Super Tuesday
What’s so special about this Tuesday? I mean that in the most holistic sense, knowing full well that we all recognize that Super Tuesday is the big early primary sweepstakes of the presidential primary season. There are fifteen states in play in both the Republican and Democratic Party races (for the Republicans: AK, AL, AR, CA, CO, MA, ME, MN, NC, OK, TN, TX, UT, VA, and VT, and for the Democrats: AL, AR, CA, CO, IA, MA, ME, MN, NC, OK, TN, TX, UT, VA, and VT). As expected, Joe Biden swept all 15 of the states with a range of 70% to 93% of the vote (the low end being in MN due to the Muslim anti-Israel voters and OK, due to who knows what). As for Trump, it was only a tad more exciting with Nikki Haley actually winning the state of VT and the rest ranging from 60% in blue MA and 84% in Trump-crazy OK. If one is into counting angels on the head of a pin, one could be optimistic and say that across the board, Nikki Haley took a 25% bite out of Trump’s ass even though she could only prevail in itty bitty Vermont with its 17 delegates out of a field of 2,429 total Republican delegates and with Trump likely to end the day with about 1,000 of the 1,215 delegates he needs to secure the nomination before the convention this summer. The point is that even with all his wins, he is still shy of the prize. In reality, there seems to be little super about this Tuesday at all. It tells us nothing new about Biden and his prospects and very little new about Trump or even Nikki Haley for that matter. We are left in the same absurd Bizarro world we have been building for ourselves in this country for the past few years.
I have been very bold in my predictions that something would happen this year that would derail Trump in his obsession to protect himself at all costs by using his Svengali populist powers over the morbidly dissatisfied and/or power hungry and greed-saturated of the country. Who knows exactly how much of the electorate fits into that broad category, but it we use the Trump “core” as the proxy, we could suggest that those who poll as being “strongly favorable” has been steadily dropping since 2020 when it rested at 69% of Republican voters. It is well below 30% at this time and still falling (I predict it will be around 20% by the election, given the legal dust that continues to accumulate in the air). Supposedly, only 28% of the electorate is registered as Republicans (the Democrats have the same 28%, with the other 41% being either Independents or the 3% who simply won’t declare anything and are thus deemed simply… undeclared). That means that the supposed Trump “core” or “base” is nothing more than between 20% and 10% of the electorate. That is far less than the % of Congressional Members who’s voting record would have to qualify them as MAGA.
So, it is less and less the case that we can say that the Trump base is growing, despite the polling numbers getting marginally stronger for the man. The point that Haley keeps making is that if she can strip away 40% of Republican voters who don’t want Trump (in actuality, as I mentioned, she is running closer to 25% in the collective primaries). But rumors in the FT coming from the WSJ suggest that Haley is throwing in the towel today in a speech from her home. Supposedly, her lack of credible performance in breaching the heralded 40% threshold in MA and VA have dissuaded her from continuing to soldier on in the battle. Now the key betting line is whether she endorses the orange-haired villain or not.
The point remains, what seems to be driving Trump forward is less about his beloved base and more about Republicans being desperate not to lose. That panic keeps otherwise moderate congressional leaders from breaking ranks when their conscience tells them otherwise and it causes larger and larger swaths of the Republican electorate to hold their nose and pull the Trump ballot lever. None of that is a new phenomenon on this not-so-super Tuesday, although it equally dhows few signs of abating either. But now things change. Now we move from convincing Republicans, who have trained themselves over the past thirty years to recognize the impending demographic wave that holds the death-knell for their kind, have learned that survival entails forcing themselves to eat every manner of shit served up to them and both keep their mouthed shut and even smile through it for the sake of political survival.
The next phase of this race and life as we know it in this country and on this planet, given the high stakes at play on the current geopolitical landscape, is about whether that shit will fly with the general electorate. And, most interestingly, it has to fly on both the Presidential ticket AND the down ballot ticket because a strong anti-Trump Congress would be the last battleground in any war of Trump the Chief Executive. Are the people of the United States prepared to allow a renegade like Trump and his hate-mongering disciples to completely dismantle their way of life for the wanton ravings of those disenchanted few who thrive (or do they like think) in a world of chaos? That is a very hard hill to climb in the clear light of day and the smartest conservative minds and wealthiest donors have recognized this and tried to throw a Nikki Haley at the problem. Now that that has failed, the big question is whether they will throw a Biden win in front of that Trump train in order to derail it as a last gasp. I am one of those optimists that believe they will wake up and reject the nihilism that is Trumpism and will, perhaps quietly and shielded by the secrecy of the shitty campaign finance protocol and the very sanctity of the American ballot booth, come to their senses and panic left.
That may be the only thing super about Super Tuesday. We finally break free of the bullshit of partisan process and move into the realm of reality of how we will live in an America that is teetering on the brink of tossing out all that it holds most sacred and for which it has continuously shed the blood of its sons and daughters over the past two hundred and fifty years. Trump may like fashioning himself the Superman able to leap the laws of the land in a single bound, but the kryptonite that is the American sense of decency and honor should be powerful enough to drop him to his knees before the finish line. Let’s face it, we all KNOW how the story ends for the strongmen of the world, sooner or later. We know that history will reveal him for what the clear-minded among us know for fact, that the man is an empty suit who brings nothing and no one good to the party … or should I say Party? He will be cast to ground within the next 8 months and both I and all of you will hold our breath while it happens and very soon thereafter shake our heads like awakening from a very bad dream on the morning after Super Tuesday.