America’s bizarre electoral dance

Six hundred thousand dead. That was the approximate American body count generated by a mismanaged pandemic response by Election Day 2020. That was a number high enough to matter and command the attention of enough voters to hold the executive in charge accountable at the ballot box. True to form, a majority of that same electorate had a short memory on Election Day 2024. Not only had they forgotten the hardships of the last Presidential Election year, but they were also bombarded by fear-stoking messaging chocked full of misinformation making them malleable enough to be convinced that their life was better when family, friends and neighbors were dying by the thousands. Yes, they came to believe that life was better when they were shut in and/or sick at a time when hospitals were using freezer trucks as makeshift morgues, unemployment was in double digits, the stock market was in the tank, nobody left their house without a mask upon their face, and they were wiping their bum with coffee filters. My hat is off to the power of persuasion of charismatic demagoguery. It is no surprise that such a quality of manipulation wielded by the President-elect works wonderfully on his supporters but not so well on most others. This wave victory for MAGA was multifactorial, but ultimately it was facilitated by a huge failure in Democratic messaging despite policies that led America to its most robust and growing economy seen this century. It isn’t like the Blue Team’s messaging deficit has not been mentioned before on this very blog! That said, let history record that a sustained Dow-Jones Industrial Average of over 43,000, the addition of 13.7 million new jobs, an unemployment rate of 4.1 %, a trending down inflation rate of 2.4%, oil and gas production at an all-time high, gasoline at my corner station costing $2.49/gallon and violent crime trending down was not good enough to make the case to get them rehired. The last two Republican administrations have ended in economic disaster, and we can all only hope this one will not be a 3-pete! Given that the President-elect was responsible for the last one, I wonder what the betting odds are that he can go 2 for 2?

Unlike his first term when he pulled off a surprising Electoral College upset, this time the President-elect actually won both the Electoral College and the popular vote. Also unlike 2016, he has a plan for governing this time. His cabinet selection is well underway, and his policies are being prepared for implementation. We have before us a genuine paradox. On one hand it is hard to grasp that a majority of Americans would embrace extremist policies delineated in the Presidential Transition Project known as Project 2025. On the other hand, especially from what has been witnessed along this, the Mother Road’s most Conservative stretch, it is not that far-fetched. One thing is for certain, for a candidate that denied all knowledge of it and distanced himself from it on the campaign trail, the President-elect has no bones whatsoever in letting it go forward. In reversing all the inclusive policies of the past four years as well as purging many administrative posts of career civil servants and replacing them with his loyalists, we are going to find out just how popular extreme rightwing authoritarianism of the President-elect is going to be. In his first term, there were many in government who provided adequate guardrails to contain the executive’s over-the-top and often illegal or at very least unethical ideas and demands. This time around there will be mostly his loyalists who will not be bound by any law or policy but only to him. Given that he has already packed the Supreme Court with loyalists, this is shaping up to be the most virulent version of unchecked power and authority ever seen in the executive branch of the U.S. government.

For all the lip service that has been paid to the notion of “bringing the country together” and “healing the nation,” the USA still remains a polarized 51%-49% divided house. What’s worse, this MAGA wave victory has energized and empowered the worst elements of humanity that occupy the dankest realms of the extreme rightwing fringe of the American body politic. Owning the Libs is what gets them out of bed in the morning and that is worth everything to them, even when it is to their own detriment. They traded a lot for that privilege this time. The ugly truth is that MAGA couldn’t care less about healing any rift in this nation. Their cruelty is the point, and it is their trademark of which they are the proudest. It is their desire to bring all the riffraff in the nation to heel beginning with the mass deportation of all persons who may be in the country illegally, a goal the President-elect stated, “has no price tag.” His sycophants are now unabashedly demanding the benefit of everything while shirking any and all liability and accountability for anything. The power bestowed by an electoral mandate is intoxicating to those who see themselves as the elect. The most sobering prospect of another four years of a MAGA-controlled America is wondering how many people are going to suffer and die as collateral damage of their blundering, plundering, mishandling, and blatant disregard for the Constitution, the rule of law, the basic rights of the ordinary citizen and, last but not least, their lack of common decency. Last time it took 600,000 dead to get the attention of enough people and make them ask themselves if this guy was capable of leading this country in a national and global crisis, and the answer was an emphatic “No.” This time the body count has already begun with women unnecessarily dying from pregnancy complications because of not being able to access and/or receive appropriate care due to draconian abortion bans. We can only hope it doesn’t take as many dead as last time before this mass hiatus from reason brings enough Americans back to their senses. Sadly, many are going to have to feel the pain of the bad decisions of toxic governance before they realize why he didn’t get the approval of enough voters the last time. I just wish so many of us didn’t have to feel it with them.

At 248 years of age, the constitutional republic of the United States is the oldest such government on the planet. From the beginning, it has always had its own unique way of doing the electoral dance. Every election cycle seems to have a tailor-made innovation or special modification. From the elegance of the Minuet and the Virginia Reel to the energy of the Charleston to the awesomeness of all manner of tap dance to the Jitterbug and the Watusi, the American electoral dance has a character all its own. Election Year 2024 will likely be remembered as when a cautious Two-Step lost its charm and took four steps backward. That is the funny thing about a media-driven environment where perception equals reality. When a decided majority of the voting public opts for a return to leadership that represents a period of temporary national insanity, America’s forward progress is at an end, at least for the foreseeable future.

Thank you for reading.

The appeal of a Narcissist