Election 2020 (Part 2): My Evaluation of the Democrats and Media Over the Past Four Years (My apologies, but I’m just being honest as to how I’ve seen things)

In my previous post, I gave a brief overview regarding how I felt about Donald Trump in 2016, how I expected him to crash and burn as president, how I assumed I would be voting for a Democrat in 2020 (as long as they acted like adults), and how I was shockingly and pleasantly surprised to a number of legitimate accomplishments by the Trump administration over the past four years. The fact has been, though, he still is often a belligerent jerk. Despite the good things he did accomplish as president, those things along didn’t tip the scales for me completely. For me, the tipping point was seeing how badly both the Democrats and many in the media have acted over these past four years. All they had to do was be the adults in the room, and they would have had my vote. Well, they didn’t do that.

Evaluating the Democrats and the Media
Now, in politics, both parties have their share of sleazy behavior and cheap tricks. Sadly, that is just par for the course. The GOP is certainly guilty of that kind of behavior as well. Over these past four years, though, I’ve felt that the Democrats, along with many in the media, have just gone way over the line. So much so, that I cannot in good conscience vote to have them in power. In my opinion, their actions have undermined our government institutions, and the media has been complicit. Remember, four years ago I was completely against Trump and heavily inclined to vote for a Democrat in 2020.

As much as I didn’t like Trump at the beginning, I was determined to give him a fair chance. Neither the Democrats nor the media, though, ever accepted him as president and it was clear that from the jump, they were intent on taking him down at all costs. I remember watching inauguration day and that horrendous speech Trump gave, but then as soon as it ended, Chris Matthews of MSNBC immediately started comparing Trump to (can you guess?) Adolf Hitler. Over the next four years, I found the constant equating Trump with Hitler to be irresponsible and poisonous. In addition, as soon as he took office, the Democrats were calling for his impeachment. Then, within a few months, the contents of the Steele Dossier were leaked through Buzzfeed, and the Democrats and the media immediately started howling about collusion and how Trump was a Russian agent and a traitor. It led to over two years of every scandalous and unsubstantiated rumor being splashed on newsfeeds and in newspapers—anonymous sources and “bombshell” stories every other day that had to be retracted or were just conveniently forgotten when proven false. When the Mueller investigation began, even the whole thing seemed fishy to me (and again, at that time I did not like Trump at all), I still said that if they found evidence of collusion with Russia, then Trump should be impeached. As it turns out, not only did they find no evidence of criminal conspiracy, but the Steele Dossier itself was a product of Russian disinformation, paid for, ironically by the Clinton campaign and then funneled to the FBI. That’s not a good look.

Then there was the fight between the GOP and the Democrats over immigration reform. The Democrats wanted guarantees for a certain number of Dreamers. Trump at least tripled the number the Democrats were asking about and even offered a possible pathway to citizenship in exchange for working with the Republicans on immigration reform, which included “the wall.” Despite the fact that politicians in both parties had routinely supported funding for walls and border fences in the past, and despite the fact that it seemed Trump would be able to get Republicans (!!!) to agree to allow a pathway to citizenship for those Dreamers, the Democrats rejected Trump’s offer and accused him of “holding the Dreamers hostage.” That told me that the Democrats weren’t serious about immigration reform or the Dreamers.

The big turning point for me, though, was the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. I was horrified and disgusted by the Democrats’ dishonest stunts and behaviors. And the way they ginned up all those protesters who were literally screaming and banging on Supreme Court door—I’ll be honest, that scared me. I was not a fan of Trump, but the way the Senate Democrats acted, there was no way I wanted them in charge of the Senate. In the 2018 elections, I made sure to vote GOP down the line. Yes, I know the Democrats were upset that Mitch McConnell didn’t even bring the Merrick Garland SCOTUS nomination up for a vote, and yes I agreed that it was underhanded of the GOP to do that, but let’s be honest, the Democrats have had a long history of torpedoing and slandering GOP SCOTUS picks, from Robert Bork in 1987, to Clarence Thomas in 1991 and then Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. And why did that do it? They were attempting to politicize the Supreme Court. And now, with the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, they are talking about packing SCOTUS because the “courts are out of whack.” SCOTUS has had a liberal majority, literally, for my entire life. Now that it looks like there will be a conservative majority, the Democrats want to pack the court back in their favor. That is the definition of politicizing the court—and that takes a bulldozer to the separation of powers.

After that, the Mueller Report finally came out and found there was no evidence of criminal conspiracy/collusion. But then it provided a number of instances where there might be obstruction of justice. William Barr and Rod Rosenstein looked at it and deemed there was none. Immediately, the Democrats and the media essentially accused William Barr of being a co-conspirator who was trying to cover up Trump’s crimes. They claimed that Barr knew the report made Trump look bad, so he issued a misleading summary of it to cover up Trump’s crimes of collusion and obstruction, even though he proceeded to make the entire thing available to the public once the DOJ made the needed redactions. The accusations never made sense to me. First, Barr had just received the report—there was no way he could have read through the whole thing in couple of days before he issued the summary to even know what was in it when he issued the summary that Mueller provided at the beginning of the report. Second, if Barr was trying to cover up for Trump, then making the entire report available to the public (something he didn’t have to do) was the dumbest thing ever to do. And yet, this was the accusation that the Democrats and many in the media kept saying. It made no sense.

In any case, as soon as the Mueller Report news was over, along came the “anonymous whistleblower” and the impeachment over Ukraine. I’m sorry, but I felt that the whole thing was a divisive, partisan sham. Trump probably deserved a censure for saying something inappropriate on the phone call to the Ukrainian president, but impeachment? No. During all of that, as well as the fallout from the Mueller Report, I was just shocked at how so many people were just lapping all of this up. It made no sense to me. I wasn’t a Trump fan, but how could anyone believe anything that came out of Adam Schiff’s mouth? I’m still waiting for the supposed iron-clad evidence that his committee obtained that proved Trump was a Russian agent. Halfway through the impeachment it occurred to me that Adam Schiff was our modern-day Joseph McCarthy.

Then there was the constant race-baiting by both Democrats and the media. No, Trump never said neo-Nazis were “very fine people.” Go back and watch the press conference after Charlottesville. He said there were “very fine people” on both sides when it came to the debate over what to do with Confederate statues, and then he immediately said, “…and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white supremacists—they should always be condemned.” And speaking of that, no, it is not true that he has never condemned white supremacy. He has, over and over again. And no, despite what Senator Ed Markey said during the Amy Coney Barrett hearings, “originalism”—the constitutional philosophy that conservative justices tend to have—is not racist, sexist, and homophobic. And yes, Biden actually told black churches in 2012 that if Mitt Romney was elected, that the GOP would “put y’all back in chains.” And yes, Biden told Charlemagne tha God—a black radio host—that “If you don’t vote for me, then you ain’t black.”

Finally (and this is a very big concern for me) there is the seeming growing acceptance of censorship culture: Bari Weiss, a liberal herself, quit the New York Times because of the intimidation and suppression of anything that seemed to be critical of Democrats or sympathetic of anything that might be considered conservative. Glenn Greenwald, another liberal, resigned from The Intercept over his editors attempt to censor him and remove anything critical of the Democrats and Joe Biden. Twitter and Facebook routinely censor stories that reflect poorly on Democrats and Joe Biden. Twitter even locked the account of Mark Morgan, the head of US Customs and Border Protection because he tweeted out how successful the border wall has been.

What I’ve Been Forced to Conclude
All of that really concerns me. I don’t particularly like Trump personally, but over these past four years, the behavior of the Democrats have convinced me to vote for him. As bad as his rhetoric can be, his administration has actually gotten a number of good things done. His policies really have done more for the minority communities than the previous administration. And for all the accusations that he is “undermining our institutions,” that’s all it seems the Democrats have been doing. The open talk this election about being open to pack the Supreme Court, to end the Electoral College, to completely end the filibuster in the Senate, and to make Washington DC and Puerto Rico states to insure a Democrat majority in Congress—those are not actions that uphold our government institutions. Those are actions that would destroy them and, in their place, set up a totalitarian, one-party government. I will never vote for a party who seeks to do those things. Our country can survive a Troll-in-Chief. It won’t survive if those actions succeed.

All that said, if you genuinely like Joe Biden’s proposals, if you genuinely do not agree with policies Donald Trump has enacted, then by all means, vote your conscience. The key to our republic is to vote your conscience, respect the choice of others who vote differently, and to accept the results of elections. I, for one, simply don’t agree with Biden’s platform, I think it is pretty obvious that he doesn’t have the stamina to do the job, and I do think he is in cognitive decline. Still, if he wins the election, he will be my president and I will give him a fair chance. That, though, is something neither the Democrats nor the media has done over the past four years.

I will say this, though, if Biden wins and if the Democrats actually go through with ending the filibuster, packing the court, and ending the Electoral College, we will look back at this election as the moment the country voted to end democracy as we know it.

I am truly concerned with the way the Democrats and the media have conducted themselves over the past four years. And I do not like what I’m seeing with the rise of cancel culture. For that reason, I think this election is far bigger than just Trump or Biden. A paranoid hysteria, coupled with a seething hatred of Trump, has gripped a significant portion of our country to the point where people are applauding with quasi-religious zeal the attempts to completely undercut our long-standing institutions and system of governance. Trump is the big, bad boogey-man and must be stopped at all costs. I actually had someone tell me that Donald Trump was worse than Joseph Stalin. Sorry, but I don’t want someone like that deciding who the president of the United States is.

There is obviously more I could say, but then this post would never end. I know politics, especially these days, it a highly toxic business, but if we become afraid to voice our opinion in an honest and respectful way, our republic will die and our freedoms, especially our freedom of speech, will be destroyed. There is one more underlying item, though, I feel I need to address. And so, I think I’m going to need one more post. That item is this: How our politics have become the national religion. It is political idolatry, plain and simple. Sadly, speaking as a Christian, it seems that far too many Christians—both on the Left and the Right—have gotten sucked into the madness. This is something I’ve seen coming for quite a while. I touched upon in both my earlier books, The Heresy of Ham and (R)evolution in Worldviews. I want to say a few more things in a third post.