Even though Trump has been president for three years, he is fighting desperately to keep this election from being a referendum on his job performance.
If there’s one thing that’s clear, it’s that he doesn’t feel that he has anything he’s accomplished worthy of campaigning on.
What he is doing instead is putting up ads that portend an America that will be coming apart if Joe Biden is elected. The trouble with these ads is that he’s using photos and films of what is happening in America right now, in the Trump presidency.
He’s also — as usual — lying and claiming that Joe Biden wants to defund the police, even though Biden has repeatedly said that he has no such intention. Trump lies. Trump’s a liar. Lying is what liars do.
His other mode of attack is to claim that Biden is unfit for the job. Joe Biden is suffering from the residual effects of a childhood stammer. He overcame this stammer as he has so many other challenges. But it still affects his speech once in a while. That residual stammer is what Trump is trying to use to attack Biden.
Trump’s so desperate to make that point that he’s made himself into a joke. He has engaged in comical bragging about his ability to pass a cognitive test designed to help diagnose dementia. As to whether Trump actually “passed” this test, all I can say is I should hope so.
My mother had dementia. I was with her when she took the same test and passed it. The only difference I remember in the test that Mama took and the one they say Trump took is that Mama had to draw a clock instead of just saying what time the clock showed. She drew that clock like a champ.
Mama actually did have dementia at the time. It’s not a biggie, passing that test. Only an idiot would brag about it.
But back to Trump’s campaign. He obviously doesn’t want to campaign on his record as president for the past three years. I don’t blame him for that. I wouldn’t want to run on a record that amounts to bringing this country to its knees and splitting us into warring factions.
It appears that Trump’s record as president is so bad that even he can’t lie and spin it into something worth basing a re-election campaign on.
He’s been throwing mud at the wall, trying to find something that will stick to Biden. The truth, according to the biggest liar ever to hold office in American history, is that the country is doomed, doomed, doomed if Biden wins.
Trump keeps spinning all sorts of ridiculous webs about Joe Biden and the horrors that will follow if Biden is elected. But none of it sticks. The reasons it doesn’t stick are obvious.
First, Trump isn’t talking about Biden’s actual record. He’s trying to blame his own record on Biden. He’s trying to campaign by claiming that Biden is going to do to America what he himself has already done to us. When Trumps runs ads of America with riots and turmoil, those videos are taken from the news showing what’s happening right now, in Trump’s America. He’s showing us what he has actually done to America and a lot of Americans are smart enough to know it.
Second, Biden is a known quantity with a vast pubic record that tells us quite plainly who he is and what he’ll do as president. He was a responsible, middle-of-the-road senator for decades. Then, he was Vice President to a president who brought us out of the worst recession since the Great Depression — a recession caused by Republican nutso economic theories. Joe Biden was vice president in an administration that had this country in good running order when they handed it over to Trump.
Trump throws dirt, and the dirt just slides off Biden.
But that is going to change pretty soon. Joe Biden has said that his running mate will be a woman. I have no idea who this woman is going to be. However I do know the United States of Misogyny and the absolutely virulent, no-limits hatred of women of the Christian Right.
As soon as Biden announces his female running mate, we are going to see the ugliest, most hate-filled and degrading attacks you can imagine leveled at this woman. And those attacks will stick with Trump’s faithful followers.
Joe Biden is going to pick a female running mate and Trump will start slinging filth at her, and all the little right-wingers will love it.
I’ve been bracing myself, getting ready for the onslaught of woman hatred that’s coming our way. The leaders of the pack will be right wing religious leaders, including right wing priests and bishops.
I hope I’m wrong. I would dearly love to be wrong. It has been my own Gethsemane, witnessing Christian religious leaders and people I had thought were my Christian friends riding on the misogyny train. It has broken my heart.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Christian religious leaders will say Enough! with this hate and stand against it.
Maybe.
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