Politics has a way of convincing us that trivial matters carry extreme importance.
Ben Sasse has learned the difference. The former Republican senator from Nebraska was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer in December. He has outlived his initial prognosis of three or four months left to live. Now, Sasse is using whatever time he has left to share how the imminence of death brings clarity to life.
“I did immediately feel regrets about a lot of misprioritization,” Sasse told New York Times columnist Ross Douthat for the “Interesting Times” podcast. “We’re all on the clock, and I wanted to have prioritized better. Whether I really only have three or four months left, or if I get nine to 12 months left, want to prioritize better from then.”
Sasse spoke those words through a face covered with dry blood, the result of an experimental cancer drug. His optimism has cut through a news cycle filled with war, political unrest and economic turmoil.
I listened to Sasse’s interview with Douthat on April 10, the same day news broke that powerful political operatives stretching from Indiana to the White House used every tool at their disposal to pressure an unknown 34-year-old network engineer to drop out of a race for state Senate.
A tale of two Wilsons
You’re probably not going to care about these details. That’s sort of the point here.
Alexandra Wilson is running against state Sen. Greg Goode in the Republican primary for District 38, which includes Vigo and Clay counties and a portion of Sullivan County.
The only reason anyone is paying attention to this race is because Goode is among seven Republican senators who voted against President Donald Trump’s early redistricting scheme, which failed last year. Now Trump, Gov. Mike Braun and other Republicans are trying to defeat these senators out of vengeance.
Team Trump considers Wilson a problem because, well, her last name is Wilson. That happens to be the same last name as Vigo County Councilor Brenda Wilson, who received Trump’s endorsement. The concern is that voters, who have lives and might not be intensely interested in Trump’s vengeance, might confuse the two candidates and give some votes to the “wrong” Wilson.
This conflict supposedly pertains to Trump’s desire to retain a Republican majority in the U.S. House in November. That was the professed goal of early redistricting. But, in the meantime, Trump is detonating Republicans’ electoral prospects with his Iran war, his depiction of himself as Jesus and other things that make him increasingly unpopular.
Republicans are going to lose the House in November, and it has nothing to do with anything happening in Indiana.
Powerful people, petty mission
Ah, but it’s all about Indiana to some people.
NBC News first reported that Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith, Braun chief of staff Josh Kelley and three White House aides have been relentlessly harassing the AntiWilson to get her out of the way of their favored Wilson.
They used carrots, floating the prospect of jobs or board appointments. Then, when that didn’t work, they used sticks in the form of veiled threats.
“I think it’s going to be really ugly,” James Blair, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, said in a recorded phone call with Alexandra Wilson that she shared with media.
Meanwhile, Republican super-lawyer Jim Bopp has been spending the twilight of his career running back and forth between court and the Indiana Election Commission in an attempt to get Wilson kicked off the ballot over a felony arrest that occurred when she was 19 years old. She pleaded guilty to a felony charge that was entered as a misdemeanor.
When Bopp spoke with NBC News, he seemed confused — to put it generously — about whether he challenged Wilson’s candidacy on his own or at the direction of the Indiana Republican Party. He also didn’t say whether he was being paid.
It’s mind-boggling to consider the high-level manhours and resources devoted to defeating Goode, a random Indiana state senator who cast one vote the president didn’t like.
Time is the only currency
These are the futile exploits of sad men acting as though life is a game with infinite playtime.
Maybe they’ll defeat Goode (I have my doubts). Maybe they’ll take out all seven traitorous Republican senators who dared vote against early redistricting. It wouldn’t really matter. Flipping seven state Senate seats over early redistricting would not improve anyone’s life in Indiana — perhaps not even the lives of the victorious senators, who would then have real jobs to do. This is a pure vanity project.
Sasse, facing death, has gained perspective on more than his own priorities.
“The historian in me says 75 or 100 years from now, when you look back on our moment, we’re not going to talk about politics at all,” Sasse told Douthat. “What we’re going to talk about is the fact that we were living through a technological revolution that was creating economic and cultural upheaval, and we were living through institutional collapse, and way, way, way, way, way below that, there’s a whole bunch of political institutions that are part of that institutional collapse.”
Indiana’s Trump-endorsed primary challenges over early redistricting are what institutional collapse looks like.
We’re all operating on ticking clocks. May we live as people who are aware of our mortality and guided by urgency to make the most of what we have.
Contact James Briggs at 317-444-4732 or james.briggs@indystar.com. Follow him on X at @JamesEBriggs.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: The petty obsession driving Trump’s Indiana revenge tour | Opinion
Reporting by James Briggs, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
