The Incredible Shrinking Candidate
Trump's campaign is imploding in full public view
This year’s presidential election campaign is already one for the history books for many reasons. You can now add Donald Trump’s melt down as a candidate to that list.
Trump and his campaign are struggling badly as the campaign enters its final phase. But it is important to remember that even though Trump may have morphed into the “Incredible Shrinking Candidate” no one should count him out.
Never count out a candidate who is willing to lie on the scale Trump is willing to lie; willing to cheat on the scale Trump is willing to cheat; willing to accept the help of malign foreign forces to win like Trump is willing to accept; and who is willing to use violence to over turn an election result which he does not win, as he has already tried to do.
Yet, Trump and his campaign are in deep trouble as the traditional Labor Day campaign “kick off” season arrives, just at the moment Trump should be at his strongest and fighting best for the final sprint.
Trump is having the worst post-convention period of any modern presidential nominee in American history. Yes, even worse than that of Senator George McGovern (D-SD) who had to jettison his vice presidential running mate, Senator Thomas Eagleton (D-MO), just 19 days after Eagleton had been nominated.
Trump’s hand-picked vice presidential choice, J.D. Vance (R-OH), is proving to be worse than Spiro Agnew and Sarah Palin combined. Vance careens like a silver ball in a pinball machine, from large voting group to large voting group - women, parents, grandparents, etc. - lighting up the lights, setting off the buzzers, and pinging them all with offensive, tone deaf comments and just down right weird nonsense. Which he keeps repeating.
Trump’s lead in the polls has been shrinking. Consistently. Rapidly.
Vice President Harris is out-fundraising him. Wildly.
Trump’s public schedule has been that of a lazy man, or an old, worn out, tired man. It’s been nowhere near the pace one would expect of a candidate in the final stretch of a political campaign. Trump claims not to be doing any debate prep, which might reasonably be expected to keep him off the road a bit. So where is he?
When Trump does appear in public at rallies or other venues where he speaks, he often - quite frequently - sounds incoherent, uninformed, unprepared and dangerously way past his shelf date as a serious contender for the presidency.
I once heard the one time “boy wonder” ex-Governor of Minnesota, Harold Stassen give a campaign speech 40 years past his prime. He was the new Republican “it” candidate for president in the 1940s and early 1950s. He never won, never even got nominated. But he was always in it and made the races close.
Stassen’s losses never stopped him. He just kept running for president into the 1990s. When I heard him in Des Moines, campaigning in the Iowa Republican caucus race in 1984, he was - admittedly - a little rusty around the edges, certainly no longer the “boy wonder” he was once was. But compared to Trump these days, Stassen sounded brilliant, energized, erudite even, ready to hit the ground running at the White House on day one.
Trump sounds exhausted, whiny, not at all ready for prime time, much less mentally or physically fit for the presidency. Today, Trump just sounds pitiful.
You may have noticed that I haven’t even mentioned Trump’s pathetic, frantic efforts to stay out of prison for the 34 felonies for which he has already been convicted by a jury of his peers, or his dozens of felony indictments that still await trial.
Very few Major League Baseball prospects get signed to big league contracts on the basis of their performance in an Old Timers exhibition game. And that’s about where Trump is these days. A shadow of his former self, hobbling and limping around the bases - if he is even able to connect with a “softball” gently served up by a friendly and sympathetic pitcher.
From this past week:
Question: Mr. Trump, how will you help strengthen child care availability in America?
Trump’s answer: “Child care is child care.”
Well, OK. Thank you, sir.
I’m not sure at this point that I’d give Donald Trump the keys to the family car, much less the nuclear codes.
Some Republicans are starting to recognize that they’ve put forward a train wreck for president and vice president this year, but also that it is impossible to get Trump and Vance off the ticket at this point.
Republican officials lashed themselves to his mast far too tightly to leave him now.
Even if they tried, his fiercely loyal base - raised on and fed a steady diet of his red meat of bigotry, resentment, misogyny and lies he tosses to them regularly - his base would never allow it.
So some Republicans are simply letting it be known that they won’t be voting for him.
Every living former Republican president and Republican vice president has refused to endorse Trump in the 2024 general election. George W. Bush won’t endorse him. Mike Pence - Trump’s own Vice President - refuses to endorse him. Dick Cheney goes even further and joins his daughter - one of the most courageous women in American politics today, former US Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) - in saying they’ll vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.
BTW, this is the third time Trump has been nominated by his party for president. He has never been endorsed in any of those races by a former Republican president.
There’s a message there, folks.
Former Trump Chiefs of Staff, Defense Secretaries, and multiple Trump cabinet members have either refused to endorse him or said they will not vote for him this November. Multiple Republican cabinet officials from previous administrations have also publicly said the same.
Even Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s White House Communications Director and White House Press Secretary announced that she’s voting for Harris. It was Grisham’s job in Trump’s White House to explain and sell him and his policies to the American people.
Trump hired her for that job. She accepted it as an enthusiastic Trumper.
She saw enough of him in that job to see what he’s really about and how he operates, to be done with him for good.
Understand how unusual - how historically weird - this all is to have such wholesale defections from, and opposition to, a president by the people who worked for him. They are members of his own political party, who he appointed to high positions in government. They are members of his party who served as president or vice president.
They want nothing to do with him.
There simply is no precedent for anything like it on this scale.
There’s a message in this, too, folks.
It’s a wake up call for Americans. It is a warning of the danger, a plea to stop Trump while we still can. They have all seen him up close. They know well what the job demands, and the kind of person who should hold it.
Their message to Americans re: Trump and the presidency a second time: “Run! Run fast and away from this man!”
All this does not mean Democrats or Harris have the 2024 election in the bag or that it is now safe for Democrats to kick back, light up the cigars, and savor the coming victory.
As I said: Never count out anyone who is willing to lie, cheat, accept the help of America’s enemies, and to even use political violence to win - all of which Trump has already done, is doing, and will continue to do - as Donald Trump.
This race has changed dramatically since this summer, with the departure of President Joe Biden from the contest and the incredible shrinking of Donald Trump as a candidate.
What Democrats know today that they didn’t know with such clarity in early July is that Trump is quite beatable. Trump, himself, is an early candidate for MVP in that effort. The air is going out of the Trump campaign daily. He has become the Incredible Shrinking Candidate.
Two people are responsible for that:
(1) Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running a smart, effective campaign, and who is fighiting the right fights: to save democracy in America, to preserve important rights guaranteed by the Constitution but that Donald Trump threatens.
(2) Donald Trump himself, his criminal, undisciplined, worn out, whining, lying, cheating, self-serving, opponent of democracy self.
It is important that all Americans who believe in democracy understand that the really hard work of saving it remains yet to be done. The task between now and Election Day is to simply work like “heck” (Harry Truman would have used a different word) to beat Trump, and to defeat him so decisively that no would be dictator ever again thinks substituting fascism and authoritarianism for democracy in America is a good idea worth trying.
Those who are true believers in Trump, are always present, they don't go away once an election ends, nor should they. They should disappear simply by going away naturally, being replaced by those who understand this "wobble" in democracy can be fixed in spite of all that appeared to have "failed" as a result of Trump and his henchmen . Quick results are not often possible in eliminating such threats. They have happened in a drip by drip, focused way so we wouldn't see there end result. By the time our alarm bells began to go off, they had enough of a grip on the situation to keep from being stopped easily. We must remain vigulant to these threats and act appropriately when they occur.
Thank you, Barry. I'm hopeful that there are Republican voters who don't talk about it, but know deep down in their hearts and souls what they need to do to save our democracy, will use the privacy of the voting booth to make their voices heard. No one ever has to know what box you checked.