I love the fact that the majority of so-called political experts and pundits on both the left and right in both the US and Canada- are stumped and stupefied over the success of the Trumpster and the raging septuagenarian socialistic Sanders, the junior senator from small town-state Vermont. These elitist lame stream commentators and analysts and even the long time political Democratic and GOP hacks are positively verklempt (speechless, overwrought with emotion) over the unpredictable political success of these two characters.
Trump’s amateur reality TV show run for the presidency was supposed to have fizzled months ago. The experts had the GOP coalescing behind the heavily-funded and favored Jeb Bush or the younger and more immigrant-friendly, youthful and telegenic Marco Rubio.
Rubio is just a poor man’s middle of the road Cuban Mitt Romney. Caught in the vortex of the Hobbesian GOP’s highly primal primary politics. Which is short, brutish, no holds-barred, and down and dirty. One day Rubio is for legitimizing illegal immigrants. The next day, bowing to the anti-immigrant GOP right wing, he is for deporting most of them out of the country.
The problem for Rubio, Cruz, Christie and all the other pretenders to the GOP throne, is that none of these political dudes appear comfortable in their own skin. They all appear, weak, indecisive. Tacking one way, then the other, as the always shifting political winds.
Very much like the now reviled and weakened President Barack Obama. President Barry started with such “hope” and promise. But he has been exposed as the weakest, the most obsequious and the sorriest US president in the last century. He talks and talks and talks. But on the world stage, he carries a very limp stick.
Obama will forever be associated with the effeminate slogan, “leading from behind”.
His disappearing “red line in the Mideast sand on Syria”, was the final straw that broke the camel’s back, to mix Mideast metaphors.
From that time forth, Putin jumped in and overshadowed him. The Iranian mullahs mocked him. And Barry’s key allies in Europe, the Mideast (Israel), Asia ( Japan) and South Asia ( India) began distancing themselves from him and America.
The result- a horrible and embarrassing near fatal blow to America’s confidence and national self-esteem, both domestically and internationally.
The feminization of Obama, both literally at home and abroad, is the reason for the rise of Trump and Sanders.
As the brilliant Ross Douthat , argues in Sunday’s New York Times, (see article) Americans- young, old, white, male, female and of color, want American to be great again. They are tired of settling for mediocrity. Of just getting by. They want to prosper. They want a better future for themselves and their children. They want to have a shot at what Trump has- and is offering.
As for the Democrats. Sanders genuinely believes that government can be a force for good and can uplift all Americans, beyond mediocrity to greatness.
For the Democrats, Sanders is the change agent. Hillary Clinton is “Yesterday’s Woman”. A congenital liar and prevaricator. Scandals, lies and deceptions are embedded in her DNA. “Whitewater, Benghazi, destruction of her national security/private emails, Slick Willy selling access to Secretary of State Hillary, for millions of dollars- the list goes on and on and on- with no end in sight. Until Sanders drives a stake in the primaries- once and for all- through Clinton’s cold-hearted chest.
Clinton is no advocate for women or women’s rights. She is a power-hungry Lady Macbeth, tainted by the blood of publicly humiliating and destroying scores of vulnerable women preyed on by her sexual predator of her husband.
I predict a Trump/Sanders fight to the death. And a Trump White House in 2017.
Mitch Wolfe: The Playful Contrarian 