Are You Ready for Four More Years of Trump?
W.J. Astore
I had no idea America elected Joe Manchin and the Senate Parliamentarian as the two most powerful people in our country. Senator Manchin has been the convenient obstacle and scapegoat for the corporate Democrats. He's allegedly blocked tougher action on climate change. He's helped to defund efforts to make community college free, to extend Medicare, to lower prescription drug prices, and so on. The Senate Parliamentarian, meanwhile, who is in fact unelected and has no real power, ruled that hiking the minimum wage is something that simply can't be countenanced under budgetary reconciliation rules. I think I got that right, not that it matters. It's all a smokescreen, it's all BS. The Democratic Party, like the Republican, answers to the owners and donors. It is doing exactly what it's been told to do, abandoning all its progressive promises (it never had any principles) in the false name of compromise and bipartisanship.
And this is exactly why Donald Trump will be reelected in 2024.
Not that the corporate-owned Democrats care, mind you. Things are actually easier for them with Trump in office. They can raise more money off their fake "resistance" to Trump, and they can wash their hands of tax cuts for the rich and more and more corporate-friendly deals, blaming them on Trump when of course the Democrats too support all these things. For that matter, so too does the Supreme Court. Justices like Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett weren't just picked because they lean against abortion: they were picked because of their pro-business sympathies. Joined by Justices Roberts and Thomas and Alito, corporations can count on winning cases in their favor by at least a 6-3 margin. Corporations are people, my friends, and they rule us through the political parties they own and the court they have packed.
If many Americans don't know this, they certainly sense it. They know politicians like Biden and Harris are phonies. They are so phony that people actually prefer a twice-divorced wife-cheater, con man, and reality TV host like Trump for his authenticity. At least Trump speaks their language and apes their grievances.
Former President Obama, meanwhile, gives speeches blaming the voters for not voting. He says with a straight face that we can't always get what we want, but that if you don't despair and keep voting blue no matter who, you may yet get a few crumbs after 2024. Who believes this anymore?
Hillary Clinton and the DNC were so bad in 2016 that America elected a failed casino owner with a fake university named after him. Biden/Harris and the DNC are so bad now that in 2024 America will elect a bloviating dictator wannabe and coup-plotter who threw his own VP under the bus as president. Yup, the same guy again. Maybe this time Ivanka will run the World Bank or possibly the State Department (can she be worse than Mike Pompeo?).
America has become a very bad joke -- worst of all, the joke's on us.