This column is not appearing on a Tuesday, and for that, I apologize. Today is Wednesday. So I’m one day too late for TACO Tuesday.
But hopefully, I’m not too late to announce the death of our political parties.
Certain restaurants have been advertising tacos on Tuesday since at least 1933. (In Norway and Sweden, tacos are typically served on Fridays, I understand.) But recently, the word ‘taco’ has been appearing in various media outlets in all-caps, as ‘TACO’. An acronym for “Trump Always Chickens Out”.
The acronym has been credited to Robert Armstrong, a columnist with the Financial Times, to describe what he said was President Trump’s pattern of announcing heavy tariffs on various countries, causing panic in the stock market, and then reversing course with pauses or reductions.
The pauses and reductions make us all feel better, temporarily, because we suspect that the whole tariffs scheme is probably just another way for the government to tax us, through higher prices on the stuff we need.
A reporter recently posed a question to the President, asking what he thought about the TACO acronym, and the President expressed a dislike for it.
A dislike for the question, that is.
“Six months ago, this country was stone cold dead,” the President said. “We had a dead country. We had a country that people didn’t think it was going to survive.”
“And you ask a nasty question like that… Don’t ever say what you said, because that’s a nasty question.”
Okay, I agree, it was a nasty question. But it could have elicited less petulant response.
Speaking as an uninformed observer, I didn’t notice that the country was stone cold dead, six months ago. Brain-dead, maybe. But that’s not exactly the same thing, is it.
Did we really have a country, six months ago, that people didn’t think it was going to survive? Seems like that’s what we have right now, at this very moment.
And if we want to feel even more gloomy, we can remind ourselves that the Democratic Party appears just as brain-dead as the Republican Party.
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote an analysis last week, entitled “Let us count the 3,515 ways in which Democrats are lame.”
Mr. Milbank did an online search for advice aimed at the poor, weak-kneed Democrats. Apparently, a lot of people think the Democratic Party is on the wrong track, or perhaps is totally derailed.
With so many things they “need” to do, the Democratic Party’s to-do list is getting exceedingly long. How long? A Nexis search finds 3,515 instances of phrases demanding “Democrats need to” and “Democrats must” in news articles and transcripts over the past three months, and another 3,680 instances of the more lenient admonition “Democrats should…”
A sample of things the Democrats need to do:
“Democrats need to mirror how a herd of elephants at the San Diego Zoo responded to a recent earthquake.”
“Democrats need to point out that Florida Republicans support tooth decay.”
“Democrats need to start asking the real question: Are you not entertained?”
“Democrats need to fight President Donald Trump everywhere.”
“Democrats need to work with President Donald Trump, not against him.”
“Democrats need to embrace males with affection.”
“Democrats need to mansplain to men.”
“Democrats need to encourage more debate within their ranks, not less.”
“Democrats need to sort out infighting — and quickly.”
I could make my own list — and believe you me, it would be a long list — but I highly doubt the Democratic Party would take me seriously. Considering that I’m a humor columnist.
That’s one of the big drawbacks to writing a humor column. No one takes you seriously.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.