The Talented Mr. Trump

I read the polls (hard as it is to imagine Americans with landlines deciding the election), so you don’t have to, but about the only thing they tell me is that the country is close to electing as its next president someone who is criminally insane, and then perhaps further enabling his psychosis with a House, Senate, and Supreme Court safely in the hands of Republicans such as cinema vaper Lauren Boebert, human trafficker Matt Gaetz, and the paid vacationer, Clarence Thomas.

I suppose the above could also be written more accurately as “criminal and insane” (forensically and to Judge Judy, there might be a difference), although I think that would be splitting hairs—especially those strands that in recent weeks have morphed from Day-Glo orange to what now appears to be Baywatch lifeguard blond.

As a consolation, I cannot say I put much stock in the polls, in part because I have met a number of pollsters in spin rooms, at campaign events, and in New Hampshire living rooms.

In person, they remind me of the punters who used to spend much of their lives in New York’s Off-Track Betting parlors handicapping, for example, the fourth race at Aqueduct Racetrack or circling the names of sure-thing horses in the tabloid Daily Racing Form—and then mumbling to themselves and throwing their tickets on the coffee-stained floor when their pony came in sixth.

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In the current horse race (perhaps in the future election day will be known as The Supreme Court Classic?), the pollsters only goal is to cover all the angles, so that after the contest is decided they can say, “Mostly we got it right.” (The captain of the Titanic could make the same claim.)

In this election, that means making the easy calls up front: Kamala Harris will win the popular vote, and the Republicans will take control of the Senate. Then it means announcing that the Electoral College and the House of Representatives remain “too close to call” or “within the margin of error.” After that, you’re on your own.

In national polling (which mean nothing as the United States does not have a direct election of its presidents), Harris leads by 47.9% over Trump’s 45.8% while in the battleground states of the Electoral College, Trump is ahead in three states (Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina) while Harris is ahead ever-so-slightly in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Nevada. In a blend of battleground state polls, Trump holds a slight lead of 0.2%.

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In its extensive model, the polling website 538 says that if the election were held 1,000 times, Harris would win 555 times, while Trump would win 441 times; in four such simulated elections, there would be no winner (and the House would decide the matter). The 538 projection updates constantly, as new polling data is fed into the model.

Thanks, 538, but if the Steve Miller band has its way, we might not get even one election, let along 1,000.

The no-toss up model at Real Clear Politics (perhaps to send off alarm bells to its Trumpist readership?) has Harris winning the Electoral College by 276 – 262, although that assumes she carries Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada (where, except in Michigan, her margin is less than one percent).

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Not unexpectedly, the most convoluted, cover-all-the-bases analysis came out in the New York Times, where its pollster, Nate Cohn, wrote in his The Tilt column:

The core battlegrounds are clear enough: The polls show Ms. Harris leading in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, states that would be enough for her to win the presidency, provided she wins the more Democratic-leaning states and districts where she currently leads. On average, Ms. Harris is faring a hair better than President Biden’s election results across these states.

The national polls, on the other hand, show Ms. Harris faring about two points worse than Mr. Biden’s results. Clearly, Mr. Trump is polling better in noncompetitive parts of the country, even as Ms. Harris shows resilience where it counts. Together, it reduces the size of Mr. Trump’s advantage in the Electoral College.

Wake me up when you figure out who the Times thinks might win. I somehow doubt language such as this counts as a forecast:

With the polling predictably focused on the battlegrounds, we may not have a great idea on this until the final results arrive in November. If the results wind up looking somewhat more like the midterms, I won’t be surprised. Much crazier things have happened.

Personally, I am skeptical of most polls, but at least they reveal one clear trend: in 2024 Americans might well elect someone to their highest political office who isn’t simply a financial fraudster, convicted felon, and adjudicated sexual abuser, but a person whose mental competence would be questioned by any EMS team that happened to collect him from the sidewalk on a cold winter night (while he was claiming to have won the presidency in 2020 and going on about immigrant Haitians eating Springfield’s dogs and cats).

I might have more faith in the polls if one of the questions posed was, “Do you believe that Donald Trump is sane?”

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The fact of the matter is that countries routinely lose their collective minds. Germany did in 1933 when it allowed Adolf Hitler’s National Socialists to seize power, but so did the United States when it tolerated a war in Vietnam for more than a decade, and Russia today is in the hands of a tsarist pretender who claims to represent a public from whom he might well have stolen a trillion dollars.

In 1984 historian Barbara Tuchman devoted an entire book to what she called The March of Folly, which is about countries that over time lost touch with reality. Would not the re-election of a mentally impaired Donald Trump to the presidency warrant at the very least a postscript?

Obviously, there is no polling data on what accounts for large portions of the American electorate in 2024 supporting a candidate who is physically, morally, and politically unhinged.

I can only guess that Trump has been given a national hall pass because his gold-embroidered name represents a brand that is synonymous with power and money, which in the current election cycle carries more weight than honesty, character, integrity, or personal accountability. On national political issues, Trump just rambles, as if Mad Libs scripted his speeches.

Here—picked almost randomly—is something that he said this week in Georgia:

Remember one other thing, and I think it’s terrible, she lied about McDonald’s. She said, “I was a worker in McDonald’s and I stood over the french fries.” I’m going to a McDonald’s over the next two weeks and I’m going to stand over the french fries because I want to see what her job really wasn’t like because she never… I stood over the french fries and that was tough. It was hot outside and it was hot over… She never worked there, it was a lie. And when I asked her at the debate, I said, ” I want to talk about this,” ABC said… ABC, which is the worst of them all by the way. Did you see that David Muir’s ratings are way down? I love that bit can he lost his credibility (sic). I love it.

Maybe there’s an app that translates Trump’s digressions into the language of The Federalist Papers? Or at least makes him sound normal?

No one trying to hire an eighth-grade social studies teacher or Little League coach would give serial felon Trump a second look, yet he remains the Republican nominee and a serious candidate to become the next president.

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Branding is the commercial equivalent of immunity (that commodity so beloved by the Roberts Supreme Court), and it has allowed all sorts of flimflam entities—think of Enron, Lehman Brothers, Bernie Madoff, Theranos, etc.—to survive for years despite being little more than fraudulent shells set up to bleed customers.

The genius (if that’s the word) of the Trump brand is that it allows its grand wizard to wrap himself in the flag and, thus suitably disguised, to use the political system as a cover behind which he can bilk billions in savings from a gullible public (and then when challenged to hide behind a corrupt Supreme Court).

In just the last two weeks, Trump has launched his own watered-down, three-card monte Trump Silver Coin ($31 of silver in a coin that costs $100) and his own cryptocurrency, World Liberty Financial, as if the illusions of the publicly-listed Trump Media were not enough embezzlement for one campaign season.

Nevertheless, in the current election, Trump’s grifting barely moves the outrage dial, even though Trump is the political embodiment of Charles Ponzi—raking in millions from his political supporters who in return only want to attend his rallies and hear a few one-liners about Joe Biden.

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Beyond branding offering a cloak of immunity to reprehensible candidates, there’s another element that has devalued American democracy to near worthlessness, which is that elections have been reduced to cheap, serial entertainments, yet another Netflix drama involving sex, lies, and videotape.

Trump gets away with his sexual, financial, and political crimes because he’s not judged as a potential state magistrate (someone to govern a nation at a critical time), but as a sitcom actor, vaudeville performer, or sideshow act that Americans can digest (and enjoy) with their TikTok attention spans. In 2024, a vote is little more than a thumbs-up emoji.

Who needs to read position papers on tariffs, monetary policy, climate change, or Gaza when Trump appears each morning in your in-box riffing about hungry Haitians or “liking” Laura Loomer’s latest plea for apartheid in America.

The truism of 2024 is that the Republican Party is nothing more than a cult, a political Jonestown with Trump at the head of his own version of the People’s Temple.

While that may be true, and while that might well explain why Trump can be close to winning the election, it glosses over the fact that Trump’s appeal is more like that of the Wizard of Oz, which allows him with smoke and mirrors to hold a nation under wraps from behind a shabby curtain.

We would do better to remember the words of the Scarecrow, who said: “Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don’t you think?”