To MAGA loyalists, don’t bet the farm on a Donald comeback, a second-act sequel or a repeat of 2016. That ship has sailed and sunk, swollen with moldy oldies that should have been dumped years ago. Au contraire, it looks like Old McDon-Old doesn’t know when to quit—and frankly couldn’t do more to lose if he tried. Even a modestly aware candidate has the horse sense when the bluster and bullshit run was done.
No doubt, blind denials reflect the terror that losing means federal jail time and severe penalties. The “I can get away with anything” ploy, the worst Trump self-delusion, is always playing with fire—or poison snakes. When do we start counting down the weeks before Harris takes an insurmountable lead, with felony sentencing and debates still to batter his reputation.
Not only can’t one go back again, what’s more pathetic than a disgraced politician oblivious to being over the hill, irreversibly losing cognitive skills, and refusing to retire? Even worse, were the Harris electoral surge to plough on, the Loser-in-Chief faces a potential rout by the perfect nemesis: a spirited, sharp-tongued woman of color riding her strengths and without scandalous baggage (who unlike Hilary won’t slight the tightrope states). Further, what factors restrain the Trump train wreck from devastating the entire GOP ticket, upping chances that Dems retake the House and hold the Senate?
That would begin to end two appalling generations of right-wing dominance since Reagan, remarkable in its success despite its minority rule. But Trump, the icon of undisciplined, foolish egotism, holds the singular destiny of blasting a huge hole in the Republican future. No, the GOP won’t vanish, but its undeserved leverage will fade—and libertarian billionaires, avid gun owners, and abortion-aggrieved evangelicals will struggle to hold the fort. Liberalism is the mindset staging the comeback that could begin the long goodbye to offset radioactive Trump fallout over a shocking range.
Electorally, the crude Trump charade was never that polished, indeed managing only one-election win—and that by hook, by crook, an ill-timed Comey slam, and the luck that just enough Trump voters lived in just the right states. Good enough to hornswaggle the dimly deficient, messiah-hunting right, what has Trump done but lose repeatedly since he twice lost the popular votes? He stumbled through four years of mismanagement, counterproductive schemes, ignorant declarations, more contradictory lies than we can count. 2020 was the poster child campaign of how an incumbent blew it, losing badly to a Hilary redux.
One-trick pony, one trick win
Since then, GOP losses everywhere have surged, reflecting egregious Trump endorsements of deficient, un-electable candidates. As a party spigot, Trump was a bust soon after his weird Electoral College win. Indeed, his 2016 victory is the best indictment yet of this antiquated, undemocratic, “college” selection curiosity. No wonder the Fraudster-in-chief had no choice but to commit a myriad of criminal election frauds (while projecting it falsely on others) in a dead-end failure to overturn the 2020 results.
We now know, with evidence on par with his 34 felony conviction trial, there can’t and won’t be any sequel for the Duplicitous Trump Circus and Demolition Parade. “Let Trump be Trump” remains (bizarrely) his campaign refrain, despite being far less fit than three years ago (simply delusional and manipulative). The same contemptuous “I don’t really give a shit” tone, brimming with clumsy insults (his Don Rickles parody), his 1980’s outfits, dumb jokes, and inability to change doomed tactics—all mirror indefensible obsessions on immigration, crime, “election rigging,” and his poor me trial victimizations.
Trump trumped his own good fortune
The old campaign shtick, which only worked once (the novelty of no voting record, against the perfect establishment foil) crumbled when he blew the Covid unity chance, sputtered in his re-election mess, then caused huge party erosion after his Jan. 6 debacle and crime sprees. As in 2020, Trump does nothing to court irreplaceable voters, going out of his way to offend all but his suckered MAGA faithful. Imagine still fantasizing here’s a straight-talking, blue-collar voice of the aggrieved. Is there anything Trump can do to reverse his sharp fallout—even if a miracle occurs and he realizes his plight. Certainly not by getting shot in the ear (and blaming Biden), facing a new, formidable opponent, making the worst VP pick since Palin, concocting two boring, failed “press conferences, or the nonsense of claiming he’s better looking than Harris.
The only thing worse than lurching into dotage—and failing to realize you ain’t what you used to be—is defying all good advice to drastically modify your pitch. Consider what’s said about old folks over the hill, oblivious that “all their get up and go has got up and went,” to echo the Weavers. The greatest tragedy by our greatest dramatist, King Lear, is exactly about an old leader too foolish to realize that dividing his kingdom, and rejecting his only honest daughter, is the stuff of epic tragedy. Whatever you call it, we all get to experience the extreme pathos of decline reinforced by denial, but instead of tragedy we may well get redemption for a country under siege and battered by a culture of know-nothing loudmouths.
Pundits who do expose Trump
Not all of the media let Trump off the hook. Just this week, I am hardly alone in foretelling disaster in the making. Item one: Dana Milbank on the obvious: “Republicans want Trump to drop the insults—but that’s all he’s got. They all might as well ask Trump to abandon Mar-a-Lago and move into a double-wide.” Two, Jennifer Rubin on “Trump’s decline: His interviews and lies get worse,” and downward spiral, “When they do discuss his mental state, it is often in the context of horserace politics. (Axios commented on his AI delusion: “Trump’s advisers and allies worry he’s spending so much time in an alternative reality that it’s undermining his real-world campaign:” Three, this from the editor of the Atlantic, explaining media failures, “Trump sounds nuts, but he can’t be nuts, because he’s the presumptive nominee for president of a major party, and no major party would nominate someone who is nuts,” Jeffrey Goldberg explained last month. “Therefore, it is our responsibility to sand down his rhetoric, to identify any kernel of meaning, to make light of his bizarro statements, to rationalize.”
Four, Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote, “[The] false claim by Trump that Harris is generating fake big crowds with AI was a true Captain Queeg moment, maybe the most bat-guano crazy thing I’ve seen in 40 years of covering presidential elections.” As Ogden Nash once quipped, “You’re only young once, but you can be immature forever.” Or perhaps more philosophically, Benjamin Franklin concluded, “Life’s tragedy is that we get too old soon and wise too late.”
Trump the cosmic fool mocks the very notion of wisdom, riding his blatant fool’s errand to the bitter end. And right now, that end looks about right for the greatest charlatan playing off vulnerable voters yearning for a genuine voice but only getting a feeble, phony whimper fading into infamy. This embarrassment to American history is the most visible, most treasonous figure since Aaron Burr or Benedict Arnold, leaving far greater long term systemic wounds and scars.
COMMENTS