Trump is Expecting to Lose and Conditioning His Followers for a Potential Bloodbath
A Blue Wave Could Materialize with Radicalized GOP Repulsing Voters
Donald Trump is correct that a “bloodbath” is coming—but the carnage in question will likely be his radical campaign. I’m beginning to think, counterintuitively, that Donald Trump will suffer the biggest electoral slaughter since 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson crushed Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater 61.1% to 38.5%, with LBJ winning 44 states. Goldwater only won his home state and the former Confederate bastions of South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana.
In our polarized nation, Trump won’t lose conservative states like Goldwater did. However, I predict the twice impeached, indicted former president will lose virtually every single key swing state suburb he must win to be reelected. Similarly to Goldwater, Trump is strictly running a base campaign, appealing to extremists, and shrinking the GOP tent daily.
Every single indicator spells doom for Trump and threatens to drag down Republican candidates with him. The outcome might be so catastrophic that a surprise blue wave is possible in 2024. Consider these ten key factors that narrow Trump’s reelection odds only eight months before the election:
· Trump is running against Biden’s booming economy and Biden has a record of tangible financial accomplishments.
· The U.S. is currently not involved in a major war as combatants.
· The Democrats have a huge cash advantage, which they can readily tap to define Trump and the Republican Party
· The abortion issue is an albatross around the necks of Republicans. Their vulnerability has been exacerbated by attacking IVF treatments and birth control. Threats to undermine Social Security from Trump toadies like Ben Shapiro will also diminish the GOP’s chances.
· The messaging of the Trump campaign and his congressional sycophants is growing more repellent and scarier every time he, or his surrogates, open their mouths.
· Donald Trump’s legal and financial woes will continue to distract his campaign, dominate headlines, and siphon money away from GOP candidates.
· Attacking the “woke” is backfiring on Republicans, which eliminates a key line of potent GOP talking points
· NBC News reported that it reached out to 44 former cabinet officials and found that only four would commit to backing Trump. Former Vice President Mike Pence will not endorse Trump.
· Trump’s enablers in Congress help reinforce the insanity of the Republican Party, creating a branding issue that could doom his campaign.
· Trump’s embrace of dictators, support for isolationism, disregard for NATO, penchant for political violence and lack of commitment to democracy is likely to siphon off enough traditional Republicans to do real damage to his campaign.
Biden has real weaknesses too, but they can be mitigated or defused through the Democrats’ financial advantage and shrewd messaging. Let’s examine Republican lines of attack:
Biden is too old: Yes, Biden is ancient. This would be a serious campaign issue if Biden was running against Nikki Haley. But he’s running against 77-year-old Donald Trump, who looks like he’s working out at the Waffle House. The former president often slurs his words like he’s having micro-stokes. Biden performed so well at the State of the Union that he laid waste to serious questions about his mental acuity.
Israel and Palestine: This issue is problematic with the progressive base and could cost Biden votes in the Arab American community, especially in the crucial swing state of Michigan. Nonetheless, which candidate is most likely to protect Israel’s right to self-defense, end the war in Gaza and move closer to the creation of Palestinian state?
Most thinking progressives will come to realize that Biden is a far superior choice than Trump. Biden is working every single day for an equitable solution and his reelection would give him added leverage to stand up to Israel’s odious Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing government. Biden also has strong credentials for Jewish voters to believe that he would continue to protect Israel’s national security.
Trump’s position on Gaza is that Israel must “finish the problem”, meaning that Netanyahu has a greenlight to do whatever he wants (Just like Putin in Ukraine). The president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, said the quiet part of Trump’s plan out loud this week, according to Politico:
In a March 8 event at Harvard University, Kushner, who served as a senior advisor to Trump during his term in the White House, said “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable … if people would focus on building up livelihoods.”
“It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up,” Kushner said. He then added that Israel should move Palestinian civilians into the Negev desert in the country’s southern region.
If well-meaning progressives want Palestinians forcibly moved to a desert reservation that reaches 118 degrees they can vote for Trump, stay home, or squander their vote on frivolous third-party candidates. “That will show Biden and stick it to Israel!”
When Trump Hotel Gaza opens, sometime around 2027, while the Palestinians melt in the desert sands, progressives would only have themselves to blame. I personally believe the majority will come to their senses and choose not to commit political malpractice or self-sabotage.
Immigration: Republicans had a salient issue in which to harm Democrats. Then, they foolishly decided to follow Trump’s egotistical lead and reject a comprehensive immigration bill they helped write. The GOP’s actions make them appear untrustworthy, cynical and uninterested in creating a solution, rather than letting the problem fester so they could have a campaign issue. Trump and the Republican Congress needlessly handed the Democrats all the ammunition they need to reduce the Republican lead on immigration.
Folks--ignore the polls, step back and look at the Big Picture. Trump is campaigning like he knows he’s going to lose. He expects to be defeated. If he thought he was going to win, he’d be running a different type of campaign – softening his positions, reassuring Americans he believes in Democracy and not insulting potential voting blocks.
Instead, Trump is unleashing a red meat machine designed to work his base into a fanatical frenzy and forge them into a blunt instrument of menace and mayhem. If he thought he was going to win, would he help Biden by making this a referendum on fascism versus democracy? Would he say he’d be a dictator on his first day, gratuitously use words like “bloodbath”, praise dictators and meet with Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orban?
If Trump truly thought he could return to the Oval Office would he openly question the loyalty of Jewish Americans? Would he tell African Americans that they identify with him because of his mug shot? Would he boast about his role in overturning Roe v. Wade? Would Trump continue praising Hitler? Would a man who thought he could win start his rallies by portraying the January 6 domestic terrorists as hostages and political prisoners?
It's not just Trump.
The entire GOP is bracing for defeat. Or, it has been down the right wing rabbit hole so long that it is no longer capable of seeing that Marjorie Taylor Green looks like a crackpot wearing a MAGA hat to the State of the Union, Sen. Katie Britt’s (R-AL) speech countering Biden was creepy, electing white supremacists is scary and North Carolina’s incendiary GOP gubernatorial candidate calling for a Christian Nation is alienating voters in a diverse swing state.
Maybe Donald Trump is an evil political genius who recognizes that a confluence of world events has ripened Americans to knowingly elect a fascist dictator hellbent on ending democracy and sharply curtailing human rights globally?
However, a more likely scenario is that Trump soberly looks at the last few election cycles and special elections – including the midterm GOP Red Wave that never materialized – and knows his chances of victory are improbable. He sees his deteriorating legal situation, his mounting financial obligations, and a possible prison sentence if he loses to Biden.
The only sure way out of his protracted nightmare is creating the conditions for severe civil unrest. Trump’s strategy seems to be stirring-up enough chaos, division, mistrust, confusion, hate and inflamed passions for an Insurrection that makes January 6 look like a warm-up act.
In Arizona, his cult followers are test marketing this seditious strategy by flooding meetings of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors (Phoenix). These bullying thugs are menacing and taunting non-MAGA supervisors. They are calling these public servants, of both political parties, “illegitimate” and agitating for “revolution.”
“I’m here today to put you on public notice and to inform you that you are not our elected officials,” said Michelle Klann, co-founder of a pro-Trump group, from the podium. “This is an act of insurrection. Due to all the voter fraud, you have never been formally voted in.”
Trump is deliberately using violent imagery and threatening our institutions with toxic words like “bloodbath”. His psychotic campaign is not about winning, but recruiting an army of belligerent, gun-toting yahoos to carry out his dangerous commands if he loses. Each day, they are being primed to believe the election is rigged, with Trump using the coming months to intensify the psychological conditioning of his followers so they will be mass-radicalized by Election Day.
No one sane doubts that Trump is willing to start a civil war to save his own skin. He has the “troops” to create havoc and our right-wing Supreme Court is likely to be on his side. Trump’s profane followers express “values” that are so warped that they can justify beating cops with American flagpoles, defacing the U.S. Capitol and undermining democracy while brazenly claiming to be patriots and born again Christians.
What we are witnessing isn’t a real presidential campaign. The Democratic nominee will respect the results whether he wins or loses. The Republican candidate will not. Trump is busy laying the groundwork, not for victory, but for seizing power after electoral defeat – using a perverse path, if necessary, paved with bloodshed and violence.
On Real Time with Bill Maher, actor Robert De Niro laid out the stakes. “The bottom line is, it’s Biden versus Trump. We want to live in a world that we…enjoy living in or live in a nightmare. Vote for Trump and you’ll get the nightmare. Vote for Biden and we’ll be back to normalcy.”
Even if Trump loses, we face the nightmare of a desperate, aspiring autocrat who will refuse to go easily into the night. In defeat he will be a cornered rat, terrified of facing the music. Trump will be at his most dangerous and his swan song is likely to be a nihilistic anthem of annihilation.
“The man is a total monster,” De Niro continued. “He’s such a mean, nasty, hateful person. I’d never play him as an actor because I can’t see any good in him. Nothing.”
Brace yourself: Trump is unlikely to win at the ballot box and he knows it. If one listens closely to his ugly rhetoric, it becomes alarmingly clear that this is a rolling coup, taking place in broad daylight, with Trump preparing his goons to seize power by any means necessary to save his sinking personal fortunes. The nation be damned.