Trump world fizzles out
Whenever something happens in politics, however good or bad, there is inevitably some pushback from the other side. The party out of power is effectively angered and organized in their opposition and acts accordingly. This was fairly apparent over the last four years or so under the Trump presidency – and the opposition was fairly successful in averting some of the worst things that administration had to offer, even if it was a destructive and chaotic time for much of the country. This is also a significant reason for why most political moves have to be incremental if they’re to have long lasting consequences for the better.
While we are seeing the inevitable Republican outrage and backlash to the Biden presidency – it’s also hard to tell because Republicans spent much of the Trump administration still seething over the Obama years and outraged despite occupying the White House and both houses of Congress. It’s also been pretty difficult to get them organized behind any particular policy or direction for the country – and even harder to sell the idea that they stand with the average American voter on any given thing.
Recently, they tried to appropriate the trucker protests in Canada that Prime Minister Trudeau cracked down on – hoping that by getting the media talking about a “freedom convoy” they could rile up a large independent bloc into voting Republican. For weeks, Fox News hyped up talk of a large group of right-wingers who would support their cause and appear in Washington DC to protest President Biden’s state of the union – but the problem was only 12 of them showed – while others were stuck in traffic and couldn’t find the venue – dealing the far right yet another embarrassment. It would be foolish to underestimate the GOP’s turnout at the polls this year – but if these protests tell us anything, it’s that they can be defeated if we organize and drive up registration of new voters to win in 2022.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making