Balita

The orange is gone, but the tree remains

Rey Moreno

“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” – William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar.

It is always a fool’s errand to make a prediction. But I’ll take the risk and the shame if I get it wrong because I’m so desperate to get rid of Donald Trump once and for all. This coming November 3, I think the American people will get it right this time and elect Joe Biden to be their 46th president in a landslide. Yes, I say it boldly again – a landslide! Of course, I won’t leave this space in a vacuum. Here’s my take:

In 2016, Trump had no record, no political experience to judge his qualifications to be the next president of the United States. But instead of a liability, it became his strength (and somehow endeared him to some voters as quite new and refreshing). He entered the political arena as a successful TV reality showman – a rich con-man who knew the psychology of his audience quite well. His derogatory assaults on Washington (drain the swamp), on Mexicans (build the wall), on women (grab their pussy) seemed to energize his growing fan base. As he annihilated his presidential opponents one by one, in spite of self-inflicted scandals, the Republicans came around to embrace his more sardonic style of politics. They thought he would change once he was in office. Instead, he changed them to be like him. Now the Republican Party is a master in the art of bullying, lying without shame, egregious hypocrisy, and a party without a soul. With more than three years in power, Trump has not made “America great again.” His tax cuts mostly benefited the rich people. His policies of America first and tariffs wars didn’t bring back the lost jobs from the mining and manufacturing industries. The roaring US economy before COVID-19 was a left-over from Obama’s economic policy (although Trump likes to take credit of everything and brags about it all the time.) That’s all gone now and he’s left with a dismal record no matter how he, his administration and the Republican Party spin the narrative. His time in office is nothing but a reality show performance, all tweets and conspiracy theories style of government – a kakistocracy!

Before the World Health Organization declared SARS-Cov-2 a pandemic on March 11, 2020, Trump and his enablers, particularly Fox News, were taunting the line that COVID-19 was another Democratic hoax to remove Trump from office after the Democrats’ failed impeachment trial in the Senate. That’s a lie, of course, and they never owned it when they were exposed as liars. Instead they doubled down in their dismissal of the pandemic. “Ride that sucker down” and by summer “it will go away like a miracle.” Well, COVID-19 hasn’t gone away, has no party affiliation and doesn’t care what Trump and his cohorts have to say. Now the US has the highest number of cases and deaths around the world (“Trump lied and many have died”.) Because of his failed response, mismanagement, incompetence, and lack of leadership, Trump has met a formidable foe that penetrates deeply into his Teflon-like shield. Even his enablers are hard-pressed to spin lies into believable narratives, no matter how much they try.  I don’t think this time around Trump will be able to convince the moderates and independents to vote for him again.

The killing of George Floyd has sparked a global movement, spearheaded by BLM, which will defang the nasty bite of racism to a mere scratch. This is the right side of history. Yet Donald Trump continues to take the side of the white segregationists and dead Confederates. Soon he will find out that those blacks and young voters, who didn’t bother to vote in 2016, now have the strong motivation to kick him out. They have been registering and urging their peers to register as well. Of course, Trump and the Republican Party are still hoping the older, white people, who have always been consistent voters, will make the difference. But they too are abandoning him, especially the white women, because of his erratic stand against the pandemic and racism. Most have finally come to realize the evilness of racism. They have changed their views and wanted to look all people without the lens of racial prejudices. Trump is a racist and his ilk will soon trickle down to just a pebble in the sand.

There are so many books that have been published which are mostly critical of Trump’s personality and leadership style. But none, it seems, to have moved the needle when it comes to his popularity from those who voted for him in 2016. Then the explosive book of Trump’s niece, Mary L. Trump comes along to give us an inside information of Trump’s psychological development. Too Much and Never Enough: How my Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man affirms beyond doubt what we know of Donald Trump – that he is a narcissistic socio-path. Not only did Mary Trump clinically diagnosed Donald Trump, but she timely released her book to warn the American people not to give his uncle another four years in power; otherwise that would be the “end of the American experiment,” as she put it in an interview. It is not clear how Mary Trump’s book has contributed lately to the lower approval rating of Donald Trump from various national polls, but I wanted to believe that it did (Bob Woodward’s new book, Rage, can be a game-changer as well).

The ads of the anti-Trump groups such as The Lincoln Project, Meidas Touch and Republican Voters Against Trump have been hitting the airwaves with videos showing Trump and the Republican party as dangerous but failed vermin to democracy and responsible government. Their pinpoint and biting video attacks are garnering quite an attention, including Trump. When the Mourning in America ad by The Lincoln Project came out on May 4 that showed a massive loss of life and a ruined economy due to Trump’s mismanagement of the pandemic response, Trump, in his usual way, fired off a ranting tweet calling them “LOSERS” and “a disgrace to Honest Abe.” His tweet backfired because The Lincoln Project claimed it raised $1.4 million after Trump’s tweet, their biggest day of fundraising result.

If there’s any question how to look presidential, those who watched the tributes given by former presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama versus Trump’s callous attempt to disrupt the memorial service proceedings with an undemocratic tweet about the upcoming election and an abrupt call for a photo-op event at the White House, would have made the stark contrast right away. They were eloquent, inspiring, humble compassionate, gracious, dignified, and honourable. They spoke of John Lewis’s legacy and life-story, and all remembered him as a fine man with a brave heart. If there’s a moment for the Americans to reflect on the lost exceptionalism of the American experience, John Lewis’s inspirational life could be the trigger point to wake them up, make the necessary change and always vote. If not, then it speaks more loudly in who they are than anything else.

The historic selection of Kamala Harris as Joe Biden’s vice-presidential nominee has triggered the enthusiasm of blacks, especially the women, to be more active and focus in their determination to remove Trump. They will come out strong and well-organized during the election just like when Obama became the Democratic presidential candidate in 2008 and 2012. As Kamala has a South Asian blood, too, perhaps the Asian voters will come on board as well.

Recent national polls have Joe Biden ahead of Donald Trump from a range of 5% to 15%. If these indicators were correct, Joe Biden could easily get the required 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. But Donald Trump already started to sow the seed of doubt in the outcome by claiming without evidence that the mail-in voting would make the November’s vote the “most inaccurate and fraudulent election in history” and a “great embarrassment to the USA”. So Joe Biden needs to win big!

Using the Cook Political Report’s Electoral College Ratings to date as a guide to do my calculation, my landslide forecast is: 413 – 157 for Joe Biden. I gave all the rating categories of solid Democrat (14 states, 188 EV), likely Democrat (3 states, 24 EV), lean Democrat (7 states, 78 EV), the toss-up (3 states + ME2, 61 EV), and lean Republican (3 states, 62 EV) to Biden.  I’m being quite an optimist that the lean Republican states of Iowa, Ohio and Texas and the toss-up states of Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina plus Maine 2nd CD will go for Biden.

The orange man may one day be gone and become irrelevant but the tree of Trumpism will remain. There are so many Trumpian-like characters enabling and owning his legacy; obnoxious people like Tom Cotton, Matt Gaetz, Ron DeSantis, Jim Jordan, Doug Collins, Devin Nunes, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Nikki Haley, Laura Ingraham, Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Sanders, Kayleigh McEnany, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Carlson Tucker, and many more (the list is long but I know you’re getting my drift).

Long-time Conservative columnist, George Will, couldn’t help himself but denounced Trump: “This unraveling presidency began with the Crybaby-in-Chief banging his spoon on his highchair tray to protest a photograph…This weak person’s idea of a strong person, this chest-pounding advertisement of his own gnawing insecurities, this low-rent Lear raging on his Twitter-heath has proven the phrase malignant buffoon is not an oxymoron.”

And to the Republican senators, he said: “Senate Republicans must be routed, as condign punishment for their Vichyite collaboration, leaving the Republican remnant to wonder: Was it sensible to sacrifice dignity, such as ever was, and to shed principles, if convictions so easily jettisoned could be dignified as principles, for … what?”

The answer to that question, of course, is LUST FOR POWER. In the current state of politics, principles seldom get one elected. The Republicans have ideologically decided that it is more important to have naked power, to defeat the Democrats and to rule forever, if possible, even if it divides the country and destroys all the institutions required for a democracy that is “a constant work in progress”, to quote President Obama in his eulogy to Congressman John Lewis. In his book, The Useful Idiot: How Donald Trump Killed the Republican Party, S.V. Date wrote, “Trump’s incoherence, his temper, his impulsiveness, his breathtaking ignorance – all of it was well known among the top tiers of the Republican machinery…Not once did I ever hear any concern that just maybe they were working to install a useful idiot who truly was an idiot.” And I may add, a dangerous idiot!

And how about those evangelical Christians, they are so complicit and heavily invested in this pursuit of power by the Republicans in order to impose their beliefs and righteousness and white privilege in others that even to appear hypocritical with their Christian values does not seem to bother them at all. They will be in bed with dictators, authoritarians and monsters without feeling the burden of moral guilt in exchange for deals that satisfy their political demands. Religion is no longer a set of beliefs for high moral value and purpose, but just a matter of transactions – a quid pro quo!

So as an additional shame if I were wrong again, I predict the Democrats will gain control of the House Senate as well. I may be an idiot to make erroneous predictions, but that’s the only line the orange man and my humble me intersect.       

23 September 2020

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