How This Could Go

Donald Trump should be toast; but will precisely the problems that should sink him help keep him afloat?

Capping four years of incompetence, lawbreaking, and ethics violations, Trump has mismanaged the pandemic so badly the U.S. easily leads the world in per capita cases and deaths; and just when several troubling police shootings of Black people have awakened more whites to systemic racism than anything since the 1960’s, Trump is still peddling racism. Logically people would reject Trump to save lives and to diminish our society’s racism and divisiveness. Plus, Joe Biden capped the Democratic “convention” with the best speech of his life. Why wouldn’t Biden rout Trump?

Polls show people recognize Trump has screwed up big-time; but beyond the death toll, COVID-19’s big impacts are confusion, grief, fear, and cabin fever. Though most people respect the restrictions many state governors have imposed, despite Trump, many people are impatient, angry, and frightened. History shows that such people often leap into the hands of an authoritarian demagogue making false promises that it’s all okay, or that only he can fix it.

Could impatience with the restrictions that stall COVID-19’s spread, and fear of the unknown course of the pandemic, draw many to Trump’s simplistic worldview? Yep. From the frying pan into the fire. But it’s happened before.

Even some white people whose eyes were opened by the murder of George Floyd are not immune to Trumps’ thinly-veiled racism. The George Floyd murder was horrible; but if Trump says violence could reach my neighborhood, . . .

Substantively, in the debates, Biden should cut Trump into pieces. Biden knows his stuff; he projects a good nature and good intentions; Trump is lazy and doesn’t read. But Trump will freely assert whatever comes into his head, in oral bumper-stickers. He’ll project absolute certainty, and complete contempt for Biden. Biden’s thoughtful responses may get lost, or seem weak by comparison, or exceed his time limit. Fact-checking by networks or newspapers will seem dry and unconvincing – and be labeled an anti-Trump plot.

If you read transcripts of Biden's and Trump’s convention speeches, you’d laugh at Trump. While Joe was Mr. Good Guy, Trump (low-energy as he was) stood in front of a live crowd, at the supposedly non-partisan White House, with scores of flags and bigger fireworks. That image will stick. Most folks can’t or won’t compare their speeches’ accuracy.

Yeah, the polls are cheering, although some who fancy Trump don’t admit it. (Some of those people are friends of mine.) But polls only approximate what people think and feel.

Vote totals are different. Our undemocratic electoral college system means Trump could win despite losing the popular vote by 5%. Extreme gerrymandering and voter suppression mean 100 strong Biden voters may not translate into 100 valid votes for Joe. That’s particularly true with balloting by mail. Many mailed ballots get lost or disallowed.

So yeah, I worry. Trump is destroying our country.

I don’t predict a Trump win. But it’s clearly possible. Each of us should spend more time than we might wish on trying to do what we can to convince everyone we know to vote for Mr. Biden and make sure Biden voters vote early and accurately.

If you’re a Trump voter, look honestly at the man’s conduct.

Our democracy is at serious risk. Our founders (in Ben Franklin’s words) gave us “a Republic – if you can keep it.” We can. Will we?

                                   – 30 –

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 6 September 2020, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website. It will also be on KRWG’s website shortly; and a related radio commentary will air during the week on both KRWG and KTAL, 101.5 FM (http://www.lccommunityradio.org/). Later today it will also be available on-demand at KRWG’s site.]

[There are a lot of encouraging signs. Record numbers of Republicans are endorsing Biden; top military officials recognize what a disaster Trump is; and while many who voted for Trump or Hillary Clinton in 2016 will vote in 2020, for Trump or Biden, Biden holds a significant lead among those who voted for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson last time around. Those voters (as am I) are dissatisfied with how our system has been going, but they also recognize that Trump is a special kind of disaster. I hope and trust that enough of my fellow U.S. citizens will see that Joe Biden is a good man with substantial experience and judgment, and that Mr. Trump is destroying our democracy.  The most recent polls I've seen show Biden up six points among Wisconsin voters (50% to 44%) and leading nationally 52 per cent to 42, with very few undecideds.

But.

After drafting this column, I read Michael Moore's warning.  (Trump read it too, and texted that Michael was a smart guy.)  We should take that to heart – not just to mutter, "Oh, shit, I wonder what Canada requires of new residents?" but to STAND UP AND DO SOMETHING.

What you can do is to make damned sure that every day you try to change someone's voting plan or strengthen a Biden voter's commitment to getting to the polls.  We each know some folks who see things somewhat as we do, but don't always bother voting.  Help them with whatever form-filling they need to do to vote absentee, or make sure they know about early-voting and that you'll be happy to drive them to the polls; or remind them of the facts.]

[In a forthcoming post I’ll detail what four more years of Trump would mean for our country.

For now, let’s just contemplate that for patriots and veterans to ignore (or deny, even though Fox News has also confirmed them) Trump’s disparaging remarks about dead veterans and his unhealthy admiration for Vladimir Putin (most recently expressed in his resistance to believing that Russia, as it has done in other situations, used some special nerve poison to weaken and perhaps kill an important political dissident) takes either a special kind of love for Trump or a strong preference for some of what Trump is doing (e.g., anti-choice on abortion). To me, that’s like fussing with the paint on your boat while it sinks. But it’s what they feel, and talking with them is important.]

 

The photograph? Just to say the gentleman on the right was neither a "sucker" nor a "loser."  (She obviously didn't think he was!)  I guess Trump might not call him a loser, because he survived; but neither was he a sucker.  As a graduate student at Duke, close to receiving his Ph.D., he made a reasoned decision to leave for training as a Marine bomber pilot, and thereafter flew in the Pacific.  It seemed the right thing to do.  The village they moved to eventually gave him a special award honoring his integrity -- another thing Trump would have mocked.  What can you get for that plaque on the open market, dummy?  But I guess his many squadron mates who didn't make it back were "losers," which sure would have been news to the surviving squadron members when they were having their reunion at our house in the 1960's.