“Worse Is Better“ For Donald Trump

Sent from a friend’s Facebook showing why they aren’t taking a summer vacation this year.

This should be the number one issue addressed at both conventions: pic.twitter.com/6kNO4BryEu

— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) July 13, 2024

“Worse is better.”

I decided to write something about this old chestnut last night.

As the theory goes, it is better for mainstream conservatives to lose. It is better to have Democrats in power doing awful things because this radicalizes more people. After four years long years of the Trump presidency, I was exhausted and ready to move on and bought into this in 2020.

Four years later, we can say “worse is better” has produced a major backlash to the Joe Biden presidency. Conservatives have been radicalized to some degree. Life has gotten objectively worse across the board for most people under Joe Biden. Inflation has raised prices and impoverished millions of people. We are embroiled in a war with Russia which was unimaginable in 2020. Israel has launched a genocide in Gaza. Ketanji Brown Jackson sits on the Supreme Court. Over 8 million illegal aliens have flooded across the border in less the four years. Joe Biden has exceeded my worst expectations as president.

If Donald Trump had narrowly won the 2020 election, he would be preparing to exit the political scene and would likely have been diminished by the post-pandemic malaise that Biden inherited. The backlash to the demise of Roe v. Wade would have been much stronger without Biden in office and taking the blame in the 2022 midterms and in the 2024 presidential election. Instead, Donald Trump is more popular than ever and is poised to sweep back into power in a landslide. The Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity will also make Trump much more powerful than he was before. “Worse is better” has extended the Trump era until likely 2029 and given him the opportunity to leave behind a very different legacy.

If the goal of “worse is better” was to move on from Trump, it has had the opposite effect by extending his lease at the center of our political life. If it was to radicalize conservatives to the point that they embraced secession or started an armed insurrection or embraced National Socialism, it has failed. None of those things have happened or seem likely to happen after this election. If the goal was to “teach Republicans a lesson” about taking the White vote for granted, they still haven’t learned the lesson.

In what ways has it been a success?

As we all know from experience by now, we succeeded in making rent and groceries more expensive. We succeeded in making nearly everything else we purchase more expensive than it was four years ago. We succeeded in flooding our communities with illegal aliens. We succeeded in raising interest rates. We succeeded in getting around half a million people killed on both sides of the war in Ukraine. We just didn’t succeed in getting rid of Donald Trump or the GOP in the process of stacking all of these Ls.

I’m sorry that I haven’t had the time to write anything this week.

I have been dealing with the fallout of that illegal alien with no insurance driving into my wife’s car and totaling it. We have spent the last week taking care of that and car shopping. It has been a huge pain in the ass because interest rates are so much worse than they were four years ago. It is finally over and we succeeded in getting a new car and driving it home late last night.

Anyway, this post was provoked by sitting at the car dealership yesterday, reflecting on my misfortunes, scrolling through Twitter and watching clips of Joe Biden losing his mind as the media turns on him. Donald Trump wasn’t spending his first night in prison. He is on top of the world right now and preparing to accepting the Republican nomination at the convention next week.