They'll Huff and They'll Puff

It was a rough night in Louisiana -- or as they say down there -- "Looziana." Hurricane Laura rolled in in the wee small hours of the morning. The National Hurricane Centre warned that Laura was "unsurvivable" and "castastrophic." But Donald Trump's party went on. And once again, Dana Milbank writes, he is a man without a plan:

He didn’t create the coronavirus, but he made its impact on the United States worse than in any other country because he had no plan to combat it. More than six months after the virus surfaced, he said his administration was “in the process of developing a strategy” to fight it.

He didn’t cause the economic collapse, but he worsened it because he didn’t have a long-term plan to soften the blow. Congressional Democrats offered him an election-year gift of a multitrillion-dollar stimulus package, but he walked away because Republicans thought it too generous. Now millions of unemployed Americans are seeing government help evaporate.

He didn’t invent police brutality, but he worsened tensions because he didn’t have a plan (or a desire) to fix racism in policing. Instead he demonized racial-justice demonstrators, sent in federal police who inflamed violence and, at this week’s convention, glorified gunmen who confronted demonstrators. The deadly scene this week in Kenosha, Wis., is the latest byproduct of the escalation.

Trump didn’t cause Hurricane Laura, but the storm highlights his lack of a plan to lessen climate change, to diversify the nation’s energy supply (major oil and gas facilities are in Laura’s crosshairs) or to prepare a muscular government response.

The evidence of what Trump called "American Carnage" is everywhere. And he is its cause. The only way to remedy the situation is for American voters to become the Big Bad Wolf of the children's fable.

They may not blow his house down. But they must blow him out of the White House.

Image: boomerang.co

Biden Will Win

Tony Burman is getting more and more certain that Joe Biden will be the next American president. He writes:

With more than 100,000 Americans dead and 40 million others out of work as a result of the pandemic and the U.S. government’s disastrous handling of it, Donald J. Trump will likely be remembered decades from now as the most incompetent, morally corrupt president in modern U.S. history.

It's hard to argue with that conclusion. But, Burman argues, there are several reasons why Trump will be a one-term president:

1. You can see a landslide in the making: Since March, Joe Biden has respected the “stay at home” instructions in his home state of Delaware, and he is doing just fine. In contrast, Donald Trump has hogged the spotlight and it has damaged him. At least two polls this week indicate that Biden is leading by 11 points. Trump’s approval rating has been sinking by the week. Remember that Trump’s margin in 2016 was razor thin — a total of 77,744 votes cast in three states (Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania) out of 120 million votes overall.

2. Trump's base is collapsing: Trump and the Republicans appear to be losing older voters who have always turned out to support them. Trump’s poor handling of the pandemic, his constant insults of Biden’s age and his persistent efforts to undermine Medicare have turned these voters against him. And unlike Hillary Clinton, Biden is seen as one of them. More broadly, recent polling in 13 swing states indicates a consistent lead for Biden in all of them, and at a level much higher than Hillary Clinton ever achieved.

3. Biden has learned from Hilary's failures: His campaign staff has placed more emphasis on their digital operation and created genuine bridges to the African American, Latino and progressive communities that felt neglected four years ago. Since it is assumed Biden will last only one term, a crucial decision is the choice of his running mate. Two strong front runners are Senators Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, who would both be welcomed by Democratic activists.

4. The worst is still to come for Trump: the U.S. will still be flirting with depression-level economic damage and a “second wave” of the pandemic will begin to surface in the autumn. There is also the certainty that Trump — on the brink of defeat — will try to sabotage the process and claim that the voting is rigged. So, strap in.

5. Facing that immense damage, Biden has been inspired by Franklin Roosevelt: The landscape will be even worse than what Barack Obama and he, as vice-president, inherited in January 2009 in the wake of the 2008 recession. Instead of promising that “nothing would fundamentally change” as he once did as a candidate, there is increasing talk that Biden will be prepared to embrace the radicalism of president Franklin D. Roosevelt who took over from an unpopular Republican opponent during The Great Depression.

That's the future Burman sees. Let's hope he's right.

Image: The Toronto Star

A Madman

There are those who still confidently predict that Donald Trump will win re-election. But Frank  Bruni writes that Trump is self-destructing before our eyes:

As Katie Rogers and Annie Karni reported in The Times, the president feels isolated and embattled and is panicked that he’ll lose to Joe Biden in November. That state of mind, they wrote, prompted his executive order to halt the issuing of green cards, which is precisely the kind of base-coddling measure that he resorts to “when things feel out of control.”

He can read the polls as well as the rest of us can, and they show that while he stands there nightly in the White House briefing room and blows kisses at himself, Americans aren’t blowing kisses back.

Wait, you object, Trump defies the rules and gets away with it:

I know, I know: He’s Trump. He carries the secret weapon of his spectacular shamelessness, which means that he’ll resort to ploys and lies that even the most unscrupulous of his opponents wouldn’t attempt. He’ll destroy what he must so long as he gets to rule over the wreckage.

And the usual laws of nature don’t apply to him. He was caught on tape bragging about grabbing women by the crotch. Didn’t matter. He got nearly three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. Still he won. If he wasn’t exactly found guilty of elaborate coordination with the Russians, he was certainly shown to be open to it. Onward he rolled, and he kept rolling past his gross abuse of power in dealing with Ukraine and his richly deserved impeachment for it.

He’s Houdini, he’s Scheherazade, he’s all the escape artists of history and fiction rolled into one and swirled with golden-orange topping. He’s lucky beyond all imagining. But here’s the thing about luck: It runs out.

And his luck is running out. As the death toll from the virus reaches the death toll in the Vietnam War -- and as Trump suggests that the cure for the disease might be injecting Lysol into the veins of the sick -- Americans are increasingly coming to the understanding that they have a madman in the White House.

Image: Ben Wiseman New York Times

Not Likely

Lawrence Martin writes that Donald Trump is not likely to win re-election. What used to be his strong suit -- the economy -- has been shattered by the coronavirus:

The Trump Republicans are hopeful that when the lockdown is lifted, the economy will come roaring back. Not by the fall it won’t. The stock market might be back up but the unemployment and GDP numbers will be brutal. The Republicans never win with the economy in the tank.

They lost in 2008 when George W. Bush left behind a shattered economy. They lost in 1992 when his father was in power and the economy was downward bound. They lost in 1932 when Herbert Hoover faced the country during the Great Depression.

And, while the virus was  taking hold in his country, Trump slept -- like Rip Van Winkle:

The American media is probing deeply what happened in January and February. Revelations of Oval Office inertia keep on coming.

Time after time, he was warned of the seriousness of the virus, and time after time, other than placing limited restrictions on travel from China, he failed to respond. While other leaders are gaining popularity for their handling of the crisis, Mr. Trump is not.

Trump is desperately trying to re-write history. But the history is so fresh, people will not forget. Joe Biden may not be inspiring. But he's normal. And he possesses what Trump lacks in spades: character.

Politics is unpredictable. The unforeseen could upend the race. But Trump is facing what he abhors the most -- being branded a loser.

Image: Daily Kos

No Man To Do Business With

Yesterday was quite a day. The Republican repudiation of Barack Obama's health care bill went down to defeat. Ezra Klein doesn't mince words:

Let’s be clear about what happened here. The American Health Care Act failed because it was a terrible piece of legislation. It would have thrown 24 million people off insurance and raised deductibles for millions more — and the savings would’ve gone to pay for tax cuts for millionaires. It broke virtually all of Donald Trump’s campaign promises, and was opposed not just by Democrats but also by Republicans.

This is a failure for Speaker Paul Ryan on many levels. He wrote this bill, and when the speaker takes over the process like that, the upside is it’s supposed to create legislation that can pass. On this most basic task, Ryan failed, and failed spectacularly.

But beyond the legislative and tactical deficiencies, the AHCA reflected a deeper failure of moral and policy imagination. Ryan spent the latter half of Barack Obama’s presidency promising to repair the Republican Party’s relationship with the poor (remember Ryan’s “poverty tour”?). He’s spent every day since the passage of Obamacare saying the Republicans could do better. This is what he came up with? The GOP put their greatest policy mind in charge of the House of Representatives and they got ... this?

Donald Trump staged a hostile takeover of an intellectually and morally bankrupt party. He is the prefect CEO for such an organization. He now claims that he will move on to tax reform and building a wall which the American people -- not the Mexicans -- will pay for.

But it won't be easy accomplishing those objectives. He also plans to build the Dakota Access and Keystone pipelines. However, the same kind of public opposition to Trumpcare will greet those projects.

Yesterday, Mr. Trudeau applauded the rebirth of Keystone XL. Not a wise move, Justin. Just ask all those Americans who almost lost their health care what it's like to do business with the Great Orange Id.

Image: Sputnik News