If enough voters, beyond his raucous gang of indentured servants, took Trump seriously, his threat to boycott “fraudulent” elections would boost Democratic chances. Truly, his commandeering of fundamentalists, plus surviving anti-vaxxers and intractable insurrectionists, imperils a handful of right-wing senate campaigns and assures covert “election stealers” hold the House. As a New York comic might quip, “it cuddent hoit.”
Here’s the latest, transparent Trump plan for self-destruction, appealing because it also impairs right-wing gerrymandering and noxious voter suppression: “If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020 (which we have thoroughly and conclusively documented), Republicans will not be voting in ’22 or ’24. It is the single most important thing for Republicans to do.” Who the hell is the royal “we”? Notice the authoritarian “will not” and across two elections.” Bravo! Don’t you just love that “thoroughly” falls short, mandating “conclusively” documented?
Perfect Trumpian logic: so, the solution to alleged rigged, public elections is decimate your party’s control over voting oversight by reducing its power? That’s unstable genius for you! What absurdity is next when virtually the same procedures for vote counting persist: “if nominated, I won’t aggrandize a rigged system by running”? If elected, of course, the principled Trump refuses the tarnished, illegitimate prize, the spawn of scurrilous dogs out to mortify him (and a second term, with incalculable damage, would secure that unwanted misery).
Rachel Maddow is right: “Democrats finally have reason to celebrate one of Trump’s threats.” In fact, the fatuous, manipulative Floridian claims to prefer progressive Democrat Stacy Abrams vs. the GOP’s “traitorous” governor of Georgia. Because Trump doesn’t get “recreational sports” (except rigged wrestling matches and plundering students), he never learned the ultimate point of fair competition, after play ends: separating the triumphant winner from the certified, finalized loser. As in LOSER: see recent “Trump lost” billboards. Politics, book and movie sales, prom popularity contests, marriages, stock investments and life itself come down to distinguishing winning from losing. Or in Trump’s perverse case, dividing winners from whiners. Whiners unite, all you have to lose is delusional certitude – as the sorest losers cry havoc and deny the rules.
Again, Trump is and will be the best (if undeserved) gift to the Democratic Party. No one else can so laughably threaten to take his marbles and go home—in his case, joining other Florida swamp critters. To which leftist multitudes , countless centrists and Republican advisers all shout, “don’t let the door hit you in the ass” or “parting is such sweet sorrow.” But also: “what? Is he really gone? Will he ever really be gone? Is he not more pandemic than politician”?
No one does chaos, calumny and contradiction like Trump – making everyone but hard-ass Trumpers look like heroic giants who know what they are doing. Who says all comparisons are odious?
Swimming against the tidal wave
Let’s face it: Trump is the first American politician, unceremoniously born into a nominal democracy, who hates elections. Along with voting rights and the majority and state election counters. Did someone force this icon of self-destruction run for office, asserting all national elections are all rigged? Impossible, as he only listens to his own gut. Trump cannot deal with a bona fide dimwit, with indescribably less genius, could in this fairest of worlds take him down. Yet, when has Trump been fair or honest or rule-abiding for five minutes straight? When has any other criminal impugned the entire democratic, legal system as being stacked against his ability to commit further crimes?
What if Trump’s perversion of American “greatness” has always depended on blocking voters from exercising their innate rights to be voters, if not fellow geniuses? Hell, says Trump, no predatory company could run on anything as unreliable as majority rule—no invading army, no oppressive church, certainly not Russia, Iran, the NRA nor the Proud Boys. Trump not only hates universal suffrage but how remarkably accurate is our vote counting, considering the numbers, state deviations, and human nature. He can’t stand that, months and millions later, he can’t punch one hole in one state’s tabulations. Thus today’s outrageous, endless fallout, taking the untenable to the unthinkable.
Trump hates that his shocking election loss—the greatest, most unpalatable tragedy in human thievery—exposes what a political numbskull he is, incapable of expanding his appeal or his own base, coming up with deliverables or sticking to the same message for ten minutes. I hear he’s already backtracking on telling Republicans not to vote in the next two elections—what a surprise. Rest assured, he will match this stupidity with more to come, unable to abandon his weak, stolen election fraud ploy. Stay that perverse course, Donald!
Beware billionaire control freaks
Though not all that exceptional for egocentric billionaires, every one a self-declared know-it-all, Trump cannot abide that the populace, especially disreputable, undeserving minorities, determine where he lives, what he does, and whom he abuses. Like Robber Barons, Trump is an unyielding snob, desperate to be an entitled aristocrat whose main complaint is why it took so long to award him the emperor’s throne. Like irrational anti-vaxxers, he can’t stand being told what to do—stopped only when wealthier, higher powers he can’t intimidate dismiss His Arrogance, “No winners remain winners by backing serial bad investments, appalling staff choices, and vulgar, insatiable presumptions.”
No one, however, can fault Trump derangement for inconsistency, remarkable considering he never resolves the tension between the horror of humiliation and his mania for celebrity. Nevertheless, his current mortification touches low points only a handful of critical observers imagined. No stable genius runs for high office without internalizing two core concepts, both of which utterly escapeTrump: 1) the democratic west elevates the rightly-celebrated bulwark of popular sovereignty called majority rule; and 2) elections, imperfect in fundraising, quality of candidates, and truth-telling, must still be honored when certified – or else the charade is exposed.
If elections are kaput, even as theater, otherwise congenial masses will conclude they don’t count a white. Then, being fickle suckers in high dudgeon, outraged insurgents can rockm even shipwreck the boat. That, among other legacies, is why popular, well-tabulated elections matter—and why absurd Trump attacks must eventually be demolished. After screwing up the pandemic, jeopardizing millions, the Trump Election Dither (TED) threatens the life (or for many the illusion) of democracy. Whether for majoritarians, GOP operatives, journalists, historians, pundits, elitists, democrats and billionaires combined, that’s a bridge way too far. How else does this freedom “beacon on the hill”—loaded with its own contradictions—survive without resisting scrutiny?
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