woolfe9998
Lifer
- Apr 8, 2013
- 16,242
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I'm actually starting to think there is no "real" or "organized" plan to get reelected. There probably is no plan to distract from the Covid anymore. I'm not sure that there is even a plan to pander to his base. Given his level of power that people have given him people assume there is actually something there, but there really isn't. All there is is spontaneous reaction. It only appears as that he is trying to distract, because he is always trying to throw himself into the lime light, and the colossal failures come so fast and furious, that you can't keep track of them all. But that's not by design, its just the way things happen when there is no plan.
From the begining, the only goal is to promote his Brand. His Brand is a smart, courageous, wily, tough, charming, funny, non nonsense, virile, alpha male, who everyone wants to be. Right?. He's a winner who is the greatest at everything and never wrong. He is the dumb person's idea of what a smart person is, a weak person's view of what a strong person is, and a loser's idea of what a successful person is.
Brand promotion is the only reason he ran for president, he didn't have any particular agenda in mind he just thought it would be cool to be able to say he was president. I think a lot of his base pandering is simply operant conditioning. When he says certain things, he gets big cheers at his rallies, and headlines on Fox, so he keeps saying those things.
Only wimps talk about feeling, compromise, coming together and reconciliation. The way to deal with conflict is to bust some heads until you force them into submission. Dirty hairy doesn't say "OK lets talk about this before things get out of hand". He says "make my day!" and the bad guy gives in. So when confronted with a social uprising to injustice, his only plan - send in the troops.
I think that is an extremely accurate description of Trump the man and Trump the POTUS. I think it mildly understates the presence of political calculus only for a couple of reasons.
From the beginning, Trump had political mentors like Steve Bannon, who he got involved with back in 2013. Bannon likely formulated many aspects of Trump's campaign messaging, particularly the immigration wall and general anti-immigration stance. Trump purportedly didn't even know he was supposed to be anti-abortion to win a GOP primary and had to be told this. So some calculus has come from others.
Also, Trump does do things in secret - pernicious things, immoral things, illegal things - to prop up his election chances. I need not catalog them here, obviously. I suppose these can be viewed as more proactive than reactive. But it's all very scattershot - a lie here, a bribe there, an illegal deal here. And of course when it comes to his public behavior he can't control his ego so it all amounts to something not terribly coherent. If you can call smearing an opponent with lies a "political strategy," and I suppose it is, well fine. It's the political strategy of an emotional and mental cripple, even if it happens to work.
I've never bought into this theory that Trump is somehow crazy like a fox (news). He isn't a brilliant political strategist. He's actually a deeply stupid man, and not just relative to other POTUSES, relative to everyone.