“President Trump likely suffers from a range of mental disorders developed over the course of a turbulent childhood, cheated his way into a top college, subjected his own brother to severe emotional abuse and turned himself into a scruples-free bully who could now bring about an ‘end to American democracy,’ “ says Mary Trump in her tell-all book about her uncle, Donald J. Trump. Titled, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” her story is an explosive account of Trump’s tumultuous life and rocky presidency that will soon be judged by the American people on Election Day, November 3, 2020. Will he be re-elected?
Three months ago, some people were putting their bets on Trump. They were optimistic that Trump will win in November. As a matter of fact, they were bragging on social media that Trump would beat Joe Biden in a landslide.
Three months later, Trump is on the brink of a landslide defeat. Polls taken in six key battleground states – Michigan (16 electoral votes), Wisconsin (10), Pennsylvania (20), Florida (29), Arizona (11), and North Carolina (15) – show that Biden is ahead by six to 12 points. That’s a total of 101 electoral votes or 37% more than what’s needed to win. Even Fox News is showing Biden ahead of Trump by 12 points. That’s 50% to Trump’s 38%! Furious, Trump tweeted, “Fox News is out with another of their phony polls, done by the same group of haters that got it even more wrong in 2016. Watch what happens in November. Fox is terrible!” And it raises the question, what’s going on with Fox? Is Trump losing the support of his favorite network? I don’t think so. Polls are based on public opinion. They measure the pulse of the people. The other networks are also showing Biden ahead too… even better. CNN shows Biden ahead by 14 points. In an effort to forestall the avalanche of negative polls, Trump instructed his lawyers to send a cease-and-desist letter to CNN. CNN ignored it.
Divide and conquer
It seems that whatever the bad news is, Trump would say, optimistically, “Let’s see what happens in November.” He’s been saying that since March when the polls started to show Biden picking up in the battleground states. With the general election less than three months away, his window of election victory is getting smaller and smaller. Pretty soon it would shrink to just a peephole. And if Trump were going to look through that peephole, he’d see his dream of re-election shrinking to a fuzzy blue blob. And as he focuses farther, he’d read “Black Lives Matter.” It’s only then that he would realize the fallacy of his racist campaign that he pivoted into when he lost control of the coronavirus pandemic. Having failed to eradicate or at least mitigate the pandemic and with time running out, Trump abandoned the fight to squeeze the life out of the invisible virus. And he was left with nothing but to go back to his old election strategy: divide and conquer.
With the pandemic still going strong and the fight for racial justice reaching fever pitch, Trump saw an opportunity to ride the crest of dissent. But he has to choose which side he’d pitch his banner. And guess what? He sided with the bunch that he’s familiar and comfortable with: the white supremacists, the Nazi, the Ku Klux Klan, the white nationalists, the Boogaloo Boys, the rightwing militias, and lately, the southern Confederates.
It’s interesting how the southern Confederates come into play in the 2020 presidential campaign. While there is no political movement that supports the Confederacy, they have always been seen as loyal Republican constituency in the southern states.
The last presidential candidate who became the torchbearer of southern politics was George Wallace. Best remembered for his segregationist, populist, and demagogic views, he ran for president three times as a Democrat and once as an American Independent Party candidate. He lost each time.
Wallace notoriously opposed desegregation during the Civil Rights Movement, declaring in his inaugural address as Alabama Governor, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.” In 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called Wallace, “Perhaps the most dangerous racist in America today.”
Culture war
Wallace reminds us of Trump today, whose politics closely resemble Wallace’s racist and divisive nature. Trump’s policies on immigration, race, and minorities would dovetail into Wallace’s views.
Trump’s support of the Confederate flag, Confederate generals’ monuments, and retention of military bases named after Confederate generals, clearly puts him at odds with the majority of the American people.
In tweets last week, Trump argued against changing the names of bases like Fort Bragg, Fort Hood, and Fort Benning, all of which are named after Confederate generals. Why not rename them as Fort MacArthur, Fort Eisenhower, and Fort Theodore Roosevelt? These were generals who won wars under the U.S. flag. The Confederate generals fought under the Confederate flag fighting the U.S.
Trump criticized NASCAR for banning Confederate flags and emblems. He also criticized the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians for considering changing their names in order to be “politically correct.”
Trump also issued an executive order banning destruction of historical monuments, memorials, and statues by “hoodlums” and “anarchists.” Among them is a statue of Andrew Jackson riding a horse, which is prominently located in the Lafayette Square across the White House. The 19th century president’s ruthless treatment of Native Americans has made his statue a target of demonstrators protesting the United States’ legacy of racial injustice.
Trump’s advocacy for the retention of Confederate icons and symbols has opened another battleground in his campaign — a culture war on race and heritage. He described the “Black Lives Matter” as symbol of hate and threatened to veto a massive defense appropriation bill if it includes an amendment to strip the names of Confederate generals from military bases.
Public opinion
Public opinion polls have shown broad support among Americans for the “Black Lives Matter” movement, with about two-thirds of Americans saying they support the movement, including some 60% of white Americans. However, a source close to the White House said Trump’s recent remarks were “less about appealing to his base and directed more at low-propensity voters who are angered by protesters attempting to tear down these landmarks.” Truly Machiavellian, indeed.
But some of his allies have urged him to focus more of his attention on Biden and issues that affects voters beyond his base. Bu Trump has been unmoved, putting fellow Republicans in a tight spot.
And this brings to the fore concerns among Republicans that Trump might lose big enough to drag down all Republicans on the ballot in November, which would create a hole so deep that it could take years for the Republican Party to dig out of it.
It makes one wonder then: Has Trump reached his “Katrina” moment, the tipping point in his presidency when public opinion would cast a die to his re-election bid? Trump was on the right track when the coronavirus cases plateau’d in May. But he opened the country too soon without following the guidelines set by the White House Task Force on Coronavirus. And as soon as he opened the country, the virus started infecting people again. It’s like letting the genie out of the bottle, which would be hard to put it back in. And now, it’s spreading like crazy! If Trump did it right, he would have been in a better position to get re-elected.
Many Republican strategists think that Trump is close to the point of no return. Has Trump permanently lost the trust and faith of the majority of voters? The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan campaign tip sheet shows 279 electoral votes for Biden, nine more than he needs to be elected president.
At the rate the states are heading toward Biden’s camp, could it be that a blue tsunami looms ahead?
(PerryDiaz@gmail.com)