My friends, my family and you -my readers - know how much I love Trump. Not loved, as in some passing fancy or something I’ve come to get over. But present tense, passionately, love the man. When you’ve complained to me about his abrasive nature, his mercurial, oftentimes petty and caustic means of communicating - I don’t apologize for it, downplay it or mitigate it. I tell you that’s a feature of the man and all the more reason to love him. It was the primary reason for Trump in the first place: to get back in the face of the undemocratic powers of politics, media and big tech with a sausage-size middle finger.
And I’ve personally been stung by his barbs. I didn’t prefer his choice for our incoming junior state senator - she’s a manicured swamp rat without a Trumpian bone in her body. I wanted her opponent on the ballot - arguably the most conservative member in the House of Representatives today. I donated and even hosted a fundraiser for my guy. But Trump dropped him like a bad habit for reasons of personal malice and plain vindictiveness. The swamp rat went on to win, of course, by a 2:1 margin of victory, this being Alabama, after all. It helps when you have both Mitch McConnell and Trump pouring in for you. And of course, we’ll elect a ham sandwich with an R after its name in Alabama these days. Bitterly disappointing.
But I still love Trump.
So it pains me to have to admit this: he won’t ever be president again. Not that I don’t want it to happen. I wanted it in 2020 so bad I could taste it. And I still want it in 2024.
But those wants and wishes have run up against a hard reality this week. And it doesn’t matter why. Yes, we can blame cheating, mail-in ballots, polling irregularities, Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, the Dobbs decision, the media - anything we want and all of the above. It doesn’t change the reality that all that has prevailed. And it will again in two years if Trump is on the ballot. Because if Trump is on that ballot, nothing else will have changed. Nothing.
With Trump, you either love him or you hate him. If you love him, you’ll drag your body over broken glass to vote for him. If you hate him, there’s nothing you won’t do to keep him out of office. And there’s just not much in between those two camps. You either believe all the bogus media witch hunts (“the walls are closing in!”) and faux “investigations” - or you reject all that nonsense. But if you believe it - it confirms everything about Trump you need to know. Which means there’s nobody left to persuade on Trump. And this midterm election confirmed that.
Let’s make no mistake about what the 2022 midterms were: disappointing. And tragically so. For if this election was a referendum on Trump - and he more so than anybody else made it one - then the results were a repudiation of Trump. Trump picked the battleground state candidates in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona. And at this point he’s lost two of those three while the third (Georgia) is headed to yet another runoff. Yes he picked a bunch of others, and many of those underperformed as well - but these three picks were key to winning the Senate back. And either he picked poorly in these cases, or his endorsement rallied his opponents - or both.
And to reiterate: it doesn’t matter why. We are where we are. We’ll win back the House in a squeaker. But the odds don’t favor winning back the Senate - it will be pretty much status quo 2020 - except with a slim majority in the House. And it didn’t need to turn out this way. Not with a 75% “wrong track” number, and 8% inflation and soaring crime rates and gas prices double where they were two years ago. It was supposed to be a Red Wave.
And I was convinced, among many others, it was going to be that. And more. I looked forward to these results as a complete electoral mea culpa on 2020. I was in the hunt for a mandate. With a 40 seat pickup in the House and six seats in the Senate, we could go on the warpath - and Trump would have been on his way to that beautiful second term.
It didn’t happen. And it doesn’t matter why. Because nothing changed from 2020 and nothing will change for 2024. Trump will run his bombastic, barnstorming campaign with unimaginably huge rallies - and his opponents will stop at absolutely nothing to defeat him, dragging down the whole of the Republican party in the process. It won’t matter that gas is at 8 bucks a gallon and the economy’s been in recession for two years or unemployment is high or any of that - they’ll still mount whatever it takes to defeat Trump.
The lesson from 2022 is this: Trump can’t win against the forces conspiring against him. Him personally. And no amount of effort or energy at this point matters. It will all be wasted, and in 2024 we’ll pick up one or two Senate seats to have a tiny oppositional majority in both houses to resist whoever the Democrats run for president - it could even be a ham sandwich. But they won’t allow Trump a victory. And then we’ll be looking to 2028 to right the ship of state. When does this end?
Trump’s time for us was in 2016, when he did us the greatest favor he possibly could by stopping Hillary Clinton. And he went on to fully expose DC and our media complex for the ugly, contemptuous and even undemocratic monsters they are. And he gave us three - count ‘em - beautifully conservative Supreme Court justices.
And I love him for that. I always will.
But this election marks the sunset for Trump. Not Trumpism, but the man as a candidate is definitely finished - and those of us who are Ever Trumpers need to accept that. We don’t need to like it, but we can take the bitterness of this reality and pour it into a candidate who will carry Trumpism forward in the Republican party.
So one departing thought and a word to the wise in the Republican “establishment” - you cannot win without us in your caucus, and you won’t. We will come at every primary challenge with the same energy we had for Trump. If you’re going to do this without Trump, you better figure out how to get us on board.
Great minds think alike. Long time no see, Jeff. Let’s rectify that.
https://afnn.us/2022/11/17/the-case-against-a-donald-trump-candidacy/
How about this: I would NOT vote for him in the primary but I would vote for him if he were the R candidate.