There is a reason Trump's campaign for re-election is in serious trouble. Okay, in fairness, yes, I know that there are a lot of reasons -- and I'll pause a moment while readers fill in the blank with your own responses.
My explanation is what I call the Mark Twain Rule. Mark Twain has a story about how he was feeling poorly, and was told to cut out smoking, drinking and swearing. He did, and soon felt better. Ever the proselytizer, when he ran into an elderly friend who was not feeling well, he exuberantly had the cure for her. He said she should cut out smoking and drinking and swearing. The problem was that she told him that she couldn't cut those things out because she had never smoked or drank or swore. Twain took in this information for a moment. "Well -- there you have it," he tells us, finally figuring out the problem. "She was a sinking ship with no baggage to throw overboard." Trump is a sinking ship with no baggage to throw overboard. We know the Trump playbook. I suspect most people can recite it by heart. He ran on it in 2016, and he has been running on it for the past 3-1/2 years. Everything that Barack Obama did was terrible and weak and illegal. Hillary Clinton's emails put us all at risk. Mexicans are bad and want to come into the United States and must be stopped. Hillary Clinton should be locked up. The Media is fake and the enemy of the people. Barack Obama played too much golf. We have to build The Wall. Russia is a hoax. No collusion. Barack Obama tried to wiretap him. Fake news, fake news, fake news. The Deep State is out to get him. China caused the pandemic. We're at risk because of immigrants. We're at risk because of immigrant children. Lock them up, too. Kneeling during the National Anthem undermines liberty. LAW & ORDER! Obamacare is a disaster and has to be replaced. The Antifa movement is a terrorist organization. We're at risk because of Muslims. And...and...and...yes, fine, you know it all. The list is longer, though most of it simply gets repeated, sometimes with just a few words changed, often the exact same. But we know it all. By heart. And that leads us to the problem for Trump. We knew all that in 2018 -- and it didn't work. Democrats had the Blue Wave tsunami, taking over control of the House by a massive 36 seats. They even closed the gap in the Senate. And this was when Trump was telling us that a caravan of Honduran and Guatemalan migrants was making its way to the U.S. and he had to call out 5,000 soldiers from the United States Army. And even with that national "threat," Republicans got swamped in the election.. And despite losing so badly, Trump only ratcheted up his cries of outrage. He hasn't tried to expand his base, he's focused on it all the more intently. Even amid a pandemic where 134,364 Americans have died, and an economic meltdown where businesses have folded and 46 million Americans have filed for unemployment, and national social change has swept across the country -- and a scandal of Russian bounties against the American military. And yet Trump keeps pounding the same, old, unrelenting messages -- with the result that his approval has been plummeting, going from around 45% (which is awful in an election year) to now 38%. So, that's the time when you dearly need to expand your support, because 38% is not getting you re-elected -- especially in the middle of a pandemic, massive unemployment, national social change, and a Russian bounty scandal. But on and on he goes, with the very same messages -- apparently because he knows it got him elected. And because it's all he knows. The problem is that the public itself knows all that now. We've heard it for four years. In 2016, he was an unknown and could make wild promises. But he now has a record. And we know it all. We can recite it in our sleep. And repeating to us What We All Know by Heart didn't scare the public, didn't outrage the public, didn't inspire the public -- it got the Republicans crushed in the 2018 mid-terms and has gotten Trump a 38% approval. And this is all he has. There's nothing else. He's a sinking ship with no baggage to throw overboard. There's nothing else. Trump can't suddenly now tell the country that the doctors and scientists were right all along, and that it was his ignorant intransigence that caused a pandemic to spread further and killed 134,364 Americans, and then expect to gain support from that. He can't bring back the economy without the pandemic ending, which is spiking specifically because of his own actions. He can't bring back jobs that have gone bankrupt and disappeared. He can't support social change that Black Lives Matter when he has spent four years trying to attract white supremacists, when he's run as a racist for -- well, not just four years, but his whole life. He can't put sanctions on Russia, or even criticize Russia, because he's counting on Russia to help him get re-elected. So, he has nothing to expand his support. He only has the same, old issues. And they long ago stopped working for him. We Know Who He Is. Republicans got swamped on those same, old issues in 2018, and his approval is 38%. With new options out of reach, and the old tricks flatlining, we've seen his campaign forced to raise those old tricks to almost desperate levels. Using the military, for instance, to attack Americans on U.S. soil during a peaceful rally. Dragging his White House team to a photo op at a church, uninvited, that outraged the church officials and turned into a disaster for him. And when those even-larger efforts failed and his approval lowered further, and election polls widened Joe Biden's margin, Trump has been reduced to using the remaining dregs of his tricks. Not much more than the fumes still in the tank. There's no baggage left to thrown overboard. And so the result is that this week the issues he pushed were his "culture war" demand that the only black NASCAR driver "apologize" for his team finding a noose in their garage at the race track. And his effort to again create "racial divide" was by weirdly bemoaning how unfair it was for sports teams to change their nicknames from ones that are offensively racist. Indeed, Trump seems to be going full white supremacist with his odd support of the Confederate flag (which even the Mississippi legislature voted to change) and statues of Confederate generals, as one of his remaining go-to issues, which would not seem to be an ideal position anyone outside...well, the old Confederacy. (And even inside it, it appears). As for dragging out the old "patriotism" chestnut, Trump has been reduced this week to retweeting Tucker Carlson's ill-advised rant questioning the Americanism of U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, who received the Purple Heart and had both legs amputated from her service in war fighting for the country. The best the Republican National Committee could do was slam Joe Biden for his supposed radical “assault” on the Declaration of Independence for having written an op-ed that referred to “all people are created equal” rather than “all men.” When you're trying to expand your support, it's hard to imagine much more that could help guarantee the erosion of the women's vote than by you being offended at your opponent saying "all people" should be treated equally, instead of only men. Because he's got nothing else. Yes, there are all the many problems Trump faces that he's been unable to resolve. There's his shrinking support that he's been unable to expand. There's a pandemic and already 134,364 dead Americans. But after four years, his biggest problem is that We Know Who He Is. We know the old, scratchy, broken record that stopped working years ago. And playing that record over and over and over in the middle of a pandemic, massive unemployment, national social change and a Russian bounty scandal doesn't make it sound any fresher or work any better. An analyst on MSNBC the other day commented that in the past, Trump has always been able to sue and bully his opponents. But the coronavirus can't be bullied or sued. And Trump doesn't know what to do about it. Or it seems about most anything. And it's made him desperate. And even more insecure. And in deep trouble. Because, in the end, he's come face to face with the stark reality of the Mark Twain Rule. He is a sinking ship with no baggage left to throw overboard. Mark Twain can explain it better, here --
2 Comments
Douglas Abramson
7/9/2020 07:20:57 pm
I have to disagree with you on one tiny detail, in the real world, but a huge deal in that moldy basement that passes for his psyche. He doesn't care if the Cleveland Indians, or the Atlanta Braves change their names. He only cares about the Washington Redskins, and not just because it's so blatantly offensive while a debate could be held over the baseball teams. No, the real reason; and it is the underlying reason he got so pissed off about Kaepernick's protest: Don-Don has always wanted to own a NFL football team and the owners have told him to go pound sand at least twice, because they simply didn't like him and didn't buy his bullshit about his finances, like most people. He wanted a NFL team so bad, he bought the USFL's New York/New Jersey franchise and then ignored that his new toy and four or five other teams were just about ready to make spring football successful and bullied and conned the other owners into moving their season to the fall to compete with the NFL, when that didn't get his team an invite to the big boy's club (and why would they want a third team playing in Giant's Stadium?), he conned and bullied the USFL into suing the NFL for anti-trust and collusion (there's that word). They won. They were awarded $1. The entire league. The USFL didn't even get their attorneys fees covered. Meanwhile, going head to head against the NFL, killed the USFL's attendance and television ratings and most of the teams had gone bankrupt. Without the windfall Trump promised the morons, the league died; taking the one still profitable team with it; the LA Express, Quarterbacked by Jim Kelly. The Raiders and the Rams were playing so badly, LA decided to watch a winner in a second rate league than a looser in the NFL. Not taking the very unsubtle hint, Trump was still trying to buy a NFL team within the last ten years. The league apparently draws the line at taking Russian mob money; but after this last rejection, Trump started publicly bad mouthing the NFL. Like all of the supermodels who suddenly became "fat" and "dog faced" after they told the little toad that they wouldn't date him.
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Robert Elisberg
7/11/2020 06:17:00 pm
Thanks for your long note.
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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