Stumbling Bloc
July 21, 2025

I recall well how the 2008 Presidential election cycle, a season meant to be dominated by Hillary Clinton and John McCain, established pols who'd worked their way up the Washington food-chain, was upended by one Barack Hussein Obama, who soared to the top of the political atmosphere by virtue of youthful good-looks, charisma and hollow oratory as would a hot-air filled soap bubble had it been running for office instead.

Mrs. Clinton was hopelessly outclassed in her own party while Mr. McCain, a man who never seemed to me to fit properly in his suit, representing the opposition, came off as a relic and fuddy-duddy next to the smooth and polished executive demeanor of Mr. Obama. The Republican swirl down the drain was accelerated when, in an attempt to capture the women's vote abandoned by the Dems when they selected Obama, McCain chose as his running mate Sarah Palin, someone who, like Tim Walz 16 years later, came across as a local yokel; you could see how she could succeed in regional politics while simultaneously understanding that, like McCain's tailoring, she just wasn't a fit for national-level exposure.

So Mr. Obama it was and the opposition seemed to have no ready answer for this situation. When, in 1976, Jimmy Carter beat a Kennedy in his own party and bested a hapless Jerry Ford to take the presidency, the Republicans at least had Ronald Reagan on deck for 1980. In 2008, the Republicans didn't seem to have anything going on at any level. They seemed exhausted as well as defeated, had neither ideas nor personalities to put forth as an alternative to Democratic Party, newly-invigorated by Mr. Obama. In a post-election speech, the head of the RNC sounded like someone who knew he had nothing...the audience knew he had nothing and he knew that the audience knew...but his job was to get up there and try to sell an empty box. I remember one political operative speculating that the GOP, having no prospects, might not retake national leadership for a generation. To me, it seemed believable.

I see the same thing happening today, but the party positions are somewhat reversed, though in this case, it's not that the Dems lack energy; many prominent liberals do have a sort of demented vigor, driven, I suspect, by advanced Trump Derangement Syndrome. Really, like the GOP of a generation before, they champion nothing anyone gives a shit about as all the meaty issues most important to the majority of the electorate were gobbled up by the Republicans; they are the party of the greedy, after all...or are they? A recent CNN poll -CNN mind you, not Fox news- showed that the GOP is now tied with the Democrats as being seen by voters as the party of everyday working people. If you're a progreessive Democrat, you might re-read that last sentence and give the implications some deep consideration.

There are prominent Democrats who have and not just those who have left the party altogether to become, if not Republicans outright, at least Independents: people like John Fetterman, Ro Khanna and Rahm Emanuel have all stated publicly (to the best of my recollection) that the party is headed is the wrong direction, or given too much prominence to issues the majority of people don't care so much about. Even Gavin Newsom toyed for a moment (just for a moment!!) with the appearance of genuine reflection before being reminded this was not the path to power in the Democratic Party. .

But those who honestly sound as if they feel their party should begin to move to the center, if not the right, are drowned out by the kooks who seem to want to double-down on their positions on the issues that clearly lost them national power in the first place. The ill-advised antics and unfortunate pronouncements of the far Left are sufficiently famous and far to numerous to bother mentioning here, but one perhaps less well-known stood out in my mind; a few months back, I watched a podcast where a political commentator (not a politician) of some renown was asked why he believed the Democrats lost the presidential election. His response was that, since the final amount of spending offered by the "Build Back Better" bill was less than $2.5 trillion rather than the 5, 6 or 7 trillion dollar range originally proposed, the Democrat base was too disappointed to get out the vote. The co-hosts of the podcast were visibly incredulous and I laughed out loud...but he was sincere in his statement.

As time goes on, I see fewer and fewer political posts from my progressive or liberal friends on FaceBook and no one has unfriended me in quite some time. I hope they've found more productive or enjoyable things to do with their time than let politics dominate their thoughts. Of course, a funny cartoon or two may appear every once in a while as should be expected as the current administration isn't perfect and mistakes will always be made. But, in general and in my opinion as of late July 2025, the second administration of President Donald Trump has defied the doomsayers and been a helluva success for which his increasingly hysterical, frustrated and desperate opposition has no meaningful response.