How can anyone make sense of this election?
I realize there are millions of people who think it makes perfect sense — that either former President Donald Trump is going to “Make America Great Again” or Vice President Kamala Harris is going to “Save Democracy.”
But for those of us not inspired by slogans and lawn signs, it’s a little harder to sort out.
I want both to lose, which I realize isn’t going to happen.
For all of their loyalists’ certainty, I am just as certain that both are ridiculous.
Trump has spent the past four years cashing in on his next-level fame by selling Trump coins, Trump crypto and Trump Bibles. I want to believe this is just an elaborate, decade-long piece of performance art, a satirical commentary on the sad state of our nation, but it’s not. It’s just a snake-oil salesman who somehow became president. Trump has plenty of negatives, but I don’t really need to know anything else about him to know I’ll never vote for him.
I was going to move on to Harris, but it must be repeated: Trump Bibles! According to the website, this is “the only Bible endorsed by President Trump!” It doesn’t seem he’s read any version of the Bible, but, to reiterate, the only one he endorses is the one with that licenses his name.
Is Harris any better? Harris is different. Having lived in California with her as attorney general, U.S. senator and vice president, I can safely say I don’t know what she really believes. She will be whatever she thinks the greatest number of voters want her to be. She was tough on crime, but also soft on crime, and then a made-for-TV progressive in the Senate and now a change candidate who can’t say how she’ll differ from her boss, President Joe Biden.
Harris is getting a pass from having to explain why she lied for years about Biden’s fitness to be president, and is benefitting heavily on ambiguous answers to general questions, a fawning media that hates Trump and the tired Trump’s-a-Nazi campaign strategy.
What do I mean by ambiguous answers? When asked how she’ll differ from Biden, since she’s running as a change candidate, she told “The View”: “There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of — and I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact.”
Harris added later that they’re “two different people.”
I guess that clears up everything.
This past week, she’s been calling Trump a fascist, while her supporters in the media compared his rally at Madison Square Garden to a Nazi rally.
To be fair, Trump doesn’t really do much to avoid situations where he’ll draw attacks of being a fascist, Nazi or sympathizer of either or both.
Trump’s policy advisor, Stephen Miller, drew fire for saying at the MSG rally that “America is for Americans and Americans only,” which on its face seems pretty racist but is also apparently a riff on an old Nazi slogan.
Is Miller a racist? According to the liberal elites, all Republicans are racist: Mitt Romney, John McCain, George W. Bush, and so on. It’s 75% of the Democrat playbook, with free stuff for everyone making up the other 25%.
Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe for some inexplicable reason used the rally as an opportunity for a roast. Most of the jokes went over poorly, most notably his joke about Puerto Rico being a floating trash island. Anyone who watched his performance at Netflix’s Tom Brady roast knows that these are his jokes.
But political rallies aren’t roasts, which is why he bombed so bad. Someone from the campaign should have seen this coming.
The MSG rally would have probably caused far worse damage had it not been for Biden, who seized back the news cycle by calling Trump supporters “garbage.”
On policy, neither Trump nor Harris get me excited. Neither is a conservative. Biden/Harris has had the largest budget deficit since at least 2000, except for Trump. According to The Wall Street Journal, under either Harris or Trump, the deficit will rise, and significantly worse under Trump.
The federal debt also continues to rise, both under Trump and then Biden. I don’t expect the November results to change anything here either.
I’m not naive, I know this is my choice: Trump or Harris — I don’t have the luxury of holding out for better candidates.
But my vote is my voice. California will choose Harris by millions of votes, so my vote doesn’t matter in that sense, but it still matters to me personally.
Trump has made being a Republican miserable for more than a decade. I don’t want to support him in any way.
Harris, meanwhile, has helped steer California into an iceberg with her weak, ineffective leadership and overt opportunism.
I still can’t believe Harris might be elected president in a few days — talk about failing up.
I still haven’t decided what I’ll do, but right now I’m split between voting for whomever is the Libertarian candidate or writing in a random choice, like Toulouse, our neighborhood cat, or the late, great William F. Buckley.
A cat? A dead guy?
Give them a chance, they might be a step up.
By the way, Biden, who was forced from the ticket for being unfit for office, is still president.
What are we doing, America?
Matt Fleming is a columnist with the Southern California News Group.