The Witness Chronicles, September 15, 2024

This is the end, the end my friend

Photo by Cooker King on Unsplash

Bill Maher Thinks Trump’s Teflon Coating Has Worn Off, and I Agree

There’s nothing slick left

Donald Trump has successfully dodged bullets all his life. His almost mystical ability to avoid blame for anything he does is at the core of his popularity. But what happens when it wears off, and is this that time?

I think it is. In the past four years he has doubled down on his arrogance and disregard for the rule of law at a scale that was so extreme that it nearly brought down the government. But it did not and that may have been the moment when he went too far.

For one thing, all of us watched, most in horror, as a crazed mob broke into the Capitol, violently attacking law enforcement and running around threatening death to elected officials.

It wasn’t a clip on the six o’clock news, it went on for hours, live in real time. Not unlike 9/11.

This was not a cheap grift like selling bibles or running failed casinos into the ground. We can laugh at those things but this was different on a monumental scale, breaking the highest laws in the land in front of millions.

Why am I going over this ancient history? Because it marks the point where Trump stops pretending he is a statesman or cares anything about the country. His narcissism has won out and now entirely controls his actions, but there is a glaring problem with his insurrection.

It failed. And Trump found himself out of power and now squarely in the focus of the law on a major scale. And then the dominos start falling. The classified documents. The begging for voter fraud in Georgia. The business fraud in NY. The lawsuits for sexual abuse and character assassination. And the convictions for 34 felony crimes.

Now, reality has caught up with the man for the first time in his coddled life and the only way out is to get reelected. He has to run or he may face prison. That's a hard reality. And he has the great power of a sitting Democrat President putting on the pressure.

And it broke him, though he doubled down, throwing caution to the wind, surrounding himself with violent racist extremists and prepared to do anything to win. And it’s working as Biden declines. Then the unthinkable happens. Biden steps down, endorses a biracial woman with extensive experience in government and, more important, as a prosecutor and attorney general.

And she does the unthinkable. She unifies the Democratic Party and laughs in Trump’s face. Many things can slide off of him but not this. A narcissist on his scale cannot bear to be ridiculed, especially not by a powerful woman of color.

And here he makes another mistake and his whole party makes it with him. They underestimate her. It’s understandable. Vice Presidents are largely invisible and powerless. Most of us can’t even name them just a few years after they serve.

But Kamala Harris wasn’t just sitting on the sidelines. She was learning the ultimate inside game and honing her image and surrounding herself with highly competent advisors who were not only the usual DC power elite, though she has them too. She added in highly competent women, people of color, and impassioned young people.

A new kind of coalition and one a man like Trump has no idea how to handle. Since she came into the nomination we have seen his shell cracking as he no longer seems to care what anyone thinks. That culminated this week in the debate where he showed no sign of any self-control, but the crackup has been accelerating for months.

There are other factors at work here. The assassination attempt must have amplified his level of fear to an unbearable level, right up there with panic. And it appears that all of this and advanced age may be compromising any mental stability he has left.

We’ve laughed off his absurdities or ignored them at our own peril, but it is increasingly obvious that he is a sick and dangerous man with an army of extremists behind him willing to exploit that sickness. We saw its scope with the 900 page Project 2025 plan to destroy democracy, then witnessed the dementia as the media finally started focusing on his incomprehensible rants and utter lack of knowledge about anything.

Not to mention the cavalcade of lies which gets worse every day.

Can he win? Of course. But I agree with Bill Maher. I think all of this may finally end the charade once and for all. He will try to repeat his lies and dispute the election but he does not have the power of being a sitting President when he tries again this time.

We know his playbook because he always repeats it. But this time it looks like the game won’t be the same and he can’t understand that. Choosing to abandon self-awareness may be the fatal flaw that destroys the man.

Sometimes relatively insignificant things can change elections. Gas prices nationally are projected to fall below $3 in the next few weeks. In many places they are already there or close. Inflation is down to 2.5% from a high of 9% after Covid. Those numbers may not mean a lot to many but they will be reflected in prices across the board. Fuel costs drive prices.

Next week the Fed is expected to lower interest rates. Again, this is an arcane thing for non-economists but it will mean lower mortgage rates and credit card interest.

Trump has theoretically been running on two main issues, the economy and immigration. Gas prices below $3 are going to take the economic issue away. So now we have immigration as his primary scare tactic, but his extreme exaggeration of those fears may be backfiring on him.

The woman responsible for the rumors about Haitian immigrants, in the country legally, eating pets, has come forward and admitted she was repeating a rumor of a rumor of a rumor. And neo-Nazi groups sending in bomb threats in Springfield, Ohio are not helping Trump’s cause.

Neither is JD Vance, who has doubled down on these blatant racist lies, showing us once and for all that he is a white suprematist. Not crazy like Trump, just a nasty f**ker. There isn’t any nice way to say that. And there shouldn’t be.

If the Trump campaign is in decline, and I believe it is, these things are the early signs that he is going to go right out to the fringes of decency and beyond to stay in the limelight. His bet is that there are a majority of white Americans who share his fears.

I think it is a losing bet. I hope so.

This is a reader supported newsletter. Please consider helping out by upgrading to a paid subscription or donating a small amount through Buy Me A Coffee, a site for small financial contributions. Thanks, ME