River News: Our View

The 2024 presidential campaign season is just getting underway — not one candidate has even dropped out yet, though Joe Biden almost always looks like he’s physically and mentally about to go down for a face plant — but already this is a remarkable and historic election.

Such a statement is likely to draw guffaws and eye rolls from the political peanut gallery, given that the most likely scenario is a rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Taken at face value, a rerun is a ho-hum, but then again, that in itself, if it indeed happens, would be remarkable, given that the vast majority of the country does not want to see such a rematch.

Remarkably telling, that is to say, about the state of our democracy.

But beneath the currents of the headlines — and of the rip tides that will sooner or later drown such candidates as Nikki Haley and Mike Pence, and, well, Nikki Haley and Mike Pence — is something truly remarkable: Voters are getting treated to a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon, which is that no fewer than four candidates are running who are deeply opposed to the deep state that rules the country (not to mention that controls both major political parties) and who are vowing to dismantle it. 

We shouldn’t have to name names, but here are the four that the CIA, the FBI, and Homeland Security would love to see take a dirt nap: Former President Donald Trump; Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis; entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy; and, the loner over in the Democratic/Totalitarian Party, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Never before have so many candidates risen up to challenge the hegemony of the bureaucratic collectivist state (or the corporate-government axis, if you prefer), and never before has the globalist state been so brazen in its efforts to defeat them and the movement that sustains them.

All of which tells us just how powerful that movement is. We are, as one of the candidates said last week, in the middle of a populist rebellion, and, if the number of their candidates is any indication, the rebellion is thriving.

To be sure, each of the candidates has the deep state in their crosshairs.

Donald Trump, speaking in Waco on the 30th anniversary of the federal government’s slaughter of men, women, and children in that Texas town, said: “Either the deep state destroys America, or we destroy the deep state.” Trump vowed to do it in six months.

Ron DeSantis wondered how Trump was going to get rid of the deep state in six months when he couldn’t do it in four years as president, but he echoed the sentiment: “[T]he elites in Washington, D.C. … are not enacting an agenda to represent us. They are imposing their agenda on us via the federal government, via corporate America, and via our own education system, all for their benefit and all to our detriment.”

Vivek Ramaswamy pointed out that Joe Biden is not really the one running for president: “He’s not even the person running the government.” And when asked about the administrative state, Ramaswamy said, correctly: “The administrative state is unconstitutional. The right answer: shut it down.”

Then there’s Kennedy, who says: “My mission over the next 18 months of this campaign and throughout my presidency will be to end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism in our country.”

They are all right, of course, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their flaws.

Trump’s 71 felony charges aside — is there anyone who really takes them seriously, except as a signal of just how terrified the deep state is of Trump — many think Trump’s biggest flaw is his narcissism, which leads him to say wacky things. He is a narcissist and it does lead him to say wacky things, but that’s not his biggest flaw, or even a major one. It certainly didn’t stop him from being a great president, at least until the pandemic came along.

The old line about Trump is still true: Watch what he does, not what he says.

No, the biggest flaw is his gullibility. Anthony Fauci played him on vaccines and lockdowns, and Trump swallowed it all hook, line, and sinker until it was too late. Trump finally saw the light but not in time and we all paid a steep constitutional price. Hopefully, he has learned a thing or two about trusting deep state bureaucrats.

Meanwhile, DeSantis’s campaign seems to have gone off the rails like an errant Disney amusement park ride. Or maybe he’s an angry Dumbo the Elephant rampaging in the parking lot. Either way, he’s breathing in a caboose full of anti-woke fairy dust that has seemingly intoxicated him. His latest ad rails against Trump for pledging in 2016 to support LGBTQ civil rights, and that’s a head scratcher because supporting LGBTQ civil rights is a good and fundamental thing, as in, everybody’s civil rights deserve protection.

The campaign against woke should not be about moralizing about someone’s sexual identity or preference but about opposing those few but loud transgender activists (and they are a minority) who attempt to undermine women’s rights, especially in sports, and who promote gender mutilation and the indoctrination of minors, also known as grooming. It’s about those in the transgender movement who attempt to undermine the civil rights of women and children, not about undermining the civil rights of the larger LGBTQ community.

We wish DeSantis would get back to what brought him to the dance — his opposition to government censorship, lockdowns, mandates, and its attempt at the totalitarian control of our lives. 

Ramaswamy doesn’t have any of the obvious flaws of Trump and DeSantis, but then he’s unknown and, at age 37, very young. And really young. And did we mention that he is very young?

Finally, Kennedy’s problem is that he is running in the wrong political party. He still calls himself a Kennedy liberal — opposed to censorship, opposed to governing by fear, opposed to war and the military industrial complex, opposed to unbridled corporate and government power, especially when they are merged.

Those are all pretty good policy positions, and once upon a time they did make for a Kennedy liberal, but these days they make for a conservative: Jack Kennedy’s hatred of the deep state — he wanted to obliterate the CIA, abolish the Federal Reserve, and de-power powerful federal bureaucrats — and his embrace of business tax cuts that fueled a massive early ‘60s economic boom would put him right at home in today’s MAGA movement.

Despite these flaws, and perhaps they are not so much flaws as they are realities, four candidates have emerged — at least one in each party — to carry the banners of the U.S. Constitution and of political and economic liberty. And while they might not all be winning the hearts of a majority of Americans individually, all have gained surprising public support and together they may well command a majority of Americans.

The multiplicity of populist candidates is really their significance. Weak or dying political movements rarely generate internal popular competition. They produce unchallenged leaders whose power is maintained through edicts and threats and patronage.

The most obvious example is the Biden administration. As Ramaswamy pointed out, the president is not running the government; a cabal of bureaucrats and corporate globalists is. Beyond Biden, there is no one else to be the face of the Democratic Party — there doesn’t need to be so long as he continues to breathe — but his cartel’s power is maintained through ideological conformity, which is the ticket to the tomb, not ideological diversity, which is the mother of charisma and excitement, of vision and leadership.

When a “progressive” like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorses Biden, as she did earlier this month, when the surrender of any internal competition is as pathetic and evident as that, the bankruptcy of the left is apparent. 

There is another important point: While American history is replete with challenges to establishment power — George McGovern, Robert F. Kennedy, and Gene McCarthy in the 1960s and early 1970s — those challenges were within the boundaries of a democratic republic. That is to say, the radicals did not challenge the existence or legitimacy of the constitution or of democracy, only interpretations of it and alleged corruptions within it.

These days the tables are turned. The establishment that has gained power though the inexorable growth of bureaucratic collectivism has no fealty to the constitution or democracy; it is increasingly opposed to it, and brazenly so.

The four “radicals” running against that establishment are fighting for a restoration of a constitutional government against an elite global confederacy that has commandeered power. The war is not fought within the left-versus-right confines of a single ideology, as it was in the 60s; it is two warring ideologies — of democracy against totalitarianism.

That makes the stakes far more significant. And the vitality of the populist movement forming against this establishment terrifies the globalist regime.

As well it should. Here’s how RFK, Jr., put it. He was speaking about his own campaign, but he could have been speaking for all four of the populists in the race:

“The rising populist movement among Democrats and Republicans is creating a space where everyone can come together,” Kennedy said. “The next president should represent all of America, and help us unite on common ground. I do think there is a growing coalition of the left and right in our country — of populist forces on the left and right — that are convening now and that are finding common ground, and I think that really is probably the only thing that is going to save American democracy.”

There is a rebellion happening in our country now, Kennedy said.

“There’s a populist rebellion and if we don’t capture that rebellion, making our country an exemplary nation again, somebody else is going to hijack that rebellion for much darker purposes,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to say we’re not going to talk to American populists because they are deplorable. They are Americans. They are our brothers and sisters, and we need to listen to them when their backs are against the wall because of policies that have come down from both the Republican and Democratic parties.”

Amen to that. The rebellion is on. It’s a remarkable thing, this populist rebellion, the most remarkable thing about this election and, frankly, probably the most remarkable thing of our lifetimes. 

It all began in 2015 when Donald Trump rode down an escalator in New York City to announce his candidacy for president. He gathered in a nascent populist movement, gave it form and voice, and started the wild and bumpy ride back up. 

These days Trump has other soldiers by his side. None are perfect; all are important. And this year’s ride back to the top is only the beginning.