Democrat 2020

[Seamus Fermanagh]

The arrogance of suggestions like this make me want to abstain out of spite, but I won't. The Democrats were defeated by Trump, who should have been a joke. I think now is the time to play it safe.

in 2016, I abstained from the vote for President. As I am a Floridian, it could be argued that any vote that was not lodged FOR H. Clinton added to the chance of success for Trump. At the time, I thought Trump would lose narrowly in the Electoral College and easily lose the popular vote. I had no idea that he would carry all five of the FL, PA, OH, MI, and WI electoral blocks. I thought he would split the upper Midwest and narrowly lose. Figured it was business as usual, working to stop the more stupid policy overtures forwarded by H. Clinton (but accepting her basic competence in the day-to-day aspects of the Presidency).

I, therefore, missed out on the sea-change brewing in the GOP, which has altered the base of the party more profoundly than at any time since the Reagan victory in 1980 (and arguably more than that). Between the hard-core deplorables who LIKE the fact that he is an aggressive ass, the 'anybody in the GOP must be supported zombies,' and the 'who cares, it is about power' subset, the GOP really has shifted, for the most part, to the party of Trump. It has, in the process, shed any number of formerly life-long GOP types such as myself, because our views of measured conservatism are anathema to the Trump core and its all-too-willing fellow-travelers.

Add in the fact that far too much of the Trump 'security' agenda (by planning or by happenstance or both) is in lock-step with the desires of the most thuggish xenophobe and blatant white-supremacy racists in our culture, and I find little to support.


Sadly, I pretty much have to pull the lever for whatever social-democrat naif the Dems put up in '20, just because as a Floridian, I have to vote to remove the current occupant.