The optics on this are terrible. Is it possible there is some subtle genius at work?
Or, maybe, he is looking ahead to the next job.
There are two big things happening in the news. One is that the COVID virus is spreading rapidly now. The other is that Trump is bunkered, playing golf and otherwise busy trying to overturn the election.
What is going on?
There is no benefit to Trump for being associated with COVID deaths and bemoaning them beyond a brief courtesy "every death a tragedy" comment if he cares to bother. News reports of deaths in my community yesterday described seven new deaths, a record. The victims were ages 91, 74, 77, 89, 94, 86, and 81. The news stories about them mentioned "underlying conditions." The media doesn't say it outright, but they absorbed the Trump message, whether they know it or not.
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| Going viral |
Trump says it's not It's not his fault people are dying, and not the reason to change national policy. Trump does not say this in words, but that is the message. It cannot be said explicitly, but it is communicated by what he is not doing. No more COVID briefings. No urging people to use masks. No more bemoaning the spread or doing anything about it. He is golfing, and tweeting.
Meanwhile, Trump says that he is responsible for creating the vaccine. That is what people should associate with Trump. Fox News host Geraldo Rivera says it should be named after Trump.
Second, the effort to get battleground state legislatures to void the election and have them cast electoral votes for him. As of this morning, Trump now looks intransigent and petulant. It could have worked, but the election was just not quite close enough and the disruptions that could have happened--a Post Office strike, election day riots disrupting polling places, strategic power outages--did not happen. People were prepared, but maybe we just got lucky. Activists on either side could have imagined themselves to be doing good work by disrupting the election and given reason for people to consider the election unfair. Trump had a plan that he announced: Call the election fatally flawed, void the election in key states, and have the legislatures award the electoral votes to him. The circumstances on the ground confounded him.
There were heroes, many unnamed and unknown in county courthouses. One, in the office of Georgia Secretary of State Republican Brad Raffensberger, got his back up when Republican Senate candidates who now face a run-off election said he had screwed up managing the election. After all, they expected to win and didn't. He said the election was well run and would withstand an audit, and it did. Republican Governor Kemp backed him up. Trump had appointed Republican Chris Krebs to run the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security division of the Department of Homeland Security. His job was to protect the election and he said he oversaw "the most secure election in American history." That directly contradicted Trump. Krebs had secured the support of Republican Senators, including Cornyn, Sasse, Rubio, Cruz, Kennedy, and others, which included people who had just won election. They backed Krebs up. Trump fired Krebs by tweet. The overall optics were bad. Trump looks like he is suppressing a courageous truth-teller.
There was an anti-hero to compare to. Rudy Giuliani looked clownish. He raised claims of widespread fraud and a conspiracy involving Venezuela, George Soros, and switched votes. His hair dye dripped, which shouldn't be relevant but it is, giving Trump's cause an amateur look. It all seemed too overblown and fanciful--the claim of a landslide win stolen in dozens of states--too much even for news anchors on Fox, the Wall Street Journal, and Tucker Carlson. Trump's base was sliding away, from semi-mainstream Fox to Newsmax and One America.
There were heroes, many unnamed and unknown in county courthouses. One, in the office of Georgia Secretary of State Republican Brad Raffensberger, got his back up when Republican Senate candidates who now face a run-off election said he had screwed up managing the election. After all, they expected to win and didn't. He said the election was well run and would withstand an audit, and it did. Republican Governor Kemp backed him up. Trump had appointed Republican Chris Krebs to run the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security division of the Department of Homeland Security. His job was to protect the election and he said he oversaw "the most secure election in American history." That directly contradicted Trump. Krebs had secured the support of Republican Senators, including Cornyn, Sasse, Rubio, Cruz, Kennedy, and others, which included people who had just won election. They backed Krebs up. Trump fired Krebs by tweet. The overall optics were bad. Trump looks like he is suppressing a courageous truth-teller.
There was an anti-hero to compare to. Rudy Giuliani looked clownish. He raised claims of widespread fraud and a conspiracy involving Venezuela, George Soros, and switched votes. His hair dye dripped, which shouldn't be relevant but it is, giving Trump's cause an amateur look. It all seemed too overblown and fanciful--the claim of a landslide win stolen in dozens of states--too much even for news anchors on Fox, the Wall Street Journal, and Tucker Carlson. Trump's base was sliding away, from semi-mainstream Fox to Newsmax and One America.
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| "Trump vaccine" |
Trump comes out of this with what he wanted and needed: a marketable brand for the post presidency.
5 comments:
Having lost the election is the equivalent to Honda's lethal airbags.
The purpose of a brand is to make money. Anything that causes a loss of faith will cut into the bottom line. If it is the political peer of My Pillow it will be vulnerable to competition from a better product.
The ultimate achilles heel of "MAGA" was that it was wholly dependent on success. The MAGA mob now must face the reality that they were sold a lemon. It has failed in the marketplace of ideas, mainly because it's intellectual junk food. Unlike Honda, who was able to rehabilitate a respected brand, MAGA, I suspect, will have to be abandoned.
The big question moving forward will be whether the Republican party will reform itself and disavow white supremacism, religion fanaticism and wingnut conspiracists in its ranks. My guess is it won't, and will continue to self destruct.
Rick,
In 2020, the Republican Party “self destructed“ into holding state legislatures, gaining seats in the US House of Representatives, and quite likely retaining control of the US Senate. The supposedly “white supremacist“ party gained votes among Blacks and Latinos.
The phenomenon of Trump voters is based on a real set of grievances that working class America has against corporate/cultural/urban elites who do not give a rip about them. Ignoring that or calling it “deplorable” is a recipe for electoral failure.
It is quite possible that in 2020 a much more acceptable Republican candidate will run for president on that platform. I am currently keeping an eye on Dan Crenshaw. I think he would have a good chance of beating either Biden or Harris.
I forgot misogynists...white supremacists, religious fanatics, wingnut conspiracists and misogynists.
Two inescapable facts..
.South Korea population 51.6 million people, Covid deaths...505
Oregon population 4.2 Million people, Covid deaths .... 822
Who gives a damn what Trump is doing? He is doing nothing while his henchmen rape the planet and leads us along on their suicide mission. Happy Holidays!
It seems to have become your mission to assert that no matter what happens, it will redound to Trump's benefit. For much of the time, what you said was a useful corrective to what folks like me perceived and concluded, and you rendered us an important service. But now, I think, the game has changed.
The sentence in Rick's first comment above that I think is acute is, "The ultimate achilles heel of "MAGA" was that it was wholly dependent on success." A critical component of Trump's brand is that he's a winner. In the 2016 campaign he promised his followers that they would "win, win, win." But now he's lost and increasingly he's looking like a loser. His protestations that he won (in a LANDSLIDE, of course) aren't working except for those who thrive on Jewish/Communist conspiracy theories.
The tweets from those folks urging Trump supporters to boycott the senate runoff election in Georgia confirms me in my previously voiced view that "Trump may have put his party astride a half-wild horse that only he can ride." He will do much damage in the remaining two months of his tenure, but the greatest damage he may do is to Republicans. They ultimately must accept a loss that he cannot and he'll perceive that bowing to reality as a personal betrayal. That will be self-defeating. No politician with national ambition can thrive outside of one of the two major parties. All I foresee for Trump after January 20 is trouble.
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