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Promoted from the diaries by streiff. Promotion does not imply endorsement.
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President Donald Trump speaks during a Made in America showcase event on the South Lawn of the White House, Monday, July 15, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The Leftist media is full of dire warnings about another potential four years of a Trump presidency.  It was a surprise (of sorts) when Trump won the presidency in 2016.  This writer had no intention of following the returns assuming a Clinton victory.  It was about 1:00 am when a liberal friend texted me: “What the hell is happening?”  I then checked the returns and thought, “Holy s@!%!!! Trump is going to win.”

Part of the surprise was that 2016 was unlike any campaign I had experienced and watched.  From the first of several Republican debates which were amusing and strange on many levels (people comparing hand size?) to the debates between Trump and Clinton, it was a surreal political experience.  After he won, there were dire predictions all around.  The mood of the non-Trump supporter was clearly one of grief.

However, unlike the dopes on the Left and the bigger dopes in the NeverTrump movement, this writer did not experience any grief over Trump’s election victory.  Instead, it was  “give him a chance and wait and see.”  Unlike others, there was no grief or anger.  But within three days of his election, the grief had turned into anger.  While the Democrat Party institution did the soul-searching aspect of the five stages of grief- “bargaining-” it was superficial.  The “what if” and “if only” scenarios boiled down to one distinct truism (which many still deny): Hillary Clinton was an unlikeable candidate who ran a horrible campaign by neglecting key Upper Midwestern states (Michigan and Wisconsin) and Pennsylvania.

To read the Leftist media (and mainstream, but they are very often the same), they appear to be in the depression stage of grief.  A recent article in the New Republic stated that surveys by the American Psychiatric Society “…have found a marked increase in stress and anxiety among respondents with regard to the future in recent years…”  That article cited another poll indicating that respondents said 2017 was the lowest point in living American history.  They even linked to an article arguing that Trump’s election led to an increase of stress-related premature births.  Good grief!

Since a day after Trump’s election in 2016, we have been bombarded with nothing but negativity regarding the duly elected President.  The better half of his term was a plethora of smoking gun accusations about Russian collusion that turned out to be duds.  They were such duds that even their anointed saint, Robert Mueller, said there was no collusion, conspiracy, or coordination with Russians.  Of course, that has not stopped Jerrold Nadler and House Democrats from engaging in what amounts to harassment in the name of “oversight.”

A woman gets killed in Charlottesville by a whack job who deserves the death penalty: Trump’s fault.  A mass shooting in El Paso: Trump’s fault.  The stock market declines 800 points: Trump’s fault.  Never before have so many unrelated events that any president has absolutely no control over been attributed to Trump.  NOAA recently announced that the current summer (which is not over yet) has been the hottest on record.  One supposes that it all Trump’s fault.

Today we have candidates on the Democrat campaign trail talking about 2020 being an election of extreme importance.  It is, they claim, an election for the soul of the country.  Take all those dire warnings and predictions the talking head pundits claimed would happen to start back in December 2016, put them in a blender, add some steroids and you will understand what they are talking about when it comes to 2020.

Meanwhile, many Americans living in the real world, it is life as usual- political and otherwise.  Trump has not ordered the military to surround the Capitol Building and dissolve Congress.  Crazies like The Squad will likely be voted back into Congress come 2020.  Despite depictions to the contrary, roving bands of brown-shirted white supremacists are not systematically taking out “people of color” and being egged on by Trump.  The earth is not going to implode in 11 years and counting if Trump is reelected.  NATO is no nearer to dissolution than it was ten years ago.

It would be an understatement to state that the Democrats are wary of Trump’s reelection.  They will ramp up the rhetoric and trot out every anecdotal sob story to prove a point.  The one thing they will also do is resort to one of two things as “policy suggestions.”  The first is that they will be radical in their approaches best exemplified by “free” everything from birth to death.  Eventually, they will run into the reality that nothing is truly free without great sacrifice.  When people realize they are losing more of their net pay in exchange for substandard health care, reality will set in.  When people realize they are paying more to heat their homes in the winter, their utility bill will be a new reality.  And the list goes on.  This is the attitude of hardcore socialists like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris.

Then we have the second option: return to failed policies with suggested tweaks.  These are the candidates often described as “moderates” and exemplified by people like Joe Biden.  The mere fact that he is the front runner should be a warning to Democrats that the hard-core socialists have no chance against Trump in 2020 when it gets down to brass tacks.  That is why despite his gaffes and memory lapses on the campaign trail, he still leads in polls among Democrats.  For them, it is another “hold your nose vote for Biden” scenario.

The election of 2020 is not existential.  One NBC pundit claimed that a recession is necessary to save the Constitution from another four years of Trump.  But what exactly has Trump done to offend the Constitution?  Which of the many court decrees did the Trump administration defy (which frustrates many of us on the Right)?  Are they referring to ICE agents actually doing their jobs?  What they really complain about is Trump not adopting their agenda and thankfully so.

From day 1, Trump was never given the benefit of the doubt.  The first few months were greeted by weekly marches and protests in the streets of Washington.  Every utterance has been parsed, taken out of context and distorted to fit a preferred narrative.  When Trump, for example, speaks out against racism, it is either not good enough or fluffed off as “too little too late,” or “he really doesn’t mean it.”

To the extent that this is an existential election as the Democrats claim, they may just be projecting their own feelings onto America at large.  They- not the country- are fearful of another four years of Trump because he is not your typical run-of-the-mill politician.  He has a job to return to.  Harris, Warren, and Sanders have the Senate, but what does Biden have to return to other than the lecture circuit?  If Trump wins in 2020, he does not have to worry about 2024 (although Democrats will tell you Trump will rewrite the Constitution all by himself allowing a third term).  Everything they feared in 2016 will be amplified in 2021.

Making America great (again) is not a 4-year task, especially after eight years of Obama who managed to bow before Saudi kings, sell-out Israel with the Iran nuclear accords, kick the “China problem” down the road with rhetoric, and disrupt the healthcare market with Obamacare.  That is the America even the so-called “moderate Democrats”  wish for.  Without the worry of a reelection campaign, perhaps then Trump will tell liberal courts to pound sand.  Perhaps then he will push even further on a conservative agenda, although he has done a fairly good job thus far regarding the pro-life movement, deregulation and immigration enforcement despite the legal warfare being waged on the Left.  Another four years of Trump neutering the Left in rhetoric and in the courts is what they most fear.  All the fears, worries and existential angst lies in the small minds of Democrats and the Left at large.