Which party is hopelessly divided again?
After Michigan, it looks like there are way more anti-Trump Republicans than anti-Biden Democrats.
I’m not normally one for whining about media bias, whichever side is trying to work the refs, but I couldn’t let some of these headlines about the Michigan primaries pass without comment:
As of this writing, Joe Biden won over 81% of the vote in the Michigan Democratic primary, while 13.3% marked their ballots as “uncommitted,” presumably in protest against Biden’s stalwart refusal to let Israel be thrown into the sea.
That sounds quite damning for Biden, except that the “uncommitted” result isn’t that far off the last time a largely unopposed (sorry, Dean Phillips) Democratic incumbent sought his party’s Presidential nomination in Michigan:
It’s certainly possible, even likely, that most of these “uncommitted” votes against Biden were at least in protest about Gaza.
Or this may be something which happens quite often, when partisans want to show their dissatisfaction with the incumbent without crossing the aisle and voting for the really bad guys.
Meanwhile, here’s how Republicans showed their overwhelming fealty toward The Orange God-King who was so cruelly denied his rightful re-election in 2020 because of a plot carried out by thousands of Deep Stateᵀᴹ officials, many of whom he had appointed to their positions in the first place:
As much as I want to see Nikki Haley win the GOP Presidential nomination - not the Presidency, to be clear, but just the nomination - I know that isn’t going happen unless there’s a fortuitously timed plane crash or something. The Republican Party is Donald Trump’s party.
But it might not be as much his party as I thought. Certainly not as much his party as spineless GOP officials, flocking en masse to support his re-election in 2024, apparently believe.
For an ostensible political party which at times resembles the People’s Temple Agricultural Project, 25% of the vote dissenting from the Great Leader should be making Trump very nervous. Most of them - including Haley herself, sadly - will likely return to the fold before November.
But not all of them. And Trump needs all of them if he has any chance of getting re-elected.
To be clear, I don’t think any of this is because media outlets want Donald Trump returned to the White House.
I mean, if you sincerely believe The New York Times sincerely wants Trump re-elected and is actively trying to tilt the election in his favor, there is nothing I can say that will change your mind.
But I can definitively say the BBC, CBC, and freaking Al-Jazeera don’t want Trump re-elected.
What’s happening here isn’t so much media bias as it is commitment to a narrative. (Admittedly, there’s often a fine line separating the two.)
That narrative has it that the Republican Party is now completely in thrall to Donald Trump, while the Democrats are racked by divisions because of dissatisfied younger voters, some of whom are so committed to standing up for Hamas Palestine that they’ll literally set themselves on fire in protest.1
As usual, the reality is much more complicated. Both parties have their divisions, but I know which nominee-in-waiting I’d prefer to be at this moment, and it’s not the guy with the gold-plated escalator.
Which he may not have much longer, in any event. But that’s another post.
In reality, these people absolutely despise Joe Biden and the Democratic Party, probably even more than they hate Trump and Republicans. Heretics are always more hated than those who never believed in the first place.