Over at The Bulwark, a place for ‘Never Trumpers’ conservative to make their case from the right that Trump is a deranged, unstable, and terrible person to hold the office of the Presidency Charlie Sykes made this observation:

But in this case, the vector of this disease is not Twitter: the root of the malignancy is the president himself. Until we deal with Trump, everything else is just noise, because he is the bully pulpit.

I sympathize with Charlie. A political organization that he had believed in, devoted his adult life to, and fought for is now lead by a narcissistic man-baby throwing tantrums and feces at anything and anyone that displeases him, but Trump is not the root, he is not the cause, he is the end result of decades of ‘red meat’ cultivation by GOP heads that believed that they could always control the monster that they created, the GOP rabid base.

Trump did not, like Athena from Zeus’ forehead, spring fully formed during the Republican Primary but rather he grew in carefully cultivated ground. He grew in soil prepared with decades of racist attacks carefully coded to allow plausible deniability, in soil watered with attacks on expertise, in soil weeded of dissent and inconvenient facts, and in soil that was sheltered with illusionary morality providing its fruit of illegitimate righteousness.

The leaders of the GOP injected their base with steroids of hate, deploying state initiatives banning gay marriage, demonizing undocumented immigrant without ever truly addressing the big businesses that employ them, stood aside while the levers of power were deployed in endless investigations of political enemies, turned blind eyes to overtly racist and baseless attack on politicians of color all while cloaking their supporters with an armor of victimhood, asserting that they were the ‘true victims’ of untampered hate.

No, Trump is not the root cause he is the inevitable metastasized tumor of this untreated cancer.

It is a presidential election year, the economy is in shambles, a pandemic ravages the US population, and the political partisanship is a mental pandemic that has infected out psyche for years.

Trump won the presidency with an electoral college victory from votes that total less than the number of Americans that have died from COVID-19 against an opponent that rightly or wrong carried 30 years of personal and political baggage into the contest with an electorate that had the erroneous sense that Trump simply couldn’t emerge victorious.

This time his opponent doesn’t spark the same visceral emotions, unemployment is skyrocketing, everyone knows he can win, and there is a clear record that Trump is incapable of making a pivot to being ‘presidential.’ There is every possibility that Trump will lose.

Setting aside the more fantastical result of a Trump defeat that he simply refuses to leave office and assuming the much more probable outcome that Biden is sworn in next year what happens next?

First off, Trump will insist and never move from the position that the election was ‘stolen.’ Illusionary and delusional claims of ‘voter fraud’ will be his constant whine. Because the GOP voting base is solidly behind him, they will pick up and echo these baseless conspiracies.

Because there is money to made in sky high rating, Fox News will make him a frequent feature in the broadcasts, keeping the base energized and watching.

In order to retain the support of the GOP voters that determine life and death in the primaries Republican Politicians will hew to, endorse, and legitimize all of his insane, nonsensical, and baseless charges of fraud, driving the party further into his ‘ideology.’ White nationalist will continue to gain power in the GOP and the ‘Never Trumpers’ will be as outcast of the Birchers once were.

This is the future of the National Republican Party for at least the next decade.

Listen, I am far from any fan of the current narcissistic man-baby occupying the Presidency. In my opinion he is a conman, corrupt, dim-witted, mean, lying and morally reprehensible. The sooner he can be removed from this position and someone of general competence installed the better for this nation and yes for the world. The current pandemic illustrates perfectly why there is always someone to vote against and that the office of President of the Unites States of America is not place for On-The-Job training.

That said attacks on his weight are offensive and stupid. The man’s corruption and incompetence are a factor of his BMI. People who would consider themselves sensitive to marginalized communities will still, gleefully, share memes and gifs that are hurtful far beyond their target of the man-baby president. These attacks belittling him due to his size are no better and in my view equivalent to Trump’s mocking of a disabled reporter. Is that really the company you want to keep?

I also despise the food snobbery people direct at Trump and indirectly at others. Food is one of the purely personal pleasures in life. I’m not going to judge you by what you eat to make you happy and if that’s what you do to others then in that instance, you’re the asshole.

I’ll vote for a potted palm to get this cruel, petty, dishonest, conman out of the office but I will maintain my morality while I am doing it.

We are living through a global pandemic and to gather in large crowds is to take a risk to your life a risk that grows greater with your age. Wisely, many states, though not all, have issues orders and guidelines for the population to stay in their homes, to avoid close proximity to other people, and take other precautions to void becoming infected or passing the virus to others. 2020 is also an election year and recognizing the importance of both our electoral and health civic duties many states have postponed their primary and other elections while also instituting procedures allowing people to vote by mail ensuring that both duties are honored.

Except for Wisconsin.

Wisconsin held an election this week, April 7^th, 2020 to be precise. The Governor, Tony Evers, a Democrat, had called the legislature into a special session to deal with the electoral issue during their pandemic crisis. The Republican controlled body gaveled themselves into session and then immediately disbanded the session without taking any action or debate at all. They were equally unwilling to make voting by mail any easier even as the virus continues to spread throughout the nation and their state. Milwaukee normally has 180 polling station for an election, due to people fears of coming out and gathering in large numbers so many volunteer polls quit that the city was forced to conduct its election with just five polling stations.

The GOP sees this election as critical. The state is filling a spot on the Wisconsin Supreme court and if the conservative can win the seat it will cement a conservative majority on the panel. It is axiomatic for conservatives that low turnout elections benefit the Republican party and apparently, they are willing to do anything to depress turnout and win including placing the voting population in peril of a deadly infectious disease.

Here is Wisconsin Speaker of the Assembly Robin Voss and how he appeared at a polling station to advise the public it was ‘incredibly safe’ to show up to vote.

Photo from CNN

This portends badly for the November elections. The popular vote has been trending against the GOP for several elections and rather than adjusting their stands to conform with the public they would rather disenfranchise and kill voters. I hope this blows up in their face. I hope that in Wisconsin the voters brave enough and committed enough to show up and stand for hours with other people are the ones dedicated to seeing the perversion of democracy ended. Only time and the vote total will tell.

The Corona Crisis is upon us and it remains to be seen just how bad it will become. Indications are that the pandemic will continue to spread straining and stressing healthcare system around the world and here in the United States where just in time supply chains and significant dependence upon Chinese manufacturing create an additional economic danger to our already fragile systems.

It is possible that this may ‘burn out’ quickly and the effect may be less severe than they currently appear but it would not be wise to bet the farm upon such an outcome. People are modifying their behavior this past weekend I was at a small convention and the men in the restroom were more diligent about washing their hands than I can ever remember men behaving so.

For Trump the Corona Crisis represents a threat that cannot be defeated with the three Bs of his usual arsenal, Bullying, Bullshitting, or Blocking.

The virus is immune to taunts, nicknames, and intimidation so he cannot bully his way out of danger.

Trump’s propensity for bullshit works perfectly fine in the arena of politics where preferred reality is accepted over actual reality with regularity but emergency rooms are not spin rooms and no amount of clever language or outright lies will change a single infection to a healthy person. Viral Pneumonia doesn’t care what you told anyone, it will do what it does including spreading and killing.

The Senate Republicans have been Trump’s political protectors, covering up his crimes, blocking investigations, and transforming his guilt into innocence, but against a pandemic they are powerless. They cannot table the matter or refuse to take it and make it disappear by denying it airtime in the news cycle. People are going to get sick, people are going to die, and radio talk show hosts calling it a common cold will do nothing to change that reality.

If this burns out quickly and if the effects on the economy are brief and mild then Trump may escape through luck, but if the gets worse, if it returns stronger in the fall, then his golden ride may finally be over.

No, this is not an argument that the landscape of the general election favors Senator Sanders. If Sanders heads the ticket, I think this election will end up turning on a handful of votes in just a few states, much as the 2016 contest did ad that means it either candidate’s presidency is in the cards. What I want to expound on is why is the ground favorable for Sanders to win the nomination, what has made his candidacy viable at all.

The GOP unintendedly tilled and cultivated the ground for Trump for years before the 2016 election and I think that this was also a factor in the rise of Sanders.

Throughout the two terms of the Obama presidency one clear and consistent theme was that the GOP would do anything and everything to block, hinder, and undermine the Democrats in everything they did and everything they passed. The general thinking at the time, and it still holds true today, is that there is no electoral downside to playing an obstructionist role. That the electorate would only punish a party holding the presidency for failing to achieve things rather than notice the dedicated obstructionism. Electorally this has been proven to be fairly accurate. However, I think there are second order effects at play that many have failed to consider.

One of Joe Biden principal arguments for his election is that he can ‘work with Republicans,’ a plea to return to a sense of bipartisanship where the parties may differ but can set aside their differences to work for the common good. The problem is that there is zero evidence that the GOP is interested in that sort of arraignment and plenty of evidence, see the Obama years, arguing that the GOP be totally obstructionist to any Democratic administration.

Faced with this history and this likely future a common refrain from Democrats is that it is a fool’s errand to give any ground to the GOP on anything. Like Charlie Brown and Lucy, the roles are set and nothing, they believe, is going to change that. Given that starting position it makes logical sense to go with a candidate unwilling to compromise. Sanders of a rational reaction to the GOP obstruction. The thinking goes, they won’t work with us, they won’t respect any compromise, then we should just go for all out and not even bother with half measures.

Should Sanders will the White House, not as unlikely as some believe, the GOP will have played a major factor in