Cleaving

Say that we have cleaved and you can’t go wrong. Even the word has been cleaved with each meaning, (separating or coming together) derived from a different source.  It’s one of those Janus two-headed ones staring off in opposite directions. Henry the 8th had it both ways. He first cleaved in marriage and then had some wives cleaved by decapitation if they didn’t produce. He gave new meaning to separation anxiety.

It’s come to this…a bifurcated nation with Us, the Good Guys cheering for Trump’s removal and Them, each watching the news as it breaks and each off to our respective cable-planets. If Trump were dragged from the Oval on MSNBC and CNN, on Fox they’d be showing a car chase in Wichita.

Then we cleave the other way with 100,000 coming together to cheer their team on any Saturday afternoon football game. The Super Bowl gets ten times the rating as the Democrat debate with over 110 million watching, betting, munching, cheering, jeering.

Let us cleave. The Democratic convention next July will be held in Milwaukee, about ½ hour flight from Cleveland. I mark that as a good omen. If the country can’t cleave together at least the Party must. We have the bigger tent, by far. We also have the largest electorate who cleave off in a stupor on Election Day; maybe they still can’t get over Saturday’s big game.

Nearly 60 million people play Fantasy Football. Do they cleave?  I wouldn’t know but in my Lyft rides last week I was able to speak that universal language with three of the four drivers. I doubt if they ever heard of Adam Schiff or John Bolton.

Joe is fading, Pete is rising, Elizabeth and Bernie are neck and neck. Newbies are leaping in. It’s almost like a football game with players being carted off in rhetorical stretchers and non-roster faces showing up not on the program.      Where are the household names, the All-Americans by acclamation? The guy with FDR's voice, JFK's vigor and Jimmy Carter's folksy sweater and Bible creds.  

It looks to me that no candidate will reach a majority. We’ll be looking at a brokered convention probably decided by super-delegates who weigh in after the first ballot. My guess it will likely be None of the Above.

Donald has set the bar so low any used-car salesman might be the one. We need somebody who can have a beer with Joe the Plummer, who can look Charlie Lunchbucket in the eye and talk the talk and at the same time speak fluent soybean with Farmer John and health and welfare to the rest of us.

Or do we need a Black Hispanic woman billionaire with magnetic charisma, name recognition, oratorical skills, unintimidated by the Bozo with broad-enough appeal to Never-Trumpers and who doesn’t strike fear in the Heartland? Did I almost describe Oprah Winfrey? Maybe but…I don’t think she’s the one either. Maybe what I want is a composite. What ever happened to Gregory Peck? Call Central Casting.

I am writing all this to find out what I think. I have until July 13^th, 2020 to change my mind but it is becoming clear to me, with a mere 50 weeks to November 3rd, it all comes down to a single issue. We must win the White House or the American experiment in Democracy will cease… to be replaced by four years of tyranny and irreversible destruction to our planet. Nothing else matters for now. Not the form of healthcare nor even income inequality.

Yes, yes, of course I agree with Elizabeth Warren but she is a 

Hail Mary (football talk). Sadly she doesn't connect with enough receivers.

There was a time when no one I knew was to the Left of me. Now there are voices I’m hearing that a Centrist is no better than a Republican. They are wrong. A Biden-like substance would not stand in the way of a progressive Congress, nor would that person appoint judges out of the Federalist Society, nor would he/she block vital climate change measures or sane immigration measures. I don’t care if our candidate takes money from hedge funds. Wall St. Bankers also have grandchildren. Some even have a conscience.

There is no need to score a touchdown to win. A field goal will do; even an extra point. This is the moment for  Americans to cleave as in forming a huddle.