Trump's Cynical - and Racist - Re-election Strategy

A piece in the Washington Post looks at who is funding and organizing the anti-lock down protests and the reality that, while aimed at looking like a "grass roots," they are being backed by billionaires, including some of the most far right vulture capitalists.    True to form, Trump devotees are being duped into playing a role in Trump's re-election strategy which, as in 2026, has a strong racist element and is intended to mask Trump's epic failures in handling the coronavirus pandemic and the fact that he doesn't actually give a rats ass about the fools being duped into participating in the anti-lock down protests.  As a lengthy column in the New York Times lays out, it is all part of a cynical strategy to use racism (it is no coincidence that the anti-lock down protests all feature Confederate flags even in places like Michigan) and rural voter hatred of educated and culturally elite cities to boost right wing turnout in November 2020.  It's cynicism is disgusting, but then again, Trump (like his billionaire sycophants) only cares about himself.  Here are column highlights: 

President Trump has chosen his pandemic re-election strategy. He is set on unifying and reinvigorating the groups that were crucial to his 2016 victory: racially resentful whites, evangelical Christians, gun activists, anti-vaxxers and wealthy conservatives.

Tying his re-election to the growing anti-lockdown movement, Trump is encouraging a resurgence of what Ed Kilgore, in New York magazine, calls “the angry anti-government strain of right-wing political activity that broke out in the tea-party movement” — a movement now focused on ending the virus-imposed restrictions on many aspects of American life.

Jeremy Menchik, a political scientist at Boston University, . . . . makes the point that anti-quarantine protests . . . will distract the electorate. If the election is a fight between Trump vs governors who refuse to open their economies, Trump doesn’t have to defend his record on Covid-19. He’s an advocate for liberty!

Studies of the 2009-10 Tea Party movement, Menchik writes, suggest that “continued protests will boost conservative turnout in Nov 2020.”

Casting the coronavirus epidemic as a wedge issue, Trump is playing both ends against the middle, in an attempt to veil his own inconsistencies. Following up on this idea, Noah Rothman, associate editor of Commentary, asked on April 20: “Can Trump Be All Things to All People?”

The calculation underlying Trump’s “liberate” crusade was revealed in a comment on the Facebook page of Pennsylvanians Against Excessive Quarantine:

The eastern border, Philly, and the western border Pittsburgh, is what is causing the state to stay shut down. What about the rest of us??

In other words, Trump and his followers want to place the onus for the social and economic restraints that are still in effect in much of the country on cities, many of them heavily black, where the coronavirus has been most destructive.

Along similar lines, Carol Hefner, co-chair of Trump’s 2016 campaign in Oklahoma and an organizer of an anti-lockdown protest in Oklahoma City, told KOMO TV News on April 15: “We’re not New York. Their problems are not our problems.”

Trump continues on a well-trodden path as he promotes the corona-liberation movement — stigmatizing inner-city dwellers, scapegoating “foreigners” and blaming the Covid-19 pandemic on China.

The demonization of China, Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, noted in an email, . . . is central to his strategic racism. Trump uses this wedge to solidify and turn out his base and persuade white, blue collar voters. Trump believes strategic racism worked for him in 2016 so why not 2020?

On April 21, Trump resumed his assault on immigrants, issuing an order blocking new green cards and instigating a 60-day moratorium on immigration: “I will be issuing a temporary suspension of immigration into the United States,” he said during the daily White House coronavirus briefing. “By pausing, we’ll help put unemployed Americans first in line for jobs. Steve Schmidt — a former Republican consultant and prominent Never Trumper who served as a senior adviser to John McCain’s 2008 presidential bid — described the shape he saw Trump’s 2020 re-election drive taking. As the “administration continues to lie, fumble and flounder,” Schmidt wrote in an April 17 Twitter thread, . . get ready for the noxious blend of Confederate flags, semiautomatic weaponry, conspiracy theorists, political cultists, extremists and nut jobs coming to a state Capitol near you.

The 2020 incarnation of the Tea Party, Schmidt continued, will be stoked by Trump every step of the way as they help make the air fertile for his blame gaming, scapegoating, evasions of responsibility, populist fulminations and nationalist incitements. They will be on TV every night storming the battered ramparts of our politics and civics.

Thomas M. Nichols — a professor at the Naval War College who abandoned the Republican Party in 2018 — succinctly described on Twitter on April 19 how Trump’s alignment with anti-shutdown forces works: This is perfect for the Angry White Trumper: People in blue states, guided by the elites and know-it-alls they hate, stealing a march on them by being better and more civic minded citizens than they are. So now it’s ‘fighting tyranny,’ because they’ve got nothing else.

The key battleground states in the Midwest are rich soil for the tactics outlined by Lake, Schmidt and Nichols.

The racial divisions in the Midwest, Austin writes, were crucial to the outcome of the 2016 election: Racially divided regions such as Detroit, Cleveland, and Milwaukee fed the rise of Donald Trump, with his scapegoating of people of color and nostalgic appeals to white working-class voters yearning for a return to the “good old days.”

Bringing the issue back to the present election, Austin pointed out: In our state capital of Lansing, an April 15 rally ostensibly protesting social distancing measures was notable for its participants’ use of Trump and Confederate iconography.

The pandemic has, in turn, inspired a renewed Christian right critique of America’s cities. . . . . the unbelievers whom Erickson contends populate American cities are getting their comeuppance: “Those who’ve had a good life now outside the presence of God will find nothing good while those who believe will live in splendor.”

Trump is egging on lockdown protesters in order to generate enthusiasm and drive turnout on Election Day, but Ron Brownstein, writing in The Atlantic, warns that this gambit could backfire.

The Coronavirus pandemic appears destined to widen the political divide between the nation’s big cities and the smaller places beyond them. And that could narrow Donald Trump’s possible pathways to re-election.

Will Bunch, a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, is more outspoken in his critique of Trump and the coronavirus liberation movement, arguing that the protesters are unknowingly fronting for the wealthiest Americans: Right-wing special interests, like the billionaire family of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, are terrified that the 22 million unemployed will demand a social welfare state.

Their goal? To “shift blame away from Trump’s multiple failures on the coronavirus and instead onto public-health-minded governors.”

“These billionaires and millionaires,” Bunch continued, “have zero moral qualms about working with some of the worst white-supremacists or neo-fascists in order to make sure a crowd turns out.”

Trump faces the cold reality of a health care crisis — and that voters may not give him as much leeway as in the past: This may be one instance in which reality and personal experience stand up to political bluster and misstatements. Undoubtedly, many Trump supporters will stick with him and regard the public health response to the Covid-19 pandemic as a costly overreaction. But there will also be political moderates and independents who regard the administration and president as increasingly incompetent in a domain in which it really matters.

More than anything, Trump is a gambler and he is taking a high risk approach to re-election. Given public wariness of his handling of the pandemic — and much else — and the recent drop in his favorability rating, he may have no other choice than to stake his political future on his ability to turn the anger and frustration of his credulous audience to his advantage one final time.

The Trump/Pence Regime Is Clueless About Americans' Finances

Steven Mnuchin -  utterly clueless.

Perhaps it's the result of loading one's regime ("administration" is too complimentary a term) with rapacious billionaires and ideologues who worship vulture capitalism, but whatever the cause the Trump/Pence regime is proving itself utterly clueless as to the finances and lives of average Americans, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck.  Among the most clueless is Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin seemed to imply that $1,200 stimulus checks would be enough to tide American families over until the coronavirus pandemic crisis passed.  One has to wonder what planet these clueless and uncaring monsters are from.  With 22 million people seeking unemployment benefits over the last three weeks, perhaps Republicans will get a glimpse at how their reverse Robin Hood agenda has harmed so many Americans.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the depths of the Trump/Pence regime's callousness.  Here are highlights:

Earlier this week, a video of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin speaking on “Face the Nation” late last month began making the rounds. Mnuchin seemed to imply that the government’s current financial support system — the temporary boost to unemployment benefits, the small business lending program and the $1,200 stimulus check — would be enough to tide American families over until the coronavirus pandemic crisis passed.  This is all ludicrously, offensively inaccurate.

There are at least 22 million people who lost their jobs within the past month — and that’s what we know of. Antiquated state unemployment systems cannot keep up with the demand. And despite the fact that gig workers are supposed to be covered — for the first time ever — the Trump administration’s Labor Department is attempting to issue regulations to get around that directive. “We want workers to have work, not to become dependent on the unemployment system,” Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia and Small Business Administration head Jovita Carranza wrote in an op-ed published by Fox Business (where else?) this week.

No surprise, thousands upon thousands of people are lining up at food banks, desperately seeking help — and the cost of staples such as eggs is soaring. Food banks, in turn, are increasingly concerned about running out of food, money or both. Meanwhile, the Trump administration needed to be publicly shamed into backing off an attempt to impose work requirements on food stamp recipients, even as jobs have disappeared.

As for the small business loan program designed to keep people employed — the Paycheck Protection Program — it was so underfunded that it ran out of money within days of opening up for applications.

More finance facts: According to the real estate site RENTCafé, the average rent in the United States is more than $1,400, over $200 more than our one-time $1,200 stimulus check. In many cities — including hard-hit New York — it’s more than $2,000. Almost a third of renters didn’t pay their rent bill for April, not because they were suddenly financially irresponsible, but because they didn’t have the money. They lived paycheck to paycheck, and when that paycheck suddenly vanished, so did their financial resources. Those Americans need a rent freeze, not a measly handout designed to make the narcissistic President Trump appear beneficent.

And that check? The American Prospect, in a great scoop, revealed that Mnuchin’s Treasury Department gave banks permission to seize the money if the account holder had outstanding balances for anything ranging from a past-due loan to an overdraft. Moreover, Trump’s insistence on putting his name on the checks means a delay in sending them to people who don’t have a bank account — that is the poorest, most financially desperate Americans.

But what would Trump care about that? He’s a man of inherited wealth who has fooled no small number of voters into believing he assembled his vast fortune all by himself. As president, he then went on to put together the wealthiest presidential Cabinet ever known. Mnuchin — estimated net worth $300 million — is all too typical. . . . Among Mnuchin’s pre-Trump claims to fame: foreclosing on the homes of financially desperate people during the financial crisis.

So instead of meaningful help, Americans get pep talks. Trump, Mnuchin and the Republican Party pursue a financial relief plan that showers gains on Wall Street and corporations, while leaving smaller businesses and individual Americans fighting for mere scraps. No amount of financial literacy is going to fix this bad penny of an administration.

Bloomberg Gives Trump a Beat Down

Donald Trump continues to brag about his business acumen - even as in typical form he threatens to not pay the Hotel Roanoke for use of its facilities - while refusing to release his tax returns which would likely either show the lie of some of his boats or disclose shady Russian dealings.  Last night at the Democrat National Convention another billionaire, Michael Bloomberg, gave Trump a much deserved beat down that challenged Americans to see Trump as the dangerous fraud that he is.  Sadly, few in Trump's base of support will listen, but hopefully many of those on the fence will understand that holding the office of president is not yet one more reality show gig.  A column in the Washington Post looks at Bloomberg's take down of Trump.  Here are highlights:

As is his wont, Michael Bloomberg didn’t mince words. The billionaire former New York City mayor used his speech before the Democratic National Convention to build Hillary Clinton up as much as to tear Donald Trump down.

The bottom line is: Trump is a risky, reckless, and radical choice. And we can’t afford to make that choice!

Now, I know Hillary Clinton is not flawless; no candidate is. But she is the right choice — and the responsible choice — in this election. No matter what you may think about her politics or her record, Hillary Clinton understands that this is not reality television; this is reality. She understands the job of president. It involves finding solutions, not pointing fingers, and offering hope, not stoking fear.   

Bloomberg is political pragmatism personified. 

Trump, the man and his candidacy, is a violation of Bloomberg’s life and political philosophy. Bloomberg slammed his fellow billionaire for his business practices that hurt real people and renders hollow his “make America great again” mantra. “I’m a New Yorker, and New Yorkers know a con when we see one,” Bloomberg told the roaring crowd.

“I’ve built a business,” Bloomberg said, “and I didn’t start it with a million-dollar check from my father.” Translation: I am a self-made man who worked hard for the success that I have and haven’t forgotten it.

“Most of us don’t pretend that we’re smart enough to make every big decision by ourselves,” Bloomberg said. Translation: I have a “very good brain,” too. But I also know that good chief executives need to surround themselves with folks as smart, if not smarter, than they are to make the right decisions.
 Bloomberg made clear several times that he and Clinton don’t agree on everything. But her penchant for consensus-building and problem-solving made her a great partner when she was in the Senate and he was in city hall. And he came to Philadelphia to urge independents to give her their votes.

To me, this election is not a choice between a Democrat and a Republican,” Bloomberg said. “It’s a choice about who is better to lead our country right now: better for our economy, better for our security, better for our freedom, and better for our future. There is no doubt in my mind that Hillary Clinton is the right choice this November.”

Then he added this: “Let’s elect a sane, competent person with international experience.”

Bloomberg doesn’t put his prestige on the line for just anyone. And he doesn’t suffer fools. That he came forth to vigorously vouch for Clinton shows how much of an unworthy and dangerous fool he thinks Trump is.

Conservatives and Billionaires Turn on Karl Rove

Perhaps one of the sweetest aspects of the 2012 election results is to have seen virtually all of the candidates backed by Karl Rove's foul Crossroads PAC go down in flames.  Living in Virginia one could help but hear the Crossroads ads - some of the most dishonest and blatant in their lies that I have ever heard.  Indeed, the Crossroads ads made Mitt Romney himself appear to be paragon of honesty in comparison.  In retrospect I suspect that the ads may have done more harm that good because anyone who paid the least amount of listening to other sources or a smidgen of fact checking could only see the ads as bald faced lies.  The election results indicate that contrary to Rove's belief, Americans are not all total cretins and morons - unlike the millionaires and billionaires Rove shook down for money that they might well have better burned based on the zero results Rove delivered.  The only short term winner apparently was Rove who no doubt paid himself very well along the way.  Here are highlights from a Salon piece that looks at the rising fury of those Rove played for fools:

Karl Rove helped pour $400 million of outside money into the 2012 elections. But since Republican candidates were walloped on Tuesday, the backlash against the Rove strategy is coming fast, and he has a lot of explaining to do.

Rove has alternately blamed Hurricane Sandy (“The president was also lucky,” he wrote in a Thursday Wall Street Journal Op-Ed. ”This time, the October surprise was not a dirty trick but an act of God. Hurricane Sandy interrupted Mr. Romney’s momentum and allowed Mr. Obama to look presidential and bipartisan”) and argued that if not for Crossroads, “this race would have been over a long time ago.”

But mostly Republicans are lashing out at Rove. Rick Tyler, an adviser for Todd Akin’s campaign, pointed to Rove’s management of his super PAC. ”Rove spends more for Republican candidates than the NRSC and the NRCC. He’s running things,” Tyler told BuzzFeed. He added, “Rove is definitely a problem.”

A Wednesday New York Times article highlighted Rove’s on-air meltdown over Fox News’ projection that Obama had won Ohio, saying that Rove’s refusal to accept the result “raises questions about his role.” Rove explained that his objections were based on memories of “premature calls” in 2000.

”The billionaire donors I hear are livid,” a Republican operative told HuffPo. “There is some holy hell to pay. Karl Rove has a lot of explaining to do … I don’t know how you tell your donors that we spent $390 million and got nothing.”

Minnesota mega-donor Stan Hubbard told Politico of the call: “Obviously, somebody made a mistake and didn’t do things right. There’s no question about that.”

I will be honesty.  I find Karl Rove to be a foul and nasty individual by almost every measure not the least of which is his willingness to brazenly lie and  sow hate and discord.  One can only hope that after the Crossroads debacle he will be relegated to the political wilderness where he belongs.