Biden hits clutch homer. GOP strikes out.

Thanks to the State of the Union, could things begin to turn Dems' way? My meandering musings the day after...

Simply put, Biden hit it out of the park Thursday night.  The 81-year-old president with a halting gait stepped up to the plate and hit a bases-loaded homer. If it wasn’t in the 9th, let’s call it the 5th inning when Team Biden fans were beginning to feel nervous. The thought had begun to cross their minds that the dangerous, rival team might actually pull this off, or at least have momentum on their side. 

But no. The good guys won the night.

Trump/GOP border strategy — backfiring at a national moment
Biden, deemed too old to play in a young person’s match-up, showed the world he’s got plenty of game left.  That verbal spring in his step, willing and eager to take on all comers, said so repeatedly throughout the 67-minute national assessment.

And, note to self: When will the always ready to play dirty Marjorie Taylor Greene realize she has neither the political experience nor the mental acuity to come out the winner? 

Despite Greene’s being dressed head to toe in MAGA campaign regalia, her rants during the President’s speech never gained traction. Railing against the border situation, her insults only served to prove the dishonesty of the Republican position that the border — and everything else, really — is all Biden’s fault.

Biden forcefully made clear he was both ready to sign the tough border bill authored by Republican Senator Jim Lankford that could have solved everything Greene was screaming about, but that Trump squelched it to keep the border front and center as a campaign issue. Lankford’s mouthing “That’s right” to Biden (in a brilliantly directed camera cut to the Oklahoma Senator) left Greene with a free-range-sized egg on her face.

Biden’s strong performance throughout the night made the “Biden’s too old” trope become less and less potent — either as a reason for voting against him or sitting out the election.

As for me, call me crazy, but I’d rather have an 81-year-old president with unquestionable patriotism and ability to see right from wrong than a 78-year-old traitor, rapist, con artist, and serial liar.  We know by now that person possesses no fealty to his country or the Constitution. If back at the wheel, Trump would drive America in Russia’s direction, or over a cliff – or both. 

It’s that simple. Everything else — an occasional stutter, etc.— is of minor importance to me and other Americans.  What’s left of Trump and his party are Republicans now so firmly in Trump’s grip that no one – not Ron DeSantis, nor, finally, Nikki Haley could wrest them free.  And so we cannot cede our country to this willfully subjugated, uninformed group.

Republicans now would rather hear that the United States “sucks,” is a “Banana Republic,” and is so far gone that only a big strongman like Trump can reclaim it.  

Drama king
Trump doesn’t know this, as he’s not seemed to have learned much of anything in school or life, but his promise to save America from Biden and the Democrats mirrors a social-psychological construct called the “Drama Triangle” that explains a lot about how Trump attracts followers and keeps them in his grip (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle).

Conceived by psychologist Stephen B. Karpman, the triangle consists of these three points: abuser, rescuer, and victim. 

Often used to describe domestic abuse situations but applicable to others, following is an example of how it works. A verbally, mentally, or physically cruel spouse maintains control in a relationship by making the victim wife or husband feel weak and inferior, so much so that they remain dependent on the abuser.  The victim then just can’t or won’t leave.

But constant abuse is also risky – the victim ultimately may choose and find the means to leave.  So the abuser must frequently switch tactics to another powerful position, rescuer, to keep the victim engaged and off-balanced — you know, in a state of constant chaos.  Better yet. 

So after tearing down the victim, the rescuer will swoop in – flattering and promising to take care of him or her like no one else can or will.  “No one loves you, baby, like Papa does. We belong together.” – something like that.

Of course the whole thing is a sick ploy to keep the abuser/persecutor in a controlling, dominant position. Deep down, these persecutors are so damaged they must rely on control just to maintain any chance of having a relationship. 

But it becomes even sicker when the abuser/persecutor takes on the mantle of victim him- or herself.  Enter Trump, here, too.

Victim, meet persecutor and rescuer at Trump’s presidential run announcement
That mantra took hold officially on November 23, 2022 with Trump’s announcement he was running again for president. 

According to Politico’s Nov. 23, 2022 coverage, Trump channeled his best messiah imitation for the occasion.  Mournfully, he promised his followers at his announcement, “We will be attacked.  We will be slandered.  We will be persecuted just as I have been.” And it’s been working.

But as of last night, The Resistant Grandmother (TRG) believes more confidently that Trump’s sick bargain with Americans will fail in November.  Nikki Haley proved a new coalition –  “I’ll never vote for Trump” or the “I’ll not vote for Trump if he’s criminally convicted” – is out there for the taking. These are the people no longer willing to play victim in Trump’s sick game.

As Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s election interference trial gets under way a little more than two weeks from now, those voters may begin to join Biden Democrats and Independents in quitting Trump if the former president is convicted on any of the 34 charges in the indictment.  In New York, judging from past legal contests, the odds look good. 

By being found criminally guilty, Trump’s “abuser/persecutor” will have been successfully challenged, diminishing the patina of his controlling image for all to see. His having to cede money and his businesses to penalties and massive fines in the civil fraud proceedings also work to blunt the power of his strongman “I can do anything I want” appeal.

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The GOP rebuttal and curse of Bobby Jindal
Tasked by the Republican Party to rebut Biden’s powerful State of the Union message was Alabama Senator Katie Britt. Ever since Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s disastrous February 2009 performance in the same role rebutting President Obama’s State of the Union message, that verbal clean-up job has generated a graveyard of former stars who failed miserably, only to then have to drastically reevaluate the no-longer-upward trajectory of their political careers. So, too, could last night’s rebuttal offered by Alabama Senator Katie Britt be seen within that context.

Recorded in Britt’s Alabama home, the Alabama Senator’s message mirrored the doom and gloom picture of America touted by the Trump campaign and its leader. Britt wanted us to believe, as she does, that America was on the brink of devastation. The economy totters precariously on its last legs. Families like hers are worried – It’s hard to make ends meet. Can we even make it? — she asked while sitting in what looked to be a beautifully-designed upscale kitchen.  

But what should have been a golden star-turn chance for a rising luminary in the Republican Party didn’t quite pan out that way.

Gloria Swanson lives!
In an odd performance fraught with a multitude of theatrical expressions, Britt came off more like the uber-dramatic Norma Desmond from the 1950 gothic film “Sunset Boulevard” than the All-American-Wife-and-Mother image she was going for.  And it only got worse as she berated Biden and his policies, lobbing accusations he had already proved to be false, with evidence, during the speech itself, including these:

• “Our commander in chief is not in command.” He’s a “dithering and diminished leader.”  His strong performance last night made that harder to believe.

• Britt: Biden’s immigration policies are the root cause of the rise in border crossings. But as Biden explained and Oklahoma Republican Senator Jim Lankford underscored by his mouthing “that’s true” caught on network cameras, it’s been Trump’s edict to Republicans not to pass the very strict border measure that’s keeping that problem from getting fixed. So, again, no points there.

• She also blamed Biden for ineffective economic policies and soaring crime rates. But another record jobs report, that came out the day of the speech, shows an overall 15 million new jobs added since Biden became president. And there are those record-breaking highs on Wall Street, figures showing declining inflation, and low-to-no chances of a once feared recession. All these forces undercut Britt’s message. Oops…

• Accordingly, consumer confidence in the economy has grown sharply in the last year, according to a recent University of Michigan consumer confidence survey

  (http://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/). As for crime, Biden correctly cited a drop in the homicide rate along with other violent crimes (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/people-think-crime-rate-up-actually-down-rcna129585).

Britt: “Biden betrays women.” Say what?
Also puzzling was Britt’s accusing Biden of betraying women – especially, “wives and mothers,” a theme underscored by her I’m-just-sitting-here-in-my-kitchen setting.

But that’s a hard case to make for a party that has put the lives of wives and mothers at risk via Draconian laws since the Dobbs decision — the Supreme Court finding that overthrew Roe v. Wade after 50 years of precedence.  It’s a ruling Trump takes credit for — brags about, really — saying, “I killed Roe when no one else could.”  

Inconveniently, for Alabama Senator Britt, the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision issued last week that brought a stop to in vitro fertilization also now adds to the long list of assaults on women at the hands of the GOP. 

Britt lied
But as further “evidence” Biden has betrayed women, Britt told a story that betrayed her and her party’s obligation to speak honestly to the American people. Instead of speaking truthfully, the Alabama senator served up a completely false account of a young Mexican woman that was cooked up by Britt’s party, headed by Donald Trump.

Britt claimed she met a woman in 2023 on a trip to southern Texas to research the border crisis. Britt asserted the woman was gang-raped repeatedly because of “sex trafficking by the cartels.” By saying, “We wouldn’t be okay with this happening in a Third World country,” Britt falsely implied the abuse took place within the United States. She makes the link to Biden by ending her story with “President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace.”

But the woman at the center of the story, confirmed by Britt’s communications director to be Karla Jacinto Romero, has testified before Congress to a completely different version of events. At the heart of Romero’s testimony was her being forced at the age of 12 to work in MEXICAN brothels from 2004-2008 — a full 12 years before Biden became president: in fact, during the administration of George W. Bush.

According to a March 8 report in the Washington Post:

“Romero was never trafficked to the United States; instead, she says many men who paid to have sex with her with her were ‘foreigners visiting my city looking to have sexual interactions with minors like me.’”

That a United States senator making her party’s case in rebuttal to a sitting president would deliberately lie to the American people becomes prima facie evidence that the GOP is completely incapable of speaking truth to Americans, even in the most visible and important — to them and us - national moments.

Oddly, after disparaging Biden as “dithering”and “diminished,” Britt also asserted that American women are “steeped in the blood of patriots,” as if this blood-soaking would help protect themselves against Biden.  I suspect TRG wasn’t the only woman to flinch at that oblique reference to womanhood, as women’s reproductive health has been turned upside down by Donald Trump and the entire GOP.

–trg

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