L&T Publisher Earl Watt
As the rhetoric heats up down the stretch of the presidential election, it seems statesmanship simply doesn’t exist.
A completely unscientific measuring stick is the behavior of the candidates right now, and while Donald Trump continues his usual jabs at what he believes to be the inadequacies of Kamala Harris, she has continued down the road of how Trump is dangerous and irrational and has now added fascist to her attacks.
The real danger to democracy is how these campaigns are hurting whoever wins.
Like it or not, one of these two will be president in January, and no matter how they may try to reach across the aisle to work together, the ability to do so will be so damaged that it will be next to impossible.
Harris has already avoided appearing at certain charitable events with Trump because she doesn’t want to “normalize” him.
Trump has been a national figure for half a century. The Trump name has been a fixture in the business world, and anyone who aspired to be anyone met with Trump in New York City at some time before he decided to get involved in politics.
Trump already served four years as president, but the far left is trying everything they can to paint him as some deranged lunatic.
Likewise, Trump degrades the intelligence of Harris and says she is not qualified for the job, and regardless of how twisted the Democratic Party’s process was on putting her at the top of the ticket, she is the nominee for better or worse.
Trump has already been the target of an assassin’s bullet that luckily only grazed his ear, but how many more will he have to dodge not only during the next two weeks of the campaign but for the next four years if he wins?
In an election that will be a razor-thin margin either way, how will the country come back together to support whoever is chosen?
That’s the threat to “democracy.” That word has been twisted over time, but we use it now to refer to our system of government and the right of the people to pick our leaders through elections and the Electoral College.
Whoever becomes the next president will face overwhelming opposition from the onset of their term.
The only clear prediction is that the Senate will most likely become Republican by a narrow 51-49 margin with the possibility of reaching 52 or 53, but it will be tight.
Which party will control the House is anyone’s guess, but either way it will still be by a very thin majority.
Our problem as of late has been to turn a thin majority into a dictatorial mandate that doesn’t exist. Parties try to use their lean majorities to push the most extreme portions of their agendas.
Because of the heated rhetoric between the two presidential candidates, trying to convince even a handful on the other side of the aisle will be poison. Neither of them will be able to seek bipartisan agreements because they will have damaged each side so badly that half of the nation will never see the winner as legitimate.
And that will lead to more disagreements between the states which then trickles down to the people.
We will see the other side as our enemy, not our countrymen and women. And whatever policy they push will be either the salvation or destruction of the nation as we know it.
After Barack Obama was re-elected he met with a Congressional delegation, and when defeated candidate John McCain spoke up, Obama silenced him with the statement, “Elections have consequences, John.”
The message — we won, you lost, and now we are going to do things our way and our way only.
McCain was a bridge builder, but to the Democrats he was the enemy.
Ironically, McCain later cast the deciding vote to save Obamacare when Trump was president.
But acts of crossing the aisle are all but impossible now, and it’s because statesmanship is dead.
Whoever wins will have little ability to govern with bipartisanship.
