Leggo The Loser

When do people let go of their fondness for a bad president?

Every president watches their approval ratings drop at some point. It happened to Reagan and Clinton who both had extremely high approval ratings when they left office. President Obama had very low ratings throughout his presidency until his last year in office when people started to realize the options we had to replace him with. Ugh.

Donald Trump has the lowest approval ratings of any president in modern history. Right now his overall disapproval is at 52% which you can check out at FiveThirtyEight. His ratings are in the dirt as most people don’t like the guy. But his base still loves him.

Why do they still love him? He’s corrupt. He’s engaging in nepotism. He won’t release his taxes. He’s too close to a hostile foreign government. He’s stocked his administration with nimrods. He doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing. He’s currently engaging in a cover-up. He’s breaking campaign promises left and right and doesn’t appear to have any principles. He’s immature and can’t stay off Twitter. He’s stupid. We’re discovering he can’t negotiate and he has the worst poker face EVER. Most of all, he’s a pathological liar.

And yet, Republicans believe his lies. Over 50% believe Obama wiretapped Trump. I’m used to some Republican stupids believing stupid shit like “Obama was born in Kenya” but c’mon, people! While normal sane folks see Trump for what he is, Republican voters are giving him an 84% approval rating. What is it he has done that you approve of? What? Eating chocolate cake? Making sure he has more ice cream than his dinner guests? What? Other than not being black or female I just don’t understand….Oooooooooh.

Republican office holders may realize Trump is a disaster but if his base continues to give him high grades then Congress will allow Trump to hand the White House keys to Putin, wipe his butt with the Constitution, and burn the country down….all while eating the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake. The GOP is afraid of that base.

Will it catch up to them? It’s hard to tell. You can’t find anyone today who defends Nixon’s cover-up. It’s universally accepted that Tricky Dick had to go. Even Democrats admit Clinton had an affair in office but they don’t think his lie about receiving oral sex amounts to the punishment of impeachment. Personally, I don’t think receiving oral sex from an intern is as bad as say…..selling out your nation to Russians.

How much worse does it have to get for Republicans to walk away from Trump? What sort of tragedy will have to hit the nation? It’s not looking good as most of Trump’s scandals are self-inflicted. What will he do next? He’s going on an overseas trip next week so that should add to the total. A week in the Middle East and Europe is way more than enough time for Trump to embarrass the nation several times over. I may not get any sleep that week. I expect him to go to Germany and say something nice about Hitler.

When will the Trump sycophants give up on the loser? Maybe for that to happen he has to lead a failing government through a losing war where major cities are burned to the ground, the landscape is devastated, and over 50,000 civilians and 620,000 soldiers die. And yet, in a hundred years someone will be screaming if a mayor tries to take his statue down.

As a memorial to Jefferson Davis was brought down Thursday in New Orleans, a crowd of sympathizers were chanting “President Davis.” Get that? “President” Davis.

He’s not my president. Which one am I talking about?

Creative Notes Part I: I’m curious how this cartoon will be received at the Southern newspapers who subscribe to my work. I have them in Florida, Texas, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, And Arkansas. But then again, how will it fare in the North? There are Northerners who adore the South and want to preserve all that Civil War heritage crap outside museums. In places like on their pickup trucks, flag poles, in your face, etc. I don’t get that.

Creative Notes Part II: Today is a small milestone for my creative process as it was one year ago today that I drew my first cartoon on a digital platform. As it turns out, that cartoon was criticizing nutzoid racists too. They need to take a day off.

I have not drawn a cartoon on paper in over a year and that’s a lot of cartoons. That’s over 400 drawings. I do miss paper. I miss the way it smells. I miss layers of ink. I miss white-out. I miss the sound of cross-hatching. I don’t miss scanning or erasing. Scanning was a chore for me as I had to fire up another computer and monkey with the program. Erasing smeared and left eraser crap on my carpet. Sometimes I’d erase so much that I would tear the paper.

A lot of cartoonists believe their way of doing things is the only way. I don’t. I believe what works best for you is what you should do. Whether you use pen, a brush, pencil, or work in digital, do what suits you. I don’t recommend going digital or tell you not to try it. Some cartoonists will thrive with it while others will hate drawing on glass. I’m still reminding myself that I don’t have to apply so much pressure.

After I year I just changed the battery in my stylus for the first time. I’m still on the original pen nib though I ordered several replaces about eight months ago. I just haven’t had the desire to mess with changing nibs. I know I’m going to drop one and crawl around on the floor for an hour looking for it. I’ve spent a lot of time hunting for bridge pins from acoustic guitars that I’d drop while changing strings.

I read somewhere that cartoonist Mike Shelton, formerly with the Orange County Register, was the first to go digital and he did it back in the 90s. I don’t see any evidence to dispute that because that’s early. Remember Windows 95? That came out in 95. That stuff was slow. He was drawing cartoons on computers while I was screaming at dial-up modems.

I think if I tried to go digital even five years ago I would have thrown the equipment off the roof of a tall building. Thankfully several others blazed the trail for me. Nick Anderson of the Houston Chronicle is the first who comes to mind because he’s probably had the most success with it and his work looks phenomenal. The advancements today are amazing because I can tell who is coloring with the program I use, but I can’t tell who is using real ink or not.

What’s the best thing about going digital? Fixing boo-boos. Editing and changing words in the speech balloons is much easier too.

Before I went digital everyone told me how much faster they work and that they’re more creative. I’m not. For some reason I’m taking longer to draw cartoons. I don’t know if that’s digital, or because I’m putting more into it, or if I just procrastinate more. I do enjoy procrastinating. I’m really good at it.

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