In Donald Trump’s W5est Wing, being a member of the Trump family has historically been the ultimate job security. But that truism is being stress-tested after a run of polls consistently show Trump losing to Joe Biden at this stage of the race—a CNN poll this morning has him down 14 points. According to a source close to the White House, Trump has mulled taking oversight of the campaign away from his son-in-law Jared Kushner. “Trump is malignantly crazy about the bad poll numbers,” a former West Wing official said. “He’s going to broom Kushner and [Brad] Parscale—the numbers are not getting better,” a Republican close to the campaign said.
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VISION 2020 2:59 P.M.
Trump Campaign Puts President’s Psychological Needs Above His Political Ones
Like countless other Americans, Donald Trump has seen his job security decline in recent weeks.
In early April, the share of Americans who disapproved of the president was about seven points higher than the percentage that approved of him; today, that margin has grown to 13.8 points, according to FiveThirtyEight. Over the same period, Joe Biden’s lead in live-interview polls of registered voters has swelled from six points to ten.
To retain the White House, Trump doesn’t need to win the most votes, he just needs to beat the spread. Which is to say, since the president’s support is concentrated among white, non-college-educated voters — who are themselves disproportionately located in battleground states — election forecasters have estimated that Trump can lose the popular vote by as much as five points and still keep his job in 2021.
But the Electoral College can’t compensate for a double-digit deficit. Making matters worse for Trump, his polling decline has been powered by defections among white, non-college-educated voters. As the New York Times’s Nate Cohn notes, Trump’s advantage over Biden with this demographic has declined from 31 points in March to 21 points today. By contrast, the Democratic nominee has gained only a point among nonwhite voters over that same timeframe. This suggests that Biden’s coalition has not only grown larger but also better optimized for Electoral College purposes. The Democratic nominee has not secured a double-digit advantage by further running up the score among demographic blocs that are heavily concentrated in safe blue states. Rather, he has built a broader and more geographically diverse voting base. Trump’s popular-vote deficit is therefore rising, even as his margin for error is shrinking.
In a normal campaign, these developments would prompt major strategic changes. Resources would be allocated in a more careful and targeted manner, as even a well-funded operation can’t afford to waste a penny when it has a ten-point gap to close. Messaging would be recalibrated to better appeal to swing constituencies. To the extent that there was a clear correlation between something the candidate was doing and a rise in disapproval, that behavior would be curbed.
But Donald Trump has neither the desire nor the capacity to mount a normal campaign. He has little investment in the long-term success of the conservative movement or Republican Party. He did not enter politics to advance an ideological project so much as to quell his insatiable thirst for attention and adoration. The rallies were the point.
Trump has some deeply rooted authoritarian and xenophobic intuitions. But his substantive agenda is for promotional use primarily. Where other presidents designed propaganda to secure their favored policies, Trump designs policies to secure his desired propaganda. To take one example: Threatening Kim Jong-un with annihilation — and then rewarding the dictator with a face-to-face meeting — did little to deter North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program. But it did yield a spectacle in which Trump could perform the role of master dealmaker. And by all appearances, this was sufficient for the president to deem his North Korea policy a smashing success. More broadly, reporting on the administration’s internal policy deliberations regularly suggests that, when Trump evaluates the relative merits of one course of action or another, he asks himself, “What would make tonight’s Fox News coverage most self-affirming?”
Trump’s fanatical obsession with his own image — a pathology that’s become more conspicuous (and conspicuously sociopathic) in the present context of national crisis — has led many to criticize him for putting his political interests above the nation’s public health. But this allegation is imprecise. The president is not actually capable of putting a premium on his own electoral fortunes. And this is not merely because he lacks the requisite self-discipline. For Trump, holding rallies and courting worshipful conservative media coverage are not means for winning political power; winning political power is a means for securing the adulation of crowds and conservative cable-news hosts.
Thus, when the imperatives of winning reelection — and gaining the president some public affirmation — come into conflict, the Trump campaign has been optimizing for the latter.
The president should be pouring every resource at his disposal into moving public opinion in battleground states. Instead, his campaign just spent $400,000 buying cable-news ads in the Washington, D.C., market — so that the candidate could enjoy a little emotional picker-upper in between Tucker Carlson segments. As the Daily Beast reports:
[O]ver the past month, the Trump campaign has spent slightly more than $400,000 on cable news ads in the Washington, D.C., area, buying time largely on Fox News but with some smaller buys on CNN and MSNBC as well, according to filings with the Federal Communications Commission … It is, on a purely electoral level, a remarkably quixotic use of campaign cash. The purchases have no real shot of moving D.C., Maryland, or Virginia into the Trump column …
But two knowledgeable sources—one a Trump campaign adviser, the other an individual close to the president—said the D.C.-area ads had another purpose as well: to put the president himself at ease … Trump is a voracious consumer of cable news, and—the thinking goes—is likely to see the spots pop up between segments of his favorite shows.
If Trump wishes to maximize his odds of remaining president, he should be catering to the preferences and sensibilities of the voters who’ve drifted away from him since 2016. For example, in 2016, Trump lost women voters by 14 points. At present, he’s losing them to Biden by 25. His deficit among college-educated whites has also ballooned.
But Trump has done approximately nothing to stanch his bleeding with these constituencies. In fact, he is arguably doing less to appeal to women than he did in 2016, when he would occasionally send Ivanka in front of the cameras to champion paid leave and testify to her father’s commitment to gender equality in the workplace.
Instead, the president has prioritized dispensing red meat to his base. There is no electoral logic to Trump’s militant advocacy for heavy-handed policing, let alone for his decision to spread a conspiracy theory about the 75-year-old white man who was brutalized in Buffalo on Tuesday morning. There is no sound political reason for him to pose with a bible in front of St. John’s church, let alone for gassing a crowd of peaceful protestors in order to do so. Trump has a higher approval rating among Republican voters than any GOP nominee since at least 2000. He has no significant room for improvement among right-wing evangelicals and “Blue Lives Matter” backers. Other Republicans understand that this is not the time for preaching to the choir; the House GOP is cobbling together a list of (milquetoast) police reforms it can support, while rhetorically affirming the need for change.
But the president craves reverence more than ballots. And only GOP base voters are willing to give him the former. So he is forever seeking to elicit the faithful’s adulation, rather than to win the converts’ tepid support.
Finally, as CNN’s Harry Enten notes, the available evidence suggests that Trump’s political standing declines when his media prominence rises: Given the president’s utter dearth of message discipline, the more Americans hear from him, the less they seem to like him. Recognition of this reality led to the suspension of Trump’s daily coronavirus press conferences. But since the president values near-term media attention above his long-term political interests, he will soon be improvising hateful rants in front of crowds of his adoring (but, for swing voters, deeply alienating) devotees on a routine basis.
In the immediate term, Trump’s inability to recognize and prioritize his own political interests makes him more dangerous. In the present context, a ruthlessly reelection-minded incumbent would be championing massive fiscal aid to states and cities, extending enhanced unemployment benefits, and coordinating a comprehensive federal response to the pandemic. There are a lot of misaligned incentives in U.S. politics. But a sitting president still has a strong interest in not presiding over mass death or unemployment in an election year.
In the long term, however, Trump’s myopic obsession with pleasing the hardline conservatives on his television and at his rallies may prove to be the cause of — and solution to — the biggest problems posed by his presidency.
INTELLIGENCERIS A VOX MEDIA NETWORK.© 2020 VOX MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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POLITICO
2020 ELECTIONS
2 long shots rise in Biden VP search
Two prospects who were not initially considered among the top tier contenders have burst into contention amid wide-scale protests.
Demonstrators march on Saturday to protest the death of George Floyd near the White House.
Wide-scale protests that have exposed deep racial tensions across the nation in the last two weeks are reshaping the contours of Joe Biden’s search for a vice presidential pick, sharpening the focus on an African American woman as his running mate and elevating the prospects of several candidates once viewed as longshots.
The campaign sees the outpouring of anger and emotion in the wake of George Floyd’s death as a watershed moment that has made the issue of a black running mate a top consideration, two sources familiar with the internal discussions say.
In the last week alone, two prospects who were initially not considered among the top tier contenders have suddenly burst into contention: Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Florida Rep. Val Demings.
Both have been tapped by the Biden campaign to act as leading surrogates amid the unrest and have seen their national media exposure intensify.
Bottoms is being vetted as a Biden running mate, two sources with knowledge of the discussions confirm to POLITICO. Demings, a former Orlando police chief, has previously confirmed she’s being vetted.
The Biden campaign, which has grappled with the question of whether to focus on race or region in choosing a vice presidential candidate, caution that the search is still fluid.
But campaign advisers and surrogates confirm that the dynamics of Biden’s search have quickly changed.
Biden, a former vice president himself, said recently he hopes to name a running mate by early August and has given no clear signals about which direction he is leaning other than to say his pick will be a woman.
“The time for the old playbook of getting geographic balance on the ticket has gone out the window with Sarah Palin,” said former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun (D-Ill.), the first African American woman to serve in the Senate and a Biden surrogate. “These are extraordinary times, Joe is an extraordinary candidate. The only way he’s going to get the voters energized is to have a black woman candidate — a black woman — for vice president.”
Just 10 days ago, top Biden surrogates pointed to Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar as a leading contender because of her appeal as a moderate from the Midwest. But her star has fallen in the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis. Social-justice activists have been sharply critical of Klobuchar’s past record as a Minneapolis-area prosecutor and have urged Biden not to choose her.
Moseley Braun said the campaign must take heed from the outpouring in the streets.
“It’s not just a signal, it’s a cry. It’s a cry from the heart from American people — ‘we need to move into another direction,’” she said. “We need to repudiate white supremacy.”
One source familiar with the internal discussions about vice presidential selection described the campaign’s view on the need for a black vice president as “an evolution” over the last two weeks.
In an interview, Bottoms deferred to the Biden campaign on questions about her prospects as a Biden running mate.
“I can tell you that obviously like so many mayors and governors across this country, my complete focus has been on our streets the last few days,” Bottoms said.
Within the campaign, the Atlanta mayor is viewed as a loyal, frontline warrior who stood with Biden almost as soon as he launched his 2020 bid last year. Her standing has been bolstered by her recent emergence as an authoritative voice at a time of racial duress in the country.
Bottoms began seeing a rise in TV bookings in the peak Covid-era, when she spoke frequently of how the virus was disproportionately affecting African Americans. But she became a ubiquitous presence on the airwaves in the wake of a widely lauded, off-script speech on May 29 that followed an evening when thousands of protesters — and looters — took to the streets of Atlanta.
“When I saw the murder of George Floyd, I hurt like a mother would hurt. And, yesterday, when I heard there were rumors about violent protests in Atlanta, I did what a mother would do. I called my son and I said, ‘Where are you?’ I said, 'I cannot protect you, and black boys shouldn’t be out today,’” she said at a news conference calling for the violence to cease. “So you aren’t going to out-concern me and out-care about where we are in America. I wear this each and every day. And I pray over our children each and every day.”
Bottoms castigated wrongdoers, telling them they disgraced Martin Luther King’s legacy of enacting change through peaceful protest.
“What I see happening on the streets of Atlanta is not Atlanta. This is not a protest. This is not in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. This is chaos,” she said. “A protest has purpose. When Dr. King was assassinated we didn’t do this to our city. So if you love this city, this city that has a legacy of black mayors and black police chiefs … if you care about this city, then go home.”
The first big city mayor to endorse Biden, Bottoms has served as a campaign trail surrogate for well over a year, defending him on national TV through various verbal gaffes and campaign flubs — even after Biden clashed with Kamala Harris on the presidential primary debate stage, when the California senator excoriated his record on race.
Harris, who has run statewide twice before, is also being considered as a possible running mate and had been viewed as an early favorite candidate.
But while Harris sat on the sidelines for a time after she exited the 2020 field, Bottoms volunteered for Biden in Iowa. On caucus night, the former judge and Atlanta city council member even stepped up to give an impromptu speech about Biden’s candidacy when the precinct captain didn’t show. Throughout the campaign, Bottoms traveled extensively through the South on Biden’s behalf, joining him for events in Tennessee, South Carolina and Texas, among other places.
When Biden’s candidacy appeared on life support following routs in Iowa and New Hampshire, Bottoms went on national TV to remind audiences “the South has something to say” because the South Carolina primary had not yet taken place.
“She was with Joe Biden before it became cool to be with Joe Biden,” said Tharon Johnson, a longtime political senior adviser to Bottoms. “She was with Joe Biden when it was unpopular.”
Johnson said Bottoms, who is 50, would bring gender, racial, regional and generational balance to a Democratic ticket.
“That is someone that to me, has the stamina and has the vigor and the discipline that it takes to take on the national scene if she’s chosen … She brings a level of humanization to the issues. She’s now built up a tremendous national profile,” Johnson said, noting that she is looking to add staff to help deal with the media demand, which has been four to five television hits a night. “She not only shares his commitment to the issues, she complements Joe Biden’s vision of America.”
In addition to Harris and Demings, other African American women the campaign is considering include fellow Georgian, former Democratic state House leader Stacey Abrams, who has been a vocal advocate for her own candidacy, and former National Security Adviser Susan Rice.
Florida Rep. Val Demings.
The recent unrest and focus on police conduct has elevated Demings’ profile due to her unique backstory as both a black congresswoman and a former police chief of a major metropolitan force in Florida. Demings’ husband is also the former sheriff of the county.
Demings, who first drew national notice as a House impeachment manager of President Trump earlier this year, has seen a boomlet of media attention — ranging from Ellen to Sunday news shows to an on-camera interview with Time — as she calls for law enforcement reform.
Still, the 63-year-old congresswoman’s law-enforcement bona fides could prove problematic for some progressive activists, which one Biden campaign adviser described as a “delicate” situation.
But Demings’ ability to speak commandingly on the topic and straddle the divide between police and African-Americans has been a boon to the Biden campaign, which has increasingly used her as a surrogate to discuss the complex intersections of these two communities.
“To protect and serve, we all need to make adjustments,” Demings told POLITICO. “You know why we see police chiefs and officers walking hand in hand with protesters? You know why we see some officers taking a knee? Doggone, it’s because there needs to be reform. They know the criminal justice system they work in needs to be reformed.”
“The George Floyd killing has reshaped America’s thinking, the campaign, everything."
Florida state Rep. Shevrin Jones
Orlando’s police department has had a history of excessive use of force, but the NAACP president of the region’s chapter who served at the same time that Demings was chief, vouched for her social-justice bonafides and tenure leading the agency from 2007 to 2011. Though also criticized by some local activists, Demings has been praised from both ends of the political spectrum, from the NAACP to the current head of the Florida Fraternal Order of Police, a Republican.
No major deaths or severe brutality cases appear to have unfolded on her watch, according to news clips and political supporters and detractors. But when she was chief in 2009, she suffered her biggest embarrassment after failing to properly lock her Chevy Tahoe, leading to the theft of her agency-issued 9 mm Sig Sauer gun, bullets, handcuffs and baton, according to the Orlando Sentinel. She was reprimanded by her own agency.
Whomever the campaign selects as Biden’s running mate, the decision must take into account the historical nature of recent events, said Florida state Rep. Shevrin Jones, an African American Democrat who hosted a virtual campaign event with Biden last month.
“The George Floyd killing has reshaped America’s thinking, the campaign, everything,” said Jones, who originally favored Sen. Elizabeth Warren as a vice presidential pick.
He now backs Demings for Biden’s running mate, saying she gives Biden the best chance to carry Florida, the biggest swing state in the nation and the home state she shares with Trump.
“This reshaped my thinking, too, as a reminder that there is a lack of regard for black lives in this country, and so there’s heightened awareness for that regard to have a black woman on his ticket,” Jones said. “We’re not speaking from a place of tokenism. This is reality. And the voice of black women cannot be missing.”
KAMALA HARRIS 2020,
2020 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES,
Trump’s conspiracy theory on 75-year-old protester draws sharp backlash
Trent Lott fired by top lobbying firm
‘Ugh’: Republicans cringe after Trump’s attack on 75-year-old protester
‘A hot, flaming mess’: Georgia primary beset by chaos, long lines
© 2020 POLITICO LLC
President’chances in November-rallies kick off in Oklahoma City June 19th
Well?
OPINION
No, Trump isn’t finished. His durable presidency is just beginning
Commentators have dismissed President Donald Trump’s chances over and over again, only to be chastened by his triumphs.
JAMES S. ROBBINS | OPINION COLUMNIST |
How many times have we heard that Donald Trump is finished? That narrative was adopted almost from Day One of his presidential campaign. From scornful predictions about his chances in the primaries to faulty polls predicting President Hillary Clinton, from the phony Russian collusion story through the Ukrainian phone call impeachment and acquittal, Donald Trump has had more obituaries written about him than most actually deceased presidents. So far, all the pundits and prognosticators have been wrong. And they still are.
Look at the past few months. Back in mid-March, The Atlantic ran a piece by “Never Trumper” Peter Wehner titled, “The Trump presidency is over.” The thesis — very typical — was that the administration’s response to the COVID-19 crisis was about to take Trump down. “His administration may stagger on,” Wehner wrote, “but it will be only a hollow shell.”
Two weeks after that opinion column appeared, Trump’s approval rating for handling the crisis reached its record high. It has since settled from that peak but not to “hollow shell” levels.
The economic shock of the coronavirus lockdown was also supposed to spell the end. An article on Yahoo Finance predicted that the downturn presaged “a death sentence for presidential reelection hopes.” Experts suggested that if there were a recovery at all, it would not be a swift “V” shaped rebound but a grinding, long-term “U” shaped slog.
The experts were wrong yet again. Trump’s approval numbers on handling the economy have remained in positive territory throughout the temporary downturn. The stock market has rebounded strongly; the NASDAQ is back in record territory. And the unexpected gain of 2.5 million jobs pushed unemployment down to 13.3%, the largest monthly gain ever on record.
PATRICK SEMANSKY/AP
Now the crisis following the killing of George Floyd has become the hoped-for tectonic event that critics believe will finally do Trump in politically. In the past week, the anti-Trump narratives have come thick and fast. When protesters occupied Lafayette Square, the president was said to be hunkered down in a bunker, and a doctored picture of a darkened White House was widely circulated that later proved to be a stock photo from the Obama era. Commentators were more agitated with Trump standing in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church holding a Bible than they were when supposedly peaceful protesters set fire to it the night before.
Responses to protests: In Harlem, we marched for justice, against police brutality
Trump’s durability
Trump is so durable, his critics want to pretend he doesn’t exist:
►Trump has “relinquished the core duties and responsibilities of the presidency,” Robert Reich wrote. “He is no longer president. The sooner we stop treating him as if he were, the better.”
►The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin, who declares Trump defunct on a regular basis, said gradual defections from the Trump camp will sink him and “this is how history is made.”
►Also in The Post, Brian Klaas conjured an apocalyptic vision of Trump as dictator, threatening the president’s supporters that “history will judge you.”
►Paul Krugman at The New York Times said Republicans would be happy with Trump as dictator and predicted that “given Trump’s determination to put troops in the streets of America’s cities, it’s quite likely that innocent civilians will be shot at some point.” Krugman did not mention David Dorn, a retired police captain and African American shot and killed by St. Louis pawn shop looters. His life mattered, too.
Klass noted that “polls suggest Trump’s ship is sinking.” Do they?
According to FiveThirtyEight polling aggregates, Trump’s decline comes from post-inauguration highs in early April. He is above his worst numbers from December 2017, when the Russian collusion “insurance policy” was in full swing.
And Trump’s numbers compare favorably with his immediate two-term predecessors. Gallup long-term poll data shows Trump following a nearly identical opinion track as President Barack Obama for the last 10 months, and he is also even with President George W. Bush at this point in his presidency. By contrast, Trump is about 10 points above both our most recent one-term presidents, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter.
The hyperbole of Trump’s critics
What works most in Trump’s favor is the hyperbole of his critics. If Trump denounces far-left militant antifa as terrorists, some rush to defend them. If Trump praises law enforcement, progressives rush to defund them. Biden backers try to elevate Joe as a historic leader who can heal the nation when his civil rights record is worse than Trump’s. Trump’s best reelection guarantee will be if Democrats cave to the extremist narrative of a fundamentally racist America requiring radical progressive change.
Saving the American experiment: It feels like the American experiment is failing. Here’s how we can still save it.
Given the dismal track record of the president’s critics, there should be an editorial moratorium on “Trump is finished” pieces until after his reelection. Then they can run with that narrative until it finally comes true in 2025.
© Copyright Gannett 2020
If anyone followed the turn of events since this forum started 2 years ago, no one in his right mind could have predicted this.
Now looking back, even the most unconvinced could begin to get the impression that it was all about the politics of anti-Trump smear machines orchestrated by the left wing liberals.
But was it?
Will we ever really find out?
God Bless Us & God Bless what remains of this country.
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Hot off the presses:
Donald Trump tells Washington state, Seattle leaders to ‘take back your city NOW’
President Donald Trump targeted Seattle in a pair of late-night tweets on Wednesday, chastising the “Radical Left” governor and mayor and claiming that “Domestic Terrorists” had overrun the largest city in Washington state.
Singling out Jay Inslee, a one-time Democratic presidential candidate, and Jenny Durkan, who has faced calls to resign as Seattle’s top elected official, Trump tweeted, “Take back your city NOW. If you don’t do it, I will. This is not a game. These ugly Anarchists must be stooped IMMEDIATELY. MOVE FAST!”
In a second tweet, Trump called for “LAW & ORDER.”
Durkan’s response on Twitter: "Make us all safe. Go back to your bunker.