The Tribune

With CHARLIE HARPER

IT HAS long been a truism in American politics that life and social, economic and political views are quite different outside the Washington, DC, beltway than within it.

With the decades-long expansion of the national capital area to a major megalopolis and suburbs spreading up to 50 miles outside the District of Columbia, you can now get well beyond DC’s circumferential beltway traffic snarl and still see and hear the same attitudes as closer to town. That’s because people even in the far-flung suburbs still work in the capital city and reflect its values.

This phenomenon has led to the transformation of Virginia, once home to the capital of the American Confederacy and as recently as 40 years ago a solidly Red state, into a reliably Blue one. Maryland and DC vote consistently for Democrats, and this is the major reason Republicans will never accede to statehood for the national capital city, despite a current revival of support for the idea.

The GOP knows that for many years past and many more to come, Washington, DC, would send Democrats to Congress. Why voluntarily make more difficult the task of national (white) minority rule that has become the centrepiece of Republican political strategic thinking?

As COVID restrictions are modified and lifted all over the US, people are hitting the road again – with a vengeance. Airports over the summer kickoff Memorial Day holiday were packed and demand for gasoline for automobile travel pushed prices above $3 per gallon in areas that saw fuel cost less than $2 per gallon just six months ago.

For those finally venturing out of the magnetic orbital fields of Washington, New York City or the other huge cities of the American northeastern seaboard, a jarring political reality awaited.

Yard signs, banners and flags adorned manufactured house trailers set on a small plot of land, older houses whose sagging porches and patched roofs revealed advancing decrepitude, and more well-kept wood and brick homes.

Most of these emblems bore two words: Trump 2024. A simple message, but a very powerful reminder that 72 million Americans voted for Donald Trump only six months ago, and they don’t like (nor supposedly, in many cases, do they believe) the fact that he lost.

While many of these disaffected voters tell opinion samplers they believe the November 2020 election was stolen by Joe Biden and the Democrats, the guess here is that they know better.

Depending on whom you listen to among commentators and pundits, these disaffected Americans are either whimsical, cantankerous, plain stupid or ominously seditious.

There is plenty of evidence the disaffected see themselves as patriots ardently advocating for the return of an America experiencing startling sustained economic growth, historically low unemployment, gradual disengagement from incomprehensible foreign entanglements and at least a superficial reverence for military power and toughening law enforcement.

Until his administration was undone by the coronavirus pandemic, Trump was delivering all of that during most of his term as President. All the while - likely scratching their heads at Trump’s amazing, shocking economic and sociological success - members of his Republican Party naturally got behind a winner and Trump was essentially handed the keys to the GOP kingdom.

He apparently still has those keys in his pocket.

It’s still early, only six months into Trump’s political exile, but those who oppose him most vociferously within the Republicans are either out of office or largely retired from active politics.

Several hundred or so of them signed a kind of manifesto last month threatening to create a third national political party if the GOP didn’t come to its senses and dispense with Trump and his controversial legacy.

Hardly anyone paid any attention. Likely Republican primary election voters certainly seemed unmoved.

Among those ignoring these Republican dissidents were rural Americans all across the country and many trade unionists turned off by the lurch leftward of the national Democratic Party.

Some of these folks are now proudly displaying anti-Biden banners in their yards and on their porch rails.

A particularly popular one says “(blank) Joe Biden and the Harris he rode in on.”

This is not a joke. Some people are proud to proclaim their affiliation with such malicious nonsense.

Others depict the incumbent President as senile and his Vice-President as a radical leftist harridan.

Liberal-leaning pundits inside the Washington Beltway or snugly within Manhattan’s protective cocoon, continue to roll their eyes before the cameras in stupefied disbelief that so many Americans could be so dumb as to yearn for the Trump years that were marked by so much corruption and wilful disregard for any public policy that promised to serve the national interest.

Out there in the amorphous vastness beyond the Beltway, though, they don’t watch CNN or MSNBC very often. They may not be watching Fox or One America News either, now without the magnetic attraction of Donald Trump. But they are confident they know what they had before the pandemic, and they know they want it back.

Maybe they’re really racists. Maybe they’re gun nuts who callously ignore the rising death toll of grisly mass shootings in all corners of the country. Maybe they truly believe what they hear about the sacrilege of abortion at their local church on Sunday morning. Maybe they really cannot make the connection between America’s historic waves of immigration and its phenomenal economic growth and progress over dozens of decades.

Maybe they have no context for appreciating the enormous role of pure luck and serendipity in the historical development and sustained economic success of the United States.

There is no doubt, however, these millions of the disaffected can surely feel the pure disdain of liberal commentators as they continue to report in disbelief on widespread vestigial loyalty to Trump.

Luck of the Irish

A 29-year-old CNN reporter from the remote coastal hamlet of Cahersiveen, County Kerry in Ireland is emerging as the lunatic whisperer of the far-out right-wing fringes of the US. electorate.

Proud holder of a Master’s degree in political science from Queens College, Belfast, Donie O’Sullivan (just the one n) burst upon the national TV journalism scene during the January 6 assault on the American capitol and has been racing to prominence ever since.

Burly, bearded and with an unassuming but unambiguous manner boosted by his charming Irish brogue, O’Sullivan has developed a knack for eliciting the most amazing responses from voters who look like either innocents or idiots to most Americans who are paying attention. This Irish-American citizen, with CNN for five years, challenges his guests without making them defensive.

Here are two exchanges from some of his recent TV interviews:

Outside a rally for disreputable GOP Congresspersons Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia) and Matt Gaetz (Florida) at the sprawling and notorious central Florida retirement community called The Villages:

O’Sullivan: “So you believe the November 2020 election was stolen by Biden?”

Guest: “I watched it on TV.”

O’Sullivan: “But that’s false. It’s the Big Lie. The election wasn’t stolen.”

Unabashed and undeterred guest: “Sure it was. They wouldn’t lie on TV.”

Outside a rally in Dalton, Georgia, north of Atlanta, in Greene’s home district:

O’Sullivan: “How do you feel about the strong negative response from many Americans to Rep. Greene and Donald Trump?”

Guest: “Well, a lot of people didn’t like Jesus Christ, either.”

O’Sullivan kept it straight and objective in replying to the snickering responses of his CNN anchors. Maybe that’s why his interview subjects feel comfortable speaking with him.

Aren’t we supposed to be a democracy?

Right now, all across the United States, disaffected Americans are supporting local city councilmen, state legislators, governors and state attorneys general who are pushing to tighten voting rules to perpetuate and reinforce the disenfranchisement of black and brown citizens.

These officials, from a village clerk in Oklahoma to Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell, are all openly doing the bidding of the disaffected.

And they clearly aim to continue to undo the results of the presidential elections of 2008, 2012 and 2020. The Republicans intend to reclaim the House so insipid Kevin McCarthy can ascend to the Speaker’s office and tiresome McConnell can reclaim his Senate majority leader post.

Meantime, they’ll band together to undermine, frustrate and corrode the Biden administration in the hopes of minimizing its national reach and influence, just as they tried to do, with considerable success, when Barack Obama lived in the White House.