October 26, 2017
There seems to be a lot of bad news out there right now. Bad in the sense that it appears that Trump is winning and Bannon (his sidekick) is like a kid in a candy store with all the candy ready for the taking (although he calls it scalps).
Jeff Flake stands up to Trump in a strong, moving speech that he may have hoped would turn the tide against Trump or that you might think would cause some kind of anti-Trump spasm at least, but did not . Bob Corker is also speaking out and using humor, tweeting about Trump being minded by his adult daycare staff, but also calling it like it is.(Trump lies! Wow! Who knew?! Ok, so Corker had to say “untruth” but we all know what that means. At least he called him out.) Again, you would think that Corker’s bold comments would have more of an effect on his fellow Republicans. Not so. They all went home. apparently, and had a few stiff drinks and vowed to continue to give Trump standing ovations when he comes over for lunch so they can get their tax breaks for the wealthy. So these two bold, self-proclaimed mavericks are going to stay and fight the good fight in the Senate, right? No, they are not. They will leave the fray in about 14 months. Along with McCain, most probably, since he has a particularly virulent strain of cancer to contend with. I hope the 3 of them take the opportunity to keep speaking out. Someone should.
We see Bannon over at Breitbart News and in stump-style speeches whooping it up, vowing to primary every single Republican who is not pledging allegiance to dear leader despite the fact that they are supposed to be the representatives of us, the American people, and they took a pledge to uphold the constitution. Short memories. Bannon is using the Mercer’s bottomless pocketbook to threaten the already terrified, rabbit-like Republicans up for re-election. Not a lot of good news here. In fact, the bad guys really seem to be winning.
Or maybe this is actually better news than you might think.
Why? If Bannon succeeds in moving the Republican party even further right promoting nativist, nasty white supremacists, angry, ornery red meat anti-immigrant, anti- LGBT, anti-woman people to beat out the current Republican lawmakers, and if those Republican outliers win their primaries because the angry right wing has a lot of energy and they vote in the primary, these outliers have a good chance of losing in the general election against a Democrat who is more centrist and reasonable because the majority votes in the general election. But it will take effort to beat back the forces of the dark lord. Progressives need to be ready to fund and support those centrist voices- knock on doors, make calls etc. If we do, we could get that wave election in 2018 we all dream of.
How could this play out? Look at the waning approvals for Trump. Even Fox News now has him in the mid 30’s. His un-empathetic way handling of the hurricanes and his horrible twitter war with a grieving, pregnant widow was so disgusting it is actually shocking that he still has an approval rating in the 30’s at all. What it says about those people who are still with him is very ugly and really very shameful. Trump’s enthusiastic core base clings to him, it’s true They love and adore everything about him including his bitchy, mean-girl bullying and tweeting. But that doesn’t mean the rest of the country does. In fact, we do not. The majority is not happy with Trump. His disapproval rating is now around 57%. And many of those who disapprove of him, strongly disapprove of him. You can hear it in the way many of the most popular late-night comedians flay him every night to the delight of their audiences.
So how will this turn out? Take a look at this commentary from Media Matters. Their effort to shed light on Hannity as a perveyor of fake news and conspiracy theories is affecting his and Fox’s bottom line. It tells me that the breathless, over the top, mean spirited forces of Bannon and the dark lord can be beaten back using the power of the purse because mainstream America has come to accept and understand a new reality that is the only one that will work in the coming global world. Bannon and Trump et al represent the death rattle of the old white, ugly American.
We need to keep supporting this Media Matters campaign to expose Hannity and have conversations with sponsors of his show so that even more of them will leave Eventually Fox News might have to accept the will of the people, the majority of people, who are just as riled up and angry about what Trump and Bannon and others in this administration are doing to our country. The pocketbook of corporate America following the will of the majority is a wonderful weapon that just might ultimately take more scalps than Bannon will be able to take when all the returns are in.
Fox News’ ad revenue nose-dives, declining a whopping 17 percent
Hannity’s advertiser losses signal that Fox’s business model is not sustainable
MEDIAMATTERS.ORG
