Trump tells his followers to “go into the polls and watch very carefully.” With or without guns?
By Michael Winship for Common Dreams
Dutiful wonk that I was even then, I
came up with my list of serious, thoughtful changes not all that different from
a lot of what we’re still debating today—abolishing the Electoral College, an
end to gerrymandering, making voter registration automatic, etc.
A friend and classmate, more
sharp-witted than I, chose the satirical route instead, and to the horror of
our teacher came up with a spot-on takedown of modern government, a parody of
contemporary politics.
As I recall, her report ended with
the presidential election being determined by a mud wrestling match in Madison
Square Garden.
It made more sense and possessed
more dignity and class than the horror show that unfurled before the world
Tuesday night in what laughingly was billed as the first debate between
President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
Just minutes in, Trump turned it
into a travesty; bellowing, repeatedly interrupting and talking out of turn,
lying, pigheadedly violating the agreements carefully worked out by the
official Commission
on Presidential Debates and both campaign staffs for a proper
discussion of policy.
At a time when we’re desperate for
rational solutions, Trump was the proverbial bull in the china shop of
democracy, and when he was done there was barely a piece of porcelain left
intact.
He acted as if this was one of his
rallies, God help us, playing to our lowest animal instincts and insulting our
intelligence.
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| Trump to Proud Boys: "Stand by." |
Throughout his life and so-called
career, Trump has always insisted that rules are for suckers and don’t apply to
him—he can shoot a person on Fifth Avenue, grab a woman by her genitals, refuse
to pay his millions of debt—and that night was no exception.
By all accounts, what happened
Tuesday is what he planned all along. Maybe it satisfied his bloodthirsty,
delusional base, stewing in a toxic soup of Fox News and QAnon
conspiracies, but for most of us it was one more manifestation of the tragedy
imposed on the nation—and the world—by a megalomaniac with nary a scruple or a
scintilla of human kindness.
Behind in the polls, perhaps it was an act of desperation on his part, as some have suggested, a ploy to make Biden seem weak. If so, it backfired miserably and was just a further demonstration of why he is the worst president in the history of the United States—and we’ve had some beauts. Unfit for office, corrupt, delusional: a real triple threat. He must not receive a second term.
As many have noted, the lowest
moment—the Badwater Basin at the bottom of a
Death Valley-like rhetorical debacle—was Trump’s refusal to condemn white
supremacy and issuing what essentially was a call-to-arms to the Proud Boys,
the right-wing racist thugs who are welcomed by many Republicans, and who
frequently show up at peaceful protests to taunt, incite and bust some heads.
Trump’s people deny it’s what he
meant but the fringe group already has made his
“Stand Back and Stand By” a new battle cry.
Further, when moderator Chris
Wallace asked Trump if he would “urge your supporters to stay calm during
this extended period [of ballot-counting], not to engage in any civil unrest,”
Trump refused and said, “I’m urging my supporters to go into the polls and
watch very carefully because that’s what has to happen. I am urging them to do
it.”
With that kind of encouragement,
harassment on Election Day could make the 2000 Brooks Brothers riot look like a tea
dance. Advice: Don’t watch that movie The
Purge or any of its sequels between now and the resolution
of this election; it's a little too close to the bone right now.
Washington Post national correspondent Philip Bump writes, “What Trump is
obviously encouraging is to poll watching what armed militias are to police:
self-appointed experts whose priority is less keeping order than confronting
perceived enemies.
It wasn’t the first time that Trump
had similarly called on his supporters to serve in that capacity, but it was
probably the call that had the largest audience.” Very scary stuff.
In the end, few, if any, minds were
changed Tuesday night: as Republican analyst Mike Murphy succinctly said
post-debate on MSNBC, “Men are split on Trump and women hate him.”
Those against him may have been
galvanized by the president’s rants to work even harder to get out the
vote, an excellent thing, but others may have been so turned off by this
Hindenburg explosion of an evening that they won’t cast a ballot at all.
What does this one-man riot tell
them about our political system? And as for the next Biden-Trump debates, who’s
going to want to watch? I live in Manhattan; if I want that kind of twisted
human turbulence, I can walk around my block a couple of times and get it out
of my system.
For me, perhaps one of the defining
moments came when Trump had launched into another incoherent harangue about
Biden’s son Hunter and then falsely claimed that his own children had “lost a
fortune… by coming down and helping us with governance.”
Biden replied—addressing the camera in
the way that was his safe haven several times during this melee—“This is not
about my family or his family. It's about your family, the American people…
You, the American people, it's about you. That's what we're talking about
here.”
Would that it was so. Right now at
least, our American family is dysfunctional, led by a power mad liar. And
almost half our relations have lost their ever-loving collective minds.
Bring on my high school pal’s mud
wrestling idea; it’s nowhere near as filthy or frightening as this national
meltdown.
Michael Winship is the
Schumann Senior Writing Fellow for Common Dreams. Previously, he was the Emmy
Award-winning senior writer for Moyers
& Company and BillMoyers.com, a past senior writing fellow at
the policy and advocacy group Demos, and former president of the Writers Guild
of America East. Follow him on Twitter: @MichaelWinship
