How much does Donald Trump want to win reelection? So much that there is literally nothing he won’t try to win it. The only weird part is that the harder he tries, the more he screws himself.
He’s going for broke, which is sort of the way he’s run the Trump Organization, given its many bankruptcies over the years. He’s only increasing the odds that he will have to deal with many criminal charges and civil lawsuits after leaving office. In addition to his actions being counterproductive to him, they are going to devastate Republican candidates across the board, including in state legislature races.
Literally no other president would even consider doing something so patently illegal as maiming the Post Office. The Post Office has the overwhelming approval of people in all parties. It’s one of the few functions of government specifically written into the U.S. Constitution. Our founders saw a mail service as so essential that it is explicitly chartered as an allowed government service. Since its first postmaster Benjamin Franklin set it up, it’s been largely untouchable.
But to Donald Trump, it’s just something to manipulate to help ensure his reelection. His toady of a new postmaster general has prohibited overtime and removed mail sorting machines from hundreds of mail processing facilities, as well as removed dozens of people from his senior staff with deep institutional knowledge. It’s true that mail volume has decreased and some of this is necessary, but not when Americans are filling the mail system with ballots. Mail is backlogging in postal facilities nationwide and in many cases it now must be sorted tediously by hand by postal clerks who are prohibited from accruing overtime. People, particularly rural people who vote disproportionately Republican, depend on it for critical things like getting prescription drugs and social security checks. How do you think this way play politically for Trump?
But that’s all appears to be expendable to Donald Trump because he’s convinced if ballots can’t be counted because they don’t arrive, he’ll win. It will throw a huge amount of chaos into the election, but it’s unlikely to change any results in his favor. People concerned about their vote counting will probably drive by city hall instead and insert their ballots into the ballot box instead. That’s likely what we are going to do.
Similarly, there are his executive orders. Four were recently issued, but actually only one (the other three were memorandum with little teeth) qualifies. All this is because he and Democrats in Congress can’t agree on a pandemic funding bill. Democrats offered $3 trillion; he offered $1 trillion. Democrats suggested meeting in the middle at $2 trillion and he said $1 trillion and we’re not going any higher. When Democrats wouldn’t take the bait, he issued these “orders” instead, cutting the previous benefits from $600 to $400, of which states had to chip in $100 for unemployed to get any of this money. These states are already running in the red because the economy is down so virtually no states can afford this “system”. Oh, and the money would come from disaster relief funds … no chance of needing some of that money considering we’re having a very active hurricane season, right?
Then there’s his unilateral payroll tax “cut”, but it’s really a tax deferral. The taxes are still owed; it’s just that some employers may stop collecting them. This is very dubious legally, but of course it expands the budget deficit and worse, strikes at the heart of the solvency of the Social Security system. This is something else Trump doesn’t like and this looks like an end around to wound it, but his most staunch voters depend on its solvency.
Most likely Trump will eventually realize he has to strike a deal more to Democrats’ liking. He can hope of course that some of voters’ ire will also be directed at Democrats that can’t come to a deal, but the Democrat’s position looks much more politically tenable than Trump’s. In addition, it’s not like Democrats have been sitting on the sidelines. The Democratic House passed a generous bill back in May, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to take it up. McConnell couldn’t even create a consensus bill among his own party and effectively washed his hands of the issue.
About half of his conference is opposed to all the deficit spending although not one of them will call for the repeal of their tax cuts for the rich to address the issue. That’s why Trump is left to negotiate with Democrats who are at least reasonably reunited. Naturally he can’t negotiate with Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer directly. He’s got a tiff with Pelosi going, so it will have to be through his chief of staff and Treasury secretary. In the meantime, the unemployed don’t have much if anything in the way of income and most can’t pay their rent and many are likely to be evicted.
Then there is his continued bungling on the pandemic, which is now hitting mostly red states the most severely. He keeps pushing for deeply stupid things that make the crisis worse, which will get much worse when schools start to seriously reopen. Students will transmit the virus home to parents, and pass it on to their teachers and school staff. This will push infection rates even higher into the fall.
It’s a strategy not just for losing, but also for a Democratic blowout. And it’s not hard to figure out why. It’s because neither Trump nor the Republican Party have a clue on how to govern.
Occam's Razor 