Upcoming Election Thoughts

As I posted a few weeks ago, I follow politics and I vote (or at least try to). Being a leftover Jeffersonian agrarian, there is not much left on the Federal level that much enthuses me any more. We have a sham Federal election every 2 years, but the two headed uni-party has been in control of the American system for so long that they have rigged the entire system to virtually ensure one or the other of the so-called political parties always has power.

These so called parties try really hard to spin the tale of the idea that we really have a choice as the American voters, but it is not really a choice. They try to spin is as Liberal versus Conservative, but there really are not any true Jeffersonian Conservatives any more on the Federal level. Republicans try to pretend to be Conservative, but they are really still the party of Lincoln. Lincoln was by far the farthest to the Left of all the candidates who ran for President in 1860. Most modern Republicans, despite howls to the contrary, are really the Leftist party of Lincoln. They still believe in all the Radical nonsense Lincoln made up out of the ether like Divine mandate indivisible union and incorporation of the Bill of Rights to the States and, frankly, centralized Federal welfare state-ism. They really just have a slightly different welfare state pit into which to throw all the money.

Federal Republicans are really content to be big staters as long as their guy is in the White House and Congress. Deficits don't go down. FDR New Deal social spending programs are never curtailed. They give lip service to such ideas on rare occasions in an election year, but once they get elected, all that goes out the window. They had opportunity after opportunity to roll back Obamacare or balance a budget or any of those things, and they never achieve any of it. On rare occasions they might get a Federal spending sequester, which was really no actual cut to anything. It was simply a cut to baseline budgeting. In other words, instead of the usual 5% across the board increase in spending, it got "cut" to 2% to 3%. It's still on increase, not an actual cut. That's the game they play though, saying, "Look! We cut spending..." when in fact is was just a smaller increase and not an actual cut of anything. 

Democrats are the same. They just are perfectly fine with even bigger spending, particularly on social, particularly Leftist, programs. The sad thing is that at one time they were actually concerned, if misguided, about the poor. They don't care now mostly. They just want to get re-elected. There isn't a single member of the Senate that isn't a millionaire, and only a small minority of the House members are not in that same financial orbit. Limousine liberals are a thing.   

So, that brings me to my thoughts on Trump. I am unenthused about Trump running a 3rd time. He still has never won a popular vote election. I will admit I voted for Trump one of the two times he ran for election for President, but it was a "hold your nose and vote for the lesser of the stinkers" mentality. While I don't blame Trump specifically for the January 6th riot flap, his sour grapes sore loser attitude thereafter really put me off. I think the breaking point for me was not January 6th so much as the fact that he intentionally did not attend the Biden inauguration. I thought that was in really bad taste. I admit there was some voting shenanigans and things in the election that have never been explained to my satisfaction, but having one final narcissistic hissy fit never sat well with me. 

I may just give up on Federal elections altogether. Think locally, act locally. That's all that we can do.