GAME OF THRONES 2020

It’s done—and it’s just beginning. HBO’s “Game of Thrones” concluded last Sunday night after a decade enthralling a worldwide audience. Based on J.R.R. Martin’s novel series A Song of Ice and Fire, “Thrones” presented a riveting struggle for power in a fantasy world. The real world’s no different.

Beyond all the conflicts we’ve learned about, experienced and keep pace with now—or try to ignore—the United States is enduring a long, spite-laden political war between Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, progressives, libertarians and independents. With Donald Trump likely the Republican candidate for the presidency, Democrats have begun waging their own game of thrones. If previous primary campaigns have revealed anything, “Game of Thrones 2020” won’t be pretty.

Nearly two dozen Democratic candidates have thrown their hats into the ring to seek crowns. As of this writing—or at least what I can keep up with—New York mayor Bill de Blasio is the latest. The group numbers serious contenders and many pretenders—men and women expending energy and resources less to win than to build public recognition leading to a higher rung on the career ladder. Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, for example, has wonderful things to say. Still, he’s young and inexperienced on the national and international stage. However, Mayor Pete is becoming perfectly positioned to run for governor or the U.S. Senate—or receive a cabinet appointment in a Democratic administration.

Bernie Sanders leads the polls, but the election is more than 17 months off. If you’ve followed primary/caucus campaigns over the past decades—the mechanism that’s starting to make the party-boss system and smoke-filled convention rooms attractive—you know that his lead means nothing. Good numbers this early often sound a candidate’s death knell. The primary fights are just that—knock-down-drag-outs. Seeking the presidency is as much a blood-sport as vying for the Iron Throne. Political bodies will fall with social media replacing Daenerys Targaryen’s dragons as weapons of reputational mass destruction.

When the debates begin, weaker candidates will quickly be flushed out of the system. Democrats—as did Republicans leading to the 2016 election—will savage each other. (Donald Trump did most of the Republican savaging; the losers then kissed his backside.)

We’ll check out a debate or maybe next-day coverage and conclude that no Democrat deserves the nomination based on rival candidates’ comments. Yet most of the losing candidates will rally behind the winner, dismissing their negative statements as “just politics.” So why should we believe anything they ever say?

Those who don’t toe the party line? If Bernie or any other candidate on the left fails to get the nomination, will his or her supporters sit out the election? Cast third-party votes in self-righteous anger? Give Trump another victory with less than half the popular vote?

“Game of Thrones” ended on what seemed a peaceful note following incredible bloodshed and destruction. Whatever happens in the 2020 election, America will still be standing. Or tottering if the Mad King remains in the Oval Office because Democrats ignored the TV show’s great lesson: Faced by a lethal threat (in “Thrones,” the Night King), unite and fight. Failure to do so could result in American democracy’s dying a slow, painful yet preventable death.

You’re invited to my party launching Big Truth: New and Collected Stories—Sunday, June 9, 3:30–5 pm at Lokma Turkish restaurant, 1801 Clement Street at 19th Avenue, San Francisco. Yes, you can buy a copy, which I’ll autograph. RSVP with number in party: dhperl@yahoo.com.

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