Looking at the two sides in the imminent midterms reveals how each side is trying to portray the election to the best advantage. Representing the left is the unsurprising Kevin Drum:
The RNC created—and Donald Trump pinned to the top of his Twitter feed—an appallingly racist ad today that accuses Democrats of “letting in” Luis Bracamontes, a man who killed two Northern California deputies four years ago while in the country illegally. It’s widely viewed as Willie Horton 2.0, except maybe worse. So have any elected Republican officials denounced it? So far, I can find three:
- Sen. Jeff Flake
- Rep. Mike Coffman
- Gov. John Kasich
Don’t @ me if I got this wrong. Maybe there are four! Or even five!
The level of desperation this shows is palpable. Trump and the Republican Party keep pulling the race lever harder and harder, but it’s not working. Trump went from 800 troops at the border to 5,000 troops to 15,000 troops. He called the migrant caravan a thousand miles away an “invasion.” He claims he’s going to end birthright citizenship even though he knows perfectly well it’s part of the Constitution and he can’t do it. …
Sadly, [the Republicans are] still going to get a lot of votes. But common decency, which took a vacation in 2016, is finally going to win on Tuesday. Trump is making sure of it.
On the conservative side, Kyle Smith on National Review has decided to play counterpoint to President Trump’s frantic attempts to stir up stark fear with a Fat, Dumb, & Happy routine:
Today is nothing like as fraught a moment, or it shouldn’t be. The U.S. is facing the usual, perennial problems such as dealing with the cost and availability of health care and massive entitlements-fueled debt, but problems specific to our moment are few. The main source of angst and anger appears to be the personality of the president. That’s hardly comparable to the importance of the Iraq War or the 2008 financial crisis or even an ordinary recession.
It’s an unpopular message, but 2018 isn’t a particularly eventful year. At the moment, things are more or less okay. Beneath the surface, there is bipartisan agreement on this. The Republicans don’t have a legislative agenda. The Democrats revealed in a breathless New York Times interview that their big plan after retaking the House is a package of political-process ideas aimed almost exclusively at bolstering the fortunes of the Democratic party, such as Voting Rights Act adjustments and more campaign-finance disclosure requirements. It can’t be the case that 2018 is both an apocalyptic moment for America and that these are the central issues.
He thinks – or would have his readers think, which can be a very different thing – that in a decade, historians will scratch their heads over this election’s uproar in puzzlement. He’s basically pouring oil on the water[1].
There’s a couple of problems with his essay, though.
First of all, he’s fixated on the present. There’s no acknowledgment that the Presidential and Republican activities of today might damage the United States.
There’s not even a mention of it.
It’s difficult to understand this omission if you’re a thinking person of an innocent nature. I’ve had the latter surgically removed, so I attribute this to attempting to take the minds of the Republican base off the more disturbing aspects of the entire conservative movement.
But it is incumbent on the thinking person to be looking to the future, to be heading off disasters before they occur. Whether it’s anthropocentric climate change, environmental damage incurred while in pursuit of yet more corporate profits, or the next war, to simply make an assessment of how we’re doing now and claiming there’s nothing going on just doesn’t cut it.
If Smith were presenting a serious essay, he would have talked about at least some of the following: the suddenly mountainous national debt; the fact that our annual deficit went to zero during the Clinton years, and then roller-coastered back up during the years the Republicans dominated the Legislature, and what that may imply about the quality of the legislators involved; the future of our judiciary, with a collection of sub-par butts in judicial seats; the future of a democracy in which any media outlet reporting news in such a way as to infuriate President Irrelevancy (yes, I’m in a crabby mood) is demonized and labeled illicit; and documented Presidential mendacity, self-interest, and possible autocratic intents.
To name but a few relevant topics.
Smith also indulges in some convenient falsehoods. For example, “The Republicans don’t have a legislative agenda,” is fairly blatant, as Senator McConnell has stated, without obfuscation, that, should the Republicans control the Legislature again, the social-net programs will be on the chopping block.
“massive entitlements-fueled debt“: Blaming the debt on entitlements is long-time conservative kant which, unfortunately for Smith, doesn’t work when one considers, again, the Clinton achievement of a zero annual deficit. If entitlements, a serious subject, were the problem then that achievement would remain a Slick-Willy Wet Dream, but instead it exists, and is the elephant in the Republican Parlor.
And we all know this. It’s not hard to come up with this reasoning, really it’s not. Start with the Afghanistan war which, unavoidable or not, was irresponsibly financially managed by the Bush Administration, the completely unnecessary Iraq War, again irresponsibly financially managed by the Bush Administration, a notoriously spend-happy Congress of 2001, 2003, and 2005, “tariff wars”, and now the tax reform bill which is verifiably failing to perform as advertised, and we have a far more plausible scenario for skyrocketing deficits and debt: a failure to raise taxes responsibly. As has been noted time after time for at least the last 20 years, the GOP-dominated Congress has simply shrugged and “kicked the can down the road” when it came to deficits. Blaming a military-happy Congress on both sides of the aisle is far more accurate than faith-based blather about entitlements.
That’s why that’s a lie.
There you go, Drum and Smith. One believes this is a very important mid-term, if only the leftists can get the disinterested youth to vote, while the other thinks everything’s hunky-dory.
Curmudgeonly and Angry at all the lying, or Fat, Dumb, and Happy. Which works better for you?
1 For those readers unfamiliar with nautical history, occasionally big ships with lots of oil reserves will dump that oil into the sea when the seas are too choppy for some activity. I doubt they do it very often these days, but I’ve read of it being done during World War II.
