11-12-2020, 04:57 PM
As the late-coming votes come in, Joe Biden has won a percentage of the popular vote higher than that of Ronald Reagan in 1980. That percentage is likely to get higher as the heaviest numbers of outstanding votes are either in states like California, New Jersey, and New York. Even in such a state as Louisiana or Ohio that Trump won the remaining votes still not counted are heavily absentee ballots from urban areas that will go strongly D. Biden has surpassed any challenger to an incumbent President in percentage of the vote since FDR trounced Herbert Hoover in 1932.
(OK, the margin isn't all that impressive, but still it is decisive).
We are still in for some tough times. We are eleven years away from the last Big Bad Crash, and we did have a short-lived mini-crash early this year (and it had nothing to do with COVID-19. This is still a Crisis Era, and the extreme interstate polarization of the vote strongly indicates that America is nowhere near achieving any political consensus.
John, we have never had a sleazier administration than the Trump administration. You are of course free to abhor any prior administration, including that of Barack Obama for having an agenda different from your dream. Trump corruption, incompetence, and cruelty would make a liberal administration operating similarly abominable and deserving of defeat. Trump makes Obama look like a conservative on foreign policy. Remember: fascists are far more different from genuine conservatives than are liberals.
Ordinarily it is the politician on the Right who better convinces us of his devout religiosity, his conservative family life, and his respect for the troops current (active duty) or past (veterans). This time it was Joe Biden. Joe Biden has a long record of public service and knows how to get things done in elected office, which matters far more than does business acumen. (Elected office and executive or ownership roles in private business are very different. A tycoon can fire a mailroom clerk, but the President cannot fire a letter carrier). The CEO can fire the Director of Marketing, but the President cannot fire an elected Senator or Representative or a federal judge. Trump failed to recognize this. The last President to have no record of elected office before Trump, Dwight Eisenhower, far better knew this than did Trump.
(OK, the margin isn't all that impressive, but still it is decisive).
We are still in for some tough times. We are eleven years away from the last Big Bad Crash, and we did have a short-lived mini-crash early this year (and it had nothing to do with COVID-19. This is still a Crisis Era, and the extreme interstate polarization of the vote strongly indicates that America is nowhere near achieving any political consensus.
John, we have never had a sleazier administration than the Trump administration. You are of course free to abhor any prior administration, including that of Barack Obama for having an agenda different from your dream. Trump corruption, incompetence, and cruelty would make a liberal administration operating similarly abominable and deserving of defeat. Trump makes Obama look like a conservative on foreign policy. Remember: fascists are far more different from genuine conservatives than are liberals.
Ordinarily it is the politician on the Right who better convinces us of his devout religiosity, his conservative family life, and his respect for the troops current (active duty) or past (veterans). This time it was Joe Biden. Joe Biden has a long record of public service and knows how to get things done in elected office, which matters far more than does business acumen. (Elected office and executive or ownership roles in private business are very different. A tycoon can fire a mailroom clerk, but the President cannot fire a letter carrier). The CEO can fire the Director of Marketing, but the President cannot fire an elected Senator or Representative or a federal judge. Trump failed to recognize this. The last President to have no record of elected office before Trump, Dwight Eisenhower, far better knew this than did Trump.
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.
