haven’t seen since 2020, or maybe as far back as 2008. And with a couple or racist, sexist xenophobes on the GOP ticket, that should be enough to get the job done.
But Biden did something much more important. Polling for the last three years has shown that the vast majority of Americans are sick and tired of politics as usual. They’re sick of the congressional logjam, they’re sick of politics as usual, and they’re sick of the same old, tired, retread names in their 70’s being forced down their throats as presidential candidates. The polling has shown for years now that the American voters wanted to see anybody other than Biden and Trump at the top of the ticket.
And in that single noble, selfless gesture, President Biden showed the Democratic party the wave of the future. And for the party, it was like discovering a canteen full of ice water in the middle of the Mojave desert. And never forget this. Every election cycle, some 2.5 million new 18-19 year old voters become eligible to register to vote. And Biden has given them a brand new, shiiny, progressive home to come to.
But you know what? The Democrats aren’t the only ones who have been thirsting for a new, younger breed of leadership to come home to. But in the last eight years, the GOP has shed millions of Never Trump voters, with millions more staying home from disgust and apathy. And even if they don’t migrate to Harris this year, Biden has shown them the future. And it looks good.
Sweet Jesus, they’re the Republican party for Crissakes! They’re the party of Lincoln, the party of Reagan! Trump lost the popular vote in 2016, lost the House in 2018, lost the White House, the Senate, and the House in 2020, and lost the Big Red wave of 2022. Why should the goddamn Democrats get to ride the wave of the future, while the GOP is stuck with a fat, orange loser convicted felon as their standard bearer? especially when the MAGA base in congress wants to keep the same old, failed MAGA bullsh*t going forward into the next generation.
Look, let’s be honest here. The millions of Never Trumpers and soft GOP voters never stopped being conservatives. They abandoned the party because it had lost its conservative roots. It no longer stood for what they believed in, but instead became mesmerized and taken over by performance art and political bullsh*t.
But especially if Harris wins in November, it opens up a cataclysmic schism in the GOP. Trump can’t run again in 2028, even if he survives and isn’t in federal prison, and his vaunted MAGA movement will die with him, leaving only a legacy of losing, and the bastardization of a once prouod political party. Those millions of disaffected conservatives are going to want their party back, and they’ll be hell-bent-for-leather to resurrect their party into something worthy again. The fireworks are going to be spectacular.
President Biden didn’t just show the Democrats the way forward into the future, he showed the entire country the way forward to the future. And that way doesn’t run along the racist, sexist, xenophobic way of MAGA. If Harris wins in November, MAGA will be slowly and painfully thrown on the ash heap of history. How badly do we want to see that happen?
I thank you for the privilege of your time.
Well written, Joseph. Well written.
Just a minor correction: I do believe you meant “Trump can’t run again in 2028” rather than 2024 (this IS, after all, 2024 and the Felonious DJT is running).
Other than that, spot on.
Here’s a visual I’d love to see at the Convention. President Biden will get to speak in what at times won’t leave a dry eye in the House. Still, I hope Dark Brandon pops up during his speech. However the best way I can think of for him to bring the house down at the end is reference the whole passing of the torch thing, then as he slowly and deliberately puts on the sunglasses a stand with a lit torch like the one torch bearers carry during the Olympics gets rolled out. He picks it up as a covering hiding a big paper construction of the letters MAGA (I’m talking two or three feet high) falls away. And Dark Brandon says “Before I hand this over to Kamala Harris, the next President of the United States I’ve just GOT to tend to this particular task – and touches it to that MAGA thing and it instantly goes up in flames!
In the convention hall and around the country our side will LOVE it, and Trump and MAGAs will go batshit insane with rage and start saying stuff that will come back to haunt them “bigly” right then and there. On camera. In tweets and of course Trump himself on Bullshit Social. There would be a massive amount said to use against them. And the former prosecutor who we are seeing has a pretty wicked sense of humor herself can easily work with her speechwriters to pull a couple of the best nuggets to use in HER acceptance speech!
The best part would be it could be turned into an appeal to the people you wrote about Murf. I didn’t like the old-school Republican who got into Reagan worship but they at least weren’t so hell bent RWNJ types that in both the House and Senate you couldn’t sit down with them after public posturing to hammer out workable compromises. THOSE people are as sick of MAGA by now as we are. For a time, they cynically used (because they thought they could control them) the monsters of the Tea Party and MAGA, and Trump too.
Those special and off-year election losses in 2017 had them saying uh oh and 2018 has them in “oh shit” mode. With each election since, and seeing the outrage building over SCOTUS your damned right they want to flush Trump/MAGA down his fake gold toilet then melt the thing down and shoot it off into deep space. All they ever wanted was their goddamned tax cuts (for the wealthy) and limits (albeit severe ones) on regulations so they could make more money. If the Tea Party and MAGA helped them gain and hold control to get that they were willing to put up with the crazy. Those days, that willingness to tolerate the performance jackassery and culture war extremism are gone, and one might credibly argue long gone. They couldn’t control their monster anymore but didn’t have the guts to kill it when they could have.
They wanted US to do it, to take the wounds and bleed and kill it for them. I have no illusions MAGA will ever be killed any more than wise people thought the Klan was killed back when we were young. The best that can be hoped for is to drive it all back under slimy rocks or deep into caves, afraid to do more than poke their heads out now and then. I’ll settle for that. And maybe, just maybe as with the shingles virus that lays dormant for decades before flourishing both painfully and ugly a vaccine can be developed that does a decent job of keeping it dormant – most of the time.
But Trump and MAGA haven’t managed to drive all hope and optimism from me. Maybe, just maybe President Biden has, without our having realized it slain the JabberMAGAwok:
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
We shall see. I think it’s safe to say that President Biden deftly swiped a Kaitana (a Japanese samurai sword) across the belly of MAGA and MAGA is trying to keep its intestines from spilling out on the ground in front of them.
Good points. But it is “katana.”
Oops. I proofed my comment and realized I’d typed kitana and obviously screwed up my editing to correct it.
The ignorant and inexperienced should never play politics with a man of Joe’s integrity and 50 years of experience. I wonder where they’ll place his statue? His home state? Washington? The old white guy, catholic, working class, and a survivor of tragedies unimaginable, might have saved our country from turning into a fascist nightmare. Never underestimate old people. ‘Thank you’ seems inadequate somehow.
I repeat here the final sentence of a few comments I’ve posted here on PZ over the last few days:
GOD BLESS JOE BIDEN!!!!!
After some reflection on Scott’s quest for a site for Joe’s statue, I think there should be two:
Scranton, PA
Rehoboth Beach, DE
Joe has been RIGHT THERE, in good times and bad, his drive for our country’s success, security and equality has always been an obvious plus for our Nation … Then there is Trump, non-caring for anyone but himself, becoming the subject of International scorn and embarrassing our whole country … Our friends in Ireland were calling him a shitgibbon as soon as he was elected … “Can we just inject bleach”, was the kind of negative mentality our country faced every day …