Trump

So here's the deal.

It could go one of two ways.

The first is how almost everybody is hoping it will go. Trump takes over, and turns out to do a far more reasonable job than can humanly be expected.

Let's say this happens, and he doesn't ban Muslims from entering the USA, and doesn't try and get his Mexican wall built. Let's say he just cuts billionaires' taxes to the bone, raises the age on Social Security benefits to 75, halves Medicare, and a few other things like that. Let's say he doesn't even screw up foreign policy.

What would happen in the long run? Well, his base will feel betrayed, but even so, in four years he'd stand a very strong chance of re-election.

The other, much more likely scenario, is that it is bad; really, really bad.

He will immediately take over the Supreme Court by appointing some legally-blind right-wing fanatic into the current opening, and will keep doing so throughout his term.

He, along with a Republican Senate and Republican House will disassemble Social Security altogether, and Medicare, and Obamacare, and Planned Parenthood. They will strip public education, and veterans' benefits, and keep cutting taxes on the rich, and cutting, and cutting.

Minimum wage will freeze, at best, and perhaps even vanish altogether. Entire swathes of the population will have their rights stripped away.

New wars are started, and many will die..

Some are pinning their hopes on the Democrats taking the House away from the Republicans, but the entire system is so Gerrymandered that regardless of the will of the people, it will be an uphill battle. The Republican majority is so massive, that they will likely retain control in 2018, giving Trump a totally-free hand for his entire 4-year term.

It will be bad.

However, this is perhaps exactly what the American people need to see; rampant racism, Wall Street unregulated, incompetent foreign policy, with the aged forced to work until they drop, and privatization run amok.....every nightmare.

Let's assume this is how Trump's four years go.

Then, he either runs for re-election in 2020, or some other radical right-winger does, along with every seat in the House and 1/3 of the Senate.

I can see a ground-swelling of anger striking hard. I see a nation getting behind whoever is running against him in a way unseen since 1932.

You see, back then, the Republican Party ruled supreme. Harding had won the presidency in 1920 with 404 electoral college votes against the Democrats 127, followed by Coolidge in 1924 with 382 as opposed to the Democrats with 136, and Hoover in 1924 who won by 444 against 87. There really was no wing other than right wing. It didn't seem to matter that the Republicans made up the people in power who sought to legislate morality in an unprecedented manner called Prohibition, or that it almost destroyed law-and-order in the US, or that they were eventually forced to repeal it. What did matter is that the rampant, unregulated, stock market had collapsed, ushering in the Great Depression.

It also mattered that President Hoover, and all the right-wing government types, could do when the entire economy collapsed was to wring their hands and say that the same system that had destroyed itself, and the economy, would magically reverse and all would be well. It was a pity, they said, that so many were destitute, and were starving to death.

The voters rebelled.

Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, won the 1932 presidential election with 472 electoral votes over the incumbent, Hoover's 59. He promptly went to work trying to inspire the nation, and implementing programs in an attempt to do something, anything, to help; right-wing wisdom be damned.

Back then, it seems, people had longer memories than they do now. Now, they think the economy sucks, and that it's Obama's fault. Back then they knew who had caused the grief, and how those same economy destroyers had not even tried to help fix it.

When election time rolled around again after four years of effort, Roosevelt won re-election with 523 electoral votes; failing to carry only two states, Vermont and Maine, and their 8 electoral votes. In fact, the people continued to hand Roosevelt two more impressive wins in 1940, and 1944, making him the only man to ever win the presidency more than twice.

That's what needs to happen. The American people need to get so motivated for real change that they reject the fallacies foisted on them by antiquated right-wing thinking.

What they should have done this time if they really had wanted change was to have thrown out every single incumbent in both House and Senate, and to NOT have elected a loose cannon as President.

The problem is, they still seem to think that the right-wing nonsense somehow still makes sense. "Trump will stick up for us." Really? Have you seen pictures of where he lives? He has absolutely nothing in common with working folks, or the middle class, or even with most rich people. He thinks he's the Emperor Caligula. He travels with a security team, and a cloud of go-fers, and lackeys. Do you think he carries a wallet with cash in it, and maybe a visa card? I seriously doubt that. He's more like the Queen. Things are done around him and for him. I doubt he dresses himself.

That's the man who will save the common people? Sure he will.

It has to get so bad that the voters need to reject this kind of stupidity forever. They need to see how critical it is that people earn a living wage, and receive proper medical care, and can retire with dignity, and have control over their own bodies, and are not persecuted for their ethnicity, or gender, and to have access to quality education.

It needs to get so bad that the voters scream for what they have in Germany, and France, and Norway, and Canada, and the rest of the western industrialized world.

A wave needs to sweep this all into being, for now and for always.

Strangely, Trump just might bring it all about.