LET’S GO BRAND NEW!
There’s a photograph circulating on the internet, maybe you’ve seen it. It’s of a long aisle in a shop somewhere piled to the rafters with political lawn signs with a single message: LET’S GO BRANDON. Because they are Republican signs, some of them are missing the grammatically necessary apostrophe. Among the mountain of signs, hanging sadly alongside the once-boisterous message, are two or three signs with the forlorn message: CLEARANCE. Maybe “Going Out Of Business” would be more appropriate.
It’s a lacerating metaphor for the MAGA Republican presidential campaign, a harbinger, maybe even an epitaph. Shifts in political fortunes sometimes turn on a dime, and the stunning change in circumstances since President Joe Biden stepped down have been nothing short of miraculous. Kamala Harris rose over the horizon like the sun at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey. A star is born.
And what a star she’s proven to be! Not only can we now glibly, even gleefully speak of the relative ages of the candidates, in Kamala we have something we didn’t even know we had. A smart, funny, compassionate and brilliant candidate. A female John F Kennedy, but slightly older and with more experience. Who could have imagined things could be so good? No one, that’s who.
It’s been only two weeks since the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. Since then we have been on the world’s steepest emotional rollercoaster. It was one of the low points of my life when I first learned that someone had attempted to kill Trump. After that a Trump victory in November seemed inevitable. It could, I feared, give him the necessary uptick in the polls to win.
But then things started to look a little better. The would-be assassin was a MAGA Republican! Republicans are the violent ones, and it was only a matter of time before one of them tried to kill Trump for (paradoxically) being insufficiently fascistic. Then we got help from Trump himself when he started milking it for all it was worth and parading around with a giant bandage on his ear like the buffoon that he is.
Then the President magnanimously, magnificently stepped down. Joe Biden saw what I did not, that passing the torch to a new generation of Americans, born in my lifetime, was the only way forward. It may have been the greatest political sacrifice in American history, and it came at a moment when we most desperately needed it.
It almost makes you think the idea of American exceptionalism has some merit. Whenever the country seemed on the brink of destruction, along comes a Battle of Gettysburg or a Franklin Roosevelt to rescue it. Losing to Trump is unacceptable. Losing to Trump literally would mean the end of the United States of America as we know it. And no hyperbole is necessary when I say the end of America would have meant the end of the planet.
But we haven’t won yet, and this is the end of July, not the end of November. We must continue this fight with all the strength we have in reserve. The stakes are too high, the consequences of losing too grave for us to do anything less. What’s more, there is an X-factor. Republicans have already made it clear that they are prepared to break the law in order to win, and certain state legislators, members of Congress and the corrupt and worthless idiots of SCOTUS still make me nervous.
So LET’S GO BRAND NEW! The finish line is in sight, and we must never succumb to weariness or complacency. Failure is not an option. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.