In 2020, the choice will be even more stark

No, I didn't watch the Very Stable Genius's Orlando rally. Whenever I'm watching a news channel and I hear that one of those drool-fests is about to commence, I find a ball game or head over to Turner Classic Movies. Or catch up on my reading. Or go start dinner preparations with some music playing in the background.

The rally's only real significance was to make his second go-round at candidacy official. Elevator descent redux.

That, in turn, makes official what has been the plain fact for some time: He is the only viable alternative to whoever the party bent on obliterating Western civilization puts forth.

For about a year after the November 2016 election, I kept my vote to myself. I finally went public with what I'd done because I could see that I was going to find myself in situations in which I was going to have to make it clear that I didn't own any of the trappings of the Trump presidency that were obviously unacceptable to anyone of any persuasion who had not swallowed his Kool-Aid. The bombast. The insults. The petty resentments against various media outlets. The incoherence of his economic policy. His appeasement of Kim and his back-and-forth on whether Russia and China posed threats or not. The vulgar braggadocio. At a point in a tussle with a leftist at which, after I'd heartily endorsed the good moves - the judicial appointments, the regulation rollback, the move of the embassy to Jerusalem, the pullouts from the Paris climate agreement and the JCPOA - I'd have the toxic stuff tossed in my face, I'd be on solid ground asserting that none of that was mine.

I voted for Evan McMullen. Obviously, for neither reason that one, under most circumstances, votes for a presidential candidate. He had not a chance in a million, and he wasn't running on anything (besides being not-Trump).

It's not as if I dismissed the binary-choice pleadings of conservatives who had decided to cast their lot with the Very Stable Genius. They made a rather convincing case. Then, as now, we were either going to get a bad candidate who'd probably make some good moves, or we'd get a power-mad hard leftist.

But since late 2016, the Democrat party has become exponentially more rotten. I know, that would have defied the late-2016 imagination. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were the party's hard leftists in that era, and they were dangerous figures indeed.

But now, with several Democrat state legislatures endorsing infanticide, and with two of the party's three most influential freshman House members getting away with rank Jew-hatred, the stakes are even higher, as hard as that is to fathom.

In recent days, fresh evidence of this has poured in.

Kirsten Gillibrand has compared a pro-life position to racism. 

The New York legislature has passed a bill allowing driver's licenses for illegal aliens.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has publicly said that the United States is operating concentration camps on the southern border. 

This is the horrifying reality of what could, if all available forces aren't marshaled against it, be in control of whats' left of the United States of America.

To any Trumpists who have read this far, you can quit holding your breath that the next paragraph is going to be an official statement of support for your man. I can't see myself issuing anything like that, ever. I will go on record with this, though: I will conduct myself between now and the first Tuesday in November, and vote on that day, in accord with my understanding of the urgency of the task of ensuring that conservative principles and policies prevail to the extent possible and that leftism is dealt as thorough a defeat as can be administered. 

Take that how you'd like. We all know the lay of the land. There is not going to be any conservative savior riding into town to save the day. We will not have Dan Crenshaw, Nikki Haley or Ben Sasse as choices. And the Democrat candidate must lose.

I reserve the right to articulate my position as I have here, and it is what I will reiterate as necessary in conversations and dust-ups between now and post-America's next moment of decision.