I have to give credit where credit is due. William Kristol came up with a thought on the campaign that I had not really considered. The idea was essentially for Joe Biden to beat Donald Trump by ignoring him. Of course, tactics can be heavily debated and they probably will be between now and the conventions when things really start ramping up.

The idea (for those that don’t want to go down the rabbit hole) is that traditional campaign tactics will backfire. Engaging with Trump treats him like any other candidate and simply becomes a traditional race between two traditional candidates. Admittedly, this is risky. Denying a debate could be seen as ducking your opponent. Such a gambit would have to involve every effort to make Biden seem more than viable. If he appears to be energetic, coherent, and working for the people then he can overcome the obvious slings and arrows for a failure to engage.

That means not only not debating him but also not even addressing him. Honestly, what does anyone think they will get out of a debate anyway? Trump speeches are degenerating into a river of word salad. His voters aren’t really weighing two coherent candidates with competing visions for the country. Those that are undecided on Biden are undecided based on his age. Watching him stand next to another old man isn’t going to move the needle that much.

One of the things I’m thankful for is discussing politics with my wife. She is a dedicated independent so she holds no punches. Her frustration is she got the feeling that Biden was supposed to be a one term president, but no one from the Democratic party stepped up to take the mantle. That is likely because everyone was waiting for Biden to step aside.

The image you get is of three fielders standing around an easy pop fly and waiting for one of the other fielders to take the reigns and catch it. The ball hilariously drops to the ground with three fielders all staring at each other. In this case it’s not that hilarious. I’m not really certain who that person would be. One of the problems is that we so readily poke holes in every possible candidate that we end up with a bench of people no one seems to want.

So, what you have are two candidates that few people inside the party seem to want. Yet, no one wants to do anything about it. The fear is that if they do something they are handing the election to the other party or ending their own political career. So, we have three or four fielders standing around and hoping someone else catches the easy fly ball.

It’s too late now. This is the matchup we have. One thing is certain. We cannot treat this like any other race. The press always loves a good horse race and if they have any excuse to turn this into one they will. Biden needs to make this a referendum on his health, vitality, and effectiveness because for undecided voters it is. In a sense, it isn’t even about undecided voters but people that are undecided about whether they want to vote in the first place. It’s not as much a gap between two men but an enthusiasm gap. People aren’t going to get more enthusiastic watching Biden tell us how awful Trump is. If you don’t know that by now you aren’t voting for Biden anyway.

A report came out recently about Lindsay Graham’s testimony to the Georgia grand jury. You are more than free to go down that rabbit hole if you like, but it will lead you to the same place we have been with all of these folks. They are on board and loyal until they aren’t. Usually that either entails them being fired or pushed out, but occasionally it happens when one of them finds themselves in legal hot water.

In the case of Graham, he spent months fighting off the Georgia district attorney. You couldn’t compel a sitting senator to testify. Donald Trump had immunity. He had immunity. His mee-maw needed him to wash her feet. He was due for a casting call at his community theater. Okay, maybe the last two were made up, but you get the general idea.

It wasn’t the testimony itself that was remarkable. We knew the truth and have always known the truth. I’m not crawling in the head space of any of his voters. I don’t know what they think they know and quite frankly I’m afraid to find out. However, I am reasonably certain that over 90 percent of those within the GOP that serve in office know exactly who he is and what he is capable of. They also know what he isn’t capable of.

For Graham, it was the reaction afterwards that was remarkable. He almost literally hugged Fani Willis in the hall outside the court room. He thanked her for allowing him to speak and get all of this off of his chest. So, let’s put some things together. He fought them tooth and nail to avoid testifying. He bad-mouthed them in the press and called the whole thing a sham. Then, he went under oath and confirmed everything they had said and even thanked them for the opportunity to say it. Just try to form your brain around that collection of facts.

One could be forgiven if they felt a desire to hitch their ride onto someone powerful. I can see it. Maybe there is a position in the cabinet for you. Maybe you can get on the most exclusive of golf courses or eat in the most exclusive restaurants. You get to stay at expensive resorts and live a life of luxury. Hell, you may even convince yourself you can do good by being in a position of authority. You can slide some good policy underneath the door when he’s not looking.

Yet, there is usually some loyalty that goes both ways in that situation. If I watch your back and run interference for you then you will do the same for me. That never happens in Trump’s case and it never has. That has been very public since 2015, but if you look hard enough you can see examples dating back to the 1970s. Everyone that deals with him personally describes this.

So, for those few demented or broken souls that know all of this and choose to flock to him anyway, we need to develop a distress signal. Maybe they can blink excessively or touch their nose in violent fashion. Give us a signal when you are in too deep and need someone to rescue you from your own avarice. On the other hand, staffers are already likely punching their nose because of his offensive odor. So, maybe they can grab their wrist or tug on their ear. I’m open to suggestions.

Tragedies follow the same formula. Someone gets themselves into an easily avoidable situation and suffers the ultimate demise. Usually the cardinal sin is hubris. Hubris can be defined as “exaggerated pride or self-confidence.” Nearly all of our tragic characters think of themselves as invincible for one reason or another. They are all tragically wrong.

There are any number of days that go by when I lose faith in the universe. The universe can be loosely defined by whatever cosmic force you choose to adhere to. Some traditions call it karma. Others say it is fate. The idea is that eventually everyone gets what is coming to them. That could be positive or negative depending on what we render.

That brings us to our ex-president. He has been found liable in civil court for sexual assault. He has a judgement against him for business fraud even though the total amount is still up in the air. It could be that he will end up owing upwards of 400 million plus in those combined judgments. That can seem like justice, but as we know, those numbers can seem about as real as Monopoly money. You have appeals. You have cries of poor. You have numerous delays and running out of the clock.

E. Jean Carroll might end up fetching a small portion of the money owed to her. After you consider the fees her lawyers will collect you have to wonder if she gets anything other than a symbolic victory. The same will be true for the state of New York. Meanwhile, millions of addle=brained meth heads will send in their five and ten bucks to shield their orange Jesus from feeling the effects of his own stupid crimes.

At each step of the way I have been overwhelmed. I never thought he would be charged with anything. He has found ways to weasel out of these things before. His life has been a life free of responsibility for anything. So, when asked how much jail time he will serve for his 91 counts I still set the over/under at zero with zero being the heavy betting favorite. I don’t know what the excuse will be, but I’ll bet it will be a good one.

The ultimate irony is that none of this needed to happen. He could have continued to live a responsibility free life well into sand trap induced dementia. He could have accepted defeat following 2020 and been a fairly benign figure in history. Most of the 91 counts are directly related to his inability to accept defeat. Some of them are loosely related like the documents case. Sure, the documents aren’t directly related to him refusing defeat but I’m sure he convinced himself they belonged to him because he was still the rightful president.

Even the Stormy Daniels stuff would probably have gone away if he had just walked away. Hubris thy name is Donald. I have no idea if the civil fraud case would have continued, but he probably could have stemmed the tide on all of his civil trials by simply walking away. You got to have a pretty big ego to be president. None of the other presidents have had trouble walking away. He is alone in that regard.

The hope here is that somehow the inability to accept defeat will bring it all crashing down on him. The universe demands it. Our collective sense of judgment demands it. Our own faith in the universe is at stake here. True accountability would be death in prison. Obviously, someone guilty of treason as he most certainly is deserves far worse, but I have to be consistent to my own convictions. I do not believe in the death penalty. So, I’ll take death in prison. Let’s go universe. Let’s get a move on.

For people from my generation, there was nothing quite like the show South Park. It is still going on, but like most things it has lost its edge after awhile. While the show centers more or less around four characters, the single thrust of the show seems to be the antics of Eric Cartman. The show’s creators (Trey Parker and Matt Stone) once called Cartman “the junk in everyone’s soul.” Nearly every episode has him doing something incredibly stupid, evil, or better yet, evil and stupid at the same time. He is incredibly manipulative, devious, and yet his plans usually always fail because he doesn’t know basic things that would be necessary to make such plans work.

For most of us that have watched the show, Cartman reminds us of someone we see in the news. Of course, the difference is that Cartman is a child and fictional. He has a plucky kind of charm even though there really are no redeeming qualities there. He is sexist, racist, and anti-Semitic and fairly obvious about it. I just can’t put my finger on who that sounds like.

We are usually shaped by those that we grew up watching on television. Our parents grew up watching Ronald Reagan in movies and on television and it made perfect sense that he should become president because people felt familiar and comfortable with him Fast-forward to our current generation and it makes some sense. We grew up on talk shows. Not everyone watched all of them, but between us we can probably recite memories of watching Geraldo, Sally Jesse Raphael, and Jerry Springer. The general idea about these shows follows a pretty precise formula.

Those talk shows provided for a pretty interesting dichotomy that I am sure is the basis of some pretty comprehensive psychological study. On the one hand, we enjoyed them because we could feel superior to someone. As messed up as our lives might have been or might be, at least we aren’t THOSE people. The ability to feel superior to someone is powerful and that power is pretty alluring to those that don’t have any.

The second part of that dichotomy is fact that a little piece of all of us wishes we could act like those people. The idea of telling people exactly what I think of them is alluring, but we know we can’t do that and maintain our careers or our relationships. These talk shows have found a magic formula that has us simultaneously feeling superior, disgusted, envious, and wanting more all at the same time.

The talk show generation is now in their forties and fifties. We are the prime age for most voters and provide for the base of people most likely to vote for the real life Eric Cartman. Younger voters don’t really get the whole talk show thing. They can stream their entertainment. They don’t have to worry about what is on the television at that particular time. They can choose their programming and they aren’t motivated by the same primal forces we were.

I think the biggest swing between 2016 and 2020 was the group of people that really didn’t agree with Trump but were oddly entertained by him. He said things we would never think of saying, but many secretly hoped they could. They felt disenfranchised from politics and felt the system had failed them. So, why not install the real life and adult version of Eric Cartman?

A majority of Trump voters would never vote for a Democrat and so you aren’t winning those folks over. However, enough switched because they saw what an Eric Cartman presidency wrought. They simply need to be reminded. As they told us when we were kids, “it’s all in good fun until someone’s eye gets poked out.” The pandemic wasn’t fun. Being a laughingstock around the globe wasn’t fun. Watching kids in cages and racists emboldened wasn’t fun. Eventually, you find something that touches on something that directly impacts them and President Cartman wasn’t good for any of that.

I predicted somewhere (I’m not sure if it was here) that the gambit of using the 14th amendment to bar Trump from appearing on the ballot was not going to work ultimately. For the time being we are going to ignore the obvious pollicization of the court and just look at the law before them. My fears were realized when the attorney general of Missouri pulled the stunt I had been waiting for all along.

For those that don’t want to go down the rabbit hole, the attorney general is threatening to hold Joe Biden’s name off of the ballot in Missouri. Has Biden participated in an insurrection or done anything illegal? Of course not. He all but admitted as such.  When the provision for the 14th amendment was written, it was written in such a way for a specific purpose. Belonging to the Confederacy was by itself proof that you had participated in an insurrection. So, the authors of that amendment left it up to the states and ultimately the attorneys general to make the call.

The problem is two-fold. First, what mechanism does that person use to determine whether someone can legally seek the office? Donald Trump has not been charged with insurrection and was officially found not guilty by the Senate. So, how does one reach that determination? Forget the fact that we all watched it unfold in front of our eyes on national television. Forget that the January 6th committee has already uncovered more than enough evidence to show that it happened and that he spearheaded it. Forget that the majority of the 91 counts that he has been charged with in three of the four jurisdictions are directly or indirectly related to it. Is there actual proof in a court of law? If not, who decides on the facts and what they mean?

While what Missouri (or one man in Missouri) is proposing is preposterous, it does highlight a problem. It is a human one. You can write all the laws you want and you can write them as carefully and clearly as you like. It still relies on someone or a group executing that law.

This fundamental failure is on two groups of people. The first guilty party is the Republican party. They could have stopped this nonsense at any point. They could have done it in 2015 when he decided to run. They could have done it any number of moments during his reign of terror. They could have done it immediately after he left office at the second impeachment trial. They could have simply said you aren’t running anymore. They could do it now. I’m not sure what the Democratic party would do under the same circumstances. I really can’t say because there has never been a Donald Trump before. It is a uniquely Republican problem at this point in history. The Democrats have tried to bail them out in multiple instances and they refuse to take the lifeline.

The second group of people are the voters themselves. This isn’t about liberal or conservative anymore. Values are values after all and he is a man that has none. I remember talking to a former colleague (that I have snoozed on Facebook) that argued that he was a honorable man with a ton of positive qualities. I dared him to name one. He couldn’t. He couldn’t because you can’t. It was never about him or the positive qualities he supposedly possesses.

The Supreme Court will likely strike down Colorado’s decision. They will do it for craven and political reasons, but they will also have legal and ethical ones. In a democracy can we allow one person to determine someone’s fitness for office? Wouldn’t that be antithetical to what we are at our core? I know people want to find some way to save us from ourselves. I get that completely. Unfortunately, there is no easy way out. We will have to vanquish this pit stain of a human being the old-fashioned way. The GOP certainly isn’t going to do it. Our courts might catch up to him one day, but ultimately it will have to be us. Buckle up folks. It will be a bumpy ride.

The House of Representatives has opened up an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden. I am suddenly reminded of an old episode of the “Dukes of Hazzard” where Boss Hogg quipped that they would throw the Duke boys in jail. When asked the charge he just said they would come up with something later. Jurisprudence was set back a few centuries that day. Thank God it was just poorly written fiction.

Fiction has become reality as the Republicans in the House have no idea what crimes Biden committed. They just assume he has done something. His brother repaid a loan. His son repaid a loan. He was on the speaker phone once with someone his son worked with to say hello. These are all horrible crimes and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The trouble is that there isn’t a law against any of those things. I suppose the House could pass such a law on the fly to make it illegal, but they couldn’t pass gas at a family function. They’ve been the second least productive Congress in the nation’s history. They passed 22 bills in the last calendar year. The Congress between 1931 and 1932 passed the least with 21. Congratulations Kevin, er Mike er who is in charge now?

This is how things are going in Washington. Donald Trump was impeached twice and had a majority vote for conviction both times. Only two other presidents had been impeached previously. None have been convicted. The general idea is that Trump can then go on the campaign trail and argue that Biden was also impeached, so they really are just the same at the end of the day. Nihilism is defined as “the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless.” In other words, there are no rules and there is no discernable moral code. It is an old Soviet mind trick. Essentially, if everyone is evil then my evil really doesn’t matter. Sure, there are degrees of evil, but that is just a thought experiment. We then can compare Edwin Edwards to Ted Bundy and put them on the same pedestal of evil.

The folks in the House GOP are hoping that you don’t notice the difference. You won’t notice the difference between a man charged 91 different times in four different jurisdictions and a guy where criminal plots are being thrown out like a pitch meeting at the WB Network. The ever-relevant Hunter Biden offered to testify at a public hearing and James Comer made it sound like Biden had kicked his dog. How dare you expose our bullshit in front of God and everyone?

The sad thing is that this actually works on some people. Thankfully, it won’t work on enough to make a big difference. Most of his voters know Biden isn’t really a crook. They know their guy is. They just don’t care. He is a crook fighting for them. At least he’s fighting the same people they fight with on a regular basis. Well, maybe he’s just using a bunch of fighting words.

It’s going to be entertaining though. Forget about anything getting done. We have another budget crunch coming in February and this particular Congress seems incapable of focusing on two things at once. Do we focus on the fake impeachment and manufacturing evidence of a crime that isn’t really a crime? Do we focus on actually funding the government and making sure essential services are met? Damn this is hard.