The combination of the overall size of the turnout, the movement of voters in every single county to the left of where they were in 2024, and the 10 point margin by which Susan Crawford won her election to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, added to the fact that Trump and Musk were heavily invested in the Republican candidate, sent a very, very strong message that I believe can be interpreted as, "Get Musk out of Washington now, and dial back the executive orders and the Project 2025 nonsense, or you're going to become completely irrelevant after the 2026 mid-term elections."
Trump is simply not capable of sustaining support, at least, not beyond the limits of his base, which make up maybe 30% of the electorate, give or take a point or two. The media makes a big deal, he's on television all the time, people forget how decrepit he looks, how demented and confused is his speech--a couple of his recent Sunday appearances were downright pathetic--and then he touches something and it blows up. In a state where the last few Presidential elections have been literally razor thin in their margins, and in which Musk made a judicial seat race into a referendum on his performance with DOGE and on the Trump Presidency, and then tried to buy it by putting in almost $25 million, an unusually high turnout made an 11 point swing back to the left in every county in the state.
Let's call that exactly what it was. It was a great victory for Susan Crawford. And it was a smashing defeat for Musk and Trump, in every possible way. Combined with the two deep red, gerrymandered Congressional districts in Florida, which shifted about 19 points to the left, it was a bad night for Trump and it was exactly what he will deny it was, a referendum on his Presidency.
There is a Long, Long Way to Go
This is not all the work of resistance to Trump, or of revulsion and repulsion to himself and Musk. Crawford had the judicial experience, and the ideology, to be an appealing candidate, especially in a state like Wisconsin. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made an appearance in Wisconsin, in Kenosha, when they kicked off their campaign tour. They got an overflow crowd and a lot of publicity. Tim Walz made an appearance in Eau Claire, focusing on what's going wrong in Washington. The two candidates in Florida did an outstanding job of raising money and running a campaign that more doubled the Democratic party vote from the 2024 election.
And if I'm going to be 100% honest, it will be to say that I don't think the 2024 election is an accurate reflection of the way people feel about Trump. I know he cheated. He'd been caterwauling and screaming about it for four years. Of course he stole this election, right out from underneath us, and one of the mistakes Democrats made was not being prepared for what he was going to do. Greg Palast has tracked down how he got it done, achieved mainly by running off experienced election workers with the intimidation they laid down last time around, and by discarding a higher than normal number of mail-in ballots. But that's for another post.
But this is exactly what we always see with Trump. The image that he puts forth, or that the media helps him put forth, does not match the gross incompetence, lack of critical thinking ability, total selfishness and greed, and the pathological lying. All of his assertions about trade deficits and about the United States being on the short end of trade deals were provably wrong. A sixth grader with a laptop could have found out, before he ever finished his speech, that his numbers did not come close to any representation of reality.
What should fascinate, or shock us is not the fact that people are rapidly waking up to the fact that President Donald J. Trump is a complete and total phony, and is completely incompetent and absolutely unfit to be President of the United States. It is the fact that there are still so many people who are totally blind to the reality of this fact.
Staying on Top of the Message
The political reality we face today is that the greatest threat to the Constitution of the United States, and to American idealism, democracy and guarantees of freedom is its own President.
The Democratic party must unite with the greater scope of patriotic Americans who understand this threat and know exactly what we are up against. We have seen some extremely encouraging movement in exactly the right direction, due in part to the fact that there does seem to be some leadership pockets forming and stepping up in the Democratic party, and also to the fact that it is not possible to hide the grossly incompetent, demented, emotionally crippled and senile Trump and the arrogant jackass Elon Musk.
I have every confidence that the lack of intellect, competence and common sense among the pathetic, rag-tag collection of deplorable human beings--and I use that description deliberately and with complete accuracy--who make up the cabinet of the executive branch, will lead to their complete and total failure to rise to any occasion, and will produce a string of disasters that will have a disastrous political effect on the GOP. We've already seen the keystone cops kind of fumbling and bumbling they've done in the wake of the Signal war plans scandal, barely two months into office making a mistake that should have resulted in the firing of the Secretary of Defense and Director of National Intelligence, along with a few voluntary resignations, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The mistakes, court defiance and the complete inhumanity involved in putting Venezuelan refugees into an internment prison in El Salvador should have cost Kristi Noem her job.
These people really are grossly incompetent, and on top of that, they are stupid in a way that can't be fixed. There are some real disasters coming down the road for them, and for Trump. My profound hope is that they aren't so bad as to do irreparable damage to our economy, our national security and our very existence, given the nuclear threat involved, but that they will do plenty of damage to Trump and the GOP when Congressional elections roll around again.
I wonder if anyone on Trump's team is even aware of the Tariff Act of 1890, or the Smoot-Hawley Tariffs, similar to what he has just done, both of which cost the GOP control of Congress that took an excessively long time to get back. I'm fearful of the economic depression that is rolling like a thunderstorm right toward us, but hopeful that it has the same effect that those prior economic depressions did to the GOP back then, costing them control of Congress for decades. Or, given the incompetence of Trump, permanently eliminating the GOP from power.
One can always hope history repeats itself.
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