TRUMP, HARRIS, HUBRIS AND A SUDDEN DIPSY-DOODLE
Keith Boag
Looks like the highlight of presidential hopeful Donald J. Trump’s summer is going to be that rally in Butler, Pennsylvania when he got shot in the ear.
In the chaos and horror of that moment Trump saw opportunity. Struggling against the Secret Service agents protecting him, he stood before the MAGA crowd— bloody-faced, fist in the air—and snarled defiantly “Fight! Fight! Fight!” as the American flag fluttered above his head against a perfect blue sky. A photo capturing the moment has been likened to the iconic picture of Marines heroically raising the Stars and Stripes at Iwo Jima in the late stages of the Pacific war. Even Hollywood could not contrive a more glorious moment for the former president.
In their rush to judgement, some declared he had just won the election. The conservative magazine The Spectator, featured a column the next morning written by a chagrined never-Trumper under the preposterous headline Today, we’re all MAGA.
Two days after the shooting, Trump, ever a sucker for fulsome sweet talk, and apparently still exhilarated by his frisson under fire, let the hubris of the moment draw him into a bold and foolish move: He decided that the No. 2 on the Republican ticket should not contrast with his own persistent darkness, but rather embody it. He reached for a man who would reject the sober Republican traditions of his last VP, the hapless Mike Pence, and instead hug the MAGA hats good and hard: Ohio Senator James David (J.D.) Vance, best-selling author of Hillbilly Elegy.
It has not gone well since. Vance quickly became known for his bizarre views on childless couples, his strange antipathy toward single women with cats, and something about couches.
Scarcely an affordable luxury when victory seemed assured, Vance is now a clear liability as Republican prospects dim.
In fairness to Trump, almost no one foresaw the dramatic turn that was about to upend the race. After President Joe Biden’s shockingly poor debate performance against Trump in June, Democrats were as despondent about their nominee as Republicans were gleeful. In that dark moment, who would have bet that the Democrats, seemingly consumed by self-doubt, would muster the brass to slip the imminent Republican tackle with a dipsy-doodle almost never heard of in US presidential politics? They pulled “the old switcheroo”.
The old switcheroo—changing leaders just before an election—is common in Canadian politics, but even here it's still the trickiest of moves and seldom succeeds. For every Kathleen Wynne, there is a stable of Kim Campbells, John Turners and Ernie Eveses.
In the US, with its fixed election cycles and fixed term limits, there are few opportunities for the old switcheroo, so it never happens. Until one day it does.
Republicans, their gleeful smirks quickly transforming into various versions of WTF, calculated the enormity of the unfolding catastrophe: the frail looking 81 year-old white-guy-in-decline they’d prepared for was out, and a vibrant 59 year-old woman of colour was in.
Vice President Kamala Harris soon picked a running mate who could fairly be described as the anti-Vance: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a fanatically normal and relentlessly cheerful warrior with a knack for exquisitely precise and sticky language. He’s the best label-maker since Trump and his first stroke was to tag the Trump/Vance ticket “weird”.
Confirming a sea change in the race, a New York Times/Siena poll this past weekend had Harris leading Trump by four percentage points in each of three battleground states— Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. In the calculus of the electoral college, that is a winning combination. Ahead lies the bounce Harris will likely get from the Democratic convention in Chicago next week. By then she might be the clear frontrunner.
With everything coming up Harris, the Democrat’s nominee has arrived at her moment of maximum risk vis-a-vis hubris—roughly where Trump was a day or two after that bullet nicked his ear. For her team to get caught up in Kamala-mania would be a huge mistake. Everyone needs to keep their eyes on the ball and remember it’s not about her, it’s not even about Trump, it’s only ever about the voters.
At a conference in Toronto in June, the former Barack Obama operative turned wise political commentator, David Axelrod, spent about half an hour explaining to Canadians the landscape for the coming US election. My clearest memory from that half hour is fewer than ten words: Do not count on Donald Trump to defeat himself.
Democrats need to quietly repeat that sacred utterance to themselves every single day.
If we were living in a time of normal political physics, they could step aside and just let voters experience a good, long blast of Trump's unique and distinctive fragrances: Twice impeached; 34 criminal convictions; civilly liable for sexual abuse; tens of millions of dollars awarded against him for defamation; hundreds of millions more in fraud penalties; criminally charged for trying to steal US military secrets and a presidential election; public musings about dating his daughter.
Even on his best day, the man’s a lying, vulgar, con man whose presence leads mothers to draw their children closer.
We know all that. But we know the laws of political physics were suspended long before Trump was a convicted felon. He survives what would end any other political career because of the idolatry and cultish fanaticism of an exuberant minority of voters. Against them nothing can be left to chance. Remember the stakes:
In his first term Trump showed he had no regard for the norms that protect the institutions of a democracy: He interfered in the justice department, he attacked the judiciary, he politicised the military, he treated America’s enemies as friends and America’s friends as enemies.
The Republicans in Congress cravenly played along and declined to honour their constitutional responsibility to constrain his overreaches. In a second Trump administration there would be even fewer guardrails to protect America from him. The risks cannot be overstated.
So what to do about a problem like Trump? Beat him at the polls, of course. But how? We’ll dig into that next week when we raise the curtain on Chicago.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Keith Boag - The US presidential ticket is set: Trump + Vance versus Harris + Waltz. And to cover that election, we're bringing our readers and listeners a brilliant journalistic mind and political correspondent legend, Keith Boag! Keith was with the CBC for more than 30 years, including as Chief Political Correspondent. His career included work for many years in Washington, D.C., and as Ottawa Bureau Chief. Keith covered seven federal elections in Canada, ten party leadership campaigns, as well as several US elections. Keith will regularly offer his written analysis via "QUOTES" at Air Quotes Media.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Air Quotes Media. Read more opinion contributions via QUOTES from Air Quotes Media.