Let's Not Get Cocky, People!

Those poll numbers are NOT GOOD!

To say that things look bad for Donald Trump and his chances of re-election would be a wild understatement. The mainstream media overflows with portents of doom for Trump and his candidacy. Every day the news is seemingly worse: Republican voters are turning on him in record numbers over his response to the George Floyd protests! His poll numbers in crucial swing states are terrible! He’s losing the support of groups that have historically supported him in huge numbers over his response to COVID-19! Joe Biden leads him in polling by double digit numbers all over the country! Trump has become so toxic that the Republicans are thinking about dropping him! He’s so dispirited that he’s considering dropping out of the race! Biden’s brilliant strategy of staying out of the way and doing nothing while Trump continually sabotages and undermines himself is working brilliantly!

Reading articles on CNN or in The Washington Post about Trump’s failing disaster of a campaign it’s easy to get the impression that the 2020 presidential race is, for all intents and purposes, over, and Biden has won it in a landslide.

I should be reassured by these stories. I’m not. Not in the least. Because I have been reading stories for over four fucking years about the imminent demise of Donald Trump as first a presidential candidate and then as Commander-in-Chief and none of these confident predictions of Trump’s certain doom have ever led to Trump’s actual downfall. 

You know what else didn’t lead to Trump’s downfall? Getting caught on tape bragging about grabbing women’s genitalia as a greeting just before the election. You know what else didn’t lead to his violent ejection from office? Getting impeached. 

It’s adorable that the press is naive enough to imagine that deliberately stoking racial tensions and clear-cut bigotry will prove a turn-off to Trump voters instead of reminding them why they supported him in the first place. 

People say that Trump has no coherent ideology. That may be true but that does not mean that he does not have a consistent message. His message in 2016 was essentially, “I am the only person who can protect you from the scary brown people who want to destroy our nation and kill you and your family. Also, tax cuts!” 

That’s a message that resonated with voters in 2016 enough to get Trump elected in violent defiance of the predictions of pollsters, pundits and politicians. I suspect that’s a message that resonates with Trump supporters who are terrified of the future and want Big Daddy Trump to protect them from it by dragging our country back into the past even more now. 

Trump’s “Silent Majority” is scared. Trump cynically thinks he can surf that wave of paranoia and rage and racial resentment to victory in the fall. He could very well be right, just as he may also be correct in thinking that voters might be VERY receptive to the notion that we can go back to normal and get back our cherished luxuries, freedoms and booming economy even if the facts angrily insist otherwise. 

We should behave as if Donald Trump has a VERY good chance of getting re-elected and we must do absolutely everything in our power, individually and collectively, to prevent that from happening. That way we’re not lulled into a dangerous state of unearned complacency but it’s also probably much truer than the far-fetched fantasy that this thing is already over and we just need to coast to sure-fire victory in November. 

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