Say Their Names

Say her name. Say his name. Aja Romano (I've said her name) of Vox has explained

After all-too-common acts of police brutality against Black women, the hashtag #SayHerName” now peppers social media timelines. The phrase, codified in 2014 through Kimberlé Crenshaw’s Say Her Name campaign, serves as a long-standing reminder that Black women are often erased as victims of police violence. Following the March 13 shooting death of 26-year-old EMT Breonna Taylor by Louisville police while she slept unarmed in her bed, that’s exactly what her family wanted: for the world to remember her story and know her name.

Arizona Republican senator Martha McSally, 3-4 weeks away from losing her seat to Democrat Mark Kelly, won't say the name of the most important (and evil) man in America.

AZ Republican won’t say “Trump” during debate https://t.co/5LkaiJnt5q

— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) October 7, 2020

It's difficult to utter the name "Trump" or "Donald Trump" or even "President Trump." Nancy Pelosi will, Joe Biden less often, and Democrats' most beloved family finds it even more difficult. Barack Obama has avoided it whenever possible and now, in an otherwise excellent speech, so has his wife.  One of the highlights was

Only a tiny fraction of demonstrations have had any violence at all. So, what the president is doing is, once again, patently false. It’s morally wrong and yes, it is racist, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work.

 But the lowlight was that while Mrs. Obama mentioned "the President" or "the President's" in reference to Donald Trump twelve times, she did not say the name at all. She did not utter the words "Donald Trump."

It's disingenuous to contend "we all know who Michelle was talking about." Viewers knew also whom Martha McSally was talking about and we know when talking of violence by police against black women, Breonna Taylor is Exhibit A.

However, the words on the back of the jerseys of some NBA players read "SAY THEIR NAMES." If asked, they'd first say "Breonna Taylor."  And for both supporters and opponents of this President, it should be Donald Trump, at least two or three times in the space of twelve references. Mentioning "Donald Trump" isn't illegal and- unless he is still President in, say, nine months from now- it never will be.

 

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All Kinds Of Leadership

I respect this tweet:

All over social media I keep seeing this masks don't work mentality. Saying its the election infection and it will magically go away Nov. 4th. Leadership has failed, and thousands upon thousands of lives have been lost because of it.

I respect this but it is inaccurate.  Leadership has succeeded.  On March 19, Trump told Bob Woodward

It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch. You know, the touch, you don’t have to touch things, right? But the air, you just breathe the air, and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one, that’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than your — you know, your, even your strenuous flus. … This is more deadly. This is five per — you know, this is five percent versus one percent and less than one percent. You know? So this is deadly stuff.

The President added "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

Trump created neither a panic- a sell-off on Wall Street- nor panic. As this video indicates, he spoke consistently since that time, downplaying the coronavirus 54 times.

That list was compiled on March 26 and now, even after being hospitalized for Covid-19, the President has warned Americans "don't be afraid of it."  His remarks and actions throughout the pandemic have had the desired effect:

New: There are now 123 front-line workers in the Capitol complex who have have tested positive—or are presumed positive—for COVID-19, according to House Admin GOP Spokesperson Ashley Phelps.

Story coming.

— Chris Marquette (@ChrisMarquette_) October 6, 2020

Reportedly, one of the president's military aides and one of his valets, who traveled with the president last week, have tested positive. Both are on active duty with the military, for which Trump professes love.  The New York Times reports that the "White House has decided not to trace the contacts of guests and staff members at the Rose Garden celebration 10 days ago for Judge Amy Coney Barrett."

There has been no suggestion of sympathy or empathy from President Trump. Back in March, he did not want to create a panic on Wall Street nor stir Americans to action. He would instead hold rallies at which supporters would be encouraged to congregate; ridicule the use of face masks; discourage testing; pointedly refuse to coordinate PPE distribution, thus  prompting states to bid against each other; and prioritized distribution according to to the strategic importance of the state or the fealty of a governor to him.

Leadership comes in different styles with different objectives and varying ends. Not everyone can be a Winston Churchill. Some can be an Adolph Hitler. If that shoe doesn't fit, President Eugenicist still has time to prove it's not in his size.

 

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Not A Normal Reaction To Plague

The Trump campaign is now attacking Biden for...not contracting coronavirus.

“He has experience — now — fighting the coronavirus as an individual. Those firsthand experiences, Joe Biden, he doesn’t have those." pic.twitter.com/Qk0Qc8l6q9

— Tim Hogan (@timjhogan) October 5, 2020

Evidently, though, this was (despite the Trump TV chryon) not Mercedes Schlapp because the CNN fact-checker noted 

Trump campaign spokesperson Erin Perrine on Fox News today: "Listen, he has experience as commander-in-chief, he has experience as a businessman, he has experience, now, fighting the coronavirus as an individual. Those firsthand experiences: Joe Biden, he doesn’t have those.”

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 5, 2020

In good snark (like John Lewis' "good trouble"), one woman tweeted back "I guess men have to get pregnant to vote on the right to choose."

It's a great point in this context, although men do have a legitimate right to have an opinion about reproductive freedom. Even some women oppose reproductive freedom, sometimes ardently and dishonestly, as in the case of the loathsome (now Never Trump) Carly Fiorina.  Truth may be stranger than fiction. 

The point about men is well taken though perhaps the most insightful came from the fellow who recognized that Trump "has failed as a businessman" and "as a CIF (debt at all time, unemployment all time high), and failed against Covid (I prefer winners and only losers get sick)."\

That highlights two of the fundamental problems concerning coverage of Donald Trump. When Trump was introduced to the public as a candidate, it was as "businessman Donald Trump." When he appeared at a debate, it was as "businessman Donald Trump." As President, it has been "former businessman Donald Trump."

You may notice a pattern.  Trump was a businessman decades ago (still is, in a corrupt way) and a very bad one. However, he became a viable candidate because he had only recently proven to be an extremely talented actor (The Apprentice), a talent he has maintained throughout his presidency.

He had been, most recently and visibly, an actor, a thespian, one who pretended to be what he was not. While Trump was given the unmerited favor of being associated with his earlier, failed career rather than the more recent source of his wealth, Hillary Clinton was labeled a secretary, as in "Secretary of State." Her successful career as a United States senator representing the fourth most populous state in the country was negated.

Moreover, Donald Trump does prefer winners and believe only losers get sick. At a recent campaign rally in Bemidji, in a manner consistent with previous remarks, the President declared "You have good genes, you know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn't it, don't you believe? The racehorse theory. You think we're so different? You have good genes in Minnesota."

Some critics would say that for the President, the "good genes" predominate in a state that's overwhelmingly white. But there is a macro, as well as micro, element in it, with Trump probably believing that within any one race, some people were born with the right stuff, some without.   You get to live, or you don't. You're a loser, or you're a winner.

With a few exceptions, the media has turned a blind eye to this. It's discomfiting, and in a literal sense almost "unbelievable," that a President of the United States of America would see death from Covid-19 as a benefit, not a bug. 

Still, the truth. And it's why, notwithstanding Trump's first hand experience, the President does care about the coronavirus- just not in the way a normal human being would.

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The Plea To Vote For The Pro-Coronavirus Candidate

A right-wing activist has a thought:

Compare how conservatives reacted to & mourned the death of RBG to how Democrats are celebrating Trump contracting COVID.

Vote accordingly this November.

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) October 2, 2020

Ruth Bader Ginsburg died of pancreatic cancer and President Trump will receive the best medical care in the nation, if not the world, and probably fully recover (which would be a good thing). Ginsburg was a legal giant; Trump has spent a lifetime skirting the law, the last 3+ years violating it. And who can forget this, from exactly one year prior to the announcement that Trump had contracted Covid-19

As of this writing, it is uncertain when Trump knew that the coronavirus test he took Wednesday was positive. It may have been before, it may have been after, he traveled to Minnesota on Wednesday for a fundraiser and on Thursday to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey for an indoor roundtable, without masks, with 18 donors.

However, we do know that on the previous Saturday, there was an announcement of a Supreme Court nomination, outdoors but including the prolifically hugging Senator Mike Lee and former governor Chris Christie, chatting away with a large number of the more than 150 guests, most of them without masks. Those two, and University of Notre Dame president John Jenkins, have since tested positive.(There have been numerous others, including three reporters, who most assuredly did not deserve this.)

The maskless included nominee Amy Coney Barrett, because nothing says "pro-life" better than putting the life of one's family, friends, and supporters in peril. Trump himself conducted numerous rallies without a face covering in front of thousands of devotees similarly unprotected and mocked people who wear masks and otherwise don't try to kill of the people they come into contact with.

We know also that the Trump posse arrived at Tuesday's debate with masks, took them off after being seated, were asked by a Cleveland Clinic doctor to wear a mask and were offered masks by a clinic official. Trump's guests (aside from Melania Trump) waved them off, because nothing says "law and order" better than disregarding the rules of the Cleveland Clinic and ordinance of the city of Cleveland.

Less well known is that there was a handshake agreement that the two candidates and their entourages had been tested, and tested negative, by their respective campaigns.  The Trumpists arrived later than all others associated with the debate, leaving insufficient time for them to be tested.  They were on the honor system and- you will no doubt be shocked- proved not to be honorable.

And this:

And, under Trumpcare insurance would be completely unafordable for anyone with a heart condition, cancer survivors, or other health problems https://t.co/sT27cjrio2 https://t.co/I5qPJeQYyf

— Dean Baker (@DeanBaker13) October 3, 2020

Conservative hypocrisy aside, the evidence continues to mount. If President Eugenicist were determined to demonstrate that only the people endowed with the best genes deserve to survive, he would have acted and spoken exactly as he has. And if had set out to send the number of casualties beyond 100,000, beyond 200,00, ad infinitum, he couldn't be doing a better job  I hope Charles Kirk will not be distraught in the absence of an apology.

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Still At It

It happened as recently as the debate in Cleveland Tuesday night, when President Trump instructed "Proud Boys, stand by and stand by. It occurred as far back as a year and a half ago when President Trump warned

I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad....

The effort at intimidation has grown considerably since

The Real Polls are starting to look GREAT! We will be having an even bigger victory than that of 2016. The Radical Left Anarchists, Agitators, Looters, and just plain Lunatics, will not be happy, but they will behave!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 8, 2020

Those may be only words. However, they're apparently being put into action as an hour before the debate we learned

In a recent video for the Trump campaign, Donald Trump Jr. becomes a modern-day Uncle Sam, urging Americans to sign up for a new kind of war.

“We need every able-bodied man and woman to join Army For Trump’s election security operation,” he says.

The younger Trump’s video, posted on the Team Trump Facebook and Twitter pages on Sept. 21, follows the Trump campaign’s strategy to rile up Republican voters against the perceived threat of voter fraud. The president’s son claims that the “radical left” plans to cast “millions of fraudulent ballots that can cancel your vote and overturn the election.”

The solution: assemble the troops.

The election is not being held today, tomorrow, or the day after. But Donald Trump is obsessed with polls in part because he fails to understand that they are a mere snapshot. So he in the past frequently boasted by Twitter and at rallies of high poll numbers, whether credible or not. And he can see by recent surveys that if the election were held today and voters were not discouraged from casting a vote, he would lose the popular vote and- probably by landslide- the electoral college.

Team Trump, however, knows there is still a chance of victory by suppressing the vote. Demand that potential Democratic voters "behave."  Threaten to sic bikers, police, and the military upon opponents. Rant and rave at a debate, thus reinforcing doubts about the political process. And recruit an Army for Trump to roam polling places in selected urban districts on election day.

I believe in divine justice but we shouldn’t have to wait. Hopefully, Donald Trump will easily survive Covid-19, lose the election, and be prosecuted.  However, GOP voter suppression will make it more difficult to defeat the President than it will be for him to recover from a coronavirus.

 

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Ostensibly, The Democratic Party Candidate

In May of 2019, as the Washington Post's Philip Bump noted at the time, Joe Biden stated

What’s happened is, between gerrymandering and unlimited campaign spending, we found ourselves in a position where an awful lot of Republicans have become intimidated by the president. f you notice, most Republicans — leaders, don’t lose from the left. They lose on the right. … I think there is not a middle ground.

That is a Joe Biden reluctant to sharpen, or even acknowledge, ideological differences with the Republican Party. one much in evidence at the debate in Cleveland, Ohio, where we heard

TRUMP: Joe, you agreed with Bernie Sanders's far left on the manifesto, we call it.

BIDEN: Manifesto? Look...

TRUMP: And that gives you socialized medicine.

BIDEN: Look, hey, I'm not going to listen to him. The fact of the matter is I beat Bernie Sanders...

TRUMP: Not by much.

BIDEN: I beat him by a whole hell of a lot. I'm here standing facing you, old buddy.

Maybe instead of boasting that he won't listen to the runner-up in the Democratic sweepstakes, Biden could have reminded the audience that Donald Trump (actually, the Attorney General's office) is in court trying to eliminate health care for pre-existing conditions, and that coverage still exists only because John McCain cast the deciding vote to protect them from Trump's scalpel.

If President Interruptus had allowed him to continue, Biden could have mentioned that the Democratic Party platform calls for a public option, as well as lowering the Medicare eligibility age from 60 to 65 because no American should go without health care.

 "Look, hey, I'm not going to listen to him" was a reference to a U.S. Senator whom tens of millions of Democrats voted for in 2016 and 2020 and whom has been a loyal supporter of Biden since the latter became the party's presumptive nominee. Bad form.

Biden renounced support for the Green New Deal, admitted he is "not opposed to the justice" (Barrett), and employed the word "Republican" merely four times. One time, he was cut off and the other three times struck a bipartisan note, once remarking "And I'll be a president not just for the Democrats, I'll be a president for Democrats and Republicans."

Bump concluded his column 17 months ago with

Maybe Biden doesn’t believe Republicans will have an epiphany but, instead, believes that voters want to hear that there will be. Or maybe he thinks there will be an epiphany and Republicans will seek to work with President Joe Biden. If he does, recent history suggests that he’s in for a surprise.

Joe Biden spent eight years serving a Democratic President whom many Republicans refused to acknowledge was born in this country, and whom even more charged was exercising dictatorial powers. Nonetheless, he still expected that post-Trump "You will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends." It was extraordinarily naive at the time, is more so now, but apparently he still believes it.

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Controlled Mania

 

Even the idiots over at Fox can’t understand why the racist President didn’t just condemn white supremacists. https://t.co/71HacpuHzx

— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) September 30, 2020

It could be that they are idiots and unlike Donald J. Trump, were not elected President of the United States of America. Even a Never Trump Republican and great journalist doesn't understand:

After tonight, I think we're a little further from civil strife, a little closer to Florida being called for Biden by 10 pm ET.

— David Frum (@davidfrum) September 30, 2020

Donald Trump's goal is not to win a debate or two, it is to win the election- or rather, to be the President a year from now.  We already knew that voter suppression is the key, a route more plausible than outpolling his opponent, to victory. It is why the President in May tweeted “MAIL-IN VOTING WILL LEAD TO MASSIVE FRAUD AND ABUSE. IT WILL ALSO LEAD TO THE END OF OUR GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY. WE CAN NEVER LET THIS TRAGEDY BEFALL OUR NATION.” It's why Trump in Cleveland boasted he was "urging my supporters to go in to the polls and watch very carefully" to intimidate voters at polling sites in major cities, It is why he ranted about "Philadelphia," "wastepaper baskets," "military ballots," and Carolyn Maloney for one false charge after another.

The Trumpian strategy in 2016 was to toss one lie after another against the wall. If they stuck, great; if not, they'd suppress the vote. Consequently, voting declined in 2016 and the challenger is credited with winning among voters who disliked both candidates. (Admittedly, that number is exaggerated. The vast majority of individuals who voted for Trump liked him- even many who have claimed otherwise.)

As the incumbent, Trump probably won't win the greater number of votes of this turned-off group in 2020. However, he understands that he needs to discourage from voting those individuals with doubts about Biden but who have tuned out Trump because of his record and histrionics.  

If that doesn't work and Trump fails to win in enough states to get to 270 electoral votes, he has an ace to play. And he did so Thursday night when he warned "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by."

So Donald Trump may have seemed in Cleveland to be an uncontrolled, unhinged crackpot. But to him, a debate is not to win or lose. It is to to get him one step closer to occupying the Oval Office after January and resume his 12-year reign.

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