Amazingly — or perhaps not — the Republicans have just nominated an utter charlatan to be President of the United States.
We Democrats are feeling blessed. If the GOP had picked Jeb! Bush or John Kasich, perhaps our fight this fall would be tougher. Instead, we're asked to run against a cartoon. Without taking anything for granted, we are thrilled to engage this battle.
We're reminded that insurgent campaigns — of which the Drumpf effort is a supreme example — rarely are able to make the transition to mainstream establishment alternative. The missteps of the Drumpf campaign have already demonstrated how difficult this is.
We cats readily admit that we are creatures of the establishment, because the party is usually where the policies that end up most benefiting Americans get hammered out. So we generally don't have sympathy for insurgencies. The one that breaks this rule, and which commands our love and loyalties, is Dean for America 2004.
Why? Because even though Governor Dean couldn't make the pivot from insurgency to nomination in 2004, his campaign and its innovations made a lasting impact. They helped elect America's first African-American President in 2008 and 2012 — and, we hope, its first woman President in 2016.
What distinguishes Dean 2004 from Drumpf 2016? Easy-peasy. The Dean forces took the details of campaigning seriously. The Drumpfs couldn't care less. Therein lies the difference, and why Howard Dean will remain a statesman in the Democratic Party, and Donald Trump will remain — well, an idiot. We cats PURR.
No comments:
Post a Comment