Las Cruces Community Radio 101.5 FM
  • Home
  • Donate
  • Listen
    • Archives
  • Schedule
    • Programs
  • Underwrite
  • Merch
  • About Us
  • Events
  • Contact Us

Walt Rubel Commentary: Two predictions for the presidential election

9/30/2020

 
I’ve been writing this column in my head ever since election night in 2016. I decided that night to stay focused on local issues, and to not allow myself to get outraged every time the president says or does something outrageous. You can count on one hand the number of columns I’ve written since then about Donald Trump. But I also decided that when the time was right, just before the start of early voting, I would craft a column that was so persuasive it would convince undecided voters of the need to make a change. Early voting starts Tuesday, Oct. 6, but I’m not sure there are any undecided voters left.
All along, I expected that the purpose of this column would be to drive home the importance of this year’s election. Now it turns out that just the opposite is true.  I’ve never been very good at election-year predictions, but here are two for this year that I feel pretty certain about.

1. If Trump is re-elected, our democracy will survive. All of those people talking about this being an existential election need to take a breath.  My faith in that has nothing to do with the president. The so-called “deep state” that has so frustrated him and his supporters is, in fact, a set of standards and values that have been established during the last two-plus centuries and are enforced each day by tens of thousands of federal workers who are loyal to their agency and its mission, not the person who temporarily occupies the office of president.  Trump would continue his attempts to weaken traditional values and norms, but he’s outnumbered. And those folks aren’t going anywhere.

2. If Trump loses, he will step down. He’ll claim until his final breath that he got cheated. His lawyers will file appeals. His supporters will look for ways to get state legislatures to overturn the will of the voters. But none of that will work.  And in the end, Trump doesn’t want to go down in history as the first president to be forcibly removed from office.  I had two hopes when Trump took office. The first was that he wouldn’t start a war. The second was that he wouldn’t face a crisis, beyond those that he creates for himself every day.

Every country in the world faced the same crisis when the coronavirus began to spread at the start of the year. None have mishandled it as badly as we have. Our death toll from the virus dwarfs that of other nations. The president knew from the start how deadly the virus was, but he kept that information to himself for fear of rattling the stock market. He said he wants to be a cheerleader for our country. We need a coach - a leader who we can trust.

What we have is a pot-stirrer. Every large group of friends or coworkers has at least one person who just loves to stir the pot. He or she knows exactly what to say to get one group fighting with another, then sits back and enjoys the show.  That seems to be the one singular talent of our current president. He’s better at it than anybody I’ve ever seen. And it has served him well, first as a successful reality TV host, then as a successful candidate in both the Republican primary and general election.  But those skills don’t translate well to the Oval Office, especially at a time when we need a leader who can unify the country behind a science-based plan to save lives.


Walter Rubel can be reached at [email protected]
Listen to the audio version.

Comments are closed.

    Shows

    All
    All About Books
    Cafe Con Leche
    Commentaries
    Coronavirus Update
    Delving In
    Earth Matters
    Eye On Government
    Just Community
    Live From The Market
    Live True
    Mesilla Valley Sports Show
    Speak Up Las Cruces
    Special Broadcasts
    Take On Faith
    The Sunday Show
    Think Again
    This Week In Las Cruces

    Music Shows

    You can find a two-week archive of all of our music shows and nearly every other one of our shows by going to our Schedule page.

    Archives

    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    May 2018

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly