Trump has executed a gigantic desperate frantic gamble to turn the midterm elections into a referendum on his good self. His methodology is his usual brash uncouth bizarre immoral business model. His “Deal” changed as the “customers” rejected each “offer”. He upped the stakes to a hysterical racist pitch in an attempt to strike fear into the electorate as he became more and more divisive. His process degenerated from “The Art of The Deal” to the “Bullying of the Bully Pulpit”. Even Trump could not envision that he would win any converts by going native but if only he could bring out those who had given him his minority win in 2016 then perhaps the Republicans could hang onto Congress, the Governorships and the State Legislatures. Realistically however if he just brought out the forty percent base he might have some protection from any move to impeach him. At the end of the day all Trump is achieving is shoring up the red states that will keep control of the Senate in this cycle.
This short term gain is potentially at the cost of his Republican Party. He would be antagonizing the thirty percent of Latinos that have been voting Republican and the suburban Republican women forever. He has already lost the Republican intellectuals so the pool of Americans that support him diminishes by the day. But Trump does not believe in the long term only the short term. He will worry about the Senate in 2020 not to mention his own re election if he is still around.
BUSINESS MODEL
The business model used was a mixture of the recklessness of his casino bankruptcies and his reality show, The Apprentice. In the end it was more akin to his franchising operation. The Republican Party have become one of many franchises that Trump has put his stamp on. While many in the past have failed Trump has never lost any of his money in the process. He rarely becomes personally involved in the endeavor but he has with the Republican Party as he is its leader and he attempts to run it like his businesses. That is why even though his name is not on the ballot he is rushing around the country in support of Republican candidates in the midterm elections like his life depended on it. In some ways his life maybe on the line as the Democrats are odds on favorites to win the House of Representatives and no longer will his finances, his alleged criminal activity and possible impeachment be held hostage by a Republican Congress. Also Donald Trump’s franchise is in deep trouble in the State elections and the Governorships so his voters are not saying, as he prophesied , “Mr. President we are so tired of you winning so much” or at least a good number aren’t.
Trump in this frenetic battle not to be “a loser” has resorted to the roles he knows best - being an entertainer and a salesman. In this challenge he is prepared to say and do anything to his adoring mob. So using his undoubted histrionic and peddling skills he is running from venue to venue giving free shows packed to the rafters with his red capped fans. He has scheduled eleven such extravaganzas in the last six days before the midterms. He has frenetically and continuingly changed what he is selling because his sales pitch is not going down so well outside of the roadshows.
INITIAL GOODS FOR SALE FLOPPED
He first offer was that because of his tax bill “You never had it so good”. However this bill of goods did not fly as the consensus was that the only citizens that benefitted were the rich. In fact when the middle class can no longer deduct their biggest tax saving benefits, property taxes and mortgages their taxes will go up in time for the 2020 elections. When someone pointed this all out to him he tweeted a ten percent tax cut before the midterms but even the red caps didn’t buy it because Congress isn’t in session and Republican Senate Leader McConnell said it would never happen. So he moved onto health care.
The line on health care has changed as the body politic suddenly realized that Obamacare was what they really wanted. So almost mid sentence the smears on the late John McCain for preventing the GOP from completely destroying it changed to that Trump and the Republicans were the best politicians to save it. However even for Trump this was a difficult sell with a history of seventy congressional attempts to axe it and the fact that Trump’s Justice Department is backing a legal move to eliminate the health care benefits such as insurance companies having to accept enrollees with pre existing complaints. Trump lamely tweeted on but he knew this just would not cut it, So something else was needed.
Of course there was the new Supreme Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh, whom, amidst great excitement, a Republic majority succeeded in electing. (Jay H. Ell thought that was what Republican majorities were supposed to do). This item only really appeals to the Evangelical base and the real Conservatives, not the Red Caps and the blue collared workers who put him over the top.
Trump claims that his record shows great achievement and that is a good reason to vote for the Trump. That really isn’t enough to keep the franchise going so there has to be a new line of merchandize to sell. The obvious line was immigration and the threat on our Southern border in the form of The Caravan
TRUMP IGNORES RACIST ATTACKS AND GOES NATIVE INSTEAD.
So it was back to racism and division that had played so well and been a best seller in the past. He was hampered by the fact that he was being made to feel complicit in three racialist tragedies that happened on his watch and annoyingly punctuated his last ditch effort. He complained bitterly that they detracted from the real job at hand and chastised the media for focussing on them instead of his daily rants. His failure to fulfill the traditional Presidential role as Comforter in Chief coupled with his continuing divisiveness repulsed and disgusted a growing group of commentators. Notable among the latest to throw up their hands in revulsion is Judge Napolitano of Fox News. A deeply religious man, Napolitano claims the big hearted individual he has known has become in this election season, “Angry, reckless and lacking in understanding. His words having given comfort to the worst of us”. In a lengthy piece Napolitano laments the fact that Trump has misused the bully pulpit and not acted in the traditional presidential manner. He rhetorically asks, “Should the President’s bully pulpit be used to divide and polarize or unite and uplift?”.
It did not bother Trump one jot that the atrocities were allegedly perpetrated by those who support his philosophies and not by “The Mexicans”. All the accused had racist backgrounds and at least two could argue that they were acting out his agenda. While he could blame all of them on the media there was only one of these savage events that Trump could not disengage himself from - the brutal barbaric synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh. Besides having to interrupt his schedule to physically make an appearance at the scene the revulsion at worshippers being slaughtered in cold blood was far too much for especially his Evangelical block to just pass by and point to the “fake news”. So he apologized to the red cappers at each meeting that “he had to tone it down”. Tone it down he did at least while he read his prepared statement berating anti semitism.
The faithful were treated to the condemning of anti semitism on the one hand and the promotion of racism on the other. The incongruity of this argument is that the perpetrator of the Pittsburgh tragedy believes like Trump that the immigrants marching onto the Southern border represent an existential threat. The accused believes that jews are aiding and abetting this threat. He believed, like Trump, the threat was urgent that is why he couldn’t wait before “going in.” There was a general conspiracy theory from the right that the Caravan was funded by the archetypical evil jew, George Soros. Trump thinks it is possible that Soros was indeed the financier. Without laboring the point further it requires great subtlety to starkly differentiate the policy of Trump, who like the assassin, believes one had to act urgently against the immigration threat, and the assassin himself.
But let us continue like this embarrassing connection is not there and return to the Trumpian mind on the immigration threat.
ITS THE IMMIGRANTS STUPID
Throwing the failing mantra that “You never had it so good” into the garbage Trump changed it to “The Republic is under attack”. The focus was turned to “The Caravan” - a collection of four thousand individuals mainly from Honduras half of who are women and children, several of whom are barefoot. By every account they are seeking asylum and or fleeing from violence. Trump maintains, without proof, that there are criminals among them and terrorists from the Middle East. “These are tough people’, Trump confides again and again and they will be stopped. He is amping up the rhetoric at every one of his jamborees. The narrative per se failed to excite the electorate so he moved on.
The refugees are anything from eight hundred to fourteen hundred miles from the border - literally months away from the USA. A leaked memorandum from the Pentagon states that from historical data at most fourteen hundred will reach the border. The POTUS’S electoral response was to order, in addition to the tens of thousands of border and immigration agents, five thousand regular troops to the border immediately. That also didn’t move the political compass.
The President then claimed, amidst disbelief, that the Constitution which states that any child born on American territory was a citizen could be negated by him with an executive order. As this was just too much for the spineless Speaker of the House Paul Ryan the latter all but said that it was absurd. Trump responded as he always does by abuse and attack and blamed Ryan in advance for the loss of the House. This too didn’t seem to evince the response Trump expected so the bile continued,
The POTUS then personally released the most racist advert recorded since the infamous Willie Horton effort in the sixties. It depicted a Mexican illegal immigrant who was responsible for murder. The message was that all immigrants are murderers. The Democrats want open borders….. All this when the statistics show that that demographic has a lower crime rate and the mentally handicapped individual came into the country under Bush. Without even waiting for the impact of that contribution he returned to the regular refrain that The Caravan was an invasion and had to be halted.
So Trump upped the regular troop deployment up to fifteen thousand, more than are currently in Afghanistan. Questions were asked about the cost and what the troops would do in the months prior to arrival of the barefooted warriors. The response was swift the troops would fire at any illegal who threw stones. The POTUS was unaware that the Military have no right, on American soil, to resort to arms but he upped the anti even further.
The President then announced that he would declare that you cannot ask for amnesty. He would declare that illegal…..
It is obvious that Trump will not stop and he will ratchet it to fever pitch till election day.
AT THE END OF THE DAY
It remains to be seen where this all ends in the short term and the long term. Whichever way this is viewed Trump faces two virtual certainties. The House is almost certainly lost and at the very least Trump will be investigated up the ying yang by the Democrats. Even more certain is that Mueller is closing in on the Trump campaign. On the upside he would have ensured the Senate stays in McConnell’s grubby hands.
The question is that in his seventieth year is teflon Trump finally out of his depth. Jay H. Ell cannot envision how he can move on unscathed to a second term. But then he was convinced Hillary would win…….
Just as an aside the Democrats are sticking to script and almost ignoring Trump. To quote the Democratic contender for Florida Governorship when Trump called him a thief, “You don’t wrestle with a pig!”.
No comments:
Post a Comment