Dem
54
GOP
46
One of the great moments of the 2008 presidential campaign came when some random woman at a John McCain town hall slurred Barack Obama for being an Arab, a terrorist and/or a Muslim. McCain took the microphone and told her, in no uncertain terms, that while he and Obama did not see eye-to-eye on the issues, the Democrat was a good family man and was no terrorist.
This week witnessed two different incidents that brought that moment to mind, in different ways. The first came at one of Donald Trump's rallies, this one in Youngstown, OH. Partway through, while the President was speaking, a woman unbuttoned her jacket to reveal that she was wearing a shirt that calls for the release of the Epstein files.
Needless to say, if you go into the lion's den like that, and you display a shirt like that, you know you're not going to be allowed to remain. Undoubtedly, the protester knew that. However, she also got more than she bargained for, as two men in the crowd assaulted her, punching her in the face several times. Had that been a McCain rally, he surely would have had the two men tossed out (and maybe arrested), would have told the crowd that violence against people we disagree with is not OK, and presumably would have taken steps to make sure the woman was OK. Trump, of course, is not McCain. So, he congratulated the two men and made fun of the woman.
It is the second incident, however, that allows us to make this a freudenfreude item. This week, Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D) held a town hall in Detroit. At one point, a white fellow in a white t-shirt with a red crusader-style cross stood up and began shouting a question. Security moved to remove the man, but the candidate said "let him speak." Here is the video:
What the man said, in short, was that he is a registered Democrat, he voted for Joe Biden, and that El-Sayed seems like a good guy. However, he continued, he cannot abide by the fact that he (the questioner) follows a different "book" than El-Sayed does. The book(s) in question, if it is not clear, are the Bible and the Quran, and the implication of the remarks is that El-Sayed wants to impose Sharia law. El-Sayed is actually used to this kind of thing at this point, and so he listened patiently to the man, and then said, "The Constitution is the book that we look to first." The crowd liked that, and even the questioner seemed somewhat mollified.
There is some scuttlebutt that the man was a plant working for El-Sayed's Republican opponent, Mike Rogers. We also allow for the (slight) possibility he was a plant working for El-Sayed, to allow him to create an "I'm reasonable, unlike Trump" meme. However, our gut feel is that the interaction was genuine. And we hope that, just maybe, this is a reminder that once Trump exits the political stage, American politics will go back to being a lot more civil, and that the spirit represented by John McCain (and by numerous other very decent politicians, Republican and Democrat) will show itself once again.
Have a good weekend, all! (Z)