Campaign Briefing

Apparently Trump’s campaign has “gone dark” in Michigan (giving up on the state). Recall that unexpectedly eking out Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin gave Trump his electoral college win. He could actually lose Michigan and Pennsylvania and still win if he carries Wisconsin — an extremely narrow path to victory — assuming all else remains as in 2016. But that’s unlikely; notably Florida is now probably lost to Trump. That would be game over.

Of course he still has tricks up his sleeve. There will be some “October surprise” like a phony Ukraine indictment, amid a blizzard of other lies. With surely the Russians in the game. Hopefully a majority of voters will have the sense to see all that for what it is.

The main dirty trick to steal the election is voter suppression. Making it as hard as possible for citizens to vote, especially targeting pro-Democratic constituencies — the young, the elderly, and particularly blacks.

With onerous ID requirements; voiding their registrations; closing polling sites, resulting in confusion and lengthy waits; et cetera. In 2016 e-mail blasts even tried to divert blacks into fake online voting. They’ll also try to persuade them their votes won’t matter, because it’s all rigged anyway. And Trump is (falsely) calling mail voting a big fraud, preparing to make this the basis for chaos and delegitimizing the results on and after election day.

Recall all the absurd Republican whines that Democrats were trying to undo the 2016 election — well Trump is already, in advance, trying to undo his 2020 election loss.

As part of this effort he has even suggested postponing the election. (Though not school reopenings!) That pesky constitution does not allow this. (We had a presidential election during the Civil War when eleven states could not vote at all.)

And fortunately a president has no power in this sphere, elections being under state and local jurisdiction. Trump, under intense criticism, has backed off. Yet suppose, nevertheless, the night before, he announces he’s cancelling the election. Just saying it will sow massive chaos. Some Republican officials might even try to implement such an illegal directive.

All this multi-faceted  assault upon our elections, their fairness, and their legitimacy, is deeply unpatriotic. Putin, who really does run rigged elections, is cackling with glee, to say, “See? America is just as corrupt.” This is why he worked to get Trump in the White House.

I keep writing during this presidency, “it will get worse.” So it has, and will continue to do, heading to a climactic November gotterdammerung. We can only hope it will be a catharsis from which the nation can recover its stability and sanity.

Speaking of sanity, given his otherwise inexplicable covid shtick, one might imagine Trump actually wants to lose. But 

the explanation for his behavior is mental illness. And nothing but winning matters to him now. If you think he’s acted crazy before, losing will destroy him psychologically. May literally kill him — possibly by his own hand.