The Transcendent Power Of Stupid

Stupid is as stupid does   Mama Gump

You know, when you read Mary Trump’s book, as I did, and you learn that His Lowness paid a chum with a functioning brain stem to take his SATs, and his sister did his college homework, it’s no surprise that Trump goes balls to the wall to hide his college transcripts. Personally, I think Trump uses a Sharpie to sign shit because it allows him to smear shit up so much you don’t realize he can’t spell his own name. Trump doesn’t have a degree from the U. of Penn in Business, he has a Ph.D in Stupid.

And that degree is on bright, shining display every day now, as not only the wheels, but the spare tire and the emergency brake fall off of the Trump bus. Let me ask you this: On December 7, 1941, what do you think would have happened if the Japanese commander radioed Pearl Harbor to tell them to ignore all of those airplanes, they took a wrong turn on the way to Osaka? And how do you think things would have gone in 1776, if George Washington had chosen to deck out all of those boats with lamps when they snuck across the Delaware river to surprise the British?

See, here’s the thing. Trump has never managed to make the quantum leap in logic to realize that in order to launch a surprise attack, the fucking thing has to be a surprise! Time and time again, due to Trump’s chronic narcissism and compulsion, he ends up like a 16-year-old in the back seat of a car.

It’s not like Trump couldn’t have learned the lesson, he had a perfect tutor in Georgia’s Governor, and former Secretary of State, Brian Kemp. In 2018, Kemp smelled true danger from Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams, so what did he do? He purged the state’s voter rolls of more than 650,000 names, mostly minority. But he did it when it was too late for the Democrats to do anything about it in court! That’s how you run a sneak attack.

But more than 2 months ago, Trump sent a fleet of third rate ambulance chasers into courts in all kinds of states, complaining about various state laws and rules governing absentee balloting. One problem with that is that in order to get injunctions, you have to prove some wrong doing, illegality, or unconstitutional nature in the state’s rules and laws. Good luck with that. But worse was the fact that Trumpleforeskin announced it with a bull horn, which sent a league of Democratic lawyers into those states to argue the cases properly. As a result, Trump has lost 85% of the cases filed so far, including one in Texas on Friday, where Governor Abbott wanted to limit counties to only one drop box, as well as a federal ruling today throwing out his attempts to restrict early ballot drop boxes as capricious and unfounded.

On a connected front, more than 6 weeks ago, Trump trumpeted out the fact that he and the RNC had more than 1,000 lawyers ready to descend on various states starting the day after the election, ready to challenge every ballot if necessary to keep Diaper Donnie on his potty throne. Which of course means that the Democrats immediately formed a far superior legal team to kick their asses.

But it gets even better, or worse, depending on your point of view. Fearing that a massive Democratic turnout via early absentee voting would sink his paper boat, Trump turned to his personal Curly Joe, Louis “Da Toy,” to fuck up the postal service. But it turns out that DeJoy is no smarter than his boss. Weeks before absentee voting even started, “Da Toy” got caught pulling truck loads of mailboxes that had been pulled from street corners where they had resided for decades. and dismantling high speed sorting machines and throwing them into the trash. The resulting congressional stink led to a federal judge ordering DeJoy to quit dicking around and put everything back the way it was.

And there is already empirical evidence that this plot has died an ignoble death. Last night on MSNBC, DNC chair Tom Perez reported that in the first two weeks of mail in absentee voting, more than 675,000 votes, or approximately 20% of the total anticipated vote in Wisconsin, had already been received back at elections offices. And a 102 year old woman in Illinois, whose grandson made a space suit for her to get her ballot from her mailbox, received her notice that her ballot had been received.

And one more thing on this subject. Postal workers are incredibly hard working, proud public servants. DeJoy’s kiddie games pissed them off something fierce. MSNBC ran a report about delivery drivers that ran into the back before leaving, going through tubs of mail left behind, searching for government checks, ballots, and medical supplies before leaving for their route. Mechanics in New York stalled in their orders to dismantle high speed sorting equipment for so long that the orders were finally rescinded by the judge. And other mail carriers took mail out in their own cars on their own time to expedite delivery. These professionals will be god-damned if they’ll let a horses ass like DeJoy smear their reputation with the public.

But here’s the cherry on the sundae. Trump actually had a two pronged plan of attack. All the way back in the primaries, many of them delayed by the coronavirus, it quickly became apparent that there was going to be a real problem with in person voting, either early, or on election day. The vast majority of poll workers in the United States are, like myself, senior citizens. They sign up to give back a little, and to get out of the house. But as a prime risk for the virus, many of them sensibly chose to sit it out this year.

That was Trump’s entre to another four years of sponging off of the rest of us in the White House. Use the lack of scared senior poll workers to create long, and potentially dangerously long lines for early in person and election day voting, and use DeJoy to fuck up the timely delivery of ballots in order to invalidate them. But once again, Trump just couldn’t resist making it stupidly obvious. And once again, way too soon.

Enter the youth.  Back in 2018, Trump royally pissed off the Parkland students, and their social media goliath with his subservient stance to the NRA. The kids showed up en masse for the 2018 election, handing a whole shit load of NRA friendly GOP incumbents their heads. Which gave them a taste of victory, and the whiff of blood in the water. The kids didn’t just go home, they activated for other reasons, especially racial justice.

The panic call went out nationally, and the younger generation responded. And so did private business. Old Navy became the first national retailer to offer younger, healthier employees days off, with pay, to work the polls. Others soon followed suit. Wisconsin is currently one of the worst hot spots in the country, and they were down thousands of poll workers for the election. Within 72 hours of the call going out, Wisconsin now only has a handful of precincts with shortages, and an exceeded in other counties, including Milwaukee county, a critical 2020 battleground. Most states are now reporting that they have sufficient poll workers to open all of their precincts for both full early voting, as well as full coverage on election day.

This is the true transcendence of stupid. Both his hold on power, as well as friendly state legislatures, and the pandemic itself gave Trump an embarrassment of riches when it came to trying to finagle the vote. And of course, being Trump, he pissed them away, just as he has every other largesse he’s been given. 24 days. GOTV!

Follow me on Twitter at @RealMurfster35