A number of synchronistic events occurred within 36 hours in the troubled America of 2020. They illustrated that whatever Trump says and does fails to move his loyal forty percent base one jot. This reality has to be taken into account by the Democratic Party, (DP), establishment including the score of candidates pursuing Presidential nomination.
A tension exists among those, including the Presidential campaigners, who want to make Trump’s patent evil front and center of their agenda while the other faction pointedly ignore Trump, rather presenting an alternate domestic program allowing Trump to run against himself. The former approach was the tactic of Hillary Clinton who believed that Trump was just too bad to be elected while the latter was the basis for the Democratic tsunami that won back the House of Representatives in 2018. Central to this dilemma is whether or not to impeach the President, some protagonists claiming that the Trump conduct is so outrageous that the DP have a constitutional duty to proceed. The most valid metric in making a decision is what will stop a second Trump term. Significant too is that while well over 60% polled said that he was a liar only 35% would impeach.
BIDEN, TRUMP, THE RIGHT WING, THE NRA AND ANTI - SEMITIC TERRORISM - ALL IN A DAY AND A HALF
Firstly, former Vice President Joseph Biden announced, on a Friday morning, his candidature for the Presidency and against conventional wisdom elected to run his campaign on cultural issues. His centerpiece being his opposition to Trump’s response to the “Unite the Right” Charlottesville violent rally. Biden epitomized the latter as the POTUS’S destruction of everything that America stood for. Specifically Biden’s announcement focussed on the right wing anti semitic nationalist chant on that occasion,“Jews will not replace us”. Obama’s Vice President compared the right wing behavior, replete with their slogans and signs as being akin to the Nazis of the 1930’s. The former Vice President then characterized the 2020 election being for “The Soul of The Nation”.
The second major occurrence was an attack on a Jewish House of Worship in Porway California which was perpetrated by a self confessed 19 year old anti semite using an automatic AK weapon which mercifully stuck after a few shots. A third interlocking event, just a day before, saw the Trump keynote address at the National Rifle Association, (NRA), convention. There the POTUS pledged his undying support for the NRA’s unfettered support of the Second Amendment which includes the right to purchase automatic weapons such as the AK 47. Lastly, Trump on Saturday evening appeared at a rally in Green Bay Wisconsin with the objective of reassuring himself and the world that in the light of the Mueller report and the Democratic Congress investigations, his base still holds firm. Inter alia he condemned the anti -semitic attack that had taken place earlier that day in California.
Congressman Eric Stalwell, who is one of the twenty Presidential candidates for the Democratic nomination to oppose Trump in 2020 and whose major campaign issue is gun control, responded to the Trump reaction to the Californian tragedy, “Spare us your thoughts and prayers which is an alibi for doing nothing about gun control”. Stalwell continued, “We are in a country where we have unrestricted weaponry and we have growing hate groups where we see a failure of leadership to denounce them”.
Trump’s position is in sharp contrast to that of the New Zealand Premier who had automatic weapons banned within a week of the recent assault on a mosque. Incidentally the shooter in California claimed inspiration for his actions from the New Zealand carnage as well as that of the assault on life in The Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh six months earlier. Trump by contrast pledged to the NRA that their fight was his, AK’s and all.
THE RISKS OF BIDEN’S FRONTAL ASSAULT
Former Vice President Joseph Biden at 76 years of age claimed that the crisis that Trump had created against what America stood for, had persuaded him to enter the race. Unbeknown to him the very issues that he singled out were to be encapsulated within 36 hours of his announcement. He claimed that Trump, following the “Unite The Right” Charlottesville rally, had created a moral equivalency between their Nazi like behavior, including outright anti - semitism and the patriots that had bravely stood up to the “haters”. A young female activist was murdered by a right wing supporter in Charlottesville. Biden claimed dramatically, “The core values of this nation, our standing in the world, our very democracy, everything that has made America, America is at stake”. Trump’s moral equivalence had “shocked the conscience of the nation”.
The stakes of choosing this route are high as Trump is the master of controlling the narrative. There is nothing more he relishes than being the center of the dynamic. However he did appear to be unprepared for this assault. He retorted lamely that he “had responded perfectly when he had claimed that there were very fine people on both sides”. He argued that "(The Unite the Right Group) had gone to Charlottesville in protest to the removal of the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee who was, “whether you like it or not a very fine general”. Trump’s comeback gained little traction containing the usual smears - “Sleepy Joe had low intelligence”.
At the time of the Charlottesville incident the POTUS”S commentary had caused visible discomfort amongst the Republicans and his chief economic advisor Gary Cohn publicly criticized him as well as several members of the GOP. His latest counter to the Biden challenge also resulted in squirming because Robert Lee is hardly a poster child for the Party. He was the defender of slavery and many apportioned a good share of the blame of the 600,000 Americans that succumbed in the Civil War to him. Moreover his continuing failure to acknowledge that one of “the fine men” in Charlottesville had perpetrated murder, stood out like a sore thumb.
The question remains whether Biden, a middle of the road Democrat with fifty years of baggage, will win the nomination then if he succeeds will his cultural plea win out. Part of the answer to that question lies in what makes up Trump’s voting base and whether the tactic that failed with Clinton will prevail with Biden. Biden currently tops the polls by a slim margin but this could just be name recognition. Obama’s former Vice President will also be assisted by three possible Republican Primary contenders for the GOP nomination. One has declared himself, the former Governor from Massachusetts, William Wild. While the latter is chanceless he will garner publicity for his message which includes attacking Trump's Charlottesville responses.
WHO IS TRUMP’S CONSTITUENCY AND WHAT WILL THEY TOLERATE?
The 36 hour events showed in glorious technicolor that the faithful will tolerate everything and anything as Trump’s duplicity and hypocrisy was on stark display. The anti semitism that had rung through Charlottesville causing a death was the self same that had been sounded in California and previously in Pittsburgh, the latter two accompanied by AK rifles. As opposed to supporting legislation to remove automatic weapons Trump had vigorously defended their unfettered sale at the NRA a day earlier. The base was not holding him to account. An analysis of his base makes all of his incongruous actions comprehensible.
Trump’s electoral college victory was predicated on two factors - forty percent that remain his base and about a seven percent swing vote that is currently not on his side. Currently his approach is to see that none of the base desserts him and when the time comes, to win back the remainder that put him over the top in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. How his base is made up accounts to a certain extent for some his outlandish incomprehensible positions. The hard core are made up by the Christian Evangelicals who will never ever desert this sinner as he opposes abortion and has given them Supreme Court Judges Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. The vast Right Wing right up to David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan are also firmly in his court. Added to those is the extended NRA constituency. Then there is the traditional diminished government base that have pulled the lever for the Grand Old Party since time immemorial. Included among the latter are the rural constituencies, the thinly populated Northern States as well as the more populated South. While the suburban Republican women deserted the GOP in 2018 who knows if they will return to Trump in 2020. (The intellectuals and the pundits have largely departed as have stalwarts like the matriarch Barbara Bush who did not die a Republican).
Assuming that the base holds firm, the big question is whether those from the Mid West rust belt that joined the discontented and neglected rural Republicans will remain in Trump’s camp. The blue collar workers from the coal mines and the factories, many of whom voted for Obama twice, were crucial to the reality television star’s triumph, as they too had been invisible to the Washington elite.
BIDEN’S RATIONALE, HIS CHANCES, THE DP’S AGENDA AND TRUMP’S BAITING
Biden, with all his baggage, is heavily identified with the rust belt workers of the Democratic Party. He is synonymous with his native State of Pennsylvania. He is inextricably bound to Barack Obama, who in 2020 represents the middle of the road of the Democratic Party. Biden's hope is that the surveys that claim the DP's electorate’s number one priority is defeating Trump will therefore logically choose him. According to the WhiteHouse insiders, who are still leaking like a sieve, Biden is thought to represent the biggest threat to Trump’s re election. What is in doubt is the Obama successor’s tactics which fly in the teeth of the Democrats 2018 success.
Whatever direction the Democratic frontrunner veers Nancy Pelosi needs to put into the record legislation that sorts to address the electorate’s top priorities including health care, education costs, wage inequity and most importantly immigration. Trump is deliberately allowing chaos to ensue at the border which he will focus on nearer the election date.
As matters stand impeachment is off the table. Trump, buffeted by Fox News and his new sidekick, Attorney General Barr, with their outright disregard for the Democratic Congress, is trying to goad the DP into impeachment. That will give Trump the victim status he is now reverting to after the Mueller "witch-hunt". While he still claims the report exonerated him his current emphasis is on the DP desire to get rid of him by impeachment and through their investigations. In the unlikely event that Pelosi will allow an impeachment to happen the spineless Republicans in the Senate will not vote to remove him allowing him to switch back into his triumphant, omnipotent, super human mode again in time for the election.
As matters stand impeachment is off the table. Trump, buffeted by Fox News and his new sidekick, Attorney General Barr, with their outright disregard for the Democratic Congress, is trying to goad the DP into impeachment. That will give Trump the victim status he is now reverting to after the Mueller "witch-hunt". While he still claims the report exonerated him his current emphasis is on the DP desire to get rid of him by impeachment and through their investigations. In the unlikely event that Pelosi will allow an impeachment to happen the spineless Republicans in the Senate will not vote to remove him allowing him to switch back into his triumphant, omnipotent, super human mode again in time for the election.
AT THE END OF THE DAY
Notwithstanding Biden’s election strategy the Democratic Party needs to stick to their 2018 agenda of pushing their positive program and exposing Trump where is weakest, namely his inability to deliver on his economic promises and well paid jobs and his tax cut for the rich . While Biden’s stand delivers a crucial message - one that he might be able to carry off - it is unlikely that any of the other 19 hopefuls could deliver it. In addition Biden can stand up to the abuse Trump would heap on any opponent.
Again notwithstanding the Biden crusade, as it played out over a 36 hour period, the base of the POTUS believe in the dictum, “My leader right or wrong”.
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