Happy fallback day, the annual return to a period of darkness in the life of working men and women, the real Americans. This seems suitable for Election Week 2020, perhaps the grimmest occurrence in my half-century on Earth.
Foiled in my attempt to early-vote, I’ll now have to face the crowds on Tuesday to cast my votes. At this late date, I still do not know whose name I’ll put at the top of my ballot. Downstream is easy: a set of Republican and Libertarian votes is de rigueur.
Unfortunately, the choice for President of the United States, which should be an easy one, is akin to choosing between death by blunderbuss – President Trump – and smallpox – Joe Biden.
Is it better to burn out than fade away, as Joe Elliot sang in Rock of Ages, a song from a happier time dominated by Valley Girls, the end of the Cold War, and the Reagan/Thatcher cross-Atlantic alliance? If so, perhaps a vote for President Trump does inexplicably make sense.
Here is the problem with the Trump presidency in a pithy nutshell: It’s not that Mr. Trump is a racist idiot – he’s neither of those things – it’s that he consistently fails – indeed, refuses – to accept advice from those who know best. Trump treats the presidency as if it were a kingship, which is at once fundamentally un-American and a recipe for disaster in difficult times.
Joe Biden presents a politic – and political – safe choice. After all, how could the country go wrong electing a career politician who has accomplished exactly nothing during his decades in office?
The problem with Senator Biden is not so much with his own policies, it is that he stands at the head of the only-liberal-lives-matter mob that’s been howling for the blood of law enforcement officers – and getting it – all year. Democrats’ unhealthy sponsorship of street terrorism makes voting for Biden all but impossible.
Jobs or mobs? That seems to be the choice.
Add to this Dems’ long-standing and oft-frustrated sense that they know better than the rest of us and are entitled to jam their neo-socialist agenda past the clenched teeth and down the throats of unwilling Americans and have stated their intention to pack the Supreme Court with enough justices to reverse the Constitutional process and what do you get? A political poison pill that no one right of Joe Lieberman could vote for while sober.
Electing Joe Biden as president will cure the illness of Donald Trump as commander-in-chief but it will inevitably prove fatal to the patient, our nation.
Given a choice between two bad options, it’s natural to cast about for a way out of the trap. Unfortunately, there is no such option. The Libertarian party, the only one with a hope of emerging as a legitimate third option, has failed to grow itself during President Trump’s term. By fielding the exceptionally unknown Jo Jorgenson as the party’s candidate, the Libertarians have made themselves irrelevant in the fight.
Tuesday, November 3rd is a second date that will live in infamy in American history. Yet somehow a choice must be made. In the absence of clarity, I suspect mine will be made on the spot, a socio-political gut-level call that is as much desperation as hope.
There will be no winners in this election. Knowing that, it’s time for Americans to pick up the pieces and start moving forward again. We’ve wasted two decades sniveling over Monica-gate, Bush vs. Gore, and Trump’s electoral college miracle.
Now, there is no place to fall back to. It is time to chart a course forward together, even if it is into disaster.