Heading into the final week of campaigning for the US elections, I find the level of personal nastiness and lies has plunged far below what I ever expected. We see Trump calling El-Sayed a radical ‘jihadist’, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and an advocate for Sharia law. We have him calling Talarico a sexual pervert and (gasp!) a vegan, forcing Talarico to eat meat on camera just to defend himself. And, of course, there is the Ramaswamy fiasco, where Trump defends the attack ad on a survivor of child rape.
Talarico eating meat
The media can criticize the GOP, but the sad fact is that Trump and his cronies know that appealing to the lowest common denominator is effective. He got elected the first time, partly because of (not in spite of) his “grab ‘em by the p***y” remark. He got elected the second time partly because of his lies about Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats.
Trump knows that descending into racism and bigotry actually works. His people don’t care about issues; they care about schools giving sex-change operations to children (total = 0), or about transgenders in girls’ sports (total = at most 11, but probably 0).
At a Trump rally last week, his fans attacked, beat up, and sent to hospital an opponent wearing an Epstein files shirt, while Trump applauded and the crowd roared “USA! USA!”
What really saddens me, therefore, is the depths to which the American know-nothing psyche has sunk.
That’s the tragedy of America. People care more about non-existent culture-war scare tactics than they do about the economy or the war in Iran.
Well, SOME people do, namely, the MAGA cultists, who number a consistent 40% of the US population. If they turn out to vote, they can gain political power, and Trump knows it.
I have been watching interviews with Trump supporters on Facebook. It’s very common to hear, “He keeps his promises.” When asked which promises he keeps, they usually can’t think of any. When asked, “What about his promise to end the Ukraine war on day one?” they usually say, “I don’t know much about that one.” One lady even stated that the Ukraine war is fake news, that is doesn’t exist at all. (So Trump promised to stop a fake war?) Of course, the Epstein files are all just fake news. Not only do MAGA not care about the big issues, but they don’t even KNOW (or choose to ignore or deny) what those issues are.
That’s why Trump’s campaign strategy is to go to Red states and stir up red-meat MAGA fears. He knows that independent voters are going to vote against him anyway, so he figures that the only way to win is to frighten the MAGA cultists into turning out to vote in droves. That has been his winning strategy all along. He knows that his MAGA cultists can carry enough electoral votes to win, even though they are in a popular-vote minority.
It’s a bit different this time, because Senate races do not have electoral votes. People vote statewide, and the popular vote wins the state. On the other hand, every state elects two senators, so a MAGA state like Wyoming (pop. <600K) has the same political clout as, say California (pop. > 39 million).
If American politics have descended into culture-war, hot-button scare tactics, then Trump knows that he can destroy the economy, launch forever wars, and oppress non-white immigrants with impunity. Even if the Democrats win both houses of Congress, we can look forward to at least two more years of destructive policies that the MAGA base will not even know about, let alone care about.