Let's Close It Down

This post is awhile in the making. I had it planned in December and the events of January 6 and everything else only seem to make it more relevant. So here’s my coda to the 2020 election.



The question that bugs me as armchair pundit is this: Why didn’t Trump govern from the middle?

I tend to think that he could have and would have won a decisive re-election.

I don’t even know that he had to ‘do’ anything differently, but change his rhetoric.

I will always recall Trump on the local radio on the night of the 2016 Caucus. He had a very broad pitch which keyed mainly on a big infrastructure package (Remember at that time, Cruz was running to the right of him)

Of course, Reagan angered many on the left, but his rhetoric was always to all Americans. As someone with as much screen time as Trump, I’m surprised he didn’t learn this lesson.




I also can’t move past a discussion on Trump without mentioning “2000 Trump”. QAnon fixates on the idea of JFK Junior praising Trump, but that was an entirely different beast. Indeed, I was a fan of 2000 Trump.

That particular animal is caught in a museum called Wikipedia and if perhaps you forgot- that candidate said his ideal running mate would be Oprah Winfrey and his cabinet might include Charles Rangel, John McCain, Colin Powell and Jack Welch.

It’s an interesting point to ponder not only because it seems like Bizarro Trump (who was attacking Reform Party rival Pat Buchanan for far right pandering) but a real shot at a bipartisan cabinet is worth pondering.

Would Republicans and Democrats be quieter from complaining if they both were invested in the government? I don’t know if we ever will know. Sure, you get some one offs like Obama naming Chuck Hagel to the cabinet, but a truly blended cabinet, hmmm...

But from Trump’s pick of Mike Pence as running mate, Trump forged a path that would begin to follow his primary opponent Ted Cruz instead of diverge from it.

Trump would seem to pander to the right on his speeches and be defined by ‘very fine people on both sides’ and saying he didn’t know anything about David Duke and whether to condemn him.

As an armchair critic, I was shocked. There is a modern interpretation of electoral politics that you play to the base. But a sitting President doesn’t do that, and Trump didn’t necessarily get elected by doing that. He just took back purple areas like Eastern Iowa by speaking to a broader audience.

Of course, crises define Presidents and a pandemic might not be the kind of crisis that brings a nation together
, and I think this inevitably was the beginning of the end.

Trump seemed to consistently play to his base and seemed to speak out of both sides of his mouth. Instead of a unifying post-9/11 style message, his general target was talking to his crowd of supporters. Maybe as PJ O’Rourke suggested in his 2020 interview with the Cato Institute that pandemics aren’t the kind of common bond that other tragedies might be.

Reagan is the gold standard for communication and whether Trump wasn’t surrounded by the right gang of speechwriters and consultants. Maybe he is following the strategy that you win by getting out the base and it’s not worthwhile to try and win undecideds.

In any case, Trump went into October with the breaking news a Covid vaccine was on the way, but he had spent months saying that Covid wasn’t a big deal. How much credit can you take for something that you had downplayed and written off.




Ironically, Biden then would take the point that he got kids back in school.

I won’t spend much more time on the subject but to say this carried onto after the election.

I won’t begrudge Trump to be Trump, but pursuing a path in overturning the election has been the road I would not have chosen.

While accepting the outcome and being a voice of dissent might have been a better result.

Instead, Trump lost his swagger, and that was one thing he never was without. I’d argue that a mildly conceding Trump would have been a better outcome for him.

Our image of Trump in the last year is of Rudy’s runny hair dye, Mike Lindell’s failing business and a parade of QAnon personalities.



Trump’s biggest fans threatened to leave Facebook but never did, showing why Conservative boycotts don’t work, meanwhile flirting with alternative social media.

Which seems like a good idea but has been a car wreck. As someone active for years, I could have easily predicted. The biggest fights I have had on social media are almost always people I would otherwise agree with.

Set only like-minded people in the same place and they will inevitably choose to tear each other down instead of build people up.

While Trump still seems to be the face of the GOP, with no appeal but to his supporters, will surely face opposition




But that is a tale for another time. I close the 2020 election here. An unlikeliest of rides.

I do offer a couple of other opinions that I might otherwise explore in detail but the hangover is too much.

We surely thought Biden would be a placeholder President. A George HW Bush for these times. What I have come to read on Biden made me rethink this some. (Evan Osnos’s “Joe Biden” isn’t a great book, but it is an insightful one). Like LBJ, Biden is often described as a moderate, maybe even a Conservative. Because of that reputation, like LBJ, he may actually pass more liberal legislation than his predecessor ever could have.

Lastly, I want to include a couple of thoughts in relation to the Libertarian Party- the largest of third parties.

If you go to Twitter, you would see a bunch of Libertarians arguing with each other (which only solidifies my statement above about people who generally agree with each other) -and it was the most unusual of election campaigns.

Most people- especially Libertarians will point out that Jo Jorgensen was not a good Presidential candidate

What went and will stay unreported is the passion Jorgensen inspired in a certain crowd of supporters. Exclude a few of the obvious big names (Obama, Trump, Bernie) and you probably only have a handful of politicians who had a more faithful fan base than Jo.

A couple of other snippets. Ranked choice voting saw its window, I believe. This was an election of two poles and more than ever, voting against a candidate.

It was an atmosphere where people might have been open to ranked choice voting. We did end up seeing this approach in the New York City mayoral election. Perhaps, it’s too confusing.

Then again, I don’t think we will ever see it on the biggest stage. In Indiana, Donald Rainwater in a three person race might have actually swung things in his favor (He ended with just over 11% of the vote)

What I could see though was the reaction of some of the strongest Trump supporters after the election which was ‘why can’t the red states do red state things and blue states do the blue state things.”

Interestingly I think this was the premise of Adam Kokesh’s run for the Libertarian nomination. Kokesh was one of a handful of Presidential candidates I ambushed in Iowa with random questions and was probably the coolest about it.




Kokesh ran by saying we don’t need a President at all. I doubt we will ever see anyone so bold as that. What I think we will see is a future mainstream candidate running on a version of that idea. Anyway, if that happens, you heard it here first. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

#VoteYerMusic: Robert Ardini

Spring 2023: GOP Iowa Caucus Winners and Losers

Caucus Byte: Hey Candidates, Free Advice