Drip, drip, drip: The bad news washes away Trump
delusions
Opinion by
Columnist
September 18, 2020 at 6:45 a.m. CDT
President
Trump has been caught in a downward spiral since the Republican convention,
both in big ways (Bob Woodward’s book, a cringeworthy town hall, reports of
a bizarre plot to
“stockpile ammunition and seek devices that could emit deafening sounds and
make anyone within range feel like their skin is on fire” as protests amassed
outside the White House) and small.
Consider
just this week: FBI Director Christopher A. Wray publicly confirmed, as
The Post reported, that “Russia is still working to influence the U.S.
presidential election, and hoping to ‘denigrate’ former vice president Joe
Biden because it sees the Democratic nominee as part of an American policy
establishment antagonistic toward Moscow’s interests.” In other words, Trump is
a patsy, and it seems the reason that highly partisan national intelligence
director John Ratcliffe stopped election-related briefings (which may in part
resume) is because they would show plainly that not only is Russia trying to
help Trump, but also that the Trump administration knows it and is trying to,
shall we say, “downplay” it.
Even
worse, a former aide to Vice President Pence, Olivia Troye, spilled the
beans. The Post reported:
President
Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic showed a “flat out disregard for
human life” because his “main concern was the economy and his reelection,”
according to a senior adviser on the White House coronavirus task force who
left the White House in August.
Olivia
Troye, who worked as homeland security, counterterrorism and coronavirus
adviser to Vice President Pence for two years, said that the administration’s
response cost lives and that she will vote for Democratic presidential nominee
Joe Biden this fall because of her experience in the Trump White House.
“The president’s rhetoric
and his own attacks against people in his administration trying to do the work,
as well as the promulgation of false narratives and incorrect information of
the virus have made this ongoing response a failure,” she said in an interview.
On one
level, this is nothing new. However, it suggests that reticence about ratting
out Trump and his antics is fading. We can expect many more such truth-telling
episodes in the weeks ahead. (Speaking of covid-19, Trump’s own director of the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that
masks may be better than vaccines at halting the disease and that we are
unlikely to have a vaccine before next year.)
In
other disappointing news for Trump and his anti-election weasels, two key
states (Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) knocked the Green Party off
their ballots, and absentee voter applications will be flying out the doors in
record numbers. Things have gotten so dire for Trump’s war on democracy that
even Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) blanched at his assertion that
we will “never know” who wins.
When
you have lost Senate Republicans, well, you know it’s not good. Then came even
more promising news about the U.S. Postal Service:
A federal judge in
Washington state on Thursday granted a request from 14 states to temporarily
block operational changes within the U.S. Postal Service that have been blamed
for a slowdown in mail delivery, saying that President Trump and Postmaster
General Louis DeJoy are “involved in a politically motivated attack on the
efficiency of the Postal Service” that could disrupt the 2020 election.
That’s
as powerful a rebuke as you are likely to hear from a federal court. The
decision will undoubtedly be appealed.
Meanwhile,
Attorney General William P. Barr seems to have gone overboard with
his audition for a Bond villain, arguing that covid-19 lockdowns are the worst
civil liberties violations since slavery (not dragging people off the streets
of Portland without probable cause? not the serial murders of Black men and
women by police?). He’s also insulted his
department as a bunch of nursery school children, accused the Black Lives
Matter movement of not caring about Black people (as opposed to the president,
who cheers White militia members?) and says any politicizing of the Justice
Department needs to come from him, not lowly attorneys. Then there was
his effort to prod prosecutors into
charging demonstrators with sedition. Any patina of professionalism, hint of
decency and respect for nonpartisan law enforcement are gone. Clarity is good,
and discrediting himself was unintentionally helpful to Democrats and anyone
else who supports free and fair elections.
And
finally, when was the last time Trump had a lead in a nonpartisan, reputable
public poll in Arizona, Wisconsin or Michigan? You know
things are not going well for Republicans when one of the most reputable election
pollsters and analysts, Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report,
declares Arizona to be in the “Lean Democrat” column. According to Cook,
Democrats have 290 electoral college votes in
the solid, likely Democratic or leaning Democratic columns. It is only
September.
You
will notice in none of this do I mention Democratic presidential nominee Joe
Biden.
It is
not that he has been doing poorly. On the contrary, he has raised a boatload of
money and shows himself to be informed and empathetic on the issues. But
nothing he does is distracting from the Trump meltdown, serial gaffes, scandals
and poll troubles.
We are
getting to the point that if Biden does not froth at the mouth at the first
debate, he probably will have this pretty much wrapped up. (Between early
voting, declining viewership in later debates and the real possibility that
Trump won’t show up for more embarrassment, that’s the debate that really
matters.)
I guess
Biden could make some horrible error, although it is hard to think of something
as bad as admitting you lied about a pandemic. Election mechanics, counting and
tabulation (including mail-in ballots being rejected) are his biggest problems,
not Trump. Trump’s biggest problem, frankly, is that not much seems to be going
his way — and the poll numbers could get worse by Election Day.
