Trump and the Tides of History

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I’ve been thinking about history, and what history can and cannot teach us about current events.

One thing history ought to teach us is that nations, politics, and the course of events are not just shaped by the plans laid by people in power. As often as not, the trajectory of history is shaped by how the people in power respond — or react — to events they hadn’t planned for.

Presidents more often than not are remembered for how they dealt with unexpected crises rather than how well they carried out their campaign promises. Are they able to adjust their thinking as situations demand, or do they remain stuck in their ideological playbooks — think Herbert Hoover’s inability to deal with the Depression. See also Peter Baker, Presidents Form Their Legacies in Crises.

Trump has been in a uniquely bad position since, in fact, he doesn’t even do plans. His only objective is his own glory. He has more or less lumbered through three exhausting years in the White House by taking credit for good news and blaming others for bad, whether he had a hand in events or not. He’s been sheltered from the consequences of his own actions, or inactions as the case may be, by congressional Republicans and the right-wing media infrastructure.

But now the nation has been hit by massive crises, and people are seeing for themselves that Trump is failing miserably to address them. He can’t adjust his thinking because he doesn’t think; he just reacts, and all of his reactions are either self-protecting or self-aggrandizing. He cannot put his emotional neediness aside to just do what is required any more than he is likely to master quantum physics or the title role in Verdi’s Otello.

And in this, he is showing us that the tides of events, and history, sometimes are too big to be subdued by propaganda and gaslighting.

Greg Sargent, this morning:

President Trump’s advisers are letting it be known that he is seriously considering a televised national address on race and national unity. When your paroxysms of laughter subside, consider the serious point here: This reveals just how badly Trump misread the politics of this moment, to a potentially fatal degree.

You know that if he does give such an address, it will consist of anodyne phrases strung together by his staff in no discernible order and clumsily read by Trump from a teleprompter in the weird sing-song tone he adopts when he’s trying to sound serious.  It will mean nothing and accomplish nothing, but the Trump campaign and its Republican enablers will claim he “addressed” racism, as if it were just a box that needed to be checked. And then Trump will prompty resume tweeting juvenile insults of everyone in the world who doesn’t adore him enough.

A typical view of Trump’s proposed address:

See Pretty Much No One Thinks It’s A Good Idea For Trump To Give A Speech On Racism And Unity. Nearly any other person who has served as POTUS in the nation’s history would have given such an address already. Indeed, presidential nominee Joe Biden has already given such an address. But Trump cannot rise to this moment because Trump is massively unsuited to be president at all. I doubt the man could competently manage a WalMart, to be honest. Yes he has owned a lot of businesses, many of which failed, but there’s no indication he has ever been all that hands-on in running any of them. All his life he’s just thrown his daddy’s money at walls to see if it sticks.

Back to Greg Sargent:

What’s been exposed is this: Trump simply will not, or cannot, operate out of any conception of what’s good for the country — the whole country. Faced with enormous crises, he has tried to pretend they don’t exist, or has tried gaslighting us into disbelieving our own eyes and ears about them, or has used them as occasions to demagogue and incite hatreds in ways he believes will help his reelection.

This takes us back to history. Trump and his team reacted to the protests that followed George’s Floyd’s killing as if it were still 1968. They assumed they coujld invoke “lawnorder” and call the protesters “thugs,” and the white voters of America would rally behind them. But that hasn’t worked this time. And even as the administration tentatively suggests that maybe Trump could address racism and national unity, administration officials continue to deny there is systemic racism in law enforcement. Which means Trump’s people can’t address racism and national unity, because they don’t know what those words mean.

And this is what happened when Trump learned that Mitt Romney marched with Black Lives Matter:

In fact, Romney’s approval numbers in Utah are looking pretty good — 56 percent approve, 42 percent disapprove, according to a recent poll. According to FiveThirtyEight, Trump nationwide is currently at 41.4 percent approve, 54.3 percent disapprove.

We’ve all heard that history repeats itself, but what does that mean, exactly? History does show us repeating patterns involving class, poverty, various forms of tribalism, greed, war, colonialism, etc. But at the same time, no nation, society or culture remains static for very long. Everything is always changing, even if in small and subtle ways. So while we’re dealing with many of the same issues as in 1968, it ain’t 1968 any more. A lot really has changed. In many ways, we’re all marching into a great unknown; the patterns of the past are not necessarily going to hold.

It’s too soon to say that Trump’s chances for re-election are dead — events may yet occur that change the current trajectory — but it appears they’re about to start circling the drain. Do see Jonathan Last at The Bulwark, The 2020 Cake Is (Almost) Baked.

See also Matt Yglesias, Joe Biden has a really big lead in the polls.

A Monday morning CNN poll showed Joe Biden with a staggering 14-point lead over President Trump as the electorate’s stated level of concern with “race relations” soars and the former vice president is seen as much better equipped to handle the issue.

Winning the popular vote by such a large margin would likely mean Democrats overperformed in battleground states and in places like Georgia, Iowa, and Texas that would put the Senate clearly in play.

And while the CNN poll is just one poll, and something of an outlier at that, there is now a very clear trend in national polling — Biden was winning before the outbreak of massive national protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death, and that lead has gotten bigger.

Maybe not 14 points bigger, but bigger than it was before and clearly larger than any lead Hillary Clinton ever held in the 2016 campaign.

Events are driving us all now. At this point the scope and depth of Trump’s incompetence and unfitness are too visible to hide, but where the tides are taking us is hard to say.

Gabriel Sherman writes at Vanity Fair that Trump has been calling people and prodding them to admit that the polls are all wrong.

“He’s asking people to agree with him that the polls are biased. But no one is telling him what he wants to hear,” said a Republican briefed on the calls. Republicans know how bad things are, but the party still believes sticking with Trump is the best bet for holding the Senate. Last week, Mitch McConnell told Republican senators that they couldn’t abandon Trump, according to a source. McConnell reminded Republicans that former New Hampshire senator Kelly Ayotte lost her 2016 reelection bid after breaking with Trump over the Access Hollywood video.

Hey Mitch — it ain’t 2016 any more, either.

U.S. President Donald Trump announces an agreement with Mexico on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) at the White House in Washington, U.S., August 27, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque – RC1D94FA7CB0

14 thoughts on “Trump and the Tides of History”

  1. In that poll is a statistic – 88% of voters approve of Donald Trump is doing his job. Trump will drop everything to attack anyone in the GOP who calls out his incompetence. The entire GOP in Congress sees Trump as a buffoon. A few thrive on the Archie Bunker malicious ignorance as something they can direct – the Frankenstein fallacy. I'm thinking of Mark Meadows and Tom Cotton but there are others with an attitude too nasty even for the GOP.  It's too early to celebrate but if the waterspout is forming over the drain won't there be consequences?

    If the GOP sees the handwriting on the wall, why are they marching in lockstep to their doom? There's that 88% combined with Trump's malicious blamemongering. If by September the outcome is obvious to everyone but Bunker Boy, Trump will still have nearly a 90% approval rating with the rank and file GOP voters. It's not likely – it's certain that Trump will want to shift the blame. IMO, Trump will go to the old trope of "stabbed in the back" applying it to the Republican Party. If Trump losses, he'll put on a performance of victimhood what might finally earn him the Emmy he's always wanted. 

    So look at the extension of this and tell me where I'm wrong. Trump has GOP voters as his cult – 88%.  Trump demands fealty from the GOP aristocrats in Congress, which Trump views as an extension of the Executive Branch. The GOP in Congress has bought into it as a matter of survival because of the 88%. The result of Trump blaming the GOP Party for his defeat will split the GOP into Trump cultists and professional politicians who want to leave Trump behind.

    Everyone who expects this election will play out like every modern election and transfer of power is wrong. Trump's rage at the defeat will inspire Trump to bring down the temple. Trump can't destroy the Democratic Party for opposing him but with that 88% unwilling to accept the results, Donald can take his revenge on the GOP demanding his followers stay true to him. If Trump blames the GOP party, he'll split it in two. The GOP has no way to avoid this other than pray Donald wins and dies in office leaving the party intact. Trump's defeat is the end of the GOP

  2. One absolutely brilliant move was the Mayor of D.C designating/ renaming just 2 or 3 blocks as Black lives Matter plaza and painting the street with the Black Lives Matter manta. That act gave validation to the voices of protest and completely changed the complexion of the protesters.

     My thoughts on history are drawn to Bloody Sunday in 1905 in Czarist Russia. A moment in history where the seeds of revolution were sown by a brutal repression of peaceful protesters seeking redress from their government. They were met with the same mentality that Trump has put forward. Just crush any voice of opposition.

     Remember the old 60's saying…Just because you've silenced a man it doesn't mean you've changed him.

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  3. I expect Romney's numbers to climb, and never Trumpers to rally around him. A Republican with some sort of moral center is like sighting a unicorn.

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  4. As Karl Marx said (though Groucho might have beaten him to it if he'd been born a century before):

    "History repeats itself.  First, as tragedy.  Then, as farce."

    This look at history might prove correct (again).

    The tragedy:  1968. 

    Racial unrest, and a youth movement focused on protesting the Vietnam War, resulted in Nixon (spit 3 times to ward off evil) winning the presidency over Hubert Humphrey.  The course of the country took a 50+ year right-wing turn.

    The farce (? TBD): Possibly – maybe even probably – 2020. 

    Racial unrest, and a youth movement focusing on that unrest, will likely lead to a tRUMP (spit 3 thousand times to ward off evil) loss to Biden.  tRUMP (a "man" and POTUS who makes Nixon look like feckin' Lincoln), is, outside of his sycophantic rabid lemming followers, considered by most as the Worst American PresiDUNCE* ever!  Ideally, this will lead to a 50+ year liberal turn!!!

    Let's hope Marx was right – Karl, or Groucho. 

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  6. The wheels of time and fortune have given us deep ruts of this tragedy.  I fear democrats will get stuck in those ruts and wallow in the mud.  Doug has a handle on what we are up against, and it is way beyond the idea of black lives matter.  It is way beyond a justice system that skews justice toward wealth.  It melds with issues of power and control and the ugly irrational parts of elitism and it's ties to theology.  Divine power is used to lever the incompetent and corrupt into positions of control over those with merit and competency.  This is what gives the cult it's cohesiveness.  That guy  in the double wide trailer house knows he is an anointed one just like Trump.  Just like Trump he knows it in spite of evidence both social and evidence based.  He too has infallible feelings and intuitions, because he is linked with the highest power in the universe, at least in his closed and twisted mind.  Democrats will need to confront and deal with opposition with this intense, dysfunction, psychological plague along with the many other unattended severe national problems.  These cultists will be no part of a solution and a huge part of ongoing problems.  

    I agree with Doug in positioning Trump with ultimate "turd in the punch bowl" status.  He will likely assume that position in the future of the United States.  Can anyone imagine him showing up with former presidents at solemn future occasions in any other way than an outlier.  The man with the drill in the hull of the fragile wooden American ship of state for years to come.  We will need bail out buckets in the hands of all of our good citizens, and everyone must be steeled for years of long hard damage control.  It is, as we know, our only choice.  Our destiny.

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  7. Maybe, this is a little off topic, maybe not.  But, if you haven't read Robin DiAngelo's book, "White Fragility,"  I would definitely suggest it.   It presents a case for re-examining the way we think about the problem of racism and about dealing with internalized racism as well as the external.  

    I think progressive young people, especially the journalists and activists have a lot to offer.    I'm not saying they don't have their faults, but, I am entirely ready to admit that we certainly have our own as well.

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  10. Pure genius, she captures the pure essence of Our Delusional, Demented Drama Queen in Chief.  What a talent.  LMAO2.  Thanks.

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