Super Tuesday is over and so is all hope

Donald

Trump is not rushing towards the White House.

With clear victories in the primaries, including in California, and a Supreme Court victory keeping him on the ballot in Colorado, any belief that Trump doesn’t have a good chance of returning to the Executive Mansion, or that the Republican Party will To change away from hatred and authoritarianism is magical thinking.

About as magical as the belief that Biden will somehow inspire the many critical voters who have slowly turned away from him, young voters who have been influenced by a campaign against his age; voters anguished by the destruction in Gaza; voters who, despite the strong economy, are still shocked by an inflation that makes filling the refrigerator increasingly difficult.

And especially voters like me, who are just tired.

It’s incredibly disheartening that we don’t have a Democratic candidate who inspires belief and needs less excitement.

“Hold your nose and vote for Hillary” was not a winning strategy in 2016 (personally, I voted for her because I thought she would be a great president). But we are now in the same position where we were then an unpopular candidate versus a useful idiot.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to take this into account, but it is also becoming increasingly dangerous not to.

Then Governor Gavin Newsom started his I Am Not Running For President Tour last year. I quickly called that magical thinking, also an overconfident display of opportunism. And of course it didn’t materialize for a 2024 run.

But I gave it to his strategists. Newsom saw this future at the gates of Hades and created a unique path we didn’t know we needed: preacher to the undevoted.

In “Inferno,” Dante described the vestibule of Hell as populated by those who took no sides in life, neither bold enough to embrace evil nor strong enough to fight it.

Today we call them independents, or the disenfranchised, or the exhausted tired people like me. Example: On Monday my ballot was still unopened on the living room table.

Our numbers are growing and we will determine America’s collective future. By voting for a Kennedy, a Stein, a West. Or by not voting at all.

Recently at a dinner party, I sat next to a California university professor who pointed out that we survived Trump’s first presidency. Maybe the second one won’t be so bad, he argued.

It was a bit like standing in line at the slaughterhouse with a fellow calf and shouting that he had never heard anyone come out with a complaint. For a moment I saw his point.

Fascist fatigue is real.

But consider this.

Overthrowing a democracy requires a fearful population, people so afraid of their own future and the future of their children that they will trade rights for perceived security. Trump is pro when it comes to stoking these fears, and that’s no coincidence.

It is an actual written plan that warns that “the moral foundations of our society are in danger,” and that “the whole point of centralizing political power is (in many ways) to undermine the family. loves and loyalties with unnatural ones.”

These are just a few lines from the Heritage Foundation’s “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” written as a guide to what to do after a Trump victory.

The difference between Trump’s first and second terms, if it happens, will be that kind of organization.

When Trump won the first time, those who would replace democracy with a Christian theocracy were unprepared. They had an agenda, but lacked the skills and discipline to fully implement it.

Lesson learned.

Over the past four years, this country’s far-right, extremist element has not only been emboldened, but has organized itself like a Starbucks industrial action. They will be ready, as they have repeatedly promised

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to remake America as a place of exclusion rather than inclusion.

Trump (if he’s not already bankrupt) may be personally willing to foot the bill for women’s red coats, but it is these invisible ranks of a new extremist ruling class that will ensure they adhere to federal laws that even California cannot avoid.

For those who don’t want to hold their noses and vote for Biden, I understand. No one should have to choose a candidate they don’t believe in, or put someone in the White House to prevent something worse. For those who are too tired to worry, sisters and brothers, I feel you.

But it is the voters who will decide these elections.

This is not Trump versus Biden. It’s democracy versus the uncomplicated, the tired, the angry, the broke.

But you can only lose democracy once.

A voice from the vestibule of hell is a great way to do that.