It is just as dangerous and gullible for Republicans as for Democrats to suck up their own spew, or believe their own rhetoric.
Case in point is the constant harping, via conservative social media, on the “coup”: the supposed outrage that Kamala Harris was chosen as the Democrat candidate in a contrived, back-room maneuver despite never having won a primary nor having a single Democrat delegate pledged to her.
This complaint is foolish and obnoxious on several grounds.
For one thing, it is ungrateful. By reports, one gathers that President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer, working together, obliged President Biden to step down as the nominee.
Thank you. Wise and good may not be the words that most frequently leap to our minds when contemplating the three of you, but that was a wise and good thing to do, likely the greatest service any of you has ever done your country. The dangers to the nation posed by the return to office of an obviously senile President were unspeakable. One may carp about motive, about the long delay in taking action, about why the 25th Amendment was not also invoked. On timing, we say sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. On motive, no man born of woman has ever yet known even his own motive free and clear.
As for the choice of Harris as a candidate, the delegates were not forced to vote for her. They were persuaded to vote for her. They were persuaded by powerful men and women, people who certainly had the clout not only to cajole but to threaten, to induce, to bribe, albeit for the most part in mostly legal ways.
It has always been so. Even in the very short time that primaries have been dispositive in the choice of a candidate, the influence of the powerful over the outcome of primaries has remained as strong as one might expect.
And it has been a short time. As recently as Ronald Reagan winning the GOP nomination in 1980, no candidate has walked into a national convention with the nomination absolutely, mathematically locked. For almost 200 years, the parties’ choices have been dominated by the parties’ leaders.
In 1860, it took three ballots (including a long third ballot to accommodate changed votes) to nominate Lincoln, who trailed in the first two. No delegate walked into the room legally bound to vote for Lincoln or anyone. Was the result undesirable? Antidemocratic? Was it tyrannical for the local leaders who had come together to choose the direction for their six-year-old party to be allowed to do so?
On balance, the system of choosing candidates exclusively by primary has not served us well. It has given too much power to the excitable and the extreme. It has restricted the most important decision the nation makes, not into a closed room where at least there is time for discussion and debate, but into the all too private confines of a voting booth, where we all can be fools alone. What is democracy without debate, not among the candidates but the voters?
In all likelihood, we are both voting for Trump. We were big fans of his first term. We remain boggled by achievements of the magnitude of the Abraham Accords or the corporate tax cut that pushed unemployment below 3.5% and knocked black unemployment down to record lows, or his bold withdrawal, even with waffles on principle, from the Paris Climate Treaty suicide pact. We love the Supreme Court and the restoration of the Constitution.
Yet looking back, say what you like about Trump Derangement Syndrome, do our fellow citizens subject to the syndrome not warrant our sympathy. Has the whole thing been worth it? The Democratic power structure replaced the daffy, dotaged Biden with a yet more leftist and feckless choice, promising to fail the Israel Test and bring down Western Civilization.
Perhaps the rough edges, vanities, and jingoist trade twaddle of Trump are acceptable in the face of his demonstrable practicality as an international deal maker and entrepreneur. Perhaps a bit of Trump derangement is worth it to avoid World War III.
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