Trump can’t stand not being the center of things. He also deludes himself into many things including that he’s far more popular with voters than he is. Republicans not part of Trump’s inner circle see the truth polls are reporting and for most the less Trump is part of the midterms the better their chances. Trump however isn’t going to fade into the background and if as many think Republicans lose in November it will be a case of Poetic Justice Trump brought upon himself. And his Party.
As you know the GOP is about to hold a ‘Midterm Convention'(?) soon and in Texas of all places. I don’t know about you but I haven’t seen many details about who will be featured or the general theme the Party will be asked to rally around. However indications are as I’ve said – GOPers would like Trump to leave them to their own devices to run localized races rather than have a national campaign. As this article from Raw Story tells us there’s a leaked memo indicating Trump is going to insist on the very thing his Party doesn’t want – making the midterms a referendum on HIM.
The linked article starts off telling us Trump’s advisors believe they’ve ‘cracked the code’ of Trump’s dismal ratings. The problem they say is that the public doesn’t realize how great Trump has been! Has your laughter subsided? Good because there’s more to discuss regarding how this nonsense was exposed as such on a Daily Blast podcast:
“So these new leaks to The Atlantic are really something,” host Greg Sargent said, unpacking claims that Trump’s team is privately blaming his poll numbers on voters not knowing his “accomplishments,” such as new stock market highs, a closed southern border, and rising manufacturing output.
Personally I’ve never put much faith in a connection to the stock market and the economy. People forget (if they ever knew) it’s an index of relative handful of corporations, rock solid blue chips virtually guaranteed to not only not go bankrupt but go up in value. It’s no more representative of American business than a championship professional sports team is representative of the overall state of their sport down to the local level. The border? Yes, policy changes did quickly cut down on the number of unauthorized crossings but Trump wasn’t content tout the win and leave it at that. No, he empowered Stephen Miller to go crazy with all the detentions and deportations (and murders by federal agents) that have so damaged Team Trump on immigration. Even rising manufacturing output isn’t because Trump’s promise of opening tons of new factories to replace overseas plants, but improvements in processes and of course replacing workers with machines and AI!
In other words it’s not nearly the simple, neat narrative Team Trump wants to paint. More importantly realization has set in with people across the country that what’s coming out of Team Trump and the reality they see and live in the communities every day don’t match. They also realize that Trump has been in office for too long to blame any problems on Biden. Raw Story’s piece includes a segment discussing how Trump’s plan to sell a load of bullshit is the opposite of what people in his Party about to face the voters want to have happen. And that the whole strategy which got leaked could well (probably will) backfire:
Bulwark writer Mona Charen unraveled that claim, likening Trump to a “mad king” surrounded by courtiers too frightened to tell the truth, and flagged the “sleight of hand” that while manufacturing output may be up, factory employment has lagged. Trump’s reported plan to flood the midterms with TV ads about his own record, she noted, is precisely what vulnerable Republicans dread as they scramble to make November about anything other than him.
That’s the problem right there. The GOP at-large knows the problem is Trump and that the more the midterms are about him the worse off their Party will be. Trump however believes his Party hasn’t done their part to convince voters how awesome he is so they by god better start ‘touting his accomplishments.’Â The result is two locomotives racing towards a head-on collision. (I think back to childhood and the two trains at the end of George of the Jungle – and think ‘Watch out for that TRUMP!’)
Trump will almost certainly get his way, at least to a large degree. He’ll hate doing it but if his minion GOP candidates won’t sell his pitch he’ll not only shoot off his fat mouth every chance he gets, but spend money on political ads. Ads I should note that will be tone deaf and do him more harm that good. As Charen points out this could lead to a delightful case of Poetic Justice. Of Trump being the architect of his own thrashing:
Polls show Trump cratering to all-time lows, and Republicans are sprinting from him with “no end in sight.” Charen argued voters can’t pin this economy on a virus or on Joe Biden, as the tariffs, the Iran war, and the price spikes belong to him.
“He did this. He’s doing this,” she said.
Charen suggests a symmetry if this Trump strategy backfires on the party that enabled him. She’s right because as she says that the GOP ‘grudingly swallowed a message.’ A message she points out that’s built entirely around a president dragging it down. She gets the last word in the linked article with what could be a brutal epitaph to Trump’s impending two years of lame duck Presidency, telling Sargent:
“And poetic justice is the best justice”Â
Friends, I know everybody begs you for money. I promise you that, of all the outlets bugging you for spare change, we are the smallest and the hardest-working. We’re a bunch of old, disabled people, except for one writer in his mid-50s. But the rest of us are in our sixties and seventies, and this is a labor of love. All we’re asking for is the ability to continue our quest to tell the truth about Trump and help ensure democracy survives. If you can help, please do. Thank you. Ursula
Eternal gratitude to Mona Charen for the saying, “…poetic justice is the best justice”. How great!!!