Another mid-term election where voters kick Democrats in the gonads for passing laws helping them, and vote for Republicans who kick the voters in the gonads and convinces them that it feels “good”

 

As I wrote about last week, it is an absolute joke to believe that “conservative” parties have an “answer” to economic issues brought on by circumstances that are difficult to control, or they themselves created. In the UK, the Tory Party has been in power since 2010, oversaw the disaster that is Brexit, and the economy has now been in meltdown mode since the last parliamentary election in 2019. The country is currently on its third prime minister in as many months, and there is a question of how long the current one will last given brewing scandals around him. The National Health Service is in a shambles for lack of adequate funding, with people with cancer hanging on for dear life before they can even see a doctor months or years down the road. The previous prime minister, Liz Truss, actually had the audacity to introduce a sweeping tax cut bill for the rich which even the UK markets reacted to with horror as irresponsible.

In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro's key allies have all called upon him to concede his defeat in the recent presidential election to prevent the country from descending into chaos, as happened in this country on January 6. Instead, Bolsonaro remains hidden from sight in the presidential palace, while his most fanatical supporters claim the election was "stolen," and have surrounded military posts, demanding that the Army intervene and keep the far-right dictatorial Bolsonaro in power. Bolsonaro can stop this by simply conceding the election; is he waiting to see what the military will do, which is to say overturn a constitutionally-accepted election result?

Irresponsibility and power hunger is of course the modus operandi of today’s Trumpist Party, which MAGA fools think actually means something other than an excuse to vent petty, selfish grievances; I mean, why even bother calling it the Republican Party when it doesn’t even stand for anything anymore than simply being “contrary”? If a psychotic lunatic like Marjorie Taylor Greene tells us it is Trump’s “party,” what evidence is there to doubt her? Before Trump no one would have thought anyone like Greene was even remotely electable; now voters in her district were not even willing to consider an alternative on the Republican side, and why Democrats think they had a snowball’s chance in hell with the candidate they nominated even with a $15 million campaign chest is beyond anyone’s comprehension.

I find it hilarious that a Tiffany Smiley campaign ad accused Patty Murray of taking “millions” of dollars from lobbyists, as if every office holder doesn’t do it. Note that she didn’t say who those lobbyists are; we are just supposed to assume that is so “baaad.” Is it “bad” when Texas governor Greg Abbott has taken $26 million from fossil fuel lobbyists? A New York Times video editorial a few days ago noted that he will be re-elected despite the fact that he was responsible for the failure to implement a plan to winterize power stations introduced a decade ago because it was opposed by his friends in the gas industry.

Then came last winter’s disaster when hundreds died and natural gas prices skyrocketed from $25 per megawatt hour to $9000; so much for the fossil fuel industry’s acting in the public “interest.” Abbott repeatedly made false and misleading claims concerning his own responsibility for all of this (that is to say, none at all), then hypocritically took credit for a water-down version of winterization standards that his politically-appointed cronies in the power grid oversight commission have only fitfully tried to enforce.

Abbott also signed a bill that instead of the state covering the massive overcharge that was clearly criminal in nature (remember Enron and the California energy crisis in 2000/2001), passed on the payment of the hundreds of millions of dollars in profit that the natural gas industry made off of the suffering people onto their backs over time through higher energy bills. And yet after all of this, it seems that a majority of Texas voters are saying please kick us in the gonads again and again; we are ignorant enough to blame all of this on those Mexicans “invading” the country.

This past Sunday John Oliver spoke of the continuing efforts of the Trumpist Party to undermine democracy in this country by suppressing as many votes from reliably Democratic districts as they can, especially in places with large black populations. In 2020, you had one Republican county election official in Michigan accused of racism when she called for invalidating the entire vote from Detroit. Another Michigan Republican election official who felt so pressured to not certify a vote count in favor of Joe Biden that he felt compelled to read a quote from founding father John Adams to "justify" why he was following the law and certifying the vote:

 

Today, after many election officials resigned after receiving death threats from Trump supporters, many of them have been replaced by far-right extremists who promise to question every Democratic vote in swing districts, counties or states. Recent “hand counted” votes in contested precincts with Trumpist counters fostered complaints that it was taking hours for counters to come up with the same number for just 25 ballots.

Meanwhile, the RNC chairperson—Ronna McDaniel, who looks to me like your typical trailer trash Trumpist—essentially stated that her party will not accept election results until after all efforts to overturn Democratic victories in “contested” contests are exhausted. In years past, Republicans were accused of cooking the books on votes, but no serious effort was made to overturn questionable results. When done, recounts always seemed to increase the Democratic vote. Why is that?

Democrats certainly have much more reason to distrust voting results than Republicans do. Remember the 2000 election when the recount in Florida appeared headed to overturning George Bush’s victory before the right-wing majority in the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in to stop the recount? We saw such recounts in Democratic counties in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia in 2020 to overturn Democratic victories and re-install Trump as president, underlining the hypocrisy of the right-wing Supreme Court in 2000, in 2020, and today. You think this Supreme Court with a majority with extremist views out of line with the majority of Americans won’t step in to stop recounts in contested Republican victories again when it comes down to a matter of “control”? The Constitution? What’s that? Voting Rights? Not our problem.

Oliver pointed out that the only way for Democrats to overcome efforts to suppress their vote is to out-vote the suppressors—meaning nothing can be taken for granted.  If you don’t want this country to turn into a fascist state governed by the dangerous cult of personality of a man who is facing multiple criminal and civil actions, then the only way to stop this is to vote—unless, of course, you are too self-absorbed to care, or have billions of dollars and don’t give a shit about “little” people. 

Elon Musk is one of those billionaires whose opinions are as far away from most people's reality as can be. He is now using his Twitter bully pulpit to urge people to vote Republican, which he knows is the same as voting Trumpist; he is just keeping Trump’s Twitter account suspended for the time being to keep him from going on insane twitter rants that could threaten the result Musk personally wants to see. Of course, as UK political commentator James O'Brien notes, the oddity of the American political system is that split power arrangements means nothing ever gets done, which I suppose is what people are really voting for in this election. It is the only thing that makes any "sense." The last time there was a Democratic president who "worked" with a far-right Republican congress was Bill Clinton, and each one of those "deals" he made with Newt Gingrich has had negative impacts on the economic and social stability of the country.

How will this mid-term election go? A few months ago I thought there was a possibility that Democrats might retain control of the U.S. Senate at least; I don’t see that now, and it could be a rout in the House, which just seems so insane on its face. What do people think will change, unless corporations and gas companies have been deliberately and cynically deflating production and inflating prices to blame on Democrats just so that Republicans will come back in power? We can surmise that support for Ukraine will diminish (or support for Putin will increase, since it is essentially the same thing given Trump’s pro-Russia past).  We saw Republican economic and financial regulation policies cause the Great Recession (and for that matter, the Great Depression), yet ordinary people still “trust” them to have their “interests” in mind.

The far-right elite will kick Trump voters in the gonads, but they won’t care or notice; they will think someone else did it if told to do so. Every chance they get, Democrats try to do right by the American people, and what do they get for their efforts? Appreciation? No, just another swift kick in the gonads by ignorant, willfully uninformed voters. Why even bother? The only way out of this morass the country is in is if the moral and ethical corruption of Trumpists turns into criminal corruption, since they are not in the business of “governing,” but simply in it for what harm they can do with the power foolish voters have given them.