My stomach has been hurting a lot more than usual lately, and I’m pretty sure it’s not totally due to my multiple surgeries. Whatever algorithms my media usage has triggered almost consistently results in my being greeted on landing pages with yet another lengthy, impassioned essay about how something that our current administration, often more specifically the obese incontinent dolt at the head of it, has said or done something else illegal, immoral or ignorant–usually some combination of at least two. And often some well-meaning and otherwise quite decent folks I’ve known for decades are reposting and sharing them with the pious belief that somehow by doing so they’re making a difference.
As someone who believes zealotically in numbers, it’s getting nay impossible for me to take seriously the amount of verbiage and emotion being extended in this area, especially by folks who jump on the latest bandwagoners of leading “movements”. Actually, the majority of those making the most noise are doing so in a manner that’s as disturbingly performative as the very lunatics they are railing about who are currently in political power.
But as THE NEW YORK TIMES’ Ruth Igielnik continues to chronicle, all of these actions and reactions are doing little to change the bottom line narrative on perception. Igielnik tracks 150 different polls, of which she and her editorial team consider 38 to be “select”, which she contends meet certain criteria for reliability . The trend line is agonizingly stagnant: more than 40 per cent of those surveyed continue to approve of whatever DJT is doing, slightly more than 50 per cent disapprove. And even Ipsos, an established international firm which I’ve been a client of for decades and is tracking this in regular two week intervals, is showing little more than statistical blips.
So no matter how encouraged many of you appear to be by the fact that a road show like FIGHT OLIGARCHY is filling up arenas and fairgrounds, or how newsworthy the sight of one of its keynoters making a cameo at Coachella may be to you, it matters scant little in the cold, hard world we are enduring.
And the truth is, the more I see of the most vocal, the less hopeful I can be. I was at one point intrigued by Texas congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, especially when she bitch-slapped the noxious Marjorie Taylor Greene during on-the-record hearings. But perpetuating this catfight, and piling on with comments along the lines of “we’re done picking cotton”, aren’t resonating with folks beyond her core, which is apparently as uber-niche in the Dallas metro as her comrade in arms’ AOC’s in the five boroughs of New York . One look at her nails reminds that she wouldn’t be a candidate for such labor even if her worst nightmare did come to pass. We aren’t being helped by what are essentially the Bizarro versions of publicity wh-res like Greene and Lauren Boebert. We don’t need to see the Gorgeous Ladies of Congress play out in front of us, at least not without an actual tag-team deathmatch with appropriate staging.
Nor do we need to need an 83-year-old man strut out on the same exact stage where Lady Gaga’s Ally Maine was coaxed onto during the most recent remake of A STAR IS BORN. Senator Sanders practically goes back to when the far more compelling original version with Janet Gaynor was made, and I highly doubt he could reach her high notes. To believe this was little more than yet another ill-advised grab for social media attention would be, pardon the pun, a might shallow.
So I do get a little jazzed when attention is turned to some different voices with the capacity to activate folks who chose not to get off their couches last fall despite whatever opinions they harbored. TAG24’s Rey Harris shed some light on a name you might recognize as late as yesterday:
Now that he is the vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg has some big plans to push the party in a new direction and bring in young blood.
According to Politico, Leaders We Deserve, an activist group Hogg co-founded in 2023, will be spending $20 million in safe-blue Democratic primaries to support younger, more progressive candidates challenging incumbent Democrats. Hogg, who is best known for becoming a public advocate for gun control after surviving the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, argued in an X post that Democrats can’t win again under the current leadership because “too many… are asleep at the wheel, out-of-touch, and ineffective.”
“We have a culture of seniority politics that has created a litmus test of who deserves to be here,” Hogg told the outlet. “We need people, regardless of their age, that are here to fight.”
I applaud Hogg for his accurate insight and vision, which is much aligned with the approach I have been advocating. But we’re both still apparently at a loss to identify who those folks may be, and whether or not they have the capacity to motivate in ways that don’t involve shooting a Tik Tok video in cosplay. And since Hogg is a mere 25, it’s gonna be a while before he can actually run for national office.
Perhaps we’re going about this all wrong. Maybe instead of seeking out the next American Idol, we should be looking more into the possibility of another 2.0 who’s slowly but surely starting to make his way back into the news–lecutring the very demographic that Hogg champions in, of all places, my old stomping grounds. As NEWSWEEK’s Jesus Mesa reported earlier this week:
At a speech last week at Hamilton College in New York, Obama delivered a forceful rebuke of what he views as the Trump administration’s authoritarian overreach and its targeting of elite American universities.
“It is up to all of us to fix this,” Obama said during the event, warning citizens, students and institutions alike that “you may actually have to sacrifice” to preserve democratic values.
Yeah, I know there’s that small little problem that at the moment Obama’s ineligible to seek a third term. But I watched Steve Bannon work Bill Maher and his studio audience on last Friday night’s REAL TIME. He’s completely committed to the possibility of reworking or skirting the Constitution to assure that Fat Orange Jesus isn’t, in his view, prematurely cast aside against the “will of the people” come January 2029. And as I’ve often mused previously, for as much of a dope as his “boss” is, he’s a damn evil genius and is deeply in the weeds at looking at scenarios. He’s only now doing a publicity tour after a lot of real brainstorming–something I can’t say the likes of Crockett, Ocasio-Cortez or even Sanders have done.
So if DJT can seek a third term, then the same will be true for the only Democratic man this century who was able to get elected president in a normal election year.
He’s still much younger and facile than the current president. He’s not exactly becoming the producing mogul he had perhaps believed he could be. And if he truly doesn’t want to work all that hard, then he can certainly use the likes of Hogg and others he motivates as his think tank. Let Hogg be the equivalent of Elon Musk–do the beavy lifting. If nothing else, it would be great training for when he is eligible for national election.
All the current president is doing is following a script, except when his own stomach is churning so badly from far too many Diet Cokes that rage-truthing all night is his only salvation. I personally think Obama is capable of more, but as we’ve seen it’s hardly a requirement these days.
Maybe to some of you that all sounds a little far-fetched; too radical and out-of-the-box. Would you not have said essentially the same thing a decade ago, before that infamous descent down the golden escalator?
All I’m looking for is a real reason to be optimistic besides rhetoric and showmanship. An actual track record and a playbook, not to mention policies that actually address someone like me, goes a long way toward providing that in my book.
Or, as some pretty decent chap from the previous century used to say, to “keep hope alive”.
Until next time…