Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Nah, he's just that nuts.



Back when Bernie still had a chance, I remember thinking that the "electability" argument that supposedly favored Clinton was empty given that she was the anti-thesis of everything being fought over in the 2016 primaries. Drumpf, I thought, was going to make mince-meat out of her by pointing out how he had, in the past, extracted favors from Democrats for political donations. He could talk about how she might not be a Republican, but she's still part of the Belt-way "in-crowd" that led us into Iraq, or at least refused to use their political capital to stop it. He could have hammered her on flip-flopping on trade, or being married to the man who signed off on Glass-Steagal... he could basically have made himself out to be the embodiment of the populist sea-change many were predicting. Back then, there was a collective assumption that somehow Drumpf's verbosity, immaturity, and thin skin were all a brilliant ploy to defeat his Republican foes in a time when many Americans wanted someone to shout down the establishment. Behind all the bluster, as awful as it was, we thought, there was a shrewd tactician, a deal-maker, a man with a plan. I mean, a really racist plan, but a plan nonetheless.

This assessment wasn't irrational given what we knew then. In fact, the only flaw in this logic was that it was rational at all and completely over-estimated The Donald's capacity for strategic planning. After months of gaffs, Drumpfs doubling down on his accusation that President Barack Obama was the founder of the Islamic State firmly grounded his campaign in another plane of reality. If one needed anymore confirmation that Drumpf simply has no idea what he's doing, that was it.

This is all irrelevant if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency, which is likely. But Drumpf's ascendance in spite of his lack of capability reveals something a bit frightening: Ascribing agency to a complete imbecile was likely an attempt to avoid confronting the reality that one of the most powerful political parties on the planet managed to nominate one of the most incompetent and dangerous nominees ever. Just as conspiracy theorists construct elaborate plots to give order to a universe they don't want to admit is actually quite chaotic, lefties like myself simply didn't want to face that the Republican Party is actually racist and insane. I admit now, freely, that I held out some kind of hope that wasn't the case.

I really wish I was wrong.