Curmie Is Voting for Not Trump

Yeah, Curmie could support these guys if necessary

People lie.  Politicians lie more than the average person.  Kamala Harris is a politician, and not a particularly honest one, even in comparison to other pols.  Curmie will still vote for her, however.  No, he doesn’t think she’s very accomplished, smart, or consistent.  He thinks she would be a pretty bad POTUS, in fact.  But she’s running against Donald Trump (and J.D. Vance), and Curmie is on the record that he’d vote for the Sauron/Voldemort ticket before he’d vote for them. 

Those fictional villains may be evil, but at least they’re sane, and that makes them at least moderately predictable.  They could construct complete sentences, even paragraphs.  Neither of them ever taped a maxipad to their ear to cover a quite possibly non-existent wound.  They probably even pay their bills, and they certainly wouldn’t publicly contemplate the prodigiousness of a deceased golfer’s penis.

Those on the right will no doubt call Curmie Trump-deranged.  Fine.  He’s been called worse.  Is it likely that a second Trump presidency would destroy the democratic (lower-case “d”) principles on which the nation was founded?  “Likely,” no; “plausible,” yes.  And that’s sufficiently terrifying, thank you.  Should we “vote like it’s Germany in 1932”?  Well, actually, yes.

In Peter Nichols’s brilliant play [A Day in the Death of] Joe Egg, busy-bodies Freddie and Pam refer frequently to people who are PLU: People Like Us.  The MAGA playbook is all about blaming literally everything that ever goes wrong on folks who are Not-PLU: immigrants (even legal ones), Muslims, BIPOCs, LGBTQs, the poor, educators… women.  The legitimacy of these people’s ideas is never considered; it is enough that they are Other.  Indeed, Trump’s positions on issues (has he actually said anything of substance on anything in the last year?) are irrelevant.  He’s the cult leader—a more dangerous one than Sun yung Moon, Jim Jones, or David Koresh—and that’s enough for his flock.

But this essay isn’t about the manifold ways in which Donald Trump is unfit for office.  It’s about one in particular.  Yes, all politicians lie.  But most, even the slimiest ones like Mitch McConnell, do so only to advance their particular perspective: they exaggerate their own accomplishments, actively and consciously misinterpret their opponents’ votes or rhetoric, and otherwise prevaricate their way to what they hope will be a political victory for their side. 

Trump is different.  He’s reckless and ultimately cruel in his dishonesty.  He railed against the Central Park Five long after DNA evidence proved their innocence.  He blathered on about how Barack Obama was supposedly born in Kenya.  Even these escapades, however, pale in comparison to his recent antics in the aftermath of the two hurricanes that battered the southeast.  Despite the testimony of the governors of the affected states, most of whom are Republicans, that the Biden administration and FEMA have been doing an extraordinary job under the circumstances, Cult45 is out there claiming the response was delayed (it wasn’t), and inadequate (given the enormity of the devastation, it could not be otherwise, but that, of course, wasn’t what he meant).

As a private citizen, he inserted himself into the spotlight, getting in the way of people (FEMA, relief organizations, actual volunteers) who were trying to do something to help.  He even riled up the yahoos to believe that FEMA was actually the enemy, to the extent that some operations had to be curtailed when workers feared for their safety!  The problem isn’t that Trump said outrageous, false things: as Jerome Kern wrote (sort of), fish gotta swim, liars gotta lie.  It’s not that he’s mendacious, hubristic, sociopathic, or narcissistic, even by politicians’ standards.  It’s not (just) that he’s a convicted felon.  It’s not that he was rather stupid already before devolving into a babbling ignoramus we see on the campaign trail. 

We’ve all witnessed that cognitive decline, too.  Even major Republicans are calling him “unhinged” and “dangerous.”  That’s just the ones who have joined in the chorus recently, not the host of military leaders, cabinet members, staffers, and (oh, yeah) his Vice President who endorsed Harris or at the very least made their lack of endorsement of Trump public weeks or months ago.

We knew he was amoral, too.  But he seems to have morphed from someone who didn’t care about anyone but himself into someone who consciously and intentionally hurts others: a progression from amorality to hard-core immorality, if you will.  Were he to win the upcoming election, he will only get worse.  And the best-case scenario would be that he would be replaced by J.D. Vance, who is nearly as arrogant, just as hypocritical, and probably even more Fascistic. 

It is possible—unlikely, but possible—that Vance actually believes in the crap that comes out of his mouth.  The difference is that Trump cares only about himself, whereas Vance might actually believe in a cause: a cause which ought to terrify us all.  Indeed, he may be even scarier for that reason.  The good news is that for whatever reason, Trump has groupies and Vance does not. 

Kamala Harris is a terrible candidate.  Her detractors say that her entire campaign is based on not being Trump.  That’s unfair—although far from impressive, she’s been far more detailed and coherent than her opponent about virtually anything you can mention—but even if it were true, being Not Trump is good enough for Curmie.

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.

2024 Election Preview: Be Afraid; Be Very Afraid

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)
Prescient Analyst of 21st-Century Politics

Curmie was just reading an article about how most Democrats don’t want President Biden to seek a second term. Barely a third of party members want him to run again; that number drops to less than one in four among Democrats under 45. Curmie, well over 45, concurs. 

Biden’s performance so far has been underwhelming in both policy and political terms, albeit better than the most logical other choice for a 2024 run, Kamala Harris, whom Hillary Clinton described as lacking the political instincts to win primaries. She also polls, as of this writing at a -13.5% approval rating, which is even worse than Biden’s -9.1%. 

The only good news for Democrats is that former President Trump, who is perceived by many as the most likely GOP candidate, is worse still, at -15.9%. The other three Republicans whose names have been most bandied about—Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz, and Greg Abbott—are nearly as repulsive as Trump. Curmie would vote for the Sauron/Voldemort ticket over any of that quartet. Perhaps there’s a latter-day Nelson Rockefeller or a pre-sellout John McCain out there somewhere? Curmie isn’t holding his breath. 

And who do the Democrats have to offer? We start by eliminating Harris, a lightweight who shows little interest, let alone competency, at anything other than advancing the career of Kamala Harris. Biden, whose presidency hasn’t been quite as bad as Curmie’s Republican friends would argue, has still been “meh” on his good days. Plus, he’s 80 now, and neither his mental acuity nor voters’ confidence in it is likely to improve over the next 21 months. 

Age is a particular problem for Democrats. Hillary Clinton is 75, John Kerry is 79, Elizabeth Warren is 73, Bernie Sanders is 81, Nancy Pelosi is 82, Sherrod Brown is 70, Chuck Schumer is 72, Henry Cisneros is 75… even Amy Klobuchar is 61, but she’s at least sane and not yet on Medicare, making her a potential front-runner. (Curmie would be inclined to support her, at the moment.) 

Could Hakeem Jeffries (52) develop into a viable candidate? Perhaps, but he certainly doesn’t have a lot of name recognition right now. Gavin Newsom is 55, but his principal attributes seem to be that he is tall and good-looking; plus, he’s from California, which is regarded by a fair share of the country as something of a lunatic asylum. Curmie doesn’t see a lot of gravitas in Cory Booker (53), but there’s at least some possibility he’s not a male version of Kamala Harris. 

Pete Buttigieg is only 41, but his performance as Secretary of Transportation has been, well, “less than impressive” would be the polite way of saying it. Beto O’Rourke (50), who has made a career out of losing statewide races to unpopular Republicans, is the Democrats’ version of Paul Ryan: an over-hyped mediocrity who somehow gets positive press coverage. 

And don’t get Curmie started on “The Squad,” now up to nine members, ranging in age from 33 to 49. None of them would make a good President (at least yet), but that’s okay, because none would stand a chance of winning, either. 

As Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, there is no there, there. Does the party turn, as some have suggested, to the likes of Michelle Obama (59)? The party could do worse, but it’s difficult to see someone that inexperienced being the nominee. The problem here is not that the Democrats might lose the next election; it’s that the Republicans might win. And, alas, vice versa. 

But the country has survived some pretty awful Presidents of both parties—Curmie would say the best grade of the last eight would be a B-, and there are a couple of D- grades that are that high only because the country was still standing when they left office. So the stakes are high, but it’s not yet time to move to Canada or fling yourself off a bridge. 

As one of the few folks in the country to have been registered to vote in both New Hampshire and Iowa (not at the same time!), Curmie looks forward to the caucuses and primaries with anxiety, but perhaps a little hope. We couldn’t get a lot worse, and there might just be someone we hadn’t thought of who’ll emerge from one party or the other. Just… uh… don’t bet the mortgage on it. And be prepared to vote for the less awful candidate.