Bill Maher, Michael Moore, Howard Stern…they’re all saying it or running it up the flagpole: Donald Trump, the worst sociopathic criminal to occupy the White House in the history of this country, stands a decent chance of being re-elected in 2020.

Not because he isn’t a malignant crime boss (that’s quite obvious), but because the left hasn’t generated any kind of strong, clearly articulated alternative in the form of, say, a new Bobby Kennedy or a consistent populist message that connects with the dumbshits. An awareness of Trump’s sociopathic gangsterism is enough for me to vote for someone else, but there’s no sense of progressive spirituality, of any kind of hopeful redemptive energy from the left. Bernie Sanders had his chance and, at 76 but 79 in 2020, is too old. It would be great if the likable, humanistic Joe Biden could run the table and snag the nomination and the White House, but the metaphor of that huge neck wattle will gnaw away at him. He has to become a 21st Century, forward-looking tactician, but he’s mainly about a vibe. In 2006 progressives were talking about Barack Obama. Right now there’s no one in the wings with Obama’s charisma, excitement or sense of promised transformation.

All the left really has right now is “Trump is a monster.” Which he is, of course, but “authentic leftism is populist,” as Camille Paglia says below. “It is based in working-class style, emotion, language, and not the fancy, contorted jargon of the pseudo-leftists of academia.”

That “fancy contorted jargon,” to continue her thought, is also manifested among the politically correct, offense-taking, finger-pointing left that seems much more invested in the mitigation of middle-class Anglo Saxon culture (“white male” is a total epithet these days) and the corresponding levelling of the playing field for the benefit of urban women, multiculturals and LGBTQs. I hate the anti-intellectual, know-nothing voting attitudes of rural bumblefucks but I also understand why they hate shrieking leftists, and unless something happens or someone comes along to bridge the gap between these poles I’m afraid that Trump might win again, God help us. Because the bumblefucks so despise the left, and because they feel their cultural survival — the idea of “serial immortality” or living in through your descendants — is at stake. We need a Bobby Kennedy, but there’s no one out there who appears to fit the paradigm.