Hail to the Jailbird President
Each time Donald Trump has been indicted, his poll numbers went up—among Republican voters who closed ranks around him in response to what they decried as politically motivated “lawfare.” Now he enjoys a commanding lead for the GOP nomination.
Of course, it’s one thing to win the nomination of your party, an exercise that requires motivating the hardcore partisans who form the ideological base. To prevail in a general election, conventional wisdom says, you’ll need to appeal to moderates and swing voters. Democrats pivot right after their summer convention; Republicans don’t pivot left as much as they pull back their red meat appeals to the right.
That said, corporate media seems determined not to plumb the depths of cluelessness-driven embarrassment they displayed in 2016, when the New York Times told readers on election morn that Hillary had an 85% chance of winning. “Trump is not only in a historically strong position for a nonincumbent to win the Republican nomination, but he is in a better position to win the general election than at any point during the 2020 cycle and almost at any point during the 2016 cycle,” CNN reports.
Still, the question remains. Can the ultimate base-dependent candidate reach beyond his MAGA partisans as he seeks reelection?
Two factors suggest that he can.
One is a data point: A June 21st Quinnipiac poll found that 62% of voters believe that the Department of Justice has been weaponized against Trump and that the federal charges against him for mishandling classified documents, for which he faces more than 400 years in prison, are politically motivated. Biden and the Democratic Party probably don’t even admit it to themselves—but that includes a lot of Democratic voters. 28% of Democrats think Trump’s legal troubles are more about politics than his wrongdoing.
And here’s a major warning sign: 65% of independents agree.
Some of those Democrats think Trump’s the victim of a witch hunt—and they love it. Anything to get rid of him works for them. An AP-NORC poll from April found that 57% of respondents thought Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s charges against Trump for falsifying business records were politically-motivated; the same percent (not the same cohort) approved.
And yet—those independents. Neither red nor Blue No Matter Who, a good portion of them disapprove of the way Trump has been targeted. Even among the Democrats, some want Trump gone while not liking the way he’s been forced to play subpoena whack-a-mole. As the charges and hearings pile up, those feelings can only increase in number and intensity.
The other factor is a major component of America’s national character; we love us an underdog. We’ve subscribed to the underdog myth “ever since 13 scrappy colonies went up against the largest empire in the modern world. The beauty of America is everybody can think of themselves as an underdog in some way,” historian Ed Ayers told NPR in 2018.
Brian Balogh, another historian, added: “We have people like Donald Trump, who has styled himself as an underdog. I mean in fact, Donald Trump came from quite a wealthy background, but he’s somebody who feels no matter what kind of advantage he has in politics, the whole system is rigged against him. I don’t think you can understand Donald Trump unless you understand that the vast majority of people who voted for [Hillary] Clinton came from counties where the economy is contributing a disproportionate amount to the GDP, and those who voted for Trump came from counties where, where they live is underrepresented in America’s economy. They are literally underdogs.”
Swarming Trump with civil lawsuits, state and federal indictments has fed into Trump’s longstanding narrative that this heir to a multimillion-dollar real-estate empire who attended an Ivy League school and hobnobbed with starlets and presidents is actually a victim of a cabal of privileged coconspirators, and not merely a sad-sack punching bag but a noble warrior fighting more for everyday people than himself. Joe and Jane Sixpack don’t stow military plans in their bathroom or pay hush money to porn stars or rip off aspiring college kids or try to overturn elections, yet they empathize more with the perpetrator of these deeds than the authority figures attempting to hold him to account. Truly, it’s a political miracle.
What these prosecutors don’t seem to know (and probably shouldn’t care about) is that we, the people, hate their guts much more than we look down on the crass self-dealing and personal corruption of someone like Trump or, for that matter, Biden. Everyone has gotten a ticket or a tax bill they thought was unfair. Everyone has felt disrespected by a cop and unheard by a judge and screwed over by the government and, in general, the justice system. (My favorite relevant aphorism: we don’t have a justice system, we have a legal system.) Americans disapprove of the Supreme Court by a 2-to-1 margin, 41% think civil courts are unfair and 80% want substantial reform to the criminal justice system.
For some voters, the choice won’t come down to Trump and Biden. It’ll be Trump versus The System writ large. If I were Trump, even if I were sitting behind bars on election day—especially—I’d like my odds.
(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)
The Final Countdown – 7/31/23 – Not So Fast: Hungarian Parliament Delays Sweden’s NATO Membership
DMZ America Podcast #110: Hunter Biden Plea Deal Meltdown, Fed Reserve Rate Increase, Kevin Spacey Cleared
Syndicated Editorial Cartoonists Ted Rall, (from the left) and Scott Stantis (from the right) unpack the many layers from the week’s top stories.
First up, the Hunter Biden plea deal. The judge said it was unconstitutional and the defense wanted it to provide a blanket get-out-of-jail card. Why it fell apart and how it reflects the media’s disdain for anything that may conflict with its prevailing narrative. Ted and Scott take a rhetorical side trip to explore other issues they have been way in front of, and examine why the mainstream media takes so long to catch up to common sense.
Next up, the Federal Reserve Board continues to raise interest rates although it seems from this healthy economy that they shouldn’t. Scott argues against government overreach while Ted makes the case for deeper regulation of the American economy.
Lastly, Kevin Spacey, one of the best actors of his generation, has been found not guilty of sexual malfeasance in yet another trial. Ted and Scott discuss whether he should be welcomed back to the entertainment business.
Watch the Video Version of the DMZ America Podcast:
The Final Countdown – 7/27/23 – U.S. Interest Rate Rises to Highest Level in 22 Years as Recession Looms
The Final Countdown – 7/26/23 – Judge Strikes Down Biden’s Controversial Asylum Policy
Democrats Are Beating Up RFK Jr. Over Vaccines. Why THIS Issue?
Within the Democratic Party, however, a quirky single issue has become the focus of opposition to primary challenger Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: his reputation as an anti-vaxxer.
For the purpose of this discussion, let’s set aside the question of whether or not the criticism is accurate. RFK Jr. denies being against vaccinations in general, says he is up-to-date on all vaccinations except for COVID-19, and claims the real problem is big pharma, not vaccines. Let’s also ignore the obvious motivation of Democrats’ attacks: Kennedy had the temerity to challenge Biden in the primaries, and opened strong with nearly 20% of the Democratic vote.
But why is this the anti-RFK Democrats’ single issue? Why are they single-mindedly raging over the fact that he’s (assuming for the sake of argument that it’s true) anti-vax?
The coverage has been brutal and sharply focused. “Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” an NBC profile of the candidate begins, “is a conspiracy theorist running for president as a Democrat.”
“Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist and scion of one of the country’s most famous political families, is running for president,” the Associated Press opened its wire-service piece announcing his 2024 bid.
Kennedy is so irredeemably anti-vax, his critics say, that he’s not even worth engaging with. “There is no point in debating RFK Jr. on vaccines,” Time magazine wrote. “He’s wrong and has been proven so many times before.”
The playing field of this particular political battle is, well, weird.
First, the issue is moot. Even assuming that RFK is objectively a wacky anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who was wrong about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine (for the record, I’ve received eight COVID shots and plan to get a ninth), the pandemic is over. The Biden Administration has officially declared the end of the coronavirus emergency. If RFK was wrong, the key word here is “was.” The controversy concerns what has now become, due to the passage of time, a non-issue. Would you vote against someone due to their (incorrect) position on the Franco-Prussian War?
If the underlying issue is that RFK subscribes to conspiracy theories, it’s going to be hard to find other politicians to support. President Biden, for example, believed that “Saddam’s program relative to weapons of mass destruction” was an actual real thing, even though the director of the CIA told him there was no evidence whatsoever at the time. Hillary Clinton said “there’s no doubt in my mind” that Russia cheated her out of the 2016 election; Russiagate, we all knew then and we all know now, was a fever dream born of self-delusion. Whatever you think of RFK’s statements about vaccines, the consequences of the Iraq WMD and Russiagate conspiracy theories were over a million people killed and recklessly risking World War III.
Perhaps RFK’s real sin is science denialism. If so, there isn’t a single American politician you can support with the possible exception of Al Gore, if he’s still interested in the job. Climate science is clear; the Earth is heating rapidly and the future of humanity hangs in the balance in the immediate future. Democrats and Republicans alike are talking about jobs, the economy, censoring books, how the history of slavery should be taught, whether children should become transgender, anything but the most pressing important problem facing Americans and their fellow humans around the globe.
It doesn’t get any more denialist than these distractions.
I’m not inherently opposed to the idea of single-issue voting. I would never vote for anyone who supported the invasion of Iraq. I would never vote for anyone who wants to keep Guantánamo open or is willing to tolerate it. I would never vote for anyone who doesn’t support a $20-an-hour minimum wage. My vote only goes to someone who would stop persecuting Julian Assange. These are, to me, basic moral filters that tell me who someone is.
I would also not vote for someone who, like RFK Jr., pledges “unconditional support” to Israel, or any other country. Unconditional support for another nation is stupid. If a U.S. ally decides to pick a fight, I want the right to decide whether or not to get involved.
RFK Jr. has stumbled into lifestyle identitarianism, a retrograde political tendency motivated not by identification with or support for a minority group or other historically marginalized population, but tribal symbolism. For a certain kind of lifestyle liberal in San Francisco or Manhattan, being pro-vax makes a statement: you are, or might be, One of Us. You shop at Target, not Walmart. You follow tennis, not NASCAR. You watch “Barbie”—ironically. RFK Jr. elicits ire because, as a Kennedy and thus heir to the last liberal dynasty, he has committed the ultimate heresy: class treason. Here, class is not (strictly) about money. Cultural signifiers—your electric car, your vacation to Europe, your take on vaccines—determine who’s out with the in crowd.
Extracting himself from this pit won’t be easy.
(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)
The Final Countdown – 7/25/23 – Barbenheimer Opens Big as Hollywood Strikes Rage
The show kicks off with Steve Gill, attorney and CEO of Gill Media to discuss a possible Trump indictment.