Dems' Convention a Trump turning point
A crude and ineffective campaign is losing it – in more ways than one.
The Resistant Grandmother
The Resistant Grandmother knows she’s up against a new news cycle focusing now on Thursday’s CNN Kamala Harris/Tim Walz interview and a firehose of other breaking news. But I promised there’d be a “Loser’s List” following the very successful Democratic convention, and believe it’s important. So here it is. The biggest loser is one person: Donald Trump.
LOSER 1 — AND ONLY: Donald Trump
The former president's unraveling began throughout the August 19-22 gathering, but he’s showed signs of losing it – to me – since 2016. For many others, it’s taken longer. But finally, it’s becoming clear.
Normally the head of the ticket of a competing party would allow the opposing party to have its convention in peace without a deluge of petty sideline interruptions. But etiquette and respect for others does not compute with Donald Trump.
First, there were the juvenile, middle-school level Truth Social postings during Harris’ acceptance speech on Thursday, the last night of the convention. In ALL CAPS outrage, Trump channeled Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle when posting and asking, “IS SHE TALKING ABOUT ME?” followed by the non-sequitur, “WHERE’S HUNTER?” — as if the query would get a rise out of voters watching a convention where Hunter’s father is no longer around.
After Trump’s “Tweets,” he turned to Fox television. A Trump call was patched into Fox’s Bret Baeir and Martha MacCallum’s convention coverage. It sounded like a drunk dial, even though Trump claims he doesn’t consume alcohol. His rambling, stream-of-consciousness phone-in was so awkward one wonders if maybe a stiff drink now and then might help him. At least, maybe he’d fall asleep earlier. And that would be good.
The projectionist
The call turned out to be another study in projection — accusing others of what Trump is actually doing himself. It began with, “Harris has done nothing but talk for three and a half years and that’s what she’s doing tonight, she’s complaining about everything but doing nothing!”
Can’t write; can’t think
Typically, here Trump’s inability to write and speak clearly gums up the effectiveness of his communication. His lack of attention to something as simple as correct punctuation as shown in Trump’s transcript reflects imprecision and makes him look too uneducated and dim to be President of the United States.
For any grammandos out there, for starters Trump is missing a semicolon after “tonight” and before “she’s.” That violates the convention of English that calls for two independent thoughts, called “clauses,” (“doing tonight” and “complaining…”) to be separated with a kind of punctuation that makes clear these are separate ideas, not a continuation of one, as Trump’s comma-spliced sentence suggests.
More importantly, he also would have benefited from a comma between “everything” and “but” — a comma before a conjunction being another English language convention. Without it, the sentence suggests she’s complaining about everything except “doing nothing,” and that criticism would be out of character since Trump himself is very good at doing nothing. So, pot calling kettle…
The bigger message, to me, is that it's embarrassing to have a man aspiring to be the American president who doesn’t know these things, or does not have a staff who does.
Baier and MacCallum “ah huh, ah huh-ed” as long as they could before finally pulling the plug and tossing it to Greg Gutfeld’s show. To any discerning Fox viewers, Trump’s rambling call, the uncomfortable demeanors of the Fox duo, followed by their giving Trump the bum’s rush all made Trump look awkward and weak in front of American voters. A bad move for someone whose campaign slogan is “Strength, not weakness.”
A ship that’s sailed
And then came still another of Trump’s odd assertions on Friday, the day after the convention’s wrap up. Responding to Democrats’ heaping blame on him for appointing three judges who joined with other Republicans in overturning Roe v. Wade, Trump asserted without evidence or credibility that, “My administration will be great on women's reproductive rights!”
That protestation was hard to figure. First, Trump would have to have the will to help women, which he doesn’t. And persuade Republican legislators to pass such legislation, which they won’t.
There’s also the little problem of his Evangelical base that’s pushed hard to ban abortion for 50 years, since 1973 when Roe was decided, and is in no mood to step it back. In fact, Evangelicals’ stated goal is to use another Trump presidency to ban abortion nation-wide.
Bottom line: in one Tweet, Trump managed to further offend both abortion-rights advocates, who don’t believe a word he says, and Evangelical followers who are not inclined to go soft on women’s reproductive rights. In Trump style, it was a transparent, inauthentic promise that offended both sides. Again, not a good move in a tight race.
Litany of lunacy
As if this weren’t enough, today Trump reposted a degrading screed written by another Truth Social user. The posting featured this political obscenity: “Funny how blowjobs affected their (Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris’s) careers differently.”
Maybe that would play well with any remaining Jeffrey Epstein Republican voting bloc members who partied with Trump during the late ‘80s and through the ‘90s when Trump and Epstein were friends. But not now. The sentiment Trump endorsed by its reposting is crude, offensive, and not likely to endear him to, say, suburban moms.
Such misogyny offers further evidence of a man who possesses a deeply degrading way of thinking about and treating women. So again, it’s not a good look for a presidential candidate in 2024.
And then there is Trump’s dustup at Arlington National Cemetery where a Trump “aide” pushed a female Army security agent and called her crazy for upholding park rules. This reinforces the reality of Trump’s thug image — especially since it involves pushing around a woman.
Running mate J.D. Vance also may not have helped when he told Harris to “go to hell” for not firing people associated with the Taliban’s murder of 12 soldiers in June 2021, which as vice president would not have been within her purview. Another recent Vance misstep was that of calling firefighters “haters” for booing him over anti-union sentiments Thursday when he addressed the group.
Down to basics
But the central question remains — are Trump’s behavior and statements having a material effect on his ability to win in November? Almost ten years of many voters usually giving Trump a pass for even the most egregious offenses would suggest no, they’ll look past them. Until now.
Polls are turning
New polling by USA Today/Suffolk University shows key swing states where Biden trailed Trump — Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — now leaning for Harris by anywhere from 1 to 3+ points within the margin of error, while Harris and Trump in North Carolina remain in a statistical dead heat, after Harris has gained five points over Biden’s percentage in one month.
Moreover, key Democratic voting blocs — 18-34-year-olds, Blacks, Latinos, and women — all show signs of coming home to the Democratic Party with Harris on top of the ticket. For example, the same poll has 18-34 year olds favoring Harris now up by 13 points, compared to their being up for Trump by 11 points in June. Similarly, Latino voters who had been pro-Trump by 2 points are now up for Harris by 16. Black voters who had been reported to favor Biden by only 47 points in June are now up for Harris by 64 points.
Storms, meltdowns, and disrespect
In short, it looks as if a perfect storm — a convergence of elements becoming visible before, but especially during and after the Democratic convention — may be triggering a Trump meltdown. An inability, or unwillingness, to focus on and clearly explain his stance on issues; a deeply disrespectful mindset toward women reminiscent of long ago eras; an awkwardness in dealing with people in a way seen increasingly as inauthentic and/or distasteful; and an incapacity to see and share a credible positive vision of the future have signaled cracks in Trump’s psychology and political support system that has brought him this far.
The DNC may not have directly caused Trump’s troubles, but its success appears to have hastened them. That’s tough for Trump, with only two-and-a-half weeks before Pennsylvania’s early voting begins.
—trg
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