Really. I had hoped Trump would go down hard but this is beyond what I had hoped for. I predicted that after about six months the Repubs would have mostly forgottem him as he continued to rant about the stolen election and that maybe he would be prosected for tax fraud. He would have had a few rallies and they would have drawn crowds at first but even MAGAts would have eventually gotten tired and stopped coming. But there was the possibility that he would have kept his tiny hands around the throat of the Repub party.
No more. He’ll always have support of, let’s be optimistic and say 25 million of those who voted for him. I do not believe that 74 million Americans believe it is a good idea to have an idiot and incompetent Fascist as President. The exact number who do believe that is impossible to measure precisely, but I say that most are uninformed and/or misinformed. They are resposible for that but a lot of them will change their mind when they see an actual competent person in the White House. I am not talking about the MAGAts who attend rallies, or who wish they could have attended, or who are on Parler, or even the guy who left his Trump For Law and Order sign up for two months after the election but took it down after 1/6.
Maybe I am talking about that guy, maybe the truth about Trump finally got to him, but I am certianly talking about the ordinary people who live down the street from you or who go to your church or Ruritan Club or coach the Little League team.
Can we call them the Silent Trump Majortiy? The ones who knew Trump was a con man and liar, but who, from their uninformed perspective, thought he was better than the socialist Biden, which seems so ridiculous to type, but it has now been a hundred years since almost every Democratic candidate was called a socialist, or at least a socialist sympathizer.
I saw a flyer from a local church before the election, it showed the comparisons between the Republican and Democratic platforms. Some of it was bullshit, for example on whether or not Democrats who allow “killing babies” nine months into a pregnancy, for which they said the Demcratic position was unknown. But there was a very key line that said "You don’t vote for the man, you vote for his positions. "
I just heard a story on the radio, Biden calling the current rollout of the vaccine a disaster, and it surely has been. If I heard it right, he is proposing using the Defense Production Act to get 100 million vaccines in 100 days. It may fall short of that but at least it is a comprehensive nationwide plan. Trump hasn’t said a goddamn word about COVID since the day before the election when he said that after the election the media would stop talking about it.
Trump is the one who stopped talking about it, while we have record number of cases. This is going to change even more people’s minds. Like the people who don’t want to die before their time.
Disclaimer - don’t take what I have said above as indication that I was or am now a great supporter of Biden, on other issues, he was my last choice among Democratic nominees. But after Trump, I’ll use a line from JJ Hunsecker in Sweet Smell of Success about a potential Presidential candidate - “My big toe would make a better President.”
As far as progressive change, we now have a Big Toe President. But at least that toe is on his left foot.