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This Strikes Us
Register, Please Register and Vote … As if Your Life
Depended on It
It’s not often that we go
on record so early in the election cycle to urge our readers
to vote in one manner or another. Usually we wait until the
week before an election to endorse candidates and issues. Of
course, it’s not often that we sense such a threat of danger
facing our country should Americans make the wrong choice
this November.
The past three weeks, as
Donald Trump has given into his inner lunacy and trashed
everyone in sight – Democrats and Republicans alike – from
the president, to his opponent Hillary Clinton, to Speaker
Paul Ryan, to Sen. John McCain, to a fallen soldier’s
parents, to a baby crying in his audience – one
pronouncement was more worrying than the rest.
“More and more,” said
Trump, he has been “hearing” that the election will be
rigged against him. He is particularly concerned that with
the federal courts overturning voter ID laws, that people
will be free to vote “10 times” if they so desire.
His advisor, the equally
deranged Roger Stone, has also claimed that the fix is in
and that if the Donald loses Florida, for example, the
result would provoke a “constitutional crisis” and
“widespread civil disobedience.”
Such talk, of course, will
serve to fire up the Trump faithful, the followers whom the
leader paid such memorable tribute to last winter when he
declared in Iowa that he “could stand in the middle of 5th
Avenue and shoot somebody and not lose any voters.”
Be afraid, people. Be very
afraid.
This is a man who makes
one yearn for the good ole days of the Grand Old Party.
Trump makes one wax nostalgic about Nixon, Reagan and the
Bushes.
You were worried in 2012
about a possible Romney victory? Think about a Trump
presidency. Think about someone as obviously unstable as
Trump leading the way on issues such as health care, Social
Security, voting rights, tax reform, immigration reform and
deciding which enemies of the moment need a couple of nukes
dropped on them.
And if you still think
this is the typical election cycle during which people with
honest political differences can hold civil discourse about
relatively minor disagreements of little real consequence,
you need to keep in mind the utterances of David Duke, past
Grand Wizard of the KKK, who said that the same folks who
vote for Trump will vote for him. Or, the statement of the
head of the American Nazi Party who says that a Trump
victory in November will present a “real opportunity” for
“white nationalists.”
No, my friends. This is an
election for the heart and soul of America. An election that
will determine whether we as a people maintain our faith in
our way of life, despite the occasional bumps and bruises
along the way, or give in to our darkest fears and embrace
nativism, xenophobia, racism and sexism as we take our own
turn at an American-styled, 21st century ethnic
cleansing.
We only have to look at
Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” to see that he has
an instinct to appeal to the baser instincts of his
countrymen. Why is America not great now? According to the
self-promoter, “America has been humiliated in so many
different ways.”
So, clearly, what we need
to do to restore the greatness of the past, according to the
Republican candidate, is get rid of Muslims, send the
Mexicans back to their country, stop China from raping us
blind, stop trying to be friendly with other countries,
restore law and order in our cities (Nixon would be proud of
that promise) and recapture the military glory that made the
rest of the world tremble at our feet.
Fortunately for America,
and the world, Trump does not have an easy path to victory.
The Electoral College is stacked against him. Consider this
– in 2012 candidate Mitt Romney received 206 electoral votes
and he needed 270 to win. Romney won only one swing state –
North Carolina. For Trump to win, he needs to win all the
states Romney won AND he needs to win the swing states of
Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida – 67 total electoral votes.
All three of those states.
It appears at this point
with about 80 days to go that Trump will have a difficult
time protecting his flank – winning all that Romney did.
Georgia, North Carolina, Utah and Arizona in particular are
pretty dicey for the Republican candidate.
Nevertheless, anything can
happen between now and November 8 and voters who are
appalled by Trump’s basic lack of decency and his inability
to appreciate even the simplest tenets of statesmanship
should take nothing for granted. He is a loose cannon who
possesses no core values and will say anything on his mind
to appeal to the worst instincts of the electorate.
Register! Vote! Here in
our little corner of the world, we can stop Trump by getting
out to the polls in numbers. We can make a difference. Take
relatives, friends and neighbors to the polls so they can
vote. Ohio is so important and Lucas County is as critical
as any section of the state or nation in preventing an
election day catastrophe!
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