Arthur D. Hlavaty

So Goodole Joe Biden can’t even win in a white heartland state, which I hope dooms his candidacy. I fear that he lost not because he trusts the Republicans in spite of everything or because of his creepy touch dominance but because of the Ukraine mess, even though no one found any actual wrongdoing. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire (or a big pile of manure). Vox populi, Vox Day.

I want to look away but I can’t.

1. Of course the Russians tried to influence the election. Governments do that all the time, and it’s legit. Israel is particularly good at it, and the UK did in 1940. The question is whether they hacked it, getting into the voting machines & such. If so, we need to know before the Electoral College votes.

2. The election was influenced, perhaps decisively, by a power often inimical to the American people: the FBI. I never thought I’d say this, but I don’t think J. Edgar Hoover would have stooped that low.

3. Some Green voters were hoping to naderize—to have just enough effect to ensure the victory of the greater of two evils so as to punish the filthy liberals for not being progressives. (It goes very well with the collectivist idea that the enabler is worse than the perp.) It seems that they did not succeed; their votes did not make that much difference. Some of them are now trying to maintain the Trump victory by going, “CIA, ha ha! Russians, ha ha!”

Ted Cruz has been compared to Richard Nixon, in terms of personal warmth and charm (Nixon usually wins), but now he is also following in Nixon’s historical footsteps.

In 1964 the Republican Party was widely perceived as having stepped out of normal political parameters with the extremist Barry Goldwater. Nixon offered dignified acquiescence, supporting the ticket but staking out alternative positions.

In those days a now-extinct species roamed the land: Liberal Republicans. Their leader, Nelson Rockefeller, was booed and hated. After Goldwater had gone down to stunning defeat, they expected to regain control. But no. The Goldwater campaign had tapped a rich vein of stupidity and hatred in the electorate, and while the party wouldn’t yet pick another extremist, they found a middle-of-the-road candidate, the good and faithful servant Nixon, and he won.

And the future belonged to them. Goldwater was a decent, honorable human being with some dumb ideas. He thought all would be well if other decent, honorable human beings voluntarily desegregated, as his family had done with their retail chain, and we wouldn’t need the government. By today’s standards, his was moderation in the pursuit of virtue. The goalposts have moved, and today Rockefeller would be running the DNC.

And now many of us are hoping that He, Trump is seen by the majority the way Goldwater was, and that seems likely. If so, Cruz hopes, the party will overlook his personal characteristics as it did Nixon’s similar ones, and he will be the nominee.

Also: Trump’s idea of letting his veep handle domestic and foreign policy while he makes America great again suggests that he actually seeks a different office: King. He is equally unqualified for that, as the prime regal requirement is gravitas. There is a reason the United Kingdom is reigned over by Elizabeth Windsor, rather than Boris Johnson.

And furthermore: I hereby apologize for something I said in yesterday’s post. Circuses, like whores, do not deserve comparison with the Republicans. (Maybe more like a carney, in which Cruz declined the proffered chicken head.)