Let's Not Get Ahead of Ourselves
Trump may be down, but he's not out!
Things look a little better post-debate. Donald Trump looked and sounded like the dopey, narcissistic racist we all know and hate. Thank you, Donald, for giving us this moment of joy, watching you melt under the world’s bright lights. The only people not smiling were our nation’s enemies and a lot of not-so-bright Foxified racists.
There is one thing, though, that many of my fellow “you-haters” seem to forget, so I am here to remind them: Never count Donald Trump out. He may have been kicked around the schoolyard by the smaller and more civil female vice president, but it does not mean that he will roll over. Donald Trump has no respect for anyone, let alone himself, and so we can’t think that he will suddenly begin to get some perspective on how horrific and stupid he really is. Donald Trump does not reflect, he just bounces from attack to attack like an out-of-control bumper car in a carnival slamming everything that gets near him.
Trump is down, but he is not out, and we all need to take a deep breath and remember this. The polls are showing that Kamala Harris kicked his ass, with even Trump supporters agreeing with the assessment. The vice president’s margin of victory was larger than that of Joe Biden in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016.
There is one thing, though, and it sadly comes down to gender: Hillary Clinton, despite having thrashed Trump, lost the election. Ms. Harris is looking good, but it almost seems like the jerking knee of American voters forces female candidates to be run through the “whore-Madonna” complex filter. They have to be divinely perfect, and if there is one single blemish, they quickly fall into the “whore” category, and the votes don’t fall their way.
For all of his faults and as badly as he looked at the debate, Trump still has the resource of a rabidly loyal base of voters who, on any given day, if just a tiny percentage of Democrat voters came out to vote, can give him an Electoral College victory. Ms. Harris has to be perfect to peel off a few layers of those voters to her, and while she may have done that at the debate, there is still a lot of time for Democrats to act like gloating assholes.
I can still feel the sting of defeat when I was 12 years old in Little League. Our All-Star team was coached by a guy my father once punched out — so I didn’t play despite being one of the best players in the league. I didn’t even get the new polyester uniform but was forced to wear one of the old-style cotton ones (yes, I recall this pain as if it were yesterday) — and we were on a roll. Having beaten three teams in the area, all we had to do to advance to the state level was beat one more team. My teammates were gloating relentlessly while the other kids cried. They started singing “Another One Bites the Dust” in the dugout even before the last out was recorded.
Giddy and cocky, they then shifted gears and started singing, “We Are the Champions.” I had nothing to do with it and looked on in disgust at them. As you probably know, we lost the next game by a score of 12–0. We managed only two hits. I was permitted to get my first at-bat in the last inning of the game and smacked a double to right center on the first pitch. Yes, our cockiness ate us alive. We weren’t as bad as that score, but we figured we were so good that we didn’t need to play much anymore. We showed up, and people were already talking about the road trip for the state finals — win there, and it would be off to the Little League World Series.
I don’t really mind having missed the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. I will be very upset if we get full of ourselves and Trump does what Trump does best: Rises from the swamp and sways just enough voters in the swing states to seize victory from the jaws of defeat. This is not a time to giggle and high-five each other. It is time to keep our foot on his throat and to grind hard until he is tapping the mat and crying out that he gives up.
We still have a lot of work to do, folks, so let’sdo it. Should Kamala win, we must be prepared for what will happen next. It won’t just be a big party. It may require us to fight for what is rightly ours: the country.