This is a great, great piece by @RonBrownstein that really crystallized something for me about how the Sunbelt COVID outbreak is a demographic, electoral, rhetorical, and existential nightmare for Trump.
theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
Trump's language is the language of elite/minority resentment. That language was always part-truth (eg: the gutting of Great Lakes industry) and part-myth (eg: the immigrants are coming to kill you).
COVID can't be slipped into that narrative straitjacket.
COVID can't be slipped into that narrative straitjacket.
COVID is an elite failure, but that failure is largely Trump's own admin. Its disproportionate effect on minorities can't be bogeymanned in any convenient way to demonize non-whites. What you're left with, then, is a national crisis of epic proportions that resists Trumpification
So what does Trump do with a threat he can't easily shoehorn into his one box-of-tricks?
He basically just forces it. He goes into a COVID epicenter and says nothing except for kidding-but-not-kidding gags about testing. That, or China-flu jokes. Otherwise, he's got nothing.
He basically just forces it. He goes into a COVID epicenter and says nothing except for kidding-but-not-kidding gags about testing. That, or China-flu jokes. Otherwise, he's got nothing.
