While the virus is the single topic worthy of the news, or offshoots from it, there is another event in the background that is starting to define issues that will define specific camps. The election is out there, but it is threatened. While Trump takes the opportunity to take the stump on a daily basis, it isn’t as effective as his rallys, not as validating to his ego, as many of the press are simply not there to swear allegiance. They have a job to do, one that the President deeply hates. They are there trying to find the truth, and it can be quite a challenge. It is rarely transparently on display.
A couple of days ago Joe Biden was being interviewed and he was making a vigorous case for having the election go forward in spite of our current challenge. Mail in voting was one way, but he was open to the logistics of it all, but immovable in regard to the election taking place.
In todays Coronavirus briefing, the topic of the election and mail in voting came up, and Trump vehemently criticized the idea of mail in ballots, insisting that they are fraught with fraud, we can’t do it, it will be the end of the world. It could bring down the country.
There is absolutely no data to support what the President said. By seven o’clock it was gospel among his base. Fox will soon follow, making the case of the obvious fraud with zero back up of fact. This easily dismissed canard will be debated seriously, looked at like it had actual relevance to life as it is actually experienced. Gaslighting is like breathing for this administration. Voter fraud does not exist. In a period of five years when 150 million votes were cast, there were 40 cases of voter fraud. Not convictions. Cases. It just doesn’t happen.
Trump has been beating this drum since the day after his inauguration. He gaslighted the public about the attendance at his swearing in. His ego could not accept that he lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million people, and so the lie about massive voter fraud, an onslaught of illegal aliens hitting the polls and democrats being bussed to vote in multiple states, was rolled out and he has continued to share that lie for the last three years, with not a scintilla of evidence to support his claims. None. His insistence would be comical if it weren’t for the sad inability of his base to parse information. They require no proof. Trump IS the proof. He said it, right out loud and in front of a camera. There you go.
What is really at risk for Trump and republicans is survival. Trump himself said that if all the voting measures the democrats are pushing for were made policy, a republican would never get elected again, and he is right. Understand, none of the measures the democrats are forwarding are trickery. The new legislature in Virginia showed the democrats, at least there, were people of good will for all the people when they passed a bill to allow a non-partisan committee to redraw the embarrassingly gerrymandered districts that the republicans had carved out with precision. The democrats could have decided to redraw the districts themselves and give it back to the republicans, stealing the elections until the next census 10 years from now. But they didn’t. They voted to institute a fair system, fair to all. When obstacles are removed from the public’s ability to pull the lever, democrats win, because the democrats more closely represent the wishes of the people writ large. The republicans have become a party of a tiny cabal of very rich, very powerful people, and they will do anything to support them, and they are very good at it. Uneducated white people are their main tool to accomplish this. Trump said, back in 2009 when he was starting to consider running for President, that he would run as a Republican, because they were so dumb, it would be so easy. Don’t blame the messenger. He said it, not me. Though he is certainly devoid of any ethical foundation, it has allowed him to dedicate his skills toward manipulation of an easily fooled demographic. He pegged it. He was right. They didn’t have the capacity to parse anything he said but he targeted their hatreds and fears like a laser, and even created a few more for them to gnash their teeth over, so they really never needed to parse anything. He was saying all the stuff they already knew, things they had already resolved for themselves. He filled out the fears with policy decisions that really didn’t matter to the seething crowds. It became a frequently repeated exercise to appear at Trump rallies and interview the folks in line waiting to get in and cheer themselves hoarse and ask questions that would clearly reveal that these people didn’t have the first inkling of the underlying nuances of the policies, they just knew he was a dependable hater of all things they hate, and that was plenty. They hated socialism, though they didn’t know what it meant. They thought Hillary should be in jail, but could not really figure out why. Wasn’t she a pizza pedophile? Yeah, that was it.
For those of us that are still watching the daily stroke sessions by the POTUS, don’t we all long for the person of character, a patriot, to stand up and throw themselves on the career sword and simply tell him, “You’re a simpleton, a liar and a hazzard to the people of America!” They might lose that job, but they would never be unemployed. I honestly believe they would be a national hero. A scene from a Capra screenplay directed by Tarantino would be just right.
Instead, we are going to have competent professionals documenting the demise of a country. The battle lines have been drawn. Biden and vote at all costs. Trump and voting might be too costly.
We will have to fight for everything until he has gone, including our right to vote.