As per my last update, here’s a look at some candidates who might stand against Trump from the Republican side of the wall fence. I can’t see any of them beating Trump in a straight-up contest. This is because most of the Republican party are power-crazed scum who won’t risk a known winner against an unproven candidate. The best hope is they’ll either split the vote or whip up so much animosity to the right of the spectrum that they’ll make things easier for the Democratic candidate.

Interestingly, they mostly seem to be fiscal conservatives. I don’t know whether that’s part of their common cause against Trump but if so, it’s depressing. It’d be nice if the Republican party weren’t so far gone that some of its members objected to Trump’s plentiful and appalling crimes against behavioural standards and basic respect for humanity. But it is, so there aren’t, and we might as well start dropping the bombs now.

John Kasich

As things currently stand, Kasich has gained a bit of a reputation for wanting to stop the entire US political system becoming the laughing stock of the world. The fact this makes him stand out against his peers is one I’ll leave just here for your further consideration.

While the usual rules of existence are suspended, he’s not a far-right lunatic. Should reality suddenly reassert itself, please refer to the following waiver:

John Kasich is a raving maniac who wants to reduce re-distributive taxes while increasing regressive taxes that cause disproportionate suffering to the poor. He thinks people should be able ‘teach the controversy’ in the science classrooms of the education system he’s privatising, letting children decide (under often immense parental pressure) between whether things are best explained by facts or magic. This is presumably to bring it into line with the prison system he has already privatised, and which if he had his way would be filled with people who’ve had backstreet abortions. All this would be made possible by banning any sort of unionisation rights in the public sector, thus bringing down employment costs for unscrupulous private providers so they can submit unfeasibly cheap tenders for government contracts.

With that said, he may be the best hope the Republican party has of escaping the nightmare that is Donald Trump. Why? Because he is one the few Republicans who still has a spine. He seems to genuinely despise Trump and hasn’t been overly shy about it.

He does have cross-bench credentials on some issues, notably firearms and (weirdly, considering his other views) healthcare. This is likely only going to play well to the narrowest of the political centre though, as he fell out with the far right (not shooty or racist enough) and anyone but the most conservative of Democrats is likely to consider him a Tea Party shill. He might pick up independent and libertarian votes though, which in some states could tip the balance enough to matter.

In his favour will be brand recognition amongst Fox News viewers. This is a key Republican voting-block, so his time spent hosting his own show on the channel is likely to be a big help. Again, as with a lot of the other points here, it’s likely to have the opposite impact on potential Democrat-leaning voters because it’s comparable to having co-hosted Bestiality Today with Hitler.

He’s struck some conciliatory tones on gay marriage, voted to restrict assault rifle availability, and supports a very non-Trumpian approach to undocumented migrants. His whole political stance seems to be one of purely fiscal conservatism and very little current interest on social issues. This is likely a mild-to-moderate positive from the centrist perspective, but I suspect the negative impact it will have on the religious fruitcake vote will pretty much neutralise this gain.

One big negative to all parties will be his association with Lehman Brothers at the time of their collapse. He has somehow tried to explain that despite being Managing Director at the time of their collapse, he wasn’t aware of or involved in the events that led to it.

The challenge for Kasich boils down to one basic equation. His ability to attract some traditionally non-Republican voters isn’t great enough to offset the losses he risks amongst hardcore religious conservatives. He won’t be picking up any anti-establishment votes from either side of the fence, so this leaves him needing to find a core and enough of a swing vote to suggest he’s capable of a convincing presidential victory.

Jeff Flake

Another fiscal conservative, Flake is a bit less nuanced in terms of his appeal. He’s a straight-up conservative with very little appeal to anyone who considers themselves even vaguely Democratic-leaning.

This obviously means he doesn’t have a lot of pulling power when it comes to potential swing voters. Equally, it means he is less likely to lose the kind of religious right votes that Kasich will struggle with. In this sense, he’s more of a traditional Republican candidate.

His voting credentials include:

• Very anti-ACA (Obamacare)
• Pro-life
• Pro-gun, albeit with the caveat he thinks people who have been declared insane as part of a criminal prosecution relating to violent crime shouldn’t be able to buy guns. Because America is a country where that isn’t the default assumption.

In terms of Democrat-friendly stuff, there isn’t a whole lot. He broke from party lines to say he’d prefer a Democrat won an election than a sexual predator. But that’s only worth commenting on because the rest of the Republican party is by now so morally defunct that they wouldn’t prefer that.

He also recently insisted on an extra week before the Kavanaugh vote to allow for a further investigation. While nobody else in the party had the spine or integrity to push even this far, it does smack of symbolism rather than actual ethical commitment. He still voted for the nominee after it all, so obviously his conscience didn’t keep him up all night.

Perhaps one interesting facets of him running is he might try and slip into being the spiritual – as well as literal – successor of John McCain. It is possible we’ll hear McCain’s name invoked by any Republican resistance to Trump, so it’s plausible this may carry some weight.

Finally, two other facts that could be relevant. Flake is a Mormon and I don’t really know how that sits within the American spectrum of religious moonbattery. Secondly, he has an incredibly punchable face.

Ben Sasse

I haven’t heard much about Sasse before, so a lot of this is necessarily first-impressions-y. And those first impressions are that, by the light of unholy buggery, Ben Sasse is smart. His degrees have degrees. His PhD is in being qualified as fuck and his thesis was titled “My Brain Could Eat Your Brain: The Ben Sasse Story”.

Beyond that, it seems he is mostly a very traditional conservative; he’s very religious, he like guns, he dislikes gays, and he is mostly interested in economic growth. I’d say he’s the outsider of the group, as while he’s been a critic of Trump, he doesn’t seem to have the same level of actual hatred of the man as the others we’ve looked at. As someone with a brain, he despairs that his country is being run by someone who largely goes without one.

But, that said, I’m not very sure what else it is Sasse finds so disagreeable about Trump. So, he’s a fiscal conservative with good religious credentials, but probably too ivory tower to win votes from Trump’s base and definitely too Republican to get any of the waving Democrat vote. In fact, I can’t help but wonder whether his ire is based on the fact that the views of an obvious moron are consistently similar to his own.

One last thing I do want to mention is that he seems to have some weird views. He’s an anti-consumerist fiscal conservative who seems to think the economy will boom if everyone lives by a puritanical work-for-work’s-sake creed. What these people then spend their money on or what motivates them to earn it, I’m not entirely sure. It sounds a lot like working yourself to death for no gain, just to die rich and leave your money to kids who will do the same damned stupid thing.

We are a little over 2 weeks from the US midterm elections and about the same over 2 years away from the next presidential election. Most cycles, that would mean the candidates would start posturing about 6 months from now. But this isn’t most cycles.

It’s not exaggerating to say the 2020 race started the day Trump took office. There are three groups who’ll be making their opening their bids over coming weeks, if they haven’t already. These are:

• The Democrats
• Anti-Trump Republicans
• Trump himself

There will be all sorts of names touted for the first two groups, some of which may be more serious than others. However, there are also some key runners who it’ll be worth watching. If I get time, I’ll do a run-through of all these groups. For now, I just want to have a look at the Democrat A-listers.

Probably the biggest names here are Bernie ‘Make Them Pay’ Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Joe Biden. A likely addition to this list is Michael Bloomberg, thankfully the only ex-Mayor of New York in the running this time around.

Conspicuous by her absence, I don’t think Michelle Obama will run in 2020. If we’re talking 2024, I think that will be a very different story. I’m also ignoring what I’ll disparigingly refere to as ‘novelty’ candidates, like Avenatti. Stormy Daniels’ lawyer will be in it for the limelight and subsequent book deal, but I don’t think there’s a chance in hell of him making a serious bid for it.

Bernie ‘Professor Farnsworth’ Sanders

Obviously he’ll run. He was a furious geriatric before Trump won an election. By now he must be so pissed off, there’s a good chance he’ll turn up to the primary debates in a 300ft mechanised dinosaur suit that breathes carbon-neutral fire.

He’s going to have a good run and I’d be surprised if he didn’t make it to the final two. That said, I think he did as well as he could on the last run and won’t make it all the way to the candidacy itself.

There’s a line of reasoning that he’ll be able to rally disenfranchised anti-establishment voters who went for Trump last time. I think that’s ignoring how vast a distance there is between them on basically every other issue. Yes, the anti-establishment drive is currently a powerful motivating factors in politics. But “I’ll vote for an admitted sex-pest and probable psychopath” strong? Then swing towards a guy who disagrees with him on literally everything? I don’t think so.

Like Warren, Sanders is up for re-election in this year’s midterms. However, unlike her he won his last election with a 47% lead. He could afford to lose a full 20% at the ballot box and still have a straight majority for Vermont.

Elizabeth Warren

Until today, I thought Warren was a contender for strongest candidate. Without wanting to get too reductionist about this, I’m going to. She has:

• Academic accomplishments
• Some cross-party economic credentials
• A vagina

This means she has strong appeal to people who like Obama, swing-voters and anti-Trump independents, and Hilary supporters. Much of the US (the bits that don’t vote Trump) is ready for a female president, which will bring pressures to bear that shouldn’t be underestimated. She’s articulate and passionate.

But… she’s fucked it. She has engaged Trump on his own terms. She’s now engaged with an argument over facts with a man who has no regard for facts. He will lie, he will belittle, he will launch all sorts of challenges and attacks. And because she’s started to respond, she has two options: respond in kind or lose.

There’s an adage that I believe to be entirely true: never argue with an idiot, because they’ll drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience. Warren has started the argument. The publicity will now show her either losing (bad) or turning into Trump (worse). The former mobilises his base, the latter keeps her own at home in disgust.

With a majority of less than 10%, polls are likely to get her scrambling to hold her seat in the upcoming midterms. If she doesn’t win that with a resounding (ideally larger) majority, her shot at the White House is probably done for.

Joe Biden

Please. Please, Joe. Not only would I love to see Biden as president, I’d be a very happy man just watching him run a campaign. He has very little time for idiots. He considers his (potential) presidential opponent to be the Sultan of Fuckwits. He’s witty, erudite, and generally extremely likeable.

More importantly though, he’s got plenty of other, less subjective things going for him. He isn’t rich, living a notably modest life and having no investment interests of any kind. That keeps him away from Wall Street. He’s Catholic, which is specific enough to impress the (worryingly large) fraction of the electorate that care about leaders with ‘real’ religious affiliation. His record with the blue-collar vote is pretty good, which gives him some traction against a perceived Trump stronghold vote across key states.

The negatives? It’s all-too possible that he’ll say something that can be spun into a disaster. His relationship with Obama is a double-edged sword, likely to please many but also enrage others. He hasn’t won a ‘normal’ Senate election since 2008, which while he took with a nearly 20% margin was still a long time ago. I also think there’s a chance he might just… not run. He should. And he’s been making some of the right noise. But I just get this feeling he might wave it away.

Michael Bloomberg

He’s rich. Really, really rich. He has the kind of money that makes Trump writhe with insecurity – over $50,000,000,000 and counting. In the political environment of the United States, that gives him a lot of literal buying power that make him a realistic prospect.

He’s (sort of) a political outsider, but the kind that has experience: he’s never been in the Senate or House, but as 3-term mayor of New York will be seen to have earned his wings. During this time, he was a registered Republican and then Independent. Now looking to make a name for himself bringing the Democrats ‘back to the centre’* he should have strong swing-vote appeal.

On possibly the most interesting note, he has perhaps unparalleled capacity to troll Trump into full self-destruct mode. He ran the city Trump only ever boasted about influencing. He is the kind of rich that Trump wishes he could prove himself to be. He has won actual majorities in elections. He even shares the coughcoughcough honour of being endorsed by Rudi Giuliani.

In the very least, he has the potential of being a really interesting candidate. I think a big drawback for him will be that he’s very establishment, which means there’s likely to be a bruising primary run between him and Bernie “88 miles per hour” Sanders. The Democrats have a tendancy to end up buggering their presidential election odds due to a combination of brutal primaries and fudged messaging. That could be a danger for Bloomberg. But, on the other hand, fifty billion dollars. So let’s call it a toss-up and see how it goes.

Summary

I’ve missed loads. There will quite possibly be as many as a dozen Democrats running for the candidacy. In some cases, the outcome of the midterms will be the deciding factor of how far their bids go. For others, it might be how they respond to Trump’s playbook. I think the above are the most serious contenders from one of the three sides of the fence.

Who’ll win? At this point, I don’t give a shit. I’d be happy to see a slice of reformed ham elected if it meant Trump was out of office. But in the next couple of weeks we will see who sees themselves as contenders and (perhaps more importantly) who Trump sees as a threat.

 

*Only in the US could they be considered to have ever left it. Unless you take the reasonable view that they never reached it, due to still sitting significantly to the right of the centre throughout their entire political history.

 

I broke a toe once. If you know me, I’ve probably regaled you with the story before. If you knew me at the time, you will definitely have heard it. And there’s the story of the scar on my arm, from when I was drunkenly mucking about with a very sharp knife. Or the one on my brow, from where I drunkenly fell down a flight of stairs straight into a radiator.

Then there’s the classic about how I did my back in, jumping off what was either a huge sand dune or a small cliff. I was sober for that one and it was the worst, so I view the other injuries as proof I learned that lesson. A bit late, as it had a huge and lasting impact on my life, but I’m calling it a deferred success.

What you might not have heard is the story about those stories. Why I was drunk so frequently, and to such an extent that I kept injuring myself. Not the back – that was just garden variety stupidity. But the reason behind the rest? I don’t tend to talk about that. But I’m happy to embellish and retell the story of how I broke two of my toes. What a world we live in, eh?

And that’s the reason World Mental Health Day is an embarrassment to our society. We shouldn’t need it in the way we do. I’m happy to tell the story about licking a tent and getting dysentery, shitting myself half-to-death in a campsite toilet until a French doctor stabbed me in the bum with a needle.  But I don’t talk about my me. That’s much too embarrassing.

We don’t have a World Shit Yourself Inside-Out Day or a World Broken Bones Day. Everyone does those things at some point. Everybody knows they suck. We’re okay with them. And the bigger scary things like cancer get their own day, to remind people that there are others less fortunate than them, struggling with some awful circumstances. These we talk about and spend serious money trying to prevent and cure. And the less severe stuff we can even brag and joke about. Breaking those three toes is one of my finest anecdotes.

World Mental Health Day isn’t like that. Its main purpose isn’t to remind others; it is to try to convince the people who suffer mental health issues that it is okay to talk about it. Their own. The stories that they don’t share. The stories that might be the story behind all the other stories. The ones they seek to hide or excuse or minimise.

I’m lucky. I have a great family, an inspirational and phenomenally patient wife-to-be, amazing kids, and life now is very different for me. I am not alone, and I can afford to choose not to talk about things that make me feel uncomfortable. I can and do when I need to. I’m extremely fortunate to have such a life.

But we shouldn’t live in a world where we need to tell people it’s okay to talk about their pain. It’s very far from fine that in any given year 25% of people suffer alone because there’s so much shame attached to suffering any other way. It’s reprehensible that mental health services are so underfunded that any talk of ‘breaking point’ is firmly in the past tense.

As a society, we spend millions on treating physical ills. If I were to guess, I’d say this is because we’re all aware that at some point we will die. Most people would like that to be later rather than sooner. They are to some extent or another afraid to die. But what about those who think sooner might be a welcome relief?

The truth is there are tens of millions of people in this country who are afraid to really live. The thing that scares them most is themselves. And by stigmatising them into remaining silent, we’re forcing them into an existence where ‘themselves’ is all they have.

It’s the same invisible social contract that means I can laugh over the story of the time I broke eight of my toes, but I don’t talk about the hourless, minuteless, boundless nights, the fear and panic and weird mania. Or the fact that while it’s obvious by this point that the story about my toes might not be strictly true, people might not stop to think the same about the one with the knife.

If you need to talk, find someone to listen. Even if you only do it so others can feel more confident in doing so themselves. I can all but guarantee you that the people who love you desperately want you to, even if they don’t know that yet.

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