Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal is howling on behalf of almost the entire capitalist class of the U.S., “Mr. Trump shouldn’t be president, and neither should Joe Biden because they aren’t what we need for the future.”
What do they need? She responds, "Someone who feels in her or his gut the wound of the open border and will stop illegal immigration; someone who can cut through the knot of 'globalism' vs. 'isolationism.'"
Please note the order of the possessive adjectives! Simply because everyone has Nikki Haley in mind as a Trump without all his bad traits, as someone who could defeat Trump.
But, she cannot!
Trump has won one insignificant primary so far (probably he will win the second one yet in another insignificant primary in New Hampshire) but already the political mavens have begun talking about the 2024 presidential elections as “Trump elections.” Even Vice-President Kamala Harris says, “She is scared as heck” Trump may win 2024.
Hence, Shakespeare’s famous question that enriched the English language by adding one more dimension to being caught between a rock and a hard place. That is exactly how the Regular Joe must be feeling: in a mere 10 months, they will have to choose between two equally unpleasant courses of action. As Nikki Haley says: one of the two 80-year-old candidates. A pot and a kettle calling each other black!
Eight years ago, Trump provided a clear choice for the non-elite American voters. Hillary Clinton as Democratic candidate, with her totally unknown running mate Tim Kaine, one-time governor and one-time senator of Virginia, was no match for Trump who, unlike Hillary and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, was offering a better economy, border security against illegal immigration and something that Americans were hearing for the first time: the need to make America great again. When you hear that call in a coffee shop in an Ohio town, you don't need any background information about the catfights between Washington elites representing “isolationism” and “globalism.” You wouldn’t worry if that mega man of MAGA could continue keeping the neo-cons at the State and Defense Departments.
Everything about him was right; yes, there were stories about a bit of hanky-panky going on at his parties. He was the Donald Trump, mega-millionaire real estate and entertainment mogul, after all. But now, he shouldn’t be president again because there are several things wrong with him: impeachments, embarrassments, scandals and inciting the Jan. 6 Congressional Raid. Plus, courts are barring him from taking place in primaries because of a rarely used constitutional ban against those who “engaged in insurrection.” If he gets elected, his next administration is not going to be conservative or moderate; his government is going to destroy political elites and unelected technocrats and their control over the country.
How did the U.S. come to find itself in this pickle jar? Is it possible for Haley (or for Ron DeSantis) to peel off some Trump votes in tomorrow’s New Hampshire primary, or later on March 5, Super Tuesday, when the greatest number of U.S. states hold primary elections? Can the U.S. voters make these elections not "Trump elections," but their own?
After the tumultuous 2020 era of pandemic, recession, stagnation, in short, the epochal shift in the world and America, we have been witnessing tectonic movements in European and Latin American politics. Is it really impossible to rescue U.S. politics from the hands of two 80-year-olds? The Democratic ticket seems already cast in stone now; the U.S. might get out of that pickle jar if either governor, Haley or DeSantis, could work a miracle and get enough turf before Super Tuesday to give hope to Americans.
Haley sounds more like Trump than Trump on international issues. In politics, substitution usually won’t work when the original seems to be at hand. DeSantis, on the other hand, should shake off that lackluster candidate shade from his campaign.
Meanwhile, I think Biden is spending his days on his knees, praying that Trump will be on the other ticket.
