If the Dog Hadn't Stopped...

Still at large

Curmie knows next to nothing about his great-grandfather (his paternal grandfather’s father) except that he was a fount of aphorisms.  His cruder, and therefore in times like these more appropriate, version of “if frogs had wings…” was “if the dog hadn’t stopped to shit, he’d have caught the fox.”

That saying resonates in Curmie’s mind as he gazes at the dumpster fire that is the American political scene.  (Curmie wishes his commentary from 17 months ago were a little less apt.)  On the one hand, we have a convicted felon who is walking the streets at all only because judges he appointed have made up ridiculous reasons to let him off the hook.  Was his prosecution political?  Probably.  But the fact remains that the lawyers for the guy who boasts that he hires only the best people were there for the voir dire.  If a single one of the jurors they helped select had as much as “reasonable doubt” that Donald Trump had done the things that he was accused of doing, and that they were felonies, he wouldn’t have been convicted.

One could make the case that Trump wasn’t the worst President in US history (he’s a contender, though), but he is surely the most vulgar, narcissistic, mendacious, and authoritarian.

On the other hand the Democrats have apparently anointed one of the most singularly unaccomplished vice presidents in American history, a smug but not terribly intelligent partisan hack who got the gig by demographics rather than competence.  (Yes, Curmie knows that could be said for a lot of white men, too.)  She was polling in single-digits even in her home state in her presidential run in the last election before dropping out before primary voting even started.  Once elected as VP, she lasted about a month on the job before she was shunted to the background, as she offered little in the way of policy expertise and made the often gaffe-ridden Joe Biden look like Cicero himself by comparison.  Jolly.

So… how’d we get here?  Well, a lot of dogs stopped to shit.

If the press hadn’t given Trump far more free media coverage than all the other Republican candidates combined in the 2016 primary season, we’d have caught the fox.

If the Clintonites didn’t actually encourage that practice, believing (wrongly, of course) that Trump would never win the nomination, let alone the presidency, but would push the more viable candidates to the right, making Hillary’s path easier, we’d have caught the fox.

If the GOP didn’t have a ridiculous policy of giving all the delegates from a primary election to the “winning” candidate, even if that person got barely a quarter of the votes, one of the not-Trump Republicans would have emerged as the nominee, and we’d have caught the fox.

If the DNC hadn’t colluded to get Hillary Clinton the 2016 nomination, there’s a good chance we’d have caught the fox.

If she’d run a competent campaign focusing on swing states instead of smugly assuming an easy victory, we’d have caught the fox.

If presidential elections were won by the person who got the most votes instead of following an archaic system designed to appease slave-owning states, we’d have caught the fox.

If the DNC hadn’t colluded to get Joe Biden the 2020 nomination, there’s a good chance we’d have caught the fox.

If Biden hadn’t made a stupid pledge to select a BIPOC woman as his running mate, we’d have almost certainly caught the fox.  [N.B., Curmie grants that Harris is a far better choice than either of Trump’s VP choices.]

If Trump were appropriately held responsible, either by the courts or by the populace (including Republican voters), for the events of January 6 and for his clear attempts to overturn a fair election, we’d have caught the fox.  [Side note: if you want to say that the press treated Trump unfairly, Curmie will listen.  But if you want to dispute the testimony of a series of Republican governors and secretaries of state that Biden had won their state, please leave.  This blog is for people who can think.]

If the GOP had said, as they certainly could have, that you’re not going to be our nominee if you don’t participate in the primary debates, we’d quite possibly have caught the fox.

If the GOP had literally any other candidate who might conceivably attract the attention of a swing voter, it’s pretty likely we’d have caught the fox.  But when Nikki Haley is the most palatable of the alternatives…

If Trump had been jailed for contempt of court, as literally any other defendant who pulled his antics would have been, we’d be well on our way to catching the fox.

If SCOTUS had refused to hear Trump’s absurd assertion of absolute immunity instead of delaying… and delaying… and delaying… and then finally granting partial immunity, denying intent as a determining factor and sending rest of the whole business back to the lower courts, thereby ensuring there would be no real ruling before the election, we’d have caught the fox.

If, indeed, any Trump-appointed judge (Curmie’s looking at you, Aileen Cannon) cared more about the nation than about their blubbery hero, catching the fox would be within reach.

If Joe Biden’s inner circle and the major media hadn’t so obviously lied to the public about the man’s mental health issues, we’d be closer to catching the fox.

If Joe Biden, his advisors, and pundits from the left really cared about their country (and their party), he’d have announced that he wasn’t going to seek re-election a year ago, when his faculties were clearly already in decline.  Then at least a sizeable chunk of the $100 million or so in Biden’s campaign coffers would have gone to a candidate whom actual voters would have had at least a little say in selecting.  Yes, the DNC would have stacked the deck for Harris, but Curmie still doubts that she’d have emerged victorious.  If she did, however, the process would have had at least some legitimacy.  Either way, we’d be in a better position to catch the fox.

If Biden had trusted his own delegates to come to their own conclusions about who should be the nominee after his withdrawal from the race, we’d be closer to catching the fox.

There’s a reason the cover photo on Curmie’s Facebook page is of John McEnery as Mercutio in the Zeffirelli film of Romeo and Juliet, uttering the character’s most famous line, “A plague o’ both your houses.” Since the only alternative, Baby Bobby, is a full-fledged wackadoodle, our choice, it appears, is between about the worst possible candidates for both major parties, although to be fair Biden (or DeSantis or Haley or Ramaswamy) would have been awful, too.  Curmie is going to vote for the mediocrity instead of the hubristic sociopath, but, Gentle Reader, we’re going to need a bigger pooper-scooper.

And the fox is still at large.