by Arneb » Sun Jul 05, 2020 9:30 am
Amid fireworks at Mount Rushmore, Donald Trump makes it clear (again) that he does not intend to be a President for all Americans. Disgracing as it is, turning a festive event for the entire nation into a charging campaign speech, it also marks a clear statement as towards campaign strategy: Mobilize the base, and everone else fuck off. That is different to 2016, when two thirds of the large contingent of undecided voters, in their aversion-aversion conflict, broke for Trump and helped him over the hurdle in the important swing states.
That gives me some hope that Trumpt might actually lose the election. The strategy helps if you are an unpopular candidate against another unpopular cadidate and have two groups voting for you: The believers and the ones thinking you're the lesser evil. It does not work when your opposition is well-known, and popular, as Joe Biden seems to be right now. It would probably too late for Trump to eat chalk now, don a mask and vistit homeless shelters and Covid ICUs, but it's significant that he says,in the clearest terms possible, that he won't try.
My prediction is this will not be a wise decision. Remember March/April when he dabbled in a role of Donald-Who-Takes-the-Crisis-Head-On. His net favourability rating rose to -5 %, the best since his honeymoon days in February 2016.Had he followed through on it, appearing at crisis hotspots everywhere, encouraging people to tough it out in lockdown, who knows what popularity he might have gained, especially among the demographic that helped him win `16. He might have gained a leg on Biden, who couldn*t do more than send video messages from home. Alright, he tried to profit on that calling Biden Sleepy Joe, but in essence, he didn't do a lot more than Biden, only that his home videos were from the Rose Garden or the Oral Office.
I do hope he made a really, really, bad decision there.
Non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem