You Are Being Played…

…if you’re more passionate about Trump versus DeSantis than you are about either versus Biden.

And, yes, many people are.

Let’s look at why that might be. Donald Trump excites a higher degree of passion and loyalty than most American politicians of our lifetime. It’s not because he’s Hitler. It’s because, at precisely the moment that no one at the top of either political party gave a crap about middle-income Americans, one of the richest people in America descended a golden elevator in a skyscraper he owns and told them he had heard them, and help was on the way.

It says something about the moment that people were so relieved and pleased to be recognized, and to hear their cry answered, that they didn’t even mind who it was.

Then, he won the 2016 election, and proceeded to deliver on his words with action. Again, that simple reality “trumped” all the other baggage with this guy, so much so that, in the middle of a pandemic, nine million more people voted for him in 2020.

So, the passion is understandable, whether you share it or not. Don’t pretend you don’t get it.

Ron DeSantis is in his second term as governor of Florida, and won reelection last year with an historic landslide, after winning by about 30,000 votes the first time around, in 2018. His policy differences with Trump would fit on an index card and give you plenty of room to doodle.

On the other hand, Joe Biden hung around politics for your entire lifetime, and was given up as presidential timber as far back as 1987. When he somehow ascended to the highest office in the land, it was as a Trojan horse for the most radical politics in our country’s history, politics with which he has no history and little familiarity, and for which he is the figurehead.

He convinced people in 2020, and will again in 2024, that no one that old, that befuddled, that innocuous-looking, could possible represent a threat or a real change. Yet, the transition from Trump to Biden has been that rare thing: a consequential election for our rights, our economy and our world.

A lot of airtime, energy and money is being aimed squarely at you, to convince you that it’s Trump or death/Ron or death in this election. That the real fight is for the Republican nomination.

The real fight is for what kind of country we will have and what it will look like after six more years like the last two.

If you don’t see that, you have been played.