11-05-2020, 08:46 PM
As usual we have conflicting indicators of how things will go. The Republican Party continues to depend upon Hillary Clinton's "Basket of Deplorables" -- people dim-witted enough to see "deplorable" as a badge of honor. Trump expressed his love for "low-information voters", but those people are getting older and rarer every year. Formal education seems to increase for just about every generation, and it is easy to see how betting on winning by attracting ignoramuses will be an increasingly-losing proposition. It is easy to see Donald Trump as a catastrophic failure as President even if he was good at bamboozling just enough people in 2016 in view of the Skowroneck cycle as a sick and ineffective parody of the initiator (in this case Ronald Reagan) of the current cycle. The political system casts such a failure off; the last to fit that pattern is Jimmy Carter, one last echo of the New Deal as its natural constituency was fading off.
On the other side, Joe Biden seems destined to be a one-term President because of the obvious risks of a leader crossing age 80. Sure, he's smart, decent, honest, and articulate... but he is already past the life expectancy of the American public. I don't see him making as many mistakes, and the American system does well in dealing with a fading leader -- which is to reshape him into a participant in a basically-ceremonial role, as was the case with Ronald Reagan. That would have ill suited the headstrong character of Donald Trump.
Senate Republicans, if they still have a majority, may end up rudderless. They are about to lose their current rudder, Donald Trump. So what do they do?
On the other side, Joe Biden seems destined to be a one-term President because of the obvious risks of a leader crossing age 80. Sure, he's smart, decent, honest, and articulate... but he is already past the life expectancy of the American public. I don't see him making as many mistakes, and the American system does well in dealing with a fading leader -- which is to reshape him into a participant in a basically-ceremonial role, as was the case with Ronald Reagan. That would have ill suited the headstrong character of Donald Trump.
Senate Republicans, if they still have a majority, may end up rudderless. They are about to lose their current rudder, Donald Trump. So what do they do?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.