IN WHICH I AGREE WITH BILL KRISTOL(!)

Everybody, and I do mean Every. Body. - including 21 Democratic long-time incumbents who are voting with their feet and retiring - says 2022 is going to be awful for the Democrats, which will leave us with A Horrible Future in 2024.

Yeah, there are a lot of reasons to believe this is the case. There’s the traditional “president’s party fails” the off-year election after an administration change; there’s all the complaining about inflation; there’s all the media reporting that “both sides” things to conflate lies as being equal to truth without comment or explanation - which can confuse even the best-informed; there’s the “disappointment” over BBB, and Joe Manchin, and Kyrsten Sinema, and, and, and...

But sometimes the “conventional wisdom” is just the bullshit the lazy and unthinking copy and paste from the more-lazy and more-unthinking who said/wrote it to begin with.

And so now we arrive at the point where I declare that I agree with a man for whom seven years ago I would have advocated a good clean hanging/drawing/quartering for his political malpractice. I refer to Irving Kristol’s kid, Bill.

Mr. Kristol writes today in the Bulwark, and says...

“The odds aren’t great.

“But the odds aren’t as overwhelming as is sometimes assumed, either. There is hope. Hope isn’t a substitute for hard work. But hard work is harder without hope. Are there any grounds for reasonable hope for pro-Democratic forces in 2022?

“Yes.

“The president’s party gained seats in two of eight of post-Cold War off-year elections. One out of four times isn’t great. But one out of four also isn’t nothing. One out of four comes up all the time.

“What characterized the political landscape in those two elections, 1998 and 2002? In both cases, the incumbent president was popular. And in 1998 the opposition party had alienated voters by pushing for the impeachment of this popular president.

“On election day this year, President Biden is highly unlikely to have anything like the approval numbers President Bill Clinton had in 1998 or President George W. Bush had in 2002. Biden is now at a pretty grim 43 percent approval vs. 52 percent disapproval. He’s been at this level for about two months, which means that he’s stopped falling. This could be a pause. Or a steady-state. Or a prelude to recovery.

“So could Biden recover enough to give his party a fighting chance?

“Perhaps.

“Delta and then Omicron damaged the sense that the administration had succeeded in getting COVID under control. But COVID really is likely (finally!) to recede this spring. A non-pandemic summer, and a return to normalcy as schools reopen in September, could well be worth a point or two for Biden.

“What about the current generic congressional ballot? The FiveThirtyEight average has Republicans with a 42.4 to 41.9 percent advantage. This number usually moves a bit more in the direction of the party out of power during the election year—so it’s not great for Democrats. On the other hand, a half a percent deficit isn’t overwhelming and the gap has actually closed a bit since early December. Also, redistricting seems to have helped Republicans less than expected.

“If Democrats could pick up about three points on the congressional ballot over the next nine months, they could hold the House. Such a gain may be unlikely, perhaps even highly unlikely. But it isn’t beyond imagination.”

And he finishes off with: “Which brings us to the Democrats’ hole card: The Republicans—and in particular the numero uno Republican, the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.”

He goes on to compare the election to Texas Hold ‘Em and points out (rightly) that one would not want the dealer to turn over the Trump Card as The River, come October.

Everyone points to the Democrats “shooting themselves in the foot,” but consider:

Senator Mike Rounds comes out and commits the radical act of Recognizing Reality and says “We lost the election, as Republicans.”

To which El Blobbo Del Mar A Lardo ripostes with “Is this guy stupid or crazy?” And then goes on to say “I will never Endorse this jerk!” (Forgetting, or more likely never realizing, that Rounds doesn’t stand for re-election until 2026).

And then The Man Who Would Be King, er, Speaker - Bakersfield’s contribution to proving that slurs against at least one Okiefornian for being a Fucking Dumbshit are merely statements of fact - comes out and declares that, when (not if) he becomes Speaker of the House, he will remove Democrats Eric Swallwell from the Judiciary Committee, Ilhan Omar from Foreign Relations, and Adam Schiff from Intelligence - as payback for their roles in impeaching El Blobbo (twice!) and removing the World’s Dumbest Evil Bimbette of Belsen (MTG) and the World’s Smallest Professional Juvenile Delinquent (Gun Grrl) from their committees.

As Charlie Sykes points out in his always-more-polite-than-me way, “Of course, this will play well with the GOP base. But this flash of pre-election vindictiveness does a seem a bit like prematurely spiking the football, doesn’t it?”

Kristol finishes his analysis thus:

“How much could Trump-caused, Trump-aligned, or Trump-adjacent madness damage Republican candidates in 2022? We don’t know, partly because we’ve never really had a situation like the current one. What we do know is that the great bulk of the Republican party’s candidates will be aligned with and perhaps seen to be marching behind a former president who’s not popular with swing voters, whose visibility could motivate lots of Democrats to vote, and whose behavior could make it far easier for Democrats to link Republicans to unpopular causes. The report by the January 6th Committee could play a role here too.”

Look at the Republicans most likely to be on their respective tickets next November:

Professional KAPO Josh Mandel, or Professional Hillbilly Idiot Jimmy Vance for Senate in Ohio.

Any of the Trumpscum Sieg-Heilers on the primary ballot for Senate in Arizona.

Professional Moron Adam Laxalt in Nevada.

Any of the 18 drooling morons running for Secretary of State in swing states who are vowing to be sure if they’re elected that there will be no question that Trump Won! in 2024.

Any of the Proofs Mark Twain Was Right (“Consider a congressman, then consider an idiot; ah, but I repeat myself”) running for Congress as Republicans.

Does anyone think any of these people are not the Perfect Motivator to get even Democrats who think elections are only held every four years, that one votes only for President, and that you do it on Facebook, out to vote?

Yes, there is a lot of work to be done to break through the Fog of Dumbness put out by the Washington Press Corpse and the So-shall Mee-dee-ya, but here are facts one can deal with:

GDP better than any time in the last 40 years.

Economy growing faster than any time in the past 50 years.

Unemployment at its lowest rate EVER.

All the result of the programs put forward by President Biden in 2021.

It’s going to take a lot of personal, one-on-one, voter-to-voter, friend-to-friend WORK for this to work.

But then, that’s not as hard as getting from the water’s edge to the seawall at Omaha Beach (which you all saw in the opening 20 minutes of “Saving Private Ryan,” done so well that Charles Durning - who had actually done that at age 18 - went running from the theater when he was asked to view the film) is it?

What are YOU willing to do to Make The World Safe For Democracy?

As Kristol concluded:

“I’m not a big Texas Hold’em player, but I know enough to know that you don’t want to have to count on the river card to grab a low-probability win. Which is what Democrats will have to do, because the flop has been little help to them.

“But sometimes all you can do is play your hand well enough to still have a chance on the final card.”

It’s hard work. But there is Hope.

Hope isn’t optimism. Hope is something it takes courage to have and keep.

Hard work and effort, combined with hope, has changed many things people didn’t think at the time could change.

Just ask my friend the late Dick Best, who lost 15 of his 18 dive bombers when they followed the newly-appointed ex-fighter pilot Group Commander - who didn’t know the proper method of dive-bombing a fleet - when he dived on the wrong Japanese carrier. Dick took his two wingmen across the fleet, to the carrier the Group Commander should have taken his squadron down on - three dive-bombers, a force all the rules said was worse than inconsequential, and executed the single most effective, accurate, dive bombing attack by any dive bomber pilot in any air force ever: his bomb hit Akagi’s deck in the middle of her airplanes fully fueled and waiting to take off, while his wingmen’s bombs hit the carrier close aboard to either side, one opening her plates below the waterline at the bow and the other wrecking her rudder. And when they pulled out of their dives, the United States had gone from losing to winning the Battle of Midway, and the only question left was how long it would take to defeat the enemy (which, yes, was a Very Big Question but it really was never in doubt, so long as the effort held).

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