GOP Control of Either House in 2024 Will Be a Sh*t Show

It’s a good thing that the likelihood of Republicans gaining majority control of the House of Representatives or Senate is fading. It was looking pretty inevitable until, for starters, the U.S. Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade. You’ve heard the quote, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” and the conservative members of the Supreme Court — one-third of them appointed by President Trump — has triggered that fury in one simple decision.

I’m not saying that maintaining Democratic control of both houses of Congress is a slam dunk, but let’s hope that it’s now a possibility.

Passing right-wing legislation, such as a national ban on abortion, is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the result of Republican control. Moreover, the right-wing legislation they pass would have to overcome a presidential veto for at least the next two years. The bigger part of that iceberg is what the various committees might do under Republican chairs.

Can you imagine the investigations that they would conduct if, for example, Rep. Jim Jordan becomes chairman of the House Judiciary Committee?

Last week, Jonathan Nicholson of HuffPost compiled a list of investigations we might expect if Republicans take control of either house. Democrats haven’t gone overboard in the way that we can expect their GOP counterparts to go.

Picture, for example, investigations of all their favorite enemies, from Anthony Fauci to Hillary Clinton to the Vice President and President themselves — and their families.

You’ve probably heard Republicans refer to the “Biden Crime Family.” Given Republican control, QAnon and Tucker Carlson might as well be in charge of setting the congressional agenda. That will delight their followers, but what about the rest of us and the future of our country?

How much attention do you think Donald Trump paid to his job between election day and Biden’s inauguration? Was he reading the Presidential Daily Brief each morning? (Not that he read it regularly before becoming preoccupied with staging a coup.)

It has been refreshing to have a president who takes his job seriously, who devotes his waking hours to the country’s business, not his own.

Ditto for the Democrats in Congress. They have been focused on serving our country, not on the country serving them. Isn’t that a pleasant change? I’d hate to lose that focus after next month’s mid-term elections.

 

Trump’s Hostility to Obamacare Is Emblematic of His Psychopathy

   From everything I’ve read and seen, Donald Trump is a profoundly insecure person, and it’s most evident in his antipathy to everything identified with his predecessor, Barack Obama.

We all saw it on day one, when he couldn’t abide the fact that Obama’s inauguration had drawn a bigger crowd than his own. That was when Kellyanne Conway introduced us to the concept of “alternative facts.”

Since that day he has been focusing single-mindedly on reversing or voiding everything with Obama’s stamp on it, and the Affordable Care Act, because of its more common identification as Obamacare, is at the top of his hit list.

What proves my point is the claim that he wants to repeal and replace it with the same provisions, notably protection against pre-existing conditions. He can’t be satisfied with amending the law, which would be far more practical than kicking millions of people off of Obamacare with only a vague promise of replacing it at some future date with a law that has the same provision.

It has been demonstrated in multiple ways by multiple former insiders that Donald Trump is only interested in himself. He’d be a pro-choice Democrat (as he was before) if that provided a path to power, but the path which opened for him was to be a pro-life Republican. He doesn’t actually care about this or any issue.

He thought he should get the Nobel Peace Prize because of his meeting with Kim Jung Un. Clearly it bothers him that Obama won that prize during his first term.

Trump had to replace NAFTA because Obama created it. Again, he couldn’t amend it, he had to replace it with the USMCA, which is only a minor tweaking of NAFTA.

He had to withdraw from the Paris Accord on Climate Change because it was Obama’s, despite the fact that virtually every other country in the world joined it, thanks to Obama's diplomacy on the topic. It goes deeper than that, however. He is a climate change denier only because Obama accepted climate change and was working to address it.  Again, he doesn't actually care about the issue.

Indeed, the failure of this president to marshal the federal government in addressing climate change will be one of his many terrible legacies which a Biden administration will need to deal with. With all the evidence of having passed the “tipping point” on climate change, it’s going to be hard. It could well be impossible after four more years of Donald Trump as president ignoring the issue.

Trump had to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal because it was Obama’s deal. One of the biggest lies that he and his sycophants like to repeat is that Obama sent a plane-load of money to Iran to secure the deal, even though it was Iran’s own assets that had been seized and were now being released to them as part of the deal. Yes, it was dollars and was in cash, but it was Iran’s dollars.

The lies and deception put forth by Donald Trump and echoed by his supporters are astounding, but thankfully they don’t appear to be working, since Biden’s lead in the polls keeps widening. As the election approaches, the lies and distortions will probably get worse and Biden’s lead will hopefully increase as a result.

Can Americans really be fooled into thinking that Obama’s former vice president is going to foment a communist takeover of America? And forget about white supremacists — Trump won’t even disavow Qanon, with its theory that the leaders of the Democratic Party and Hollywood celebrities are a Satan-worshipping cabal engaged in child sex trafficking and drinking the blood of babies. No wonder the president is finally losing credibility except among his base who so love his racist attitudes and policies that they will accept things in him that they wouldn’t ever accept in any other human being.

Trump’s desperation, I believe, is rooted in his fear of prosecution once he is out of office.  I predict that once he finally accepts that he has lost re-election and his 2nd Amendment followers haven't created a coup, he will resign so President Pence can pre-emptively pardon him, although that would only protect him from federal, not state, prosecution. He knows that New York, among other jurisdictions, is waiting to indict him. 

Will Trump’s Biggest Legacy Be Ending the Peaceful Transition of Power?

   I fear for the future of our country, regardless of who wins the presidential election next month. I agree with the president's longest-serving National Security Advisor, John Bolton that we can survive four years of Donald Trump but not a second term.

But I also fear the future if Joe Biden wins the election, even if by such a margin as to overcome phony charges of the election being “stolen.” In this regard, our decentralized election system will serve us well, because Trump will have to allege cheating in enough individual states and counties to add up to a change in the electoral college totals. At least in Colorado, the statewide vote is the sum of the vote counts in 64 individual counties, many of them run by Republicans. It would be a steep climb to say the totals reported at the state level were wrong by a statistically useful amount.

However, I’m talking about something deeper and more intractable than public confidence in the electoral process. I’m talking about the willingness of Trump’s base, not Trump himself, to accept defeat.

If one is to believe what his base believes — that a Biden victory will lead to a communist takeover — wouldn’t a true patriot with an arsenal of military grade weapons and ammo take up arms against the new regime? Trump has invoked their support in the past and would not hesitate, I suspect, to do so again. Trump knows that there is no danger for him — the Secret Service will keep him safe as Americans spill each other’s blood in his name. It might even warm his narcissistic heart to know that supporters are willing to die in defiance to his defeat at the polls.

What I find so disheartening is, to quote a Forbes.com headline on Sept. 2, 2020, that a “Majority of Republicans Believe The QAnon Conspiracy Theory Is Partly Or Mostly True.”  The breakdown is that 33% of Republicans believe QAnon’s theory is “mostly true” and 23% say it is “partly true.” On the other hand, only 4% of Democrats think QAnon’s conspiracy theories are even partly true, and 72% of Dems say they’re “not true at all.”  I’m proud to be a Democrat. Unfortunately, QAnon supporters are proud to be Republicans and Trump supporters.

To quote the article by Forbes staff writer Tommy Beer, “QAnon supporters claim President Trump is defending the planet from a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles (consisting mostly of Hollywood celebrities, liberal politicians and 'deep-state' government officials) who are running a secret child sex-trafficking ring.”

If fear of a communist takeover doesn’t scare you into taking up arms, would believing that bullshit do the trick for you?

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bi-partisan resolution condemning QAnon by a 371-18 vote. That may have no effect, since Donald Trump won’t disavow QAnon. “I’ve heard these are people that love our country,” he said during a White House news conference. “So I don’t know really anything about it other than they do supposedly like me.”

The enthusiasm of Trump supporters will certainly get them to the polls. The question I have is whether it will also get them to the barricades when and if Joe Biden takes office. With the current President of the United States emboldening them to do just that, we have a serious problem on our hands.

The headline of my May 14 column was, “Dems Need to Realize That People in Trump’s Base Are Simply Unreachable.” That statement has been reinforced for me by the emails I receive each week from Trump supporters who, God bless them, keep reading this column. I engaged in email conversations with several of them, but recently have started blocking their email addresses and cell/text numbers because they are so totally lost in their adoration of Trumpism, and not worth the distraction.

So sad, so true, and now so scary as the president lays the emotional basis for his supporters to take up arms if the election is “stolen” from their man. Even if bullets don’t fly, as I fear they might, they will never accept defeat.