Nashville Tennessean – Opinion
Americans and their leaders are to blame for returning Trump to the White House
April Lieberman – December 26, 2024
From rural Tennessee to Democratic presidential politics, I’ve lived in both worlds − of “us and them.”
Here’s my take on why:
- my neighbors don’t trust Democrat
- a convicted felon is returning to the White House.
There’s plenty of blame to go around.
Biden himself is among those to blame among Democrats
- President Joe Biden: for selfishly pursuing the presidency despite cognitive decline, his sundowning obvious back in the 2019 primary debates.
- Biden supporters and allies: First Lady Dr. Jill Biden and his family for letting him. White House staff, the Democratic National Committee, and party leaders, for enabling this epic disservice to the country. His Cabinet, profiles in cowardice, for not invoking the 25th Amendment and removing him.
- Attorney General Merrick Garland: for delaying appointing a special counsel, allowing now President-elect Donald Trump to run out the clock. Rep. Jim Clyburn, for delivering Biden South Carolina in the 2020 primaries. Former President Barack Obama, for strong-arming Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, out of the race, placing loyalty over country, then again by preemptively supporting Biden’s reelection bid, deterring primary challengers.
- The Clintons: 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and coastal elites, for underestimating Trump in 2015-2016 and neglecting the Blue Wall. Former President Bill Clinton and ‘90s NAFTA Dems for decimating small towns across America, including mine. All of them (not named Bernie Sanders), for decades of ignoring rural and blue-collar voters while taking Black and Latino Americans for granted, instead pushing agendas far left of the American electorate.
- Miscellaneous: Whichever idiot coined “Bidenomics,” an infuriating attempt to gaslight America.
- Vice President Kamala Harris: for not distancing herself from Biden or showing us she felt our pain. Her campaign, for inaccessibility and insularity (shades of Hillary Clinton), ignoring those devastating anti-trans ads, and fundamentally misreading what mattered most to voters: It’s still the economy, stupid.
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MAGA voters and justice system are responsible for returning Trump to the White House
- MAGA: For placing a racist/rapist/convicted felon over our Constitution.
- Other Republicans: Most of them, for striking Faustian bargains in normalizing Trump, sacrificing their integrity for power, none more craven than Sen. Lindsey Graham’s betrayal of “Amigo” John McCain on his deathbed to worship at the orange altar. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, for not saving us this national nightmare by ordering his minions to remove the Insurrectionist-in-Chief, forever barring him from federal office − Howard Baker he is not.
- Right-wing Supreme Court justices: For not checking the presidency, instead placing Trump above the law, dismantling our rights and democracy itself.
- Judge Juan Merchan: For delaying sentencing on 34 felony convictions until after the election, instead of letting Trump campaign from a New York City jail cell.
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Media, dictators, billionaires and Congress bear responsibility too
- Legacy media: For feeding the beast for ratings, and not reporting the emperor’s lack of clothes until the Biden-Trump debate debacle.
- Right-wing media: All of them, particularly the late Rush Limbaugh for pioneering a talk radio of racism, misogyny, and mockery; Fox News, for admittedly “entertaining” the masses with decades of disinformation and paranoia; and Joe Rogan’s #1 podcast, for touting conspiracy theories to millions. His interview and endorsement of Trump? Huuuuge.
- Dictators: Putin, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), et al., for funding Trumpworld and interfering in our elections, from stirring division online to disenfranchising voters with bomb threats.
- Billionaires: Most of them − Mark Zuckerberg, for letting Russia polarize Facebook/Instagram; Elon Musk, for buying/destroying Twitter/X and underwriting Trump’s campaign; Jeff Bezos, etc., for buying media/censoring editorial boards;andHarlan Crow, for buying Clarence Thomas.
- Corporate America: For price-gouging and using dark money to buy deregulation, tax breaks, and a suppressed minimum wage.
- Public school systems: For hiring football coaches to teach history and civics, and graduating young people who can’t sign their name on a ballot.
- Evangelical leaders: Most of them, for interfering in politics while claiming religious tax exemptions, radicalizing congregations, hailing a rapist as a messiah, and pushing us toward theocracy.
- Country music: Some, like Jason Aldean, for a sub-genre of Southern suspicion and vigilantism owing much to Hank Williams, Jr. Over 40 years ago he followed rock’s Lynyrd Skynyrd in tapping a vein of belligerence, stoking the embers of the Confederacy. Hank Jr. may not have created this divide, but he did give rural America its soundtrack.
- Congress: For pandering to gerrymandered extremes, failing to check SCOTUS, the president, or itself. But, the Senate’s abrogation of its constitutional duty to remove an insurrectionist from the presidency, forever barring him from federal office, is the greatest failure in the 248-year history of American democracy.
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April Lieberman is a former appellate attorney with family experience in presidential politics, a Yale Law School graduate who studied philosophy at Vanderbilt, and Democratic politics in the backwoods of West Tennessee.