The Parallels Are Striking, and Very Scary

Three years of resistance have come to nothing. The mindless goofball won a decisive victory and will lead his country down a road of divisive withdrawal. He insults, bumbles his comments, and bullies those with whom he disagrees. He's a jokester, not a serious politician or leader. He mostly just pounds the table and shouts (Try watching it on C-SPAN).

And that's in Great Britain, where Boris Johnson's Conservative party has just smashed all hopes of avoiding Brexit by dominating the Labor party in the very recent parliamentary elections. It will mean that, by the end of next month, Great Britain will be out of the European Union--to what effect, absolutely no one knows--and will sow instability throughout much of the world.

How did this happen? The signs are evident and worth considering across the Atlantic, where more than three years ago now, an unthinkable victory there forecasted another one right here:

• A weak opposing candidate. Jeremy Corbin excited exactly no one. It's one thing to avoid the bombast of the other side and to project calmness and competence; it's quite another to bore everyone to death. That's been known there for some time now; I recall reading about it at least two years ago.
• A campaign too leftist for appetites. The Laborites leaned farther left than people were comfortable with. Socialism, or any breath of it, can be weaponized to instill fear. Conservatives did just that.
• Good, simple, winning political ad strategy. Conservatives tend to keep things very simple. Their best ad had Johnson knocking on someone's door to tell them, with signage not speech (flipping cards at the doorstep), their campaign in a nutshell: We have to get on with things and get Brexit done.
• People got tired of all the conflict and battling. They began giving up. Worn down, they withdrew from the strife and said either okay-have-it-your-way-stupid, or didn't engage at all, which is to say they stayed away from the polls.

Ensconced as we now are in a futile impeachment process, the same attitudes are emerging. Republicans in the House of Representatives were taken to shouting and dissembling in front of a nationwide audience as charges against 45 were trotted out in logical, dressed-down fashion. Republicans conjured a mindset that has never existed--namely, that 45 was thinking about the country at all when he tried to undermine both Ukraine's government and our own to secure a second term by extorting $391M in military aid that Congress had already granted it in exchange for arranging non-informational, speculative, "official" announcements that would have had the effect of smearing the person 45 fears the most, Joe Biden. The only reason more than a dime of that money got where it was supposed to go was that 45 got caught in the act, then tried to get out in front of it by swearing it off to one or two people upon the discovery. It was, as it always is, all about him.

45 hasn't gotten down on his knees and begged for forgiveness--indeed, has firewalled all evidence possible from his office--because that could implicate complicity. So that "proves" to his shameless, mindless Congressional minions that he's done nothing wrong. The claim does not establish the fact but, as is true of their leader, that need not be relevant to them. They're trying to do to these charges what they did to the Mueller report--shout long enough to bury it amidst wild countercharges that make little sense but resonate with people due to effective messaging techniques.

The 2020 campaign operates within this cesspool. Because Senate Republicans are nearly sure sustain their political support for him and let him get away with these crimes against the Constitution, it is vital to understand the distinct parallel with Great Britain--namely, that the "good guys" and logic and propriety and in our case, the rule of law, aren't going to win this national crisis. On the other side lurks ripe, manipulative possibilities for Republicans--see, you got beat and wasted our time; told you so--that can be pounded down the electorate's throats as we approach next November. They don't have to say it with any other language than that; it's already on the silver platter for them.

All the more reason that the Democrats must come up with the best possible candidate to not only oppose this horrible person, but to project a different, better nation up the road. Just putting someone who seems to have earned the spot won't get it done. Whether the primaries will carve out enough delegate support, or whether they will need a brokered convention--not the first time I've noted that here--some of these things must be taken into consideration: Who can come off as competent and resistant to the insults, innuendoes and outright lies coming on the debate stage, staying calm and deliberate yet responsive to the nonsense that we know will spew from 45's piehole? Who has a reasonable plan for the future? Who can find and direct the political center (It may not be as large as before, but it's still there and will still be decisive) back to stability, and not frighten it with proposals that sound great but can't possibly pass any Congress of any makeup? Who can combine a vision that promises more for more people with a reasonably precise warning of the unraveling of our democracy that will follow upon four more years of this lout? Who can deflect 45's powerful personality, exposing it as only that and not the competence and decisiveness that the mere sound of his voice seem to imply to too many?

Beyond that, the same attitudes that eased their way into Britain's body politic seem to be taking place here: The weariness of it all. That's the idea. That's what they want. They want us to give up. They want us to admit that it isn't worth it. All the protesting and demonstrating and resistance that accompanied 45's election--Remember the pink hats the day after the inauguration?--have led to exhaustion. Understandable? Certainly. Therein lies the decisive edge, or not, depending upon whether those who believe that we still, potentially, have a better country here than we've been giving off for three years, can turn this around and become a balanced, reasonably conversant polity again. 

To do that, ironically, we must stay angry and committed and determined and energized to not only resist--which got us a Democratic House, after all--but to prevail. It really is possible, after all, to keep a Democratic majority in the House. It really is possible to retake the Senate. It really is possible to turn 45 away.

There has to be effective, precise, simple messaging, too. It has to come to this: Do you really think we'll be in a better place in four more years after he's done with us? Look at all that's happened. You want more of this? Whoever you are: Are you better off? You know the answer. We can turn this around. We can still talk to each other reasonably. But he has to go first. He has to go.

Should we fail at that, we'll get what Britain's getting right this very minute: withdrawal and isolation for no particular reason other than irresponsibility, certainly not greatness; domination by the minority; and a president who will run wild, knowing that all organized efforts to rid ourselves of him have, and probably will, fail. And remember, too: Scotland is discussing secession from Britain. There will be some of that talk, too, should we fail next November. Somebody will not want to have anything to do with such a society any longer.

The parallels are striking. They are very scary. We already know it can happen here. We still have chances to stop it. We brought it well enough two years ago; we can bring it again.

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark