The Best Idea: Neither Biden nor Trump — Part 2

Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan

Colleen O’Connor’s views are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of the OB Rag.

By Colleen O’Connor

Earthquakes happen.  Geological (Morocco), Economic (Crashes), Environmental (Cat 4 hurricanes), Medical (pandemics) and even political ones.

Each manifest fault lines that presage potential disaster and prompt the wise to prepare.

It is in that vein that “Neither Biden nor Trump” Part 1 was written.

The political fault lines in both leading candidates and their respective parties are well known.  The consequences of not preparing for an obvious political earthquake is imprudent at best.

Hence, the need to find an escape route and prepare ahead.  Just in case.  Surely, it merits a discussion.  Even if for beyond 2022.

Part 2.

As W.B. Yeats warned over 100 years ago, in The Second Coming:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
…
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

The poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War[4]  and amid the 1918–1919 flu pandemic. Dark days.

No room here to list the calamities of wars, domestic violence, global instability, or Blue States vs. Red States ruptures underpinning Confederacy vs. Union Civil War grievances or the 2020 election outcomes.

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold” is upon us now.

Yet arguably the only geographic area that has begun stitching the country together again is the geographical center.  The Midwest Heartland.

Assume that neither Trump nor Biden are the 2024 presidential candidates.  Maladies happen. Fate intervenes.  Biden may garner enough delegates to go to the Convention, decline the honor, and then free all those delegates to vote their choice.  Or opt out earlier.

Trump might cut a deal to avoid dealing with the 91 costly indictments, trials, and possible incarceration.  He, as Biden, is not in robust health and/or may not be his party’s nominee.

Who can keep the center holding?  Try two Governors who have stitched together home-grown successes.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois.  Whitmer, akin to a champion rough-water swimmer in a turbulent ocean.  Pritzker, a billionaire, with much-need economic acumen.  In short, a politician who can count.

First, Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a state Donald Trump won in 2016. His vitriol against “that woman from Michigan” likely ushered in an armed mob at the state capitol and a plot by a group linked to a right-wing militia intending to kidnap and kill her.

Excerpts from The New Yorker profile of Whitmer by Benjamin Wallace-Wells:

“It didn’t stop her from leading on women’s reproductive rights, gun control legislation… while sweeping the suburbs so convincingly that the Democrats gained control of both houses of the Michigan legislature for the first time in forty years.”

“What’s happening in the Midwest, one of Whitmer’s advisers said, is a “Tea Party in reverse.”

As Angela Weaver, described her district, “There is labor, but even labor is split, because they think we’re all taking their guns away.  The suburban part of her district, she went on, “is educated, heavily female. And then I have a ton of farms and little, tiny villages that are hanging out Confederate flags everywhere. ‘Fuck Biden’ flags are everywhere.”

“People think Whitmer’s an intellectual, but she’s not.  She is a wartime consigliere.”  Who stitches together a majority of voters.

Asked what it has taken to be a successful politician amid chaos, Whitmer’s reply, “cold blood and genuine passion.”  Her winning campaign slogan, “Fix the damn roads,” while also promising to create “an ideas-producing state.”

On her foresight, specifically about the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.  She “had been preparing for a post-Roe campaign since the night that Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, in September, 2020.”

Then she delivered “the defining speech of her political career. It started with characteristic brutality: “I’m about to tell you something that I’ve not shared with many people in my life,” she said. (Not even her father).

“Over twenty years ago, I was a victim of rape. And thank God it didn’t result in a pregnancy, because I can’t imagine going through what I went through and then having to consider what to do about an unwanted pregnancy. From an attacker.”

“Things are moving so fast right now. And, when you’re moving fast, you can make a lot of progress, or you can do a lot of damage.”

The best idea.  Neither Biden nor Trump.  And an open and competitive race.

Part 3: The Governor of Illinois, Governor J.B.  Pritzker.  A billionaire heir to the Hyatt global fortune, (amid the “covert war among billionaires”) who also comprehends capitalism’s fault lines regarding Artificial Intelligence, crypto-currencies, stock markets, Ponzi schemes and major global financial frauds.

In a political earthquake, Governor Whitmer, “a force for pragmatism,” can quickly muster the necessary troop responses.  In an economic collapse, J.B. Pritzker’s financial acumen might just avoid an economic calamity.

Prepare ahead.  Part 3 coming soon.