Gretchen Whitmer F***ed Up: She Is No Longer My Choice for 2028
Dems are NOT building a unifying message to stop Trump's fascist takeover of our country.
This is how I will remember Gretchen Whitmer — hiding like a child who believes if she can’t see, we can’t see her. Nope, I won’t vote for this warrior from Michigan. As much as I love her strength in taking on the dummy cultists from one of the most whacked-out states in the country, her bending of the knee to meet Trump in the Oval office has pushed me too far.
Whitmer immediately explained she was there to get help for her state. I accept that. I also accept that she and her team know what makes more sense: to kiss up to the orange POS and manipulate his paranoia. Confronting him directly only guarantees that the people of her state will suffer, which will not harm Trump at all but could doom her politically. As a president with no regard for the law, Trump wields enormous power over governors. If calling him sir means you will get billions of dollars in federal investment, why not utter those words and gargle later?
I will even offer up one more “I get it” here. Whitmer’s ability to survive in that laboratory of cultist lunacy that Michigan, in many ways, is, demonstrates why she might be a strong candidate for getting the cultists to return to the Democratic Party. But here is the thing: since Trump won the election, Whitmer has been the most active of all potential nominees in 2028 in building bridges to Trump. The day after the election, she sent him a hand-written letter offering her support and included her cellphone number.
Instead of waiting a moment or two to see how the convicted felon would act, whether or not he would govern sanely or insanely as he has been, she was one of the first to kiss the ring privately. She threw herself on the floor before him and begged mercy. She couldn’t know how and what he would do in his first 100 days. Despite all of the promises and warnings about Project 25, few would’ve believed Trump’s team would have worked so diligently to wreck not just the United States government but the world’s economy. With each public and private display of fealty in the name of “helping Michigan,” Whitmer digs the hole she now finds herself in deeper and deeper.
Gretchen Whitmer can no longer be trusted to fight for what is best for America. She is now and forever stained by the stench of Donald Trump. If you have ever run over a skunk — or driven over a skunk road kill that happened to be in the middle of the road like I did — you know that the smell does not fade quickly. It lingers for weeks and sometimes months. In some cases, it requires selling the car. Gretchen Whitmer stinks!
Dems failing to find a messsage
Bernie Sanders and AOC are doing a great job communicating the message that most Dems are either too weak to or too scared to. There are instances of Democratic Senators and Representatives verbally abusing Trump’s defenders when they appear before Congress, but none of this is creating a tangible message around which something like a “red hat” can be created. Adolf Hitler himself designed the black Swastika encircled by white on the blood-red field. That symbol hypnotized millions of Germans. It is still a powerful symbol representing white supremacy and hate that unites dummies all over the world.
Trump’s MAGA with the ridiculous red hat will go down in history as a symbol representing hate, racism, white supremacy, fascism, and sadly, much more. In the way that Hitler’s Swastika can’t be linked to anything positive, so too MAGA will never be connected to anything but a moment when tens of millions of formerly sane people lost their minds and joined a cult. The power of this cult requires that Democrats bring their A-game to the communications battle — but they aren’t.
They aren’t communicating anything. They are too patiently waiting for the dust to settle. Each time it seems the debris and wreckage of the latest Trump eff-up will land and a moment to begin slowly communicating about the manmade chaos will arrive, Trump blows something else up, and the previous tragedy fades away like words across the sky. They want to investigate. They want to use the traditional levers of minority power to show Americans why Trump is a tragedy.
The thing is, except for us political junkies, no one is paying attention to those well-meaning investigations. No one is watching as Democratic Senators and Representatives shred lost-in-the-headlights Trump administration officials. Trump has trained the world to live in the moment of the soundbite more than any other politician. Until Trump spoke the words “fake news,” no one knew what that was. The words “fake news” are now understood in most languages.
I wrote an article last week about “rallying points.” Democrats need verbal rallying points on par with MAGA and “fake news.” No matter how right and eloquent you may be, a cultist will say “fake news,” and your argument has been shattered. We don’t have a unified communications strategy because we are too goddamned smart. We are too kind. We shy away from stereotypes and blanket statements.
I wrote an article yesterday about the mentality of the average Chinese person. Dollars to donuts, many “too-liberals” will regard a statement like that as being “racist.” To just an accusation, I would say “horeshit.” Once, when I wrote an article criticizing Kamala Harris and her role as vice president, liberals attacked me as being a misogynist. Up until that moment, the people who attacked me had agreed with everything I wrote in my articles, but by writing one accurate assessment of Harris’s role as VP, I became the ultimate enemy.
According to Sigmund Freud, the narcissism of small differences is the tendency to have interpersonal feuds when people are closer to agreeing on most things. This is because they are hypersensitive to minor differences. This hypersensitivity dooms Democrats in the communications battle with Republicans. Democratic voters tend to be better educated and more adamant in their opinions because they are based on facts. When someone offers an opinion slightly different, the fights kick off over the misinterpretation, or lack of knowledge, of facts.
This is why creating a tidal-wave-sized slogan like MAGA or fake news is so difficult. Too many of the “smart” Democrats will pump the brakes on the desire to be swept up into some nameless, faceless movement.
As Hillary Clinton has said on more than one occasion and repeated in the runup to the 2024 election, we need to get ourselves and set aside the need to always be right. Too many Democrats were being too picky, embracing the comfort of the “small differences,” and so they either sat out in 2024, voted third party, or, in the case of many Muslims, voted for Trump.
If we will have a chance in 2026, we need to stop chasing the debris of Trump’s chaos, come up with some calls to action like MAGA, close our eyes, and repeat them with the intensity and sense of hope Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.
Pick up my book, “How Bro Culture Won the 2024 Election for Donald Trump,” here.