Governing a nation as large and diverse as ours is a difficult proposition even for the most talented of politicians, and the current bitter political and cultural polarization has made it even more difficult. But I am amazed at how woefully incompetent both political parties seem to be these days. Both seem to be doing their best to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
On the Republican side, it is simply mind-boggling that the RNC (Republican National Committee) would censure Senators Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, and withdraw any financial support for their re-election campaigns. Here the Republicans are trying to take back control of the Senate, yet are unwilling to support two of their most popular (with voters, not with Trump supporters) Senators. Republicans are in a great position to take back control of Congress in the upcoming midterms, yet Trump and his supporters may well jinx the whole effort, just as they did with the 2021 Georgia Senate runoffs, which might well have been won by Republican David Perdue (who only lost 48.4 to 50.6%) and/or Kelly Loeffier (who only lost by 49 to 51%) if Trump and his supporters hadn’t so clumsily interfered.
Beyond that, Republicans seem to be content to just be against anything the Biden administration or the Democratic Congress proposes. It’s hard to know what they are really for, and I can’t see how they can appeal to voters if they don’t have something positive to offer.
On the Democratic side, setting aside the questionable performance thus far by the Biden administration, it is simply mind-boggling how far out of touch the elite ultra-left progressives and their wealthy donors have gotten with even their own Democratic voter base, let alone the independent voters they desperately need to retain power. With absolutely no margin in the Senate, why would they be so stupid as to viciously attack two of their own (Senators Manchin and Sinema), when they desperately need to hold on to every seat?
Leading Democratic pollsters and strategists have been telling the party for the last two years that they are pushing the wrong issues, but apparently to no effect. A recent Pew poll of registered voters found that the top voter concern was (as expected) the economy, with the pandemic and crime also ranked high. Yet liberals in power in Congress spent their time and political capital, unfruitfully, on climate change (11th rank) and social justice (8th rank).
So the Republican party seems to be in the grip of the Trump/QAnon nuts, while the Democratic party seems to be in the grip of far-left activists and wealthy donors with largely impractical Utopian ideas. And both parties have adopted a “my way or the highway” approach to even their own members.
Both George Friedman (The Storm Before the Calm) and Peter Zeihan (Disunited Nations) have predicted a decade or so of political disruption, They seem to have been accuate.
Posts
