Last week brought two views, from a family member and former respected associate, that I believe sum up a perspective going into the 2024 election year. My cousin Noah, a high school English teacher who describes himself as a moderate Democrat, and Jim, an editor and publisher for a defunct right-of-center print magazine in my article-writing past, bemoan the current political landscape.
First came the Third Century Solutions newsletter from Jim, which I still receive in my inbox. In the lead article, he included current polling which portend a rematch of 2020, Trump vs Biden, framing the choice—to paraphrase—as paltry and not worthy of our great nation.
Here’s an excerpt: “So, the question is: Are the American people as bad as their politics? Are we getting what we deserve—our two party leaders are a couple of old men, one corrupt and demented, the other crazy?”
Later in the week, at a large family gathering, I cornered Noah and proposed that we dispense with the third-rail proscription against discussing politics. I wanted to know where he was coming from at this dispiriting moment in American political history. Interestingly, Noah and Jim are largely on the same page. Noah said that Joe Biden, who he voted for, isn’t up to the job, and that Trump was “insane.” He referenced the advanced age of the candidates, and averred that there were several young professionals in his orbit who would “make a better president than either Trump or Biden.”
Identified here, I suggest, is some middle position, neither Trump’s inflamed legions or Biden’s bunkered socialists. Is it possible, as Jim suggests, that if this pragmatic, forward-looking part of the electorate ever voted as a plurality, both Trump and Biden would be doomed? Are there enough of them?
Who would be their dream candidate? I propose that late Sen. John McCain embodies the characteristics that fit the bill. If McCain hadn’t borne the standard of a party that precipitated and then bungled the 2008 economic meltdown while facing Barack Obama’s hope and change, he could’ve won and become a consensus statesman, leader of an administration that would’ve marginalized extremes and achieved progress through bipartisanship.
The reality on the ground is open warfare, and there’s blame to go around, though in this writer’s opinion most of it falls on the Democrat and Deep State left. The rancor is unprecedented, and will only get worse. The idea of governmental accomplishment crafted to improve the lives of the citizenry is a punchline; there’s only one objective, to destroy the opposition.
The Democratic Party is bent on continuing the transformation Obama dropped in the lap of Joe the Plumber. The all-out effort it’s making to persecute and prosecute Trump shows that while they might prefer to face him in the general (it’s an open question, opinions differ) they fear what he represents: an entrenched America First ideology that rejects the managerial-elite plunge into globalist hegemony.
In the majority of Republican precincts, especially in MAGA country, things are just as existential. In the minds represented by Trump’s runaway primary percentages, if the aforementioned left gets away with what they’ve done against Trump and his movement, this country’s in trouble.