Trump is not doing well in his bid for re-election.
75% of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track.
71% of Americans are angry.
63% are fearful.
59% of Americans disapprove of the way Trump is handling his job as president.
Only 19% of Republicans are satisfied with the direction of the country.
When Trump took office in January of 2017 there were 241 Republicans in the House. Since then 115 (48%) have retired, resigned, been voted out, or are leaving for good in 2020.
Trump is on the wrong side of history because he is on the side of a declining minority.
Trump’s White Supremacist Beliefs Do Not Reflect the Majority
Trump sealed his fate as a racist on the wrong side of history with the re-tweet of that fist pumping “white power!” video from an old fart in a golf cart shouting at a protester outside a retirement village in Florida. It doesn’t matter that Trump took down the re-tweet at the urging of his horrified White House communications team. The damage was already done, and it was done long ago. This incident just reminded everyone that Trump is a white supremacist.
Trump has aligned himself with the dying forces of white supremacy at a crucial tipping point in the history of our country. Trump talks about the “silent majority” which translates to racist white Americans. Trump believes American racists will rise up to re-elect him even though a clear majority of Americans have decided we must have a fair and multi racial society in order to succeed as a country. No going back. Yet that is exactly what Trump stands for: “going back”. That’s really what Make America Great Again was all about. Now we all “get it” that that was the underlying symbolic message of his candidacy all along.
Americans are in the throes of rejecting the fundamental message of Trump and Trumpism. Even many white skinned Trump voting Republicans are not okay with racism in our country. Unlike the 1960s there have been many recent marches for racial justice in Trump country with lots of white people protesting. Many people are realizing the terrible unfairness of two different worlds of policing in America. Why? Because a lot of white people have black and brown friends, family members, co-workers, and many admire black and brown athletes and celebrities. In other words the browning of America is already well under way. Trump has miscalculated the power of racism and bigotry to get himself re-elected.
Trump’s Failure to Accept Science Is Destroying Our Country and Economy
Trump has aligned himself with conspiracy thinking pandemic deniers. He is again on the wrong side of history today with his 4th of July super spreader event (no masks required) at Mount Rushmore to appease his narcissism. 62% of Americans favor requiring face masks in public and around other people. 69% want local stores to have a face mask policy. Trump has politicized wearing a mask and he has mocked mask wearers. He has said that people who wear masks are wearing them just to piss him off. This week for the first time he suddenly did an about face saying, “I’m all for masks,” but he’s still not wearing one himself.
The Trump administration’s response to the pandemic has been an utter failure thanks to Trump’s lack of a national plan and his inability to accept reality. Time and again he stood in the way of a science based national response. Front line hospital workers have had to use Hefty trash bags to protect themselves and reuse masks intended to be worn only once. Our country has failed where EU countries, South Korea, New Zealand, Australia, and many other countries have succeeded in beating back the pandemic. PPE shortages continue in our country as the number of cases rise exponentially. July 1, 2020, we hit 50,000 new cases in a day. Dr. Fauci tells us we are potentially heading for 100,000 new cases a DAY if we don’t enforce extreme mitigation. What does Trump do about this danger to all of us? Nothing!! Trump himself is protected because everyone around him is tested. So he could care less about the rest of us.
Trump’s failure to manage the pandemic response means the economy will not have a “v” shaped recovery as the well-managed countries have had. His conspiracy laden thinking has led to red state anti-science delusional thinking about the pandemic being a hoax that was created to take Trump down. The result will be continuing spread of the epidemic.
The Bounty Scandal Is Going to Hurt Him
Trump has a strange, disturbing and almost certainly nefarious relationship with Putin that he has kept under wraps. He often talks with Putin by phone but there are no records of their conversations. We hear about their little chats from Russian news agencies, not our own. What is he hiding? As Nancy Pelosi has famously said, “All roads lead to Putin.”
The most recent damning revelation that Putin paid Taliban fighters bounties to murder American soldiers and Trump knew about that for over a year but did and said nothing to Putin about it, has become the most recent breaking news furor damaging Trump’s approval rating. It is spawning the usual denials that Trump knew anything and claims that this is another “hoax!” foisted on an unsuspecting public by the fake news.
However, the very real bad news for Trump is that there is undeniable evidence coming out: large sums of money transferred from the Russian military GRU bank accounts to Taliban accounts; interviews with captured Taliban that bounties were paid; specific information about who paid the money to the Taliban. John Bolton said he briefed Trump. There was a meeting of the NSC at the White House about what to do about these Russian bounties on our soldiers. Our allies were notified by US. There was an article in The Wire, a newsletter that goes out to people in the world of intelligence, on this topic. Do you mean to tell me that Trump didn’t know anything about this when the rest of the world knew?
This is a gathering storm that Trump is facing only four months now from the election. It happened because someone in the intelligence community has had it up to here with Trump’s failure to act and is leaking all of this intel to the media. The House will be investigating this in the next few months as we get closer to November 3rd. That means the information will be front and center in the news as we close in on the presidential election. This story is not going to magically disappear just as the pandemic won’t magically disappear.
Republicans are getting uncomfortable and edging away from Trump a little bit. Some of them are amazingly (omg!) wearing masks (Lamar Alexander and Mitch McConnell) and encouraging Americans to do that too no matter what Trump says. The Governor of Texas decided to edge away from Trump. He has ordered people in Texas to wear face masks. It is far too little too late, but the fact that some Republicans are breaking with Trump at all is predictive of further breaks if Trump’s poll numbers crater. I think they will.
Here is what’s coming:
The pandemic will continue to be a huge red state problem. The epidemic will continue to surge in communities in key southern states that Trump expected to win handily, knocking down his approval ratings and those of his Republican allies as his voters get sick and some of them die, and hospitals experience a surge beyond capacity, causing Trump voters to finally accept the reality of Covid-19.
The pandemic will prevent Trump from having the “tightly packed” rallies that he desperately needs to rev up his cult base and the economy he needs to be re-elected.
The Russian bounty plot will result in more exposure for Trump as the House investigates and calls witnesses close to the election.
Racism will not get enough hidden voters out to bolster Trump’s bid for re-election.
As the SS Trump sinks, Republicans who have signed on for the voyage come hell or high water, will go down with him in the coming hell AND high water. We can hope Republicans will learn a lesson from the coming defeat: if and when this country rejects Trump and Trumpism. This country is demanding racial justice, reality-based, science-based pandemic policies, and ready to vote for a president who does not have a secret slimy relationship with Putin.
What’s the Biggest Nightmare? Trump Might Quit Before the Election
Currently Trump is on course to be a one term president; a hot mess who failed miserably at his job. It is hard to imagine a different outcome given what we are seeing currently. Trump’s only ace in the hole would be a convincingly recovered economy but that is unlikely given the way the pandemic is being mismanaged.
Given these hard facts, what plays are left for Trump? The best play for him may well be to quit before he loses. That way he avoids the personal humiliation of the loss and does not drag the GOP down with him. Trump would then get Pence to pardon him for his federal offenses leaving state offenses still pending, which he could spend the rest of his life fighting in our molasses slow court system while he golfs with his buddies and tries to rebuild his ruined brand.
Trump would blame the “lamestream” media, the deep state, and the unfairness of the world for his failures. He would leave, moaning like the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz after Dorothy splashes her with a pail of water causing her to shrivel up and melt away into a puddle. Hmm…instead of the pandemic melting away like magic, could it be that Trump and Trumpism will melt away like magic?
But, No! I don’t want Trump to quit before the election. If he is on the ballot November 3rd he will draw out agitated voters to the polls who want to get rid of him and his enablers, bringing the GOP down with him. They all deserve to lose. If Trump leaves office unscathed, he will be a voice for Trumpism and continuing culture wars after he quits instead of taking Trumpism down with him into the trash bin of history.
At the start of the Trump presidency I was hoping he would be a good president. As he did one awful thing after another, my fervent wish became that he be kicked out or forced to resign by his colleagues before the end of his term. I thought Mueller might be the impetus or impeachment might do the trick.
Now that we are four months away from the election, I want Trump to stay on as president until the bitter end. I want to see the SS Trump to go down with every Republican on board who did not stand up for morality, ethics, the rule of law, integrity, honesty, science, and fairness. All of them betrayed us. And I want the Trump trolls and cult members to witness that loss and understand how much their ideas are being rejected by America.
Don’t assume that what I write here is a given, of course. It is not. Anything could happen in the next few months.
We still have to work really really hard to get the blue tsunami that our country needs to get ourselves back on track. We have to support candidates for the Senate, write checks for American Bridge PAC, the Lincoln Project, Media Matters for America, the DNC, Joe Biden, local Democrats, and more. We need to write hundreds of postcards to voters in battleground states urging them to vote and make calls to voters to get out the vote as Election Day approaches. We have to vow to keep fighting until this battle for the soul of our country is won, Biden is elected, the Senate flips and the House grows an even bigger majority.