I am Scared

Listening to the news and pundits, I am scared. The bar for trump is incredibly low. If he can get through a speech without saying something stupid then it was a great speech. For Harris though, the bar is high. Were she to slip up, even minimally, then it will be seen as a failure.

These two candidates will not be judged by the same criteria. Harris will be judged by criteria fitting a serious Presidential candidate.

Trump is a buffoon. He will be judged as a buffoon. When he says outrageous things, all the media says that “Well, that is Trump being Trump”. No, that is a candidate for the Presidency of the United States of America. He must be held to the highest, not the lowest standard.

How did we get here? How did we allow ourselves to be accepting of this carnival barker’s nonsense? Trump has somehow made his crazy not only acceptable but expected. Were he to speak as a serious politician, people would wonder, what is wrong? Junior high school taunts are not even acceptable on the junior high school playground. The adults on the playground attempt to curb that behavior. The adults in the Republican party have tried to reign him in, but he will not be contained.

My fear is that as long as he continues this Trumpian behavior the public will not react. Again, they will say, that is only Trump being Trump. In 2015 Kellyanne Conway said that people should not take him literally but figuratively. How did that work out for us? This cowardly narcissist has created a fantasy world where up is down and left is right. Somehow, he has caused otherwise rational people to believe his nonsense. And, by lowering the bar to the point that everything he does and says is acceptable, he is accountable for nothing.

Harris will be held to an impossibly high standard, while there is absolutely no bar low enough for Trump to stumble over.