Trump can’t stop winning, even as he loses
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American life is like being in a movie. The alternative is reality, and who wants to live in that? But man cannot bear too much unreality. The wages of delusion eventually lose their purchasing power in real life. Things fall apart like a Boeing 737 Max, or the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore after being rammed by a foreign-flagged container ship whose engine had conked out, possibly because it was running on contaminated fuel.
The bridge disaster is like an outtake from “Idiocracy.” In Mike Judge’s 2006 comedy, nothing works in America any more because no one can read the manual. Politics is mob entertainment. The government is an extension of corporate power. The President is an ex-wrestler. Everyone is obese and porn-sick. These are the jokes, folks.
Meanwhile, reality scouts its own locations and rams home a harsher symbolism. Francis Scott Key wrote the lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner,” America’s national anthem. Joe Biden, who ran in 2020 on a promise to “Build Back Better,” claimed he had crossed the bridge many times on his Amtrak commute to Washington. The bridge has, or had, no train tracks.
This presidency resembles Wyle E. Coyote, sprinting off the cliff edge. It is a Looney Tunes convention that the careering Coyote only falls to earth when he realises that there is no ground beneath him. Biden, a man who can trip over his own shadow, sustains the delusion that his feet remain on the ground by wearing anti-trip “lifestyle sneakers.” No one is falling for it.
At Biden’s fundraiser at Radio City Hall in New York last Friday, the President and his two Democratic predecessors, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, emerged from the bowels of the stage on a bridge lift, waving like holograms to the donors. This spared Biden the effort of his trademark mini-jog, and any comparisons to twinkle-toes Obama, or the rheumy and sleazy Clinton, who left office in 2000 but is still younger than Biden. This was a “grassroots” event, so ticket prices ranged from $250 (interrupt the Presidential ramblings by shouting about Gaza) to $500,000 (photo op with the three presidents, shot by Annie Leibovitz).
The three amigos batted back scripted softballs from Stephen Colbert, who has ascended from smug late-night TV host to even smugger courtier. The wags on social media dubbed Colbert a “regime comedian.” Watching it, you felt reality was not so much being massaged as pounded into submission.
The Democrats delude themselves that GDP growth on paper and a reduction in the rate of inflation equate to affordable basics in real life. This is mere wonkery. It invites the Republicans to pose as the party of reality. While Biden and the grassroots partied at Radio City, Donald Trump attended the wake of Jonathan Diller. A New York City police sergeant, Diller was murdered at a traffic stop by a career criminal. Diller leaves a widow and an infant son, and a peerless opportunity for fundraising on Trump’s private social media site, Truth Social.
It’s no surprise that Biden is behind in the polls. The surprise is that he’s not further behind. The Democrats can thank the opposition for that. The Republican base could have picked Ron DeSantis, a conventional politician with a strong legislative record. Instead, they picked Trump.
The Democrats are determined to squander that gift by using the courts to administer what they hope will be a judicial kneecapping. Their procedural expertise is in inverse proportion to their knowledge of human nature. In a nation where the underdogs are becoming a majority, the Democrats are inviting Trump to play that American icon, the underdog as top dog. They must be barking mad.
