Today is Saturday, November 26, 2022. Trolling my online news source called Smart News today, I was amazed to find an article appearing in the online version of New York’s most conservative rag, the New York Post, Rupert Murdoch’s baby, that actually declares “the cult of Trump is dead.” Very improbable that this declaration was made by this bastion of rah-rah Trumpism while the clown was in office. The article by Erin Norman is denunciatory of the entire Republican Party and offers prescriptions for the almost-defunct party in order to win races two years from now. Quite startling, I would say, since this paper was a former cheerleader for the Orange Blob when he was in office. Not anymore; the orange-haired one must be seething if he has even read this rebuff of him from one of his former champions. The article is titled “Lauren Boebert’s near loss proves the cult of Trump is dead.”

Of course, the opening paragraph advises that Democrats have a lot to learn from the 2022 midterms. I wonder what, since they did fabulously well. It was repugnicans who failed miserably since they enshrouded themselves with the cloak of Trump that became as brittle as bone. The writer acknowledges that “the bigger lesson is for Republicans, who need to get their house in order if they want to be competitive in two years.” Anyone knows what the party needs to do and that is to ditch the boob in Mar-a-Lago.

Norman describes the approach that Democrats took to the midterms which was a “referendum on Trump,” even though it’s been a half decade since he was elected to office. Here the myopia of the writer is apparent because she fails to see that the midterms were indeed a referendum on Dumpf. The loss of women’s productive freedom couldn’t hurt either. Norman inaccurately paints the strategy taken by Democrats as a “desperate, fear-based strategy,” but she fails to mention the similar message of fear taken by repugnicans who portrayed a nation beset by crime, more crime, inflation, and more inflation.

The truth wins out in the article when Norman avers “Trump endorsements did little to help Republican candidates.” His success rate was likened to a coin flip, picking three out of eight winning governors and six out of 11 U.S. senators, with one U.S. Senate race – in Georgia – still undecided. Norman also realizes that across the country, candidates who denied the results of the 2020 election and ran for U.S. Senate, governor, or state election chief were more likely to lose than prevail. Only 22 – too big even in my mind – out of 53 deniers won those seats, “rebuking the Trump brand of electoral politics.”

Therefore, the Lauren Boebert race in Colorado was an excellent example of this admonishment from American voters. A great quote is this: “Boebert is the poster child for the MAGA brand of Republicanism.” She denied the 2020 election results and antagonized her political opponents as a full-time job, such as when she brazenly heckled the President during his State of the Union speech as he called for more help for U.S. veterans. Not a very controversial request, I would contend, but this loud mouth opened hers during the speech as if she were in kindergarten. Her Colorado district was not considered very competitive and she should have been reelected this year without any effort.

However, it took over a week for Boebert to be declared the winner by just 554 votes, and the count only ceased when her Democratic challenger, Adam Frisch, opted not to proceed with an automatically triggered recount. Of course, it was Boebert’s Democratic challenger who bowed out of the race with civility that would have been missing if indeed he were declared the winner over her by a very slim margin!

The closeness of the race was wholly unexpected and has little explanation other than Boebert’s repugnican base rejecting her repugnant, divisive approach.

The article shamelessly goes on to laud Dumpf for things he “accomplished” during his one catastrophic term in office, which I won’t mention here since I don’t agree with them. She does mention that he doubled the standard tax deduction for middle-class families, creating a lower tax burden for those kinds of families. Norman fails to mention the tax cuts he imposed on the wealthy class that did not trickle down to the middle class as a result.

Norman concludes her criticism of the repugnican party by saying that the party has “many reasons to be optimistic about their chances in two years.” If they do not overthrow the shackles of Trumpism by then, they will indubitably lose election after election (my point). She states they will continue to lose elections “if they do not fully refocus their brand away from political mudslinging and fomenting distrust in our institutions, and instead move toward more positive, solutions-oriented policy.” If they don’t, they will be disappointed at the next presidential election.

In conclusion, Norman returns to the case of Lauren Boebert who actually seems to have woken up to the non-Trump zeitgeist dominant now herself. Asked by a Denver news station recently if she is still a “huge supporter” of Dumpf, she wouldn’t say if she would back his third run for president. She enthusiastically added instead, “I love Governor Ron DeSantis. He is America’s governor.” Another budding autocrat, in my mind.

So it’s getting late here. I wanted to share something I found on Facebook that someone posted, and I believe it’s a great explanation for why so many people are still deluded in this country over Dumpf and what they fail to see in him. It’s a quote from Tiny Buddha or something like it, and it goes, “You want to hear an ultimate truth? You cannot make someone see clarity when they find comfort within their own fog.” I think this is a great elucidation of a quarter of the country that still won’t give up their Golden Idol because it would mean that they have to acknowledge being conned.

Tomorrow my son flies home, if there are no flight delays because of the anticipated bad weather. I did see him one last time today; we met for an early dinner – sans Elliot – in his neck of the woods and had dinner at the North Shore Diner, on Northern Boulevard.

Have a good Sunday. Let’s hope it won’t be too sodden.

Stay safe and be well.