Thursday, October 29, 2020

WHY REACH OUT TO REPUBLICANS?


I'm not taking this admonishment very seriously:



The first reason I'm not taking it seriously is that I know our candidate will reach out. He's been reaching out all through the campaign. I think it's a heartfelt wish of his that his overtures will be welcomed and that the GOP fever will finally break.

But the real reason I'm not taking it seriously is that the fever won't break. Trump supporters won't want a rapprochement. They now believe Joe Biden is one of the most corrupt politicians in American history. They believe he's a criminal mastermind, but they also believe he's too senile to be in charge of his own administration, which they imagine will be controlled by a cabal of radicals who want to silence dissent, take everyone's guns, and lock down the country until the economy is destroyed. A large and growing percentage of them believe all prominent Democrats are cannibal pedophiles; they think private communications from members of the Biden family will prove this. Even the ones who don't believe the truly crazy stuff think we all wallow in cop-killing and baby-killing. They think we want to ban cars, meat, and air conditioning. And, of course, they won't accept Biden's victory because they'll believe it was obtained fraudulently, no matter how large his winning margin is.

I could go on, but you know all this. You know that the goal of the Republican Party will be to make it impossible for Democrats to govern successfully so the GOP can engineer a wave election in 2022 and another one in 2024. Unlike Democrats -- who would have cooperated with Trump if he'd put forward a serious infrastructure plan, or an immigration plan that protected Dreamers, Republicans in Congress will cooperate with Biden on absolutely nothing. And the Republican Supreme Court justices -- we should all start calling them that because that's what they are -- will devote themselves to blocking everything substantial Biden and the Democrats manage to do, as well as much of the progressive change of the past century.

Under different circumstances, sure, I'd reach out after a Biden win. But there's no point.

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