OK, this is just getting ridiculous. I’m not even going to say “I’m old enough to remember” because this didn’t happen all that fucking long ago! Many of you can remember when “Black Friday” meant that people lined up for stores opening up at 6 am on the day after Thanksgiving. I certainly do, mainly because I have an e wife who used to set the alarm for 2 am to go and stand in line in 14 degree temperatures with all of the other failed genetic experiments. Now, Dad has to take the turkey out of the oven and entertain the guests, since Black Friday starts at 6 pm n Thanksgiving night. Give it a couple of years, and people will be lining up at 6 pm for the door buster pre Black Friday sales starting at 12:01 on Thanksgiving morning.
And now the same thing is happening in politics. They haven’t even finished counting the votes for the city council in American Samoa yet, and already the talking heads, along with all of the rest of the flotsam and jetsam of the mainstream media are “on watch.” There’s the “Biden watch,” and the “Kamala Harris watch,” and the “Elizabeth Warren watch.” News Flash! Congressman Eric Swalwell was spotted in Iowa! Maybe because he was born and raised there fer Crissakes?!? Given the latitude, pretty soon the media will be starting the 2024 campaign in October of 2020.
This is where that big, fat, beautiful payback comes in. Cast your mind back to the carefree campaign days of 2015. What was the dominant reason that Donald Trump won the 2016 GOP primaries? Because he unilaterally hijacked the mainstream media airwaves 24/7, it was ATATT (All Trump All The Time). There were 16 other GOP candidates running out there, but nobody even knew their names until Der Donald started coming up with insulting nicknames for them. And forget about Bernie and Hillary. Those two could have stood hand in hand on a ledge on the roof of Trump Tower, threatening a suicide pact jump, and they wouldn’t have made the “bulk filler” section after the sports, and before the sign off on the nightly news. Trump was the modern PT Barnum of politics. And in the post 11/8 recriminations, the media got their heads handed to them for it. They joined the ranks with that clown who tried to catch the foul ball at Wrigley Field in that Cubs playoff game against the Marlins. Basically, a convenient scapegoat for somebody else’s mistakes.
But the bloom is long off of that dessicated rose. The mainstream media stopped following Trump’s rallies midway through his “Thank You tour of 2017, seeing it for the pap that it was. And even the Fox Ministry of Propaganda stopped covering His Lowness’ midterm rallies live in prime time, when they discovered that their viewers were switching over to the Home and Garden Channel rather than suffer through them anymore. Even the stalwarts at Fox and Friends are finding ways to sign off with him after about 10 minutes of his morning call in blather. Trump just isn’t all-that-and-a-bag-of-chips anymore.
And this new, long term media fixation on 2020 is going to hit Trump right where it hurts the most, in his voracious ego. Democratic candidates are going to start springing up soon, like the first shoots of green grass through the last inch of winter snow, and they’re going to be news. Their names, their bios, their positions on the issues, every utterance out of their mouths is going to be captured, broadcast, and dissected for a national audience. And the more of them that pop up, like a football field sized Whack-A-Mole game at Chuck E Cheese’s, the more media coverage they are going to engender.
But what about poor widdle Donnie-Wonnie, The Pampers President? Forget about him, there’s a new baby in the house! He’s old news, a one trick pony, with Mexican rapists this, and Crooked Hillary that, and “Build that wall!” for a side. *YAWN* Why waste time with stale rerun when there’s a new season of “Interesting Political Creatures and Their Mating Habits” on? There are already predictions that the Democratic 2020 field could easily be larger than the record GOP 2016 field. They are all going to go on the stump, and early, and they are going to hold preliminary rallies. The networks won’t make the same mistake of blanket covering any one of them again, but the cumulative effect will swamp any attempts from Trump to garner free face time. Which means that The $1 Store Caligula is going to have to become even more unhinged, in order to attract attention, and thereby draw the contrast for the ‘Democrats.
And as 2019 chugs along into 2020, and the primaries start, this plethora of Democratic candidates are going to be holding debates. Lots and lots of debates. And these are going to be debates worth watching. The Democratic candidates will be spending their times battling coherent, practical plans and solutions, not engaging in 3 hours of character assassination. And each and every one of them is going to take a turn at slamming Trump, and his disastrous policies. Not only will the debates be carried live on at least one network, but the snippets from the debates will dominate the rest of the nights news cycle, as well as the next morning.
This is why Trumpenstein so desperately needs a primary challenger. And not just some pushover slob either, Trump needs a Kasich, or a Flake, or a Corker, somebody that can actually appeal to some long forgotten segment of the traditional Republican party. Who the hell is Trump supposed to debate, himself? Why would somebody like Chris Cuomo, or Chris Matthews bother to hold a televised town hall with Trump, when his opinions and agenda are already so clearly and pathetically defined? Why bother to cover any kind of a primary Trump rally, when it’s just the same old, tired shit, and it’s not contrasting any GOP challengers positions? Trump will get blown out of the water in terms of media coverage, and you know what that makes him? A LOSER! The one thing he cannot tolerate being.
What the GOP needs is a good, old fashioned sacrificial lamb. Forget about saving Trump and the Presidency, they need somebody to save the Senate, and to try to stem any further hemorrhaging in the House. Somebody willing to take one for the team, a truly thankless task. And here is where personal and party loyalty and honor kick in. In the recent 2018 midterm elections, Nancy Pelosi gave her candidates free rein to run against her if it would help to get them elected. Does anybody really expect that The Orange Julius would give leave to anyone in his own party to criticize him, even to save himself or the party? Anybody? I didn’t think so.
And so it begins. Yet another endless two year cycle of campaigning, for something or other. And ironically, the one thing that Trump has always enjoyed, and the one thing that he needs the most for survival, is the one thing that it will now be the most difficult for him to get. Media attention. Ain’t payback grand?
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