Harris’ debate moves were brilliant, but the aged, racist, gut-driven charlatan drove his own train wreck, blind to eight years of scatter-gun, MAGA-driven electoral blows
Trump’s devolving, ever-desperate tantrum campaign is now taking far too literally the old saw, “The only thing worse than bad publicity is no publicity.” Tactical “bad publicity” works, like a splashy lightning strike, but not the crude drudgery of Donald’s demagoguery. Expect worse. But contriving bad publicity after a terrible debate sabotages any potential reversal against a vigorous, up-spirited foe vigorously pumping out good publicity. Trump’s ugly, undisciplined flare-outs, ever vile and racist to grab a headline, fully infests J.D. Vance, whose tone-deaf blunders match the Fraudster-in-chief. Robotically played-out Trumpist tricks are backfiring, even disqualifying.
A MAGA miasma explains Trump’s vanity defense of his latest pet—a pernicious, conspiratorial white supremacist, Laura Loomer. Someone could get killed in Springfield, Ohio when nutcases bomb-threat grammar schools. On display is calculated, sensationalized outrage, invoking that old media motto, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Trump now blames his 2020 loss less on Dems than insiders who stopped Trump from being Trump. Gloves are off, even if go-for-broke, reptilian venom infects his own campaign.
Thus does the misfit double down on a miserable debate by blurting out, then clinging to the appalling, centrist-alienating slur that Haitians are pet-cannibals. Why limit it to Haitians, or Ohio, must not other newcomers be starving to death? We regress to 2015 when Trump’s scam novelties gamed the media with outlandish claims, devoid of accuracy, logic, or character. Back to harsh, bare-knuckle MAGA barrages, back to immigrant hatred.
Trump only commands blunt, phony 2015 campaign schemes, but those slurred a far more vulnerable, baggage-laden veteran. MAGA refuses to realize time passes, the majority seeks a new direction, and “we’re not going back” stings. Apocalyptic TV pandering only attracts his base – making Trump like Sisyphus, weighed down by pushing the same (or worse) sucker ploys up the same hill. Where’s any electoral evidence SINCE 2018 that Trump’s manipulative hustles have worked for the GOP? Old-style Republicans sustain leverage but not because Trump upped his favorability. Repeating loser ploys spotlight not only Trump’s devolution as a one-trick pony but Einstein’s notion that insanity duplicates the same thing while expecting different results.
Since fixated MAGA haters care little what Trump is FOR, only how well he outrages mutual enemies, they cheer cringe-worthy inanities as if bad messaging doesn’t lose votes. Despite great anguish by party pros, where’s any viable, winning “Trump agenda” that redeems campaign quick sand. Trump is digging a hole, being nostalgic about his own failed nostalgia, distorting his potentially strong issues (“migrant invasion,” out of control crime, Obamacare stinks) without any constructive proposals? He deserves all the mockery that thundered down, when pushed on health care, by admitting he only has “concepts” of a plan – echoing exactly the same 2015 misdirections. No loudmouth entertainer succeeds, a decade later, without a shrewder second or third act.
The gullible cartoon TV true believer
How many unforced errors—the Arlington cemetery mess, JD Vance, fake Ohio pet-napping and Loomer—confirm Trump as monumental scatterbrain? The most revealing admission on his pet-eating scandal was the infantile logic exposed when Trump weakly conceded his only evidence was a random TV claim after a Facebook item. Whatever outlandish scam appears on TV or the crazed internet house of mirrors, that makes it true (and worse still repeatable) for the most gullible, least aware opportunist in the universe. Is Trump no more than a backward comic book character with so little brain power he sucks up all TV truthiness? The pet-eating lie was many-times removed, no more than vicious gossip (now recanted). Thus Trump’s dismal, revealing quotient for propaganda: “I heard it on TV, good enough for me and my obedient lackeys.”
Thus Trump and MAGA must now confirm kiddie cartoons and deceptive advertising, idiotic memes and AI inventions, wild conspiracies along with unreal fantasy stories – plus endless online bluster. How about imaginary friends or talking space visitors? Or obsessions over the “real” Hannibal Lecter? What sane adult believes whatever stupidity he or she sees on TV, as if bereft of basic thinking modes? Failed blather may corral Trumpers but not undecided centrists looking for a reality anchor. Days later, Trump refuses to condemn bomb threats—repeating the lie Haitians have ruined Springfield. By the way, pets disappear all the time, get sick or hijacked, or wander off and find new owners. Can a third popular vote rout help disappear Trump?
Trump’s unforced gift to Dems: Unfit temperament
In short, this presidential election has become less about the Democrat, as in 2020 a stable, non-threatening choice, than the growing horror of the next deranged Trump terror tantrum. What greatly divides the country isn’t inflation or immigration but the nightmare of repeating the worst presidency ever, with even fewer guardrails. Instead of being about Harris, the bottom line is how badly undecideds balk at Trump disruption, charades and melodrama—replayed as if 2015 time stood still. Wash Post’s veteran Dan Balz captured the current Trump repetition complex with “Harris dominated Trump in the debate:”
Trump did nothing to offer voters a new portrait. This was the same Trump who voters have seen for nearly nine years—an attack politician, one who thrives on personal grievance. He is as well defined as any politician can be . . . The act is old—and to about half the country, it is disqualifying.
Not quite nothing, indeed it’s worse than “the same” since 67 million viewers endured an older, more unfit, more cornered, and compromised candidate—exactly what Dems, pundits and savvy observers harp on daily. How many new ears heard Trump slander Harris as a “Marxist,” that she impossibly hates both Israel and Gaza—and Biden “hates” her? Say what? Or that Trump keeps lying about the size of his rallies? Or that high tariffs magically tax the FOREIGN country, not U.S. consumers stung with higher prices? Or that Trump insanely admires the nasty Hungarian dictator? What, for America?! How about the whopper that “everyone” supports the calamity he caused, that one-third of states have dangerous abortion restrictions, even total bans?
Beyond all this “bad publicity,” the bottom line question remains: what has or does Trump offer the lives of ordinary citizens? It’s not horrendous temperament, eviscerated and exposed by Harris’s effective debate moves. Aside from inflated negativity, that the entire U.S. is a failed country, what exactly has Trumpism done for the average Joe since 2016? What new messaging, beyond fake healthcare “concepts” does he even talk up? Okay, the rich now pay less tax, courts have shredded abortion, voting, and election rights, but how does that help the angry, under-employed, aggrieved blue collar worker in Dayton or Springfield, OH? Or the raped teenager?
Don’t fix, make worse
Trump will never fix immigration because then he loses his most fatuous talking point, dragged in whatever the topic. But on health care, job training, outsourcing, school children safety—nada. Instead, he promises higher inflation (via 20%! tariffs), undoable mass deportation, weaponing the DOJ for enemy retribution (“Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials”), hoping Ukraine loses, more tax breaks for the rich—oh yeah, the latest gimmick, no taxation on tips or overtime.
Does this small change gimme offset letting Russian rampage against peaceful neighbors, more free-wheeling Gaza violence, and the “patriotism” of installing a “dictator” so that MAGA nuts “won’t have to vote anymore”? Even MAGA suckers don’t believe that mainly because no Trump disaster scenario vanishes upon his re-election. He’s lost without enemy immigrants. Or a Constitution to break. Let’s end with two witticisms that take the measure of the third Trump candidacy.
1) Attributed to Mark Twain, “Being talked to death is a terrible way to die.”
2) “It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.”
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