It would be swell if today’s existential hand ringing over the “soul of America” proved nothing more than a bad case of the presidential election year yips. We’d look back, proud that despite another grueling and malicious process of selecting a chief executive, the outcome was the outcome. The losing side would’ve staged a mature on air concession, the victors were done sipping champagne and dancing into the wee hours, and we’d all be wondering why all the blather about a new civil war.
But much as it pains to write these next words, we are not that America. Check every reliable source: The wide clefts in politics, class and values are for real. All indications are we’re on a fast track to the zero sum game once considered a hypothetical, and neither major party is about to put on the brakes.
The difference is one side is so desperate for control, fully 21% of it’s base have already signaled the only acceptable outcome has their candidate back in the White House — nearly 1 in every 4 Trump supporters. (Source: ABS/Ipsos poll, Aug. 30.)
The news from an Aug. 7 poll conducted by Johns Hopkins’ SNF Agora Institute is every bit as unnerving. Among voters who assert the 2020 election was tampered with (popularly known as“election deniers”) 65% believe the country is “very” or “somewhat” at risk for an internal war.
Progressives might find it easier to discount such worst-case-scenario findings were it not for the rock steady level of support indicated therein — a Teflon faith in Trump’s second coming despite legal woes, waco speeches and dubious choice of running mate. The fidelity to Trump is irrational, but as the events of Jan. 6th proved to the world, that loyalty can turn violent. Ignoring the numbers is just whistling past the proverbial graveyard.
Nor should progressives underestimate the impact of Trump’s penchant for grabbing “statistics” out of the ether, especially as applied to the 2020 election he nearly stole.
In a typically rambling, red-meat address given last spring in Greensboro, N.C., Trump was in classic make-believe form: “Eighty-two percent of the country understands that it was a rigged election. You can’t have a country with that. A poll came out: Eighty-two percent. But they go after the people. They don’t go after the people that rigged the election …”
None of the related research posted by the Washington Post-University of Maryland, Associated Press NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, or Monmouth University supports this, the biggest of all lies emanating from Trump and his campaign. In reality, support for the rigged-election theory peaked at 36% among all participants in the studies, and down to 68% who identified as Republican.
Trump’s capacity for lying extends well beyond the actual 2020 election results, but as the Greensboro stump speech shows, neither he nor his campaign stray far from that attack line. Confronting those claims with truths may not keep him out of office, but neither will ceding him repetitious soundbites about an “unfair” system.
As evidenced by his iron fisted hold on today’s Republican Party, the Trump campaign is where solid research goes to die. But that doesn’t mean thinking people should abandon fact-checking as a campaign strategy.
Trump’s icky and false narrative as a victim, not victimizer has served him well. Yet the Harris/Walz camp is at their best when the tables are turned, and the lies are exposed for what they are: The whims of a man with little accountability, and littler conscience.
Don Rollins is a retired Unitarian Universalist minister in Jackson, Ohio. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, October 1, 2024
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