“Perceptions,” by Gerry Warner

Op-Ed Commentary

Hallelujah! Or whatever powerful exclamation you care to use.

Recognizing the inevitable, President Joe Biden has announced he won’t run for the presidency again and that means a better than even chance that Donald J. Trump will not be the next president of the United States.

Phew! I was really beginning to worry our good friends to the south were going to inflict a political catastrophe on themselves that would consume the world. Make no mistake about it, the man with the bloodied ear is not running to be president of the world’s greatest democracy. He’s running to destroy democracy and replace it with a neo-fascist regime that would destroy democracy and the rights and freedoms that go with it. Under Trump, the US would become a despotic Orwellian society with Big Brother running the show. That’s what Trump means by “MAGA,” a dictatorship replacing democracy and the rule of law.

Think I’m kidding? Keep in mind that Hitler came to power by overthrowing the democratic Weimar Republic. Democracy has never touched the shores of China and Russia and more so-called “populist” or “nationalist” regimes keep springing up in the world like a plague. Trump even mused at a news conference what he would do if he could be a “dictator for a day.”

Maybe he was kidding, but who wants to take the chance? But after the ghastly assassination attempt last week and the raucous Republican National Convention which took on the tone of a religious tent revival meeting, it looked like a Trump victory in November was inevitable.

Who would you favour for president? Super-Trump flying through the clouds with a bloody ear or “slow Joe” Biden laboriously making his way up the airplane stairs to certain electoral defeat? It wouldn’t even be close.

And then came the Biden resignation letter showing how an honourable leader resigns honourably:

“I know none of this could have been done without you, the American people. Together, we overcame a once in a century pandemic and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We’ve protected and preserved our democracy. And we’ve revitalized and strengthened our alliances around the world.”

Forty-eight words on a plain sheet of paper summing up Biden’s career and explaining why he felt he could no longer save a country on the brink of political catastrophe. Unlike Trump, Biden didn’t stretch it into a hate-filled, 90-minute screed dripping with venom and lies as Trump did at the Republican convention.

And the reaction to both speeches spoke volumes. In the wake of the Biden resignation letter, some $81.5 million in donations poured into Democrat coffers in one day setting a record for American political donations. Talk about putting your money where your mouth is. Trump, meanwhile, called the donations “a brazen money grab” and he ought to know because he’s built a career on brazen money grabs.

And now you hear fear in Trump’s voice and the voices of millions of other Trump cultists as they watch the funding gates burst wide open for the Democrats. Money and lots of it is the surest path to political victory and the Republican cult will need every penny of the $45 million-a-month allegedly promised to them by Elon Musk if they want to stay in the race competitively. As for Musk, he has a better chance of making it to Mars than getting Trump into the Oval Office.

Let’s cut to the chase. Less than a half-dozen so-called “battleground states” will decide the presidential race because all the other states have been gerrymandered into supporting one party or the other.

How do you win battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania or Arizona? You spend gazillions of tainted funds for that victory. Now that the Democrats have the money and Vice President Kamala Harris — a woman of colour — as their likely leader, they are in a damn strong position to win. Meanwhile the Republican cult has a candidate that’s sometime orange, sometimes white and always loud and abusive. And they dearly wanted Biden to stay in the race because they were confident they could beat him.

Just goes to show you should be careful of what you wish for.

– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist who has never seen an election like this.

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