Saving America by Nancy OhanianIf you watch right-wing media (or pay attention to Republican Party fake pollsters like Trafalgar or Rasmussen), you'd think Trump is tightening up the gap between himself and Biden. That isn't what I'm seeing in the legitimate polls. aYesterday a new one, from YouGov, commissioned by Yahoo News, was released showing Biden leads 49-39% among registered voters. "Trump," wrote Yahoo's Andrew Romano, "has fallen further behind Joe Biden following bombshell reports that the president knowingly misled Americans about the dangers of COVID-19 and privately disparaged dead U.S. soldiers as 'suckers' and 'losers.' The results suggest that a week of unrelenting and unflattering revelations about Trump-- from the Atlantic report on his alleged contempt for Americans wounded or killed in war (which appeared on Sept. 3) to Bob Woodward’s recordings of Trump admitting he downplayed the deadliness of COVID-19 (released on Sept. 9)-- has damaged the president’s standing with voters."An incredible 15% of those who voted for Trump in 2016 say the Woodward news has changed their mind about Trump’s handling of the pandemic and 15% of voters overall said that the revelations from Woodward have made them less likely to vote for Trump in November. Although this is impacting former Trump voters, it is really impacting independents. 8% of 2016 Trump voters say they're voting for Biden this year.If that holds (and if it is spread more or less evenly among states)-- and it is more likely to grow than diminish-- on election day, Trump will lose the key states he needs to be reelected: Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, North Carolina, probably Georgia and Ohio and possibly even Texas.Late last week Vanity Fair published a transcript of former GOP strategist Stuart Stevens being interviewed by Joe Hagan. It's worth reading the whole transcript. In summarizing it, Hagan wrote that "Stevens described the GOP under Donald Trump as a party of cynics, stooges, racists, and obsequious enablers whose profiles in cowardice bear an uncomfortable resemblance to 1930s Germany. 'When I talk to Republican politicians, I hear Franz von Papen,' he says, referencing the German chancellor who convinced Germans that so-called radical leftists were a far greater threat than Adolf Hitler. 'They all know that Trump is an idiot. They all know that he’s uniquely unqualified to be president. But they convinced themselves that he was a necessity... It is the combination of the anti-intellectualism, the anti-education elements of the Republican Party, and the anti-elite elements of the Republican Party, so-called, that have culminated in this toxic brew that is killing tens of thousands of Americans,' says Stevens, who recently joined the independent Never Trump organization the Lincoln Project. 'I mean, more Americans are going to die because of this combination of political beliefs than major wars. This virus [is] attacking Americans. And Donald Trump is making it a lot worse, and we all know this. But Republicans won’t even stand up to defend America.' Consequently, Stevens calls Trump a 'traitor' to his country. 'I really think he is against America,' he says, blaming the Republican Party for 'a complete collapse of responsibility that they had to defend democracy in America.'"So not just Trump... the entire Republican Party. Hagan spoke with Stevens about his 71 year old Republican father: "Help me with something here. My dad is a conservative. He voted for Trump. He said he held his nose, he hated Hillary, the common story that you hear. And in your book, you talk about how the party and its media apparatus, Fox News and other like-minded people, have turned it into tribal-like sports where you’re just going to root for your team almost no matter what. There’s a sense of like, even if they see that he’s a horrible guy and that they might have made a colossal error, they’re going to deflect and project all the blame onto the media and the 'radical left.' We’ve seen this time and again. How can we get my dad out of that?"
It’s dangerous for your dad to go outside now. Your dad’s not going to be going to a football game. It’s dangerous for him to go shopping. Donald Trump has made the world more dangerous for your father in a very tangible, real [way]. It didn’t have to be this way. It’s not this way in Canada. If your dad goes across the border to Ottawa, he’s going to be a lot safer. And it’s not genetic. It’s government. And it’s not conservative or liberal. It is the combination of the anti-intellectualism, the anti-education elements of the Republican Party, and the anti-elite elements of the Republican Party, so-called, that have culminated in this toxic brew that is killing tens of thousands of Americans. I mean, more Americans are going to die because of this combination of political beliefs than major wars. This virus [is] attacking Americans. And Donald Trump is making it a lot worse, and we all know this. But Republicans won’t even stand up to defend America.What drives me crazy about this is you take my dad-- I’m older than you, my dad fought in World War II, South Pacific, 28 island landings, and like hundreds of thousands of guys came back, never really talked about it. My uncle was grievously wounded in Europe, shot seven times, never really recovered. They took this legacy and handed it off to the current group of politicians. And the Republicans have completely squandered that. And it’s a disgrace. Courage isn’t standing up to Donald Trump to defend Americans. Courage is getting out of the boat when the guy in front of you gets shot. And they don’t have the courage to stand up to some fat, ridiculous imbecile from Queens. And it’s shameful. It should be their legacy. They are killing their neighbors to defend Donald Trump. I’m very comfortable calling Trump a traitor because I really think he is against America, what it means to be an American. I don’t think these Republican politicians-- I know a lot of them, I helped elect a lot of them, they’re good people. If you’re stranded on the side of the road with a flat tire, they’d stop and help you in a heartbeat. If they lived next door to you, they’d be a really good neighbor. They’re not mean people. But there’s something here that has been a complete collapse of responsibility that they had to defend democracy in America. And they failed....I came across the stats: of Americans 15 and under, the majority are nonwhite. So odds are looking really good they’re going to turn 18 and still be nonwhite. And what does that mean for the Republican Party? It’s a death sentence if the party doesn’t change, and the party has no desire to change.I think there’s really three parties now in America: there’s two parties in the Democratic Party and then there’s a Conservative Party and the Republican Party. I don’t think the Republican Party is going to be very relevant for a long time. I think we’re at a period when we’re going to be in for center-left government. Probably that center-left government goes too far at some point and some logically coherent, moral, and intellectually defensible center-right opposition will emerge. But it’s not going to happen with these clowns like Josh Hawley and [Ted] Cruz. These are people who have made themselves ridiculous. Nikki Haley praising Charlie Kirk. These are people that faced a moment and the moment defeated them. I can’t tell you who it will be. But you can’t negotiate with Trump.