With apologies to President Clinton for absconding with his line from the 1992 debates.
Here’s the thing. Right now, I think the count for 2020 Democratic candidates sits at about 22, and that doesn’t count the very minor ones. There are over 20 candidates running that anyone paying attention to politics would know. And with that number of people running, there’s a real “my candidate is better than yours” going on, as well as the degradation of candidates because “the candidate you like isn’t perfect and here’s why” bullshit going on. What does this do? All it really does is weaken all the candidates, as well as divide us. If 2016 Clinton versus Sanders taught us anything, it’s that dividing the Democrats only strengthens the Republicans. How many “Bernie or Bust” people out there stayed home and didn’t vote in 2016? Yes, there’s talk of impropriety, as well as Russians hacking at least two Florida counties. But the real number of people who decided it would be better to sit at home, effectively holding their breath and throwing a fit because THEIR candidate wasn’t at the top of the ticket? Yeah, all that did was mean another vote for Trump.
And it just gets worse from there. Trump has pushed through more judges – judges that have horrible records on women’s issues, abortion, LGBT rights, civil rights, et cetera – than any other president at this point in their term. And we all know about his two SCOTUS appointments.
This morning there are two headlines that I read that tells you exactly what road we’re heading down. They are:
Gay-Marriage Opponents Hope Trump’s Judicial Appointees Will Overturn The Law
U.S. Appeals Ruling That Granted Gay Couple’s Son Citizenship
Trump and Republicans, with the help of the right-wing judges that he’s put into place and his appointments to the Department of State, are already doing damage to LGBT couples. In one version of the second story, it’s stated that even though the children would automatically be granted citizenship to a straight couple, a gay couple doesn’t qualify.
Why do you think Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, and other right-wing controlled states are pushing severe anti-abortion laws? They think that with Trump’s appointees, that overturning Roe v. Wade is going to happen under Trump’s much friendlier SCOTUS.
So while people keep fighting on social media, promoting their candidate of choice and denigrating every other candidate, we’re playing right into Trump’s hands. And if we keep fighting, weakening us all, you can sure as hell bet there’ll be four more years of the orange idiot in the White House.