During a previous low-point for the Republican Party, a former leader of their campaign committee in the House of Representatives said “The Republican brand name — if you were to put this on a dog food — the owners would just take it off the shelf because nobody’s buying it.”
The same could be said today for politics in general.
Hardly anybody today is buying the proposition that politics and elections matter and who gets elected is worth caring about. Who can blame them? The House is a clown show, the Senate is mostly gridlocked and the presidential campaign is about as far from inspiring as one can get without traveling into the actual Underworld.
Donald Trump has poisoned the system so thoroughly that otherwise rational, sensible people believe he’ll manage to skate past all his indictments, never come to trial, or be able to make all his problems go away after winning re-election.
They act as if they know what it’s like to see a former President on trial for multiple federal conspiracy and corruption counts, and hear daily evidence of what CBS’ Robert Costa reports is a “sprawling case” against Trump.
“The special counsel has phone records. He has memos and diary entries from key witnesses, like former Vice President Mike Pence, key eyewitness testimony from people who are inside the Oval Office with Trump."
"But they had something in the special counsel's office the January 6th Committee never had, which is subpoena power to really go deep with witnesses and not just get public testimony and some depositions. They've gone deep. And I've talked to people who participated in this investigation as lawyers, sometimes even as witnesses."
Before 9/11, we had no idea what the aftermath of a terrorist attack in the U.S would feel like, or its’ lasting and changing impact. The same applies to Trump’s trials.
Today, he gets to set the agenda and shape the conversation with his grievance politics and midnight rants on Truth Social. But as Chris Christie reminds us, that all changes once he goes on trial.
I met a C-Span viewer over the holidays who says most of the calls are about immigration and the crisis at the border. That, plus Joe Biden’s age, puts this election in the bag for Trump, he figures.
As for Biden’s age, I continue to quibble that it’s really Biden’s walk that bothers people—his old man shuffle, plus the way he reads a speech. He’s no Barack Obama—but hey, he did manage to pass, with Nancy Pelosi’s help, some landmark legislation, didn’t he?
No matter what’s happening on the Border, it’s the abortion issue that’s going to drive voter turnout in 2024, just as it did in 2022 and 2023.
And no matter what the national polls say (and please, read this and don’t panic!), the race is still going to come down to a handful of states: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, plus Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. If you think other states should be on this list, please find proof of how that’s possible and leave it in the comments.
But I know that even after all my persuasive arguments, links to news stories, impeccable logic and years of experience in politics…
After believing, as Robert Kennedy believed, what politics should be all about:
“It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
After all that, I’m still met with the shake of the head and shrug of the shoulders I saw in that neighbor over the holidays that for many, trum overpowers common sense and convicti belief. Trump will never come to trial, they say. He’ll outsmart the Department of Justice, the courts and the law.
(Really? His lawyers are better than our lawyers?)
We’ll know soon enough if the Supreme Court is going to side with Donald Trump’s claim to lifelong presidential immunity. If SCOTUS takes up this case soon, and the D.C. trial gets back on track, the odds are overwhelming that Donald Trump goes into the Republican convention as a convicted felon awaiting sentencing for federal crimes that could send him to prison for the rest of his life.
That’s when you’ll start to see a flurry of stories—as there always are—about a “brokered convention” —or what might be called the “Asa Hutchinson strategy.”
“Hutchinson lays out strategy to nab GOP nomination after Trump conviction”
Maybe it won’t be Asa. But while you’re making your New Year’s good luck black-eyed peas, just consider, please, that as they say in Hollywood, “nobody knows anything.”
Trump is invincible? Maybe not.
So… then what?
Stay tuned to this space, and Happy New Year!
Please note that the wonderful quote was from Robert Kennedy Sr., not the lame-brained vax denier and ego-driven grifter running for President today.