By Ruth A. Sheets
In a Substack piece, Robert Reich, Professor Emeritus at UC Berkley, wrote about getting voters to vote for candidates who have their interests at heart. I started thinking about how hard that is going to be for Republicans, maybe some Democrats too. This is what I came up with in response.
Over the years, we Americans, and people of other nations too, have been carefully groomed by the rich and powerful to go for the loud-mouthed white male as having the "best" answers to every question of importance, the “mold.” Those loud-mouthed white men decided what is natural among the beasts of the field and birds of the air and among human beings too. They told us what to buy and what makes us beautiful/handsome. They told us they knew how to rule and that it was right for loud-mouthed white men to rule the world. Well, those same loud-mouthed white men took us into Holocaust, into endless wars, enhanced significantly the wealth gap, have blamed poor people for being poor, have used the taxes paid by working people all over the world to produce and buy war machines that have no other purpose than killing our fellow human beings and any other creatures that get in the way.
Here, the Republican Party has made recruiting those loud-mouthed white men into their ranks critical, and put a lot of money behind them. What those in charge of the party recruitment knew is that in the position of "president" you can put the not-so-loud and definitely not very competent, but behind them must be a loud-mouthed white man. If you can't manage that, go with the loud-mouthed guy for president who can lie like a rug and the guys in charge can make the public believe every word.
If one looks at Republicans say from 1960 onward, every victorious Republican presidential candidate has fit one of the molds or other. Nixon could be a loud-mouth, but he depended on others like his VPs Lodge and Agnew to do the shouting while Nixon pretended he was just like a thoughtful judge. Goldwater fit the mold perfectly, threatening all sorts of people and groups with American might. Ford was the least like the mold, but he was only needed to pardon Nixon of his crimes. He did it and was gone. Reagan was portrayed as everyone's grandpa, but he had no clue. His VP was rich and knew how to manipulate folks behind the scene and did, Bush,Sr. As president Bush,Sr. had all the words, but also had racism and misogyny to keep him in favor. Bush,Jr. was incompetent, but I think, wanted to do a good job, at least some of the time. His VP Cheyney was the needed loud-mouth.
Trump was the perfect creation that fit the mold sufficiently to be carefully shaped using Trump's own loud-mouthed white man tendencies to believe himself better than everyone else when in reality, he was not smart, a bad businessman, a cheat, a liar, a rapist, and more. That could easily be covered by a lying media and his loud-mouthed hatred of everyone he chose to or was directed to hate. With the Republican Party cheating in elections, Trump was elected, then re-elected. He gives the rich white men in corporate power nearly everything they want while enriching his family (well, the corporations enrich them so their patriarch won't get out of line during the takeover of our democracy).
Republican voters are drawn to this kind of loud-mouthed bullying that Trump portrayed so well before his dementia made it harder for him to know what is going on. How do we convince Republican voters that they are focusing on the wrong hand. The corporate magicians are doing them immense harm while they watch their Trumpian puppet lie his way through this corporate destruction machine. It will be hard for them to break out because their loyalty has been so carefully groomed and tended.
On Saturday, March 28, 2026, people all over the country rallied to try to draw attention to and stop the loud-mouthed bully in the white house. In our tristate area, the media practically ignored the whole day’s activities, giving no more than a minute to the event while covering Tiger Woods’ car crash in Florida for a far longer report. That truly is what we are dealing with, a corporate media that props up an old man with dementia while ignoring the American people.
It’s time We the People work harder to “break the mold” and find more ways to get information to people who are stuck in their perceived need for loyalty to a party that left them behind long ago. The people and corporations in power want to drain them of their will to act, and to distract them from making good decisions for their lives; it’s working.
I didn’t mention the Republicans who lost the presidency, except for Goldwater because for the most part, they were white men who did not fit the corporate/conservative uncaring mold: Dole, McCain, and Romney. And, they didn’t have the VP back-ups to counter their decency. The Democrats who ran against them had ideas that were more powerful to capture Democratic voters. Remember, when Democrats get out to vote in their greater numbers, unless there is AI or media-based fraud, Democrats win.
