In Arthur Miller’s timeless Death Of A Salesman, Willy Loman suffers within the throes of dementia as his life circles the bottom of the bowl. Loman can no longer escape accountability for character flaws responsible for the wreckage of his most important relationships. Despite trying to delude a brighter picture, Willy faces his own failure, as well as his adult sons’ dysfunction, and is shattered by the reckoning. The moral is clear: the world’s agenda is often merciless, and not subject to alteration by the spin we attempt to apply… no matter how often we try to do so. Reality is not the servant of our imaginations, it’s consequences foist themselves on us whether or not we wish away their coming.
Since we suffer our own Willy Loman in the White House, constantly spinning his own facts in a relentless attempt to sell America an image of his Presidency that has little to do with reality, it’s prudent to remind ourselves that normalizing the crisis such fantasy represents is ruinous to our future prospects. Trump fatigue simply means accepting his lies because we’re tired of hearing them. Yea, whatever you say pop, time for bed.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi came out yesterday and announced impeaching Trump was not an option she favored. “He’s not worth it,” said Pelosi, admitting the exercise would be more trouble than certain Senate aquittal could justify, unless startling new revelations come forward. Say what?! Almost 10,000 public lies in two years, including denying payoffs to a porn star mistress weeks before he was elected, repeated assurances he never would have picked his first Attorney General if he knew he wouldn’t obstruct justice for him, and certainty he lied about knowing his son met with a Russian agent claiming to be in possession of damaging intel on Hillary Clinton, just for starters, isn’t a basis for seriously considering impeachment? What is, then? My Lord.
Pelosi suggests we just wash Trump away in an electoral landslide instead. Sadly, that’s easier mused than done. The Speaker seems to have her own issues with wishing the best in an addled fog. After all, Trump got elected in 2016 after literally trying to lose. Now he already has $100 million in the bank and all the benefits incumbency bestows. Moreover, unhinged campaign rallies are the one Presidential activity he actually likes to do. After haphazard wack-a-mole forays in 2016, Trump/Pence 2020 is sure to have its act much tighter.
Trump 2020 is promising the most comprehensive data mining operation ever to uncover hidden coal within the GOP base to be shined into general election votes. And the message? Nothing new. Trump spinners call it “raw populism” put forward in “frank terms” by the “combative” President. Calling Trump “combative” is like calling a nuclear bomb “disruptive.” The GOP has normalized the worst civic crisis in our history and plans a campaign designed simply to further deaden the senses of the rest of America.
Brad Pascale, Trump 2020’s Campaign Manager, claims “on every metric” the new operation outpaces 2016 “by many multiples.” The campaign will proceed on three levels. First, uncover new votes from wretched core acolytes heretofore unwilling to get out of the recliner in swing states like Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida and Michigan. Of course, the subtext to any GOP voter outreach is the compliment of parallel voter suppression efforts at the state level. In Florida, Trumpie Governor Ron DeSantis continues his best efforts to undo the will of 2/3 of the state’s electorate and slow roll voter rights for convicted felons. In Wisconsin some of the harshest voter ID standards will couple with strategically underserving various polling stations to help stack the deck.
Next will certainly be an unhinged effort to fully smear whoever emerges from the crowded Democratic primary field. Everything possible will be thrown at the wall to see what sticks. Fox/AM will go full 24/7 to create and push this cycle’s email server and Bhengazi sagas. Frank Luntz will have his focus groups busy explaining why whatever peccadillo is selected threatens the future of US sovereignty. Like the cyborg miscreants of The Terminator, Fox’s prime time lineup simply will not stop until Trump’s opponent is rebranded as the enemy of all that is white Christian.
Finally, there will be Trump himself. Fully disenchanted with the work required by the job he will again seek, the President is in a rabid lather to get Air Force One in the air and hit the campaign trail. The CPAC monstrosity clarified “off script” is the only way Trump plans to go in 2020. It’s going to be full Jim Morrison day in and day out until November. How awful it will get is anybody’s guess… nothing will surprise. But it’s a sure bet everybody but those who actually want to hear his drivel will emphatically tune him out. That could very well mean talk will instead focus on Joe Biden as a retread, or Amy Klobuchar’s treatment of staff, Bernie’s commie leanings…. anything but the inferno blazing right in front of us.
Trump and his co-conspirators want nothing more than Election 2020 to become part of just another horse race paradigm. Hey, some colts act up in the gate, what can you do? Let’s get down to some serious polling and focus on the numbers. Newsflash! This is not a normal situation! Already Trump and his Capitol Hill minions are equating Mueller’s work and any other efforts to hold his corruption to account as efforts to rig 2020 results. Delegitimating the process will surely become a big part of his stump ugliness. Perhaps the most important quality we can look for in a Democratic standardbearer is a determination to circle the White House with troops loyal to democracy and show the ex-POTUS off the White House grounds after his inevitable refusal to accept results he doesn’t like.
Talk to anyone raised in a dysfunctional household and you’re likely to hear at some point they simply went numb and got tired of the conflict, acceding to the madness they couldn’t escape. Happy and Biff Loman ever humored Willy’s delusions to avoid his rage and rancor. Two years into the worst Administration ever given White House keys, the most important portion of American voters and politicians appear affected by a similar level of skittishness. Trump isn’t just the elephant in the room, he’s the Ebola on the fork at our national place setting. Ignoring his hourly menace in favor of tailoring messages that “reassure” the voters who foisted him on us in the first place their concerns “won’t be ignored” plays right into his grubby little hands. It also clarifies one thing above all else: the GOP and its base aren’t the only ones given to normalizing a pestilence far more concerned with surviving its own seditious corruption than any service to the national interest. Pretending otherwise, like his boss Howard’s refusal to keep Willy on as the firm’s “New England man,” won’t set our table. BC