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| Home Front: Politix |
| Can Trump Pull a Truman? |
| 2020-07-14 |
| [TownHall] - On July 22, 1988, after the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, the party nominee, Gov. Michael Dukakis, enjoyed a 17-point lead over Vice President George W. Bush. Five weeks later, on Labor Day, Dukakis was down eight points, the same margin by which he would lose the election. He had lost 25 points in one month. What had happened? During August, Republican attack groups elevated and relentlessly pounded what might be called Dukakis' Bay State radical liberalism. ...Vice President Bush ended up winning 40 states. Is this possible today? Because a turnaround of that magnitude appears to be needed by Donald J. Trump. Over the weekend, the bad news on the virus front turned awful for the country and for Trump. The number of U.S. citizens dead from the coronavirus hit 135,000. COVID-19 deaths, whose weekly average had been falling since April, began to rise again. New cases of the infection began appearing in previously unseen numbers across the Sun Belt. Florida set a U.S. record with more than 15,000 new cases in one day. This surge in infections is occurring as the nation debates whether or not to send its young back to schools. Children, teachers and students could arrive by the millions in classrooms in late summer, only to be sent home in a new shutdown as a second wave of COVID-19 hits this fall. Were that not enough to concentrate the mind, an economy that last winter was as strong as any in modern history now looks to be in a depression. The good news of the May-June revival could be canceled out by shutdowns mandated by the new infections. Beyond this, America's racial divide has reopened. The attacks on cops and their demonization in the wake of the killing of George Floyd have led to demoralization, resignations and retirements, and, from there, to an explosion of shootings and killings in major cities. And we have witnessed the outbreak of a cultural revolution, which holds that as America has, from birth, been a slave-owning society whose policies toward the native-born amounted to cultural and ethnic genocide, the statues of those generations of men who produced such a history should all be pulled down and smashed. A medical crisis, an economic crisis, and a cultural and social crisis have hit us all at once, raising some fundamental questions. ...Trump is not responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. And the shutdowns that induced today's depression were as much the decisions of governors and mayors as of the president. Yet, he is the one whose fate is tied to the state of the economy in November 2020. And, politically, Trump is the one paying the price. ...In 1948, Harry Truman looked like a certain loser to Gov. Tom Dewey. So he sent a raft of liberal legislation to the Hill and challenged the Republican Congress to enact it. When Congress airily dismissed his proposals, Truman barnstormed the country, calling on America to help him rid the nation of this "no-good, do-nothing 80th Congress." Which the country proceeded to do, as it elected Truman and threw out the first Republican Congress to sit since before the Depression. What the Trump folks must do now is to zero in on Biden's vulnerabilities, personal and political. First among these is Biden's transparently diminished verbal and mental capacity. ...Second, the Biden campaign has embraced an agenda that is, in part, Bernie Sanders-AOC-Black Lives Matter. The Trump folks need to force Biden to come out of his basement and either embrace or renounce the radical elements of his agenda. They need to do for Biden what Lee Atwater & Co. did for Dukakis. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #8 First paragraph: 1988. . . vice president GEORGE W BUSH????? In 1988? I don't think so. |
| Posted by: Canuckistan sniper. 2020-07-14 23:35 |
| #7 I think it is funny that in the last 55 years since high school have I ever been asked to do a poll. Statistically doesn't seem possible. Of course, I've never won a lotto either. |
| Posted by: AlmostAnonymous5839 2020-07-14 19:58 |
| #6 I find no reason to believe the polls are accurate. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2020-07-14 16:30 |
| #5 /\Always something positive to contribute? |
| Posted by: Bobby 2020-07-14 16:01 |
| #4 What if it's Tammy? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2020-07-14 13:37 |
| #3 Unlike those "paragons" (spit) McStain and Mittens, Trump will not pull any punches down the stretch. It's practically a given the dem VP pick will be a black woman (with maybe a difference, IYKWIMAITYD) and the dems will translate any attack on Joe into an attack on his VP, even if Trump says he's only talking about Joe. But Trump isn't going to let that dishonest ploy stop him. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2020-07-14 12:02 |
| #2 ^For some reason I don't believe he's going to be an official candidate. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2020-07-14 11:49 |
| #1 But Biden ain't the official candidate, yet. There ain't much point in attacking his obvious shortcomings until after Labor Day. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2020-07-14 11:44 |