The Stage is Set. Will the Election be a Tragedy or a Farce? It’s Up to You.

With last night’s complicated and conflicted results of Super Tuesday on the GOP side, including Haley’s departure from the race, the stage is set for a repertoire production no one wants to see: It will be Biden vs. Trump… again. But will it be a tragedy that marks the end of the democratic tradition of America, or a farce in which an orange fool crashes his party into a humiliating ditch? That’s really up to us.

We are all very anxious about the coming election; how could one not be? We all know the stakes.

Just remember: action is the best remedy for anxiety. Work for a candidate you believe in. Work to register new voters. Work to ensure those is your social circle also know the stakes and make a plan to vote with them. Work to reach out to persuadable voters. Protect our democratic process as a poll worker or monitor. Choose your project and when you feel the anxiety, work your row.

But there are very good reasons to be optimistic – not blithe, mind you – but cautiously optimistic.

Trump is the weakest candidate that the GOP could have nominated. His actions have failed to bring back into coalition the moderate Republicans who cost him the election in 2020, and seem likely to alienate even more Republicans as he struggled to contain the several challenges to his leadership across the primary season.

Despite their corrupt thumbs on the scales Trump’s (soon to be impeached, replaced, or made irrelevant by expanding the Court, I hope) hand-picked cronies on the Supreme Court, Trump faces unprecedented challenges to his election. He still faces almost 100 felony charges across America; his time and energy are consumed with defending himself and keeping himself above water financially as consequences bear down on him for his lawlessness. He is uniquely hated and despised, not just among Democrats, but among independents and even within his own party.

The Lincoln project highlighted this simple fact in a mail today:

Even Karl Rove pointed out Trump’s got BIG problems, live on Fox News:

He’s seeing what we’re seeing. There are gigantic chunks of Republicans who are done with Trump. And that’s what’s going to make the difference in November. Now that Super Tuesday is over, the stage is officially set. In November, it’s America or Trump. And Trump may have bitten off more than he can chew. He’s not as powerful as he was in 2016, or even 2020. He’s slower, weaker, and lacking firepower. How do we know this? All you have to do is look at Karl’s whiteboard.

Sure, Trump won most of his primaries yesterday, but not by the “huge” numbers he expected. In states like Virginia and Colorado, the orange messiah could barely muster up 60 percent of the vote. Oh, and let’s not forget what happened in Vermont, where Trump was utterly and completely embarrassed by Nikki Haley, who ended up taking the state. The cherry on top? These are GOP voters who hate the leader of their own party so much that they show up to the polls just to vote against him. These are the people who have made this primary season so special. Well, for us anyways.

The past few months have made us more optimistic than we could’ve hoped, and last night was no different. The bad man is losing, and that means the pro-democracy movement is winning. We know it, the media knows it, and even The Donald himself knows it.

Lincoln Project email, 3/6/24 (emphases added)

Trump’s position even within his own party is not strong; he is unprecedentedly weak, even among his fellow Republicans. I foresee that the trials and tribulations of the campaign will only make Trump’s position steadily worse over the coming months.

This video from the Wall Street Video breaks down Trump’s weakness among Republicans with simple visuals that make Trump’s growing problem quite clear:

There are other reasons to be optimistic, as well.

Biden and the formidable power of the Democratic Party backed by an incumbent Administration have locked our jaws on Trump and we are just starting to do the rhetorical death shakes. Now that the suspense (such as it was) of the primary’s ‘will they, won’t they’ is done, we can start to focus on the task of destroying the malignancy of the MAGA movement.

The news media narrative will not be as kind to Trump as they have been when he was steadily seeing off challengers within his own party.

Trump is weak politically, unappealing to most, old, inarticulate, suffering obvious dementia, and justice is coming inexorably for him.

The GOP is in crisis across the county as the MAGA fever burns bright enough for most voters to see the unfolding fascist and Christian Nationalist train wreck for the national disaster it has become.

The case Trump and the GOP are making to country on the issues are deeply unpopular among the wider electorate. Most do not want an inhumane deportation campaign. Most do not want American women to be second class citizens. Most do not want to flirt with fascism and abandon democracy.

So, yes, there are reasons to be optimistic and confident.

I am a Democrat as well as a democrat. That means not only do I believe that the Democratic Party continues to embody American values, to promote our fundamental traditions, and to promote the common good, but I believe in the American people’s collective judgment and wisdom to see that fact.

I truly believe that when given the freedom to choose sanity, democracy, the rule of law, and to stand by our traditional values and allies in the world, the American people will rise to the occasion as we have done when given such choices in the past. We are a great people, and a great nation. Democracy is never a perfect means of making collective decisions – just the least worse humanity has ever stuck upon. We may make grave and stupid mistakes – like electing Trump the first time – but we almost never make the SAME grave and stupid mistakes twice.