Biden: "100 million shots in 100 million arms in 100 days. We will manage the hell out of this operation."
Trump: No public schedule. Instructed aides not to pay Giuliani's legal fees. Staff resigning.
There is one big theme regarding Joe Biden so far. He seems to have his eye on the ball of dealing with substantial problems.
COVID deaths are now 4,000 a day. There is no prominent officeholder publicly minimizing COVID, not with deaths at this level. The story on vaccines has moved from the miracle of their fast development to their slow distribution, and Biden is talking about a plan to manage that. GOP partisans blame blue state governors, but the problem is national, so it reflects on Trump. Biden is proposing big budget deficits to fund programs to address the economic distress from COVID, and GOP officeholders are muddled in opposing it since they so recently defended Trump's own big budgets for the same purpose. COVID is still here and the economy is still in distress, so Biden has some room here.
Most important for Biden is that he appears to be looking at problems to solve, not fights to pick. Let Congress, the Justice Department, and the states deal with Trump.
Meanwhile, Trump is acting like a basketball team that has been blown out, behind thirty points with a minute left to play in the fourth quarter. They have to be on the court but they are mentally gone, going through the motions. In this situation, a lot of people are filing to the door--but not everyone. Trump has lost popularity, but he still has die-hards.
Trump's approval has just fallen sharply from his normal range in the low-to-mid-40s to an average of 38% of recent polls and 34% for the most recent one by Morning Consult. Only 29% of people want him to stick around in national politics.
This erosion of popularity takes place in the context of his strongest supporters staying steadfast. Sixty-two percent of Americans rate Trump's performance since the election as "poor," a number that includes some discouraged Republicans. But within that big shift there is a visible and very powerful body of people who are sticking with Trump. Even now, 23% approve.
Trump has his base. There is a reason 138 Republican Members of Congress voted to overthrow an election by refusing to accept the Pennsylvania electors. 48% of Republican voters think Trump has no responsibility for the Capital insurrection. 34% of Americans--nearly all of them Republicans--still believe Trump was the true winner of the November election. A significant number of Republicans are sympathetic to the Capitol rioters, even as news is coming out that some planned to murder or kidnap Republican Senators and the Vice President.
What are those people thinking? I quote at length Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, because he lays out the case for continuing to support Trump. It demonstrates the centrality of partisanship and secular issues, even by this spokesperson for political Christianity. Graham dismisses Trump's effort to strong arm Congress or the Vice President into reversing the election. It was a "low point," yes, he said, but a coup d'état is forgivable in light of the overall benefits of a Trump presidency, starting with lower taxes. Trump is worth it.
Trump has a foundation of inertia and party tribalism. Television ratings may be a leading indicator of political trends. Fox is losing share. For a decade Fox has been atop the cable ratings. Their business model of aggressive courting of Trump supporters gave them as many viewers as CNN and MSNBC combined. No longer. On the day of the Capitol insurrection CNN averaged 5.9 million total viewers, while MSNBC averaged 4.53 million and Fox News averaged 3.5 million.
Fox may have over-played its hand by linking the network to Trump, but one can already see them adjusting. There are fewer news stories about Trump. The main stories on Fox are how terrible Democrats are, especially Democratic governors; how unjust was the Russia collusion probe; how frightening AOC is; how terrible is Hunter Biden's nepotism; Hillary Clinton; and a new subject of outrage: How unjust it is that Trump and his closest allies are being censored, de-platformed, or having their messages labeled as dishonest on social media.
The reliable centerpiece of Fox News mood is outrage, a mix of frustration and indignation over being picked on by powerful tyrants and elitist snob hypocrites. Governor Newsom ate at a restaurant, Speaker Pelosi got her hair done.
Fox will thrive. The ideal environment for Fox is not as cheerleader, for Trump or anyone else. It is to be the voice of opposition, of indignant resentment. There is a audience for that. Look back at Franklin Graham's post and the mood that runs through it. Why look at those terrible Democrats. Anything we do and Trump does is fair, in the context of Democratic evil. All Trump did was try to overthrow the government by sending a crowd to the Capitol to intimidate and possibly kill the Vice President, while those those divisive Democrats are spreading disunity by calling that impeachable. How dare they?
Biden has a good start, but he is in for a slog.
4 comments:
Jesus favored low taxes?
Republican defectors scare the sh** out of FOX and Graham. It's a threat to the bottom line. Whether it's the terror of eternal damnation or a mean tweet the cash flow depends on every Republican toeing the line.
Fox News depends on a functioning society. I think they saw how close they came to the brink. Koch also saw this and realized maybe they should support some centrists to keep the money flow going. In the end it’s always follow the money.
Trump loves chaos. Big Business and the wealthy (for the most part) need predictability. An algorithm used to measure the probability of investment returns is useless in the face of revolutionary change, whether it be leftist or reactionary. Trump served their interests - lowering taxes and cutting regulations. Now he has proved to be a threat to their financial interests. I’d be surprised if the Kochs, DeVosses, Mercers and others aren’t privately counseling McConnell to engineer Trump’s Senate conviction. The needs of the rich and powerful must be met.
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