The Progressive Populist Today Blog: 2020-10-11

Saturday, October 17, 2020

Editorial: Oust Banana Republicans

Joe Biden has widened his lead over Donald Trump to double digits in national polls, and he continues to lead Trump in most swing states after the Great Misleader’s disastrous performance in the first (and, most likely, only) presidential debate, followed by Trump’s four-day stay at the Walter Reed Medical Center, where he took experimental treatments and steroids for a touch of the coronavirus, which he now insists he has whipped, although prominent epidemiologists questioned his hasty return to the White House, where at least 34 staffers have tested positive for the virus.

Hopped up on steroids, Trump has been raving since his return from the hospital. In a latenight Twitter blitz on Oct. 6-7, Trump wondered why Attorney Gen. William Barr had not arrested former President Obama and Biden, apparently because they allowed the FBI to monitor the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian intelligence assets and government officials during the 2016 campaign, and Russian efforts to get Trump elected. Letting the FBI do its job is “the greatest political crime in the history of our country,” Trump said. And he still wants Hillary Clinton jailed because of her emails.

Then, in a nearly hourlong interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business Oct. 8, after the vice presidential debate, he called Sen. Kamala Harris a “communist” and a “monster.”

“I thought that wasn’t even a contest last night,” Trump said. “She was terrible. I don’t think you can get worse. And totally unlikeable. And she is. She’s a communist. She’s left of Bernie. She’s rated left of Bernie by everybody. She’s a communist.” (Sanders ran to the left of Harris in the primary. Neither one is a communist — but Trump seems to enjoy hanging out with communists, current and former.)

In a video released Oct. 7, Trump said he considered getting ill with a virus that has killed more than more than 215,000 Americans to be a “blessing” because he ended up taking an experimental antibody cocktail, still in clinical trials, that is produced by Regeneron under a $450 million contract with the government.

“To me it wasn’t therapeutic — it just made me better, OK? I call that a cure,” said Trump, who appeared to struggle to breathe at times. He then said everyone should have access to the not-yet-approved drug for “free” and that he would make sure it was in every hospital as soon as possible.

Trump also dropped the F-bomb on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show Oct. 9, warning Iran, “If you f*ck around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are gonna do things to you that have never been done before.” That was in case Iran struck back at the Trump administration for imposing sanctions on Iran’s banking sector, which European allies warned would stop imports of food and medicine, after Trump withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.

Then, after federal agents announced Oct. 9 they had thwarted a plot by Michigan militants to kidnap and possibly murder Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — a conspiracy that allegedly included visits to her home in northern Michigan, training with firearms and explosive devices, and plans to storm the state capitol and take other hostages — Trump continued his criticism of Whitmer.

In April, Trump had tweeted in all caps, “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” amidst the lockdown to control COVID-19. He urged Whitmer to negotiate with the militants who had stormed the capitol with assault rifles and tried to get into the legislative chambers.

After the conspiracy was uncovered, Trump and state Republican leaders appeared to back up the domestic terrorists’ complaints. “Governor Whitmer of Michigan has done a terrible job,” Trump tweeted Oct. 9. “She locked down her state for everyone, except her husband’s boating activities.”

He falsely claimed Whitmer had called him a white supremacist (although there is substantial evidence to make that case), and he again urged her to “open up your state, open up your schools, and open up your churches!”

Hours after the FBI announced the plot against Whitmer, Republican leaders of both chambers of the legislature joined a right-wing rally on the steps of the state capitol targeting the governor and her efforts to keep the state safe. Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey was forced to explain to the press that the people who attended the rally are not the same people who were involved in the plot to kill the governor, Allison Donahue noted at MichiganAdvance.com.

Whitmer said she’s asked the White House and Republicans in her state to decrease the level of inflammatory rhetoric they put out, which she said helped spark the alleged plot.

Trump closed the week with a rally Oct. 10 on the South Lawn of the White House, where he spoke from a balcony before a crowd of a few hundred attendees, where he spoke for only 18 minutes instead of the promised 30 minutes. The next day, he tweeted that he is “immune” to COVID and “can’t give it,” even though the White House has been fuzzy on details and the CDC recommends isolation for up to 20 days in severe cases, which would seem to cover someone who was hospitalized, administered supplemental oxygen and treated with the steroid dexamethasone, a drug typically used for serious cases. Instead, Trump embarked on a tour of “Super Spreader” rallies that started in Sanford, Fla. Oct. 12 and had rallies planned in Pennsylvania, Iowa, North Carolina and other swing states.

Of course, Dems fear a repeat of 2016, where polls showed Clinton winning — and she did beat Trump by 2.8 million votes nationwide, but Trump eked out an Electoral College victory by fewer than 80,000 voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. This past week, Biden led Trump 51%-41% in Wisconsin and 48%-40% in Michigan in New York Times/Siena polls released Oct. 12 and Biden led 54%-41% in Pennsylvania in a Quinnipiac poll released Oct. 7. In other states Trump won in 2016, Biden was leading outside the margin of error in polls in Arizona, Florida and North Carolina; within the margin of error in Iowa and Ohio; and only 1.5 points behind Trump in the average of polls in Texas.

Polls are only indicators, of course, but Trump isn’t sneaking up on us this time and Republican elected officials are starting to eye the exits. In Arizona, where Trump trails Biden, Sen. Martha McSally avoided several questions about whether she was proud of her support for Trump during her Oct. 7 debate against Democratic challenger Mark Kelly. She repeated that she was “proud to be fighting for Arizona” and she admitted that Trump’s disrespect of the late Sen. John McCain “pisses me off when he does it.” A recent New York Times/Siena poll showed McSally 11 points behind Kelly, an astronaut and husband of former Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords.

Even in Texas, where polls show a tight race between Trump and Biden, combat veteran M.J. Hegar is within single digits of Republican Sen. John Cornyn, and the high-ranking Republican appeared to be distancing himself from Trump when he told the Houston Chronicle Oct. 5 that Trump “let his guard down” on the coronavirus and has created “confusion” by trying to downplay the severity of the pandemic. He added, “[I]t is not easy to try to get things done working with him or the White House.”

Your job is not done when you vote against Trump and Pence. Go on down the ballot and vote against all of his Republican enablers in the Senate, the House and state legislators who also have conspired to make voting more difficult during this pandemic. — JMC