It's Still About Trump

One thing that appears certain before the Midterms, tomorrow, is that Trump has won this battle: The Midterms are significantly about Trump and his vision for America. This is exactly what Trump has sought to accomplish—with his endorsements and campaigning—and what he has successfully accomplished. The Dems somehow thought it would be a good idea to help Trump in this, and we’re about to see the results in solid showings by Trump’s cadre of candidates.

That it’s all about Trump is obvious from the the Dem campaign strategy: Attack the Trump SCOTUS and attack the concept of “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” I cited a Jonathan Turley article yesterday on the remarkable rhetoric emanating from the putative party of the demos, and Turley is at it again:

“When True Democracy Goes Away, People Get Hurt”: Obama Joins Mantra that Democracy is at Risk if GOP Wins

I think we all get it that the “true democracy” at risk features a definition of the demos that is limited to the ruling elite. Turley notes the irony in the Dem talking points:

Obama added that you see the threat to democracy “in countries where the government tells you what books you can and cannot read.” Yet, many on the left are seeking to preserve censorship by surrogate on social media and seeking to prevent the publication of books by those with whom they disagree, including a book by Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett. With corporate censorship threatened, many leaders like Hillary Clinton are turning to good old-fashioned state censorship.

Indeed, President Joe Biden has questioned how citizens will know the truth without censors framing what the truth is on social media and the Internet.

All of this is true, but it also remains true that much of the groundwork for all this overbearing government control over We the People was laid beginning with Dubya’s Global War On Terror (GWOT), which has morphed—under the continued unelected foreign policy control of the Neocons—into a Global War on, well, just about everybody else, including the American people. The movement toward a domestic national security state has been ongoing since 9/11, at least in public, but one imagines that it has been in the works for far longer.

The organs of the ruling elite, having received their talking points, have jumped into action and are dutifully parroting the scare talk—they want to “save” us from Civil War. Which means something very like, save us from a second Trump administration. Elijah Magnier documents the concerns of the elites in the political class:

Did America open an Embassy in the US without my knowledge?

‘These are conditions ripe for political violence’: how close is the US to civil war?

‘These are conditions ripe for political violence’: how close is the US to civil war?

Nearly half of Americans fear their country will erupt within the next decade. Here, three experts analyse the depth of the crisis

Will America encourage a "Colour Revolution" at home? And this time the Coup d'état will be against whom?

How To Save the U.S. From A Second Civil War

As the U.S. becomes more ideologically divided than ever, how do we avoid the vortex of political passion and blame?

How many military bases will the Pentagon establish in America and around it?

Opinion | Is America Headed for Another Civil War? Jamelle Bouie and Tim Alberta on whether America’s polarization is at a tipping point.

Is America heading for civil war? A clutch of books makes an alarmingly persuasive case that the warning lights are flashing redder than at any point since 1861

43% of Americans say a US civil war is at least somewhat likely in the next decade, according to a recent survey bloomberg.com/news/articles/… via @bpolitics 

Magnier’s reference to a “colour revolution” is telling, since the definition of such revolutions is a US inspired revolution of the ruling class against the subject population of any given country. A color revolution in the US would look something like the military occupation of the Imperial City on the Potomac in 2020 and the political J6 show trials. But maybe without more elections, because back in 2020 the ruling class thought they had got rid of Trump and would reinforce that victory with show trials. They thought that would be sufficient, but Trump had other ideas.

But of course those scribes of the ruling class aren’t the real rulers. Today at The Saker we get a Russian perspective on what we’re all obsessing about:

The Trojan Horse Presidency

The US midterm elections are nigh and, as I happen to be a good and patriotic Russian national, it behooves me to meddle in them. Election-meddling is an example of Russia’s soft power, which is much nicer than Russia’s hard power, so you should be glad that it’s still on offer.

I am on record saying that “The United States is not a democracy and it doesn’t matter who is president” multiple times in multiple places, and I stand by that statement, which I believe to be a provable statement of fact. Statistics show that there is zero correlation between public preferences and public policy decisions but a strong correlation between business lobby group preferences and pubic policy decisions. Thus the US is not a democracy (rule by the people) but an oligopoly (rule by business groups). From this it follows that it doesn’t matter who is president because both parties of the Democrat-Republican duopoly are owned by the same set of business groups.

Obviously, matters are somewhat more complicated than that. Our republic and constitutional order may be fraying, but that doesn’t mean a color revolution would be easy to pull off—not after America’s experience of the coup against Trump, the Covid Regime, and Woke excesses. Moreover, for all our political and cultural problems, our republic retains some basic strengths. Even the ruling class needs to at least pretend to be responsive to the voting public, and that can lead and has led to complications for the establishment agenda. For example, that imperative has resulted in a SCOTUS majority that, allowing for the vagaries of personal style, has adopted a fairly consistent view of the constitution, of the major issues confronting the nation, and has also shown an appetite for applying those views in practice. Elections do matter, and it’s a safe bet that the oligopoly spoken of at The Saker would not approve of developments at the SCOTUS—left unchecked, devotion to the Constitution could upset the Corporatist applecart that most oligopolists are so comfortable with. That is precisely the danger that Trump represented, and we see that Trump’s legacy is likely to live on in the SCOTUS. Another Trump administration—perhaps animated by Trump’s hard won knowledge of who his real enemies are—doesn’t bear thinking, for many of the oligopolists.

Who are these oligopolists? Zerohedge offered a nice picture of them not long ago:

GOP's Billionaire Donors Dwarf Democrats In Huge Reversal From 2018

For our purposes, the two graphics will do:

Without doing some deep digging about all you can say about the GOP donor oligopolists is that they’re a more mixed bag than the Dems. However, I can tell you that the Uihleins (cardboard box magnates—don’t laugh, you should see their HQ directly across from a huge Amazon complex on I-94) and Jeffrey Yass are probably coming from a similarly conservative cultural direction (despite Yass’ major role at Cato Institute). The Uihleins were early and major backers of Trump. The others are a bit harder to peg, although Larry Ellison was involved in questioning Election 2020.

Where do these oligopolists stand on Trump 2024? It’s safe to assume that the Uihleins are all in for Trump. The oligopolist who’s making waves lately, however, is Ken Griffen.

Griffen is a super wealthy “investor” who wants to remain super wealthy and even become more super wealthy. His main issue seems to be keeping the capital gains tax low his income will be taxable at rates lower than mine. However, he’s a guy who has the courage of his convictions and puts his money where his mouth is—he’s willing to spend a lot of money in pursuit of low tax rates. For example (via Don Surber):

Politico reported, "GOP megadonor: I’m ready to back DeSantis for president in ’24.

"Billionaire CEO Ken Griffin is a bit tired of Donald Trump. 'For a litany of reasons, I think it’s time to move on to the next generation,' he said in an interview."

Buried in Paragraph 11 was, "Griffin liked [Trump’s] fiscal policies while in the White House, but his only financial support to Trump came in donating $100,000 to his inaugural committee."

He gave $500,000 to the Biden inauguration.

Perhaps he was anticipating the Biden inflation?

One suspects that Griffen’s appreciation for Trump’s tax cuts is actually a measure of their palatability to the super wealthy. Anyway, he’s now saying that Trump is “pointlessly divisive” and that it’s “time to move on” away from Trump:

"He did a lot of things really well and missed the mark on some important areas," Griffin said. "And for a litany of reasons, I think it's time to move on to the next generation."

So, it’s still about Trump. Griffen, like others, is investing in Ron DeSantis, although he makes it clear that he doesn’t agree with DeSantis on all points—points which are all rather Trumpian:

The businessman admitted he opposed some of DeSantis' moves as governor, including flying migrants to Martha's Vineyard and revoking Disney World's special tax status over the company's opposition to Florida's Parental Rights in Education law.

"I have no qualms with the very public fight, but the revocation of Disney's special tax district felt like retribution," Griffin said.

Griffen has gone head to head with Trump in the recent past. During the primary season in IL—before Griffen left for his home state of FL—Griffen gave $25 million to Richard Irvin, a quintessential RINO. Trump’s pick, Darren Bailey, thumped Irvin in the primaries—helped, it’s true, by large contributions of votes and money from Dems.

The bottom line is that, once the Midterms are behind us, the political battles will only intensify, both in Congress and DC as well as in the preparations for 2024. We see that battle building already. Trump will face strong opposition from the GOP establishment, as always, but he’ll also have new strengths to add to his record if his sponsorship of candidates in the Midterms pans out as expected. He’ll also have some important financial backing. The question for many of us is: What has he learned from his experience over the last six years and what has he learned from his mistakes? I’d like to see Trump articulate answers to those questions, in an open way. If he can do that, I think he can solidify the Midterm gains and transform those gains into support for his own candidacy. To do that he will need to move past Trump Redux and present a new version of himself—familiar, but having grown in stature from his experience. Not renouncing his program in the least, but providing the public with a narrative of why he’s the leader who can advance that MAGA program. If anyone can do that, it’s probably Trump.