If you watched the debate last night, I pity you. I watched it for you so you wouldn’t have to, but [spoiler alert] you didn’t miss anything by tuning out.
Regardless, I think some things became clear in the two hour snooze fest.
1. Joe Biden still looks like he is too old to be president. He stumbles, stutters, drools, and loses his train of thought in two seconds. Not a good showing for Uncle Joe.
2. Amy Klobuchar isn’t ready to be president, and probably never will be. She is in over her head and needs to quickly exit the race. Foreign policy is the most important role for the president, and Amy lost any momentum with her debate performance.
3. Mayor Mister Bean is attempting to appeal to centrist Democrats that do not exist while banking on LGBTQ support to increase his “woke” credentials. That, coupled with his Frederick Douglass initiative, is bad optics in that Party that is made up of various factions defined by Victim status.
4. Elizabeth Warren delivered the tomahawk chop to Bloomberg’s chances for the Democratic nomination, but she’s still too awkward and weird to win the nomination, even in a Party full of awkward and weird people. No one feels comfortable watching her. It’s like watching every boomer on social media trying to appeal to the kids with a meme about medical marijuana.
5. Comrade Sanders is the most authentic candidate in the the Party and appeals to its real base, the neo-Stalinists who comprise a good portion of the online Bernie Bros. He has never shied away from being a communist, and that means he has the inside shot at winning the nomination, unless the Party steals it from him again.
6. Mike Bloomberg isn’t going to get the nomination, but I think he will run as an independent candidate on a Never Trump/Never Sanders ticket, potentially with Hillary Clinton as his running mate. He is too many of the things the modern Victim Democrats can’t stand: racist, womanizer, billionaire, etc. That was clear as every candidate took shots at his character, money, and influence.
So what does this mean? 2020 looks a lot like 1860 or perhaps 1912.
Substitute Trump, Bloomberg, and Sanders for Douglas, Lincoln, and Bell or Taft, Wilson, and Debs and you have the 2020 presidential election.
The only real modern comparison could be 1992 with Perot, Clinton, and Bush, but Trump represents everything Perot advocated in 1992 while Bloomberg is the establishment. Sanders will be the socialist side show.
And Trump will win.
Fortunately, this won’t end in war, but I do think that no matter who wins, decentralization will get a boost in 2021.
Think locally, act locally. We are already seeing more Americans sign on to the idea of secession and nullification than at any point since 1860. And this time it will be peaceful. There are secession movements in Oregon and Virginia in addition to California, Illinois, New York, Texas, Alaska, Hawaii, Colorado, and Vermont. Self-determination is the American tradition.
How Alexander Hamilton... Best Price: $4.09 Buy New $5.99 (as of 06:55 UTC - Details) It really doesn’t matter who wins the 2020 election. Nearly fifty percent of the American population, if not more, loses. But not if we had real federalism.
Every president before Lincoln knew it, as did nearly the entire founding generation.
The States, and perhaps even the counties, are the key to breaking apart the monstrosity that is Washington D.C.
I discuss the debates and the future of American politics in Episode 292 of The Brion McClanahan Show.
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Reprinted with the author’s permission.