Hitting The Wall

Trump's 'trusted political tools' have failed in fight against Harris: CNN analysishttps://t.co/gF0iZlPT5D

— Raw Story (@RawStory) August 12, 2024

"When the ex-president called Harris 'dumb' at a Montana rally Friday night or falsely claimed last month that she 'happened to turn Black,' he may have delighted his base voters," wrote Collison. However, he is on the verge of "alienating women and swing-state voters, as well as reversing the gains he has made among minorities that he’d proudly highlighted for months.

"Trump’s campaign was also forced on Saturday to deny a report in The New York Times that he’d privately referred to Harris as a 'b---h' as he bemoaned her momentum."

Trump has nothing but golden-oldies:  race-baiting; misogyny; xenophobia; and his personal favorites, paranoia and persecution complex. He's been running on it for two years now, and the slightest change in circumstances has thrown him off.

I remember a Theodore Sturgeon story, I think it was, from the '50's.  I think he was trying to explain nuclear fission to an audience distinctly not educated in nuclear physics (I was already reading about the subject in elementary school.  Not because I was a fuckin' genius, but because the concepts were familiar enough by then for kids to pick up the basic ideas.)  Anyway, he described two sticks held by two hands, perfectly balanced on each other, with the hands pressing as hard as they could against the sticks.  So long as the sticks were perfectly aligned, all as well.  But put a finger on the point where the sticks met and nudge....and a great deal of energy was violently released.

It's a metaphor for Trump v. Biden redux.  It was an old story, one made too familiar by Trump running for two years and Biden being in office for four.  All the propaganda and misinformation about Biden (inflation, open border, general incompetence) from Trump was such a constant no one could hear what Biden was actually accomplishing (lowering inflation, lowering the price of oil and taking over the world market, lowering the cost of insulin, creating jobs and needed repairs/new civil engineering projects, stabilizing NATO and so the world).  It was a shit storm that buried everyone in information overload.

And the sticks were perfectly balanced, even as the pressure on them increased.   Then Biden stepped aside, and all that energy was released....agains the other hand.  That hand being: Trump.

Trump has only his schtick.  But he's been running on it for 2 years (since his presidency, anyway), and it's tired, and he's fucking incoherent, and blatant in-your-face racism hasn't sold in this country since 1964. JD Vance is Trump's "Mini-Me," which just amplifies Trump's worst characteristics (which he's doing a good job of emphasizing himself). Trump was never so popular as he just sold a bill of goods people were buying because the alternative and incumbent was selling as vigorously (LBJ, as I've said before, had the same problem.  Every incumbent does.)

Only now he's selling the wrong set of problems against a new opponent they simply don't apply to.  And his naked racism and misogyny are so repellent even his supporters are telling him to stop it.  They can read the handwriting on the wall, but Trump can't even see the wall.