(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
Donald has played the trump card again. This time in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District. He is on a roll. This was the seventh time the Trump card has been played and each time the Trump card has proven to be a winner for the Republicans.
The Donald first played the trump card last summer during the GOP primaries. He won their nomination for president.
The Democrats were chomping at the bit, the saliva was drooping down their cheeks at the prospect of getting Trump in the General Election ring. Their candidate, a former First Lady, Senator and Secretary of Defense was a shoo-in to trounce him in a game of bid whist, a card game popular among African Americans.
She was a shoo-in, that is, until The Donald played the trump card. No one is sure if he pulled this card out of his sleeve, got it from the Russians or whether it came with the hand he was dealt.
What we know is The Donald is, for now, the King of the Hill; and that he has played the trump card in five congressional special elections since winning the White House sweepstakes seven months ago, winning each time he has intervened on behalf of a Republican candidate.
Meanwhile, Democrats find every reason under the sun to explain why they have not won a major election since President Barack Obama won reelection in 2012. Every reason that is that has to do with how corrupt and crooked Donald Trump is, but nary a finger pointing at what they have done to throw the last six federal elections.
Democrats have to come to grips with one salient fact: Donald Trump, the man they like to despise, as unfit to be president, is kicking them in the seat of the pants and enjoying the fact that Democrats do not have a clue about how he is doing it.
Allow me to let you in on a secret: Trump is winning precisely because he is speaking the language of the people he represents, at a time when Democrats are speaking in lofty terms about things that do not speak to the goals and aspirations of their constituents.
Moreover, Democratic party bosses should get out of the business of hand-picking candidates to represent the party. They should allow the natural selection process to run its course to determine what issues the people want addressed.
For instance, three years ago in Georgia, a red state, Democratic Party bigwigs selected a conservative Democrat to run against a conservative Republican for an open senate seat. A lukewarm Democrat is about as useless to a political party as a lukewarm Christian is to the “Kingdom.”
Additionally the Democrat, Michelle Nunn, had not lived in Georgia since she was in middle school and has not been seen in the state since she lost that election to David Perdue. There were qualified Democratic candidates living in the state, who given the financial resources, could have run a winning campaign.
Fast forward to 2017, Democrats in Washington, sent a 21 st century carpetbagger south to run for the open house seat vacated by Rep. Tom Price. But that is not all, not only did the party select John Ossoff, a Georgia native, who had been living in Washington to run for Georgia’s Sixth Congressional seat, but Ossoff failed to set up residence in the Sixth District, opting instead to reside in his parents basement which was outside district lines.
In all fairness to him, the constitution does not require representatives to live in the congressional district they represent, but to do otherwise, smacks of taxation without representation.
Ossoff did not remedy this situation and did not provide any voter education to inform the public that the constitution does not prohibit him from representing the area in Washington.
After Ossoff had spent $23 million – none on voter education – he held a one percentage point lead going into election day, The Donald, pulled out yet another trump card, hitting Ossoff over the head with the fact that he did not live in the district.
In fact had the vote ended in a tie, Ossoff could not have voted to ensure himself the victory. Additionally, Ossoff is another lukewarm Democrat, who took a middle of the road political persona. History records that we are in a period of extreme political rhetoric and he or she who would be elected to public office must of necessity take a hard line stand to the right or to the left of center.
It is blunders like these that keeps Donald J. Trump in control of the bid whist game, which prevents Democrats from bidding no trump downtown allowing the contestant with the lowest vote count to win.
Oh forget the spin, close only counts in horseshoes, not to mention, that it takes a well-run operation to win the close matches and right now, Trump is winning the close bids. This enables him to name the trump suit and to keep the game uptown where the team with the highest number win.
Harold Michael Harvey is an American novelist and essayist, the author of Paper puzzle and Justice in the Round, edited Easier to obtain Than to Maintain: The Globalization of Civil Rights by Charles Steele, Jr.; and the host of Beyond the Law with Harold Michael Harvey. He can be contacted at haroldmichaelharvey.com.
Great… I can’t stand it.
I know. It’s just the reality of the country’s situation. There is no way to defeat an opponent without acknowledging his or her strengths.
Michael, one of the problems with Democrats is that they do not stand for anything; and when they do stand for something they are the first to cut and run if they sense any political liabilities on the horizon. They too often stand for what they are against; and that is not a platform. If they spent five minutes with the more than 1,000 students (ages 17 to 24+) that I have talked to in the last two years, and particularly in the last 4 or 5 months, they would know that the Democratic Party’s biggest mistake was underestimating the intensity of young people’s loyalty to Bernie Sanders. Get this: According to my niece, nearly 100 percent of the student body of Maynard Jackson High School were Sanders supporters even though most of them are not old enough to vote. But hey, who are we educators? What the hell do we know? I tell you what we know: we know what your children and adolescents are thinking. These young people are, and always have been, an untapped resource. But what good does it do Democrats when Congressman John Lewis tells young Black activists not to grill Hilary Clinton; and then Andrew Young labels them all “spoiled brats.” Neither of them have sat down with any young Black activists in 40 years! In Georgia, the most prominent Democrats missed an opportunity to speak with them because I spoke young 20-something Black Lives Matter activists who would have loved to speak with the legends (now “relics”) of the Civil Rights Movement. And do not misunderstand my respect for the work Young and Lewis did for us over 40 years ago. But that is part of the problem. They have rested on those laurels and lapped up the compliments and platitudes, often at the expense of the very people they claim they want to help. And now they and the rest of the Democratic Party have to deal with Trump who appeals to a fractious and virulent and often silent element of people that have always been there. He has given them the voice they wanted. They are out of work, scared of anything colored, and are losing power and they are, literally, disappearing. This is a fight to the bitter, silly ass end. Great writing my friend. FYI: The opinions expressed here are solely the opinions of Leslye Joy Allen and are not necessarily that of HaroldMichaelHarvey.com.
Ayo, as Tuskegee history professor W. J. Fluker would say back in the day: “Solid on down, little sister, solid on down.”