Coop Scoop: The Apocalypse Postponed
Trump defies all counsel and declares a third run
November 16, 2022
By Marc Cooper
There was Donald J. Trump in all of his sweating, oversized 275 pounds of glory, squinting and gesticulating over a South Florida podium Tuesday night, announcing his third run for the presidency – though it might be more accurate to say he was warning us about his coming 2024 candidacy.
The speech was unimpressive for a presidential candidate, mostly a rambling, disjointed rerun of his original Mexican Invasion rant and his dark inaugural address, American Carnage, mixed in with the usual paranoia about “Chinaw.” He took the first 20 minutes to describe in delicate and heavily manufactured detail about how he alone briefly made America Paradise on Earth, only to see it come crashing down overnight as soon as the “radical Left Democrats” took over. He even claimed he held inflation down to 1 percent, a bald faced lie and in any case, as Joe Biden will tell you, presidents really can’t do much about price hikes. Remarkable was the very low energy projected by a uniformly glum Donald Trump.
He made short reference to the election shellacking his MAGA team got last week but he made sure to say any disappointments (if there were any!) were not his fault or any individual’s fault. Instead, in one of the most absurd and self-contradictory statements ever made, he blamed the American voters who, he claimed, had not yet fully experienced the suffering foisted on them, the American voters– though he predicted they soon will. Go figure that one out.
A couple hundred dolled up Little Piggies, squeezed into a ballroom in the gilded toilet of Mar-A-Lago excitedly ate up the speech, as did Sean Hannity who anchored it on Fox along with a couple of MAGAites, including con man and former Alabama Governor Huckabee who wildly predicted that “if he keeps it up like that, he’s gonna be impossible to beat.”
Oh yeah. Sure. Just look where he’s at. Trump is under the loupe in three major criminal investigations and he is likely to be indicted at any moment. He is currently refusing to recognize or comply with a congressional subpoena from the Jan6 Committee. He was exposed a few days ago in the New York Times for having illegally ordered the IRS audits of former rivals. His favorability rating is in the mid-30’s.
His work putting together a team of candidates that could engineer a victory for the loser in 2024 crashed and burned when American voters said Halt! Every single Trump-endorsed election denier running for a top post in 5 swing states, got punched out by the voters. Even in states like Nevada and Arizona with their conservative DNA. He has led the Republican Party into a political hellscape, turning in the worst midterm performance in 60 or 90 years depending on how you do the math. The midterms will have expanded, not destroyed the Senate Democratic majority (assuming Walker will go down in defeat in December). The razor thin Dem House majority looks to be replaced by a similarly thin GOP majority, not even enough to produce a stable governing majority. Democrats are licking their chops at peeling off just 3 or 4 or 5 Republican House members who will vote alongside them on issues like codification of marriage equality.
As I write, convulsions have ripped through the Republican congressional delegations as even Mitch McConnell found a MAGA interloper trying to undo him as party leader in the senate. And the loathsome and hapless Kevin McCarthy angling like mad so he can finally become Speaker of the House (and Marjorie Taylor Greene’s little bitch).
Didn’t matter that so many electeds in his party pleaded with Donny not to announce tonight. Unlike The Boss, they know very well that he was, indeed, responsible for much of their losses. Simply put, about 2/3 of the population can’t stand him any longer. Made no difference that Ron Desantis is now polling better than Trump in 2024 matchups. either.
Trump kicked off his campaign early, only 150 hours after his party’s crushing electoral defeat, because he feels the DOJ and other investigators breathing down his neck. And he wrongly believes that being a presidential candidate will afford some sort of protection. He also jumped the gun in the hope that he can freeze the Republican field and dissuade any rivals from entering the race. And that might not work either. There are too many other in the party anxious to replace him – if they can do so without confronting him.
In any case, we owe a dose of gratitude to Trump. We should thank him for waiting only a week after the elections to remind us that while the Apocalypse has been averted, it might still offer a future threat. There was much to celebrate, unexpectedly, in the midterm returns and I, for one, believe its most important aspect has been to immediately stop the forward motion of MAGGATS organizing in public, to short circuit any disfavorable 2024 election results by having GOP Secretaries of State, Governors, and Republican legislatures over-riding the voters. That conspiracy has been busted open by the voters who cancelled the election deniers supported by Trump.
But just as certain, please comprehend that the same completely discredited Donald J. Trump remains the absolute undisputed leader of the Republican Party – an organization committed to the seizure of power by any means necessary. And unless something truly unforeseen happens, Donald J. Trump will be the 2024 candidate of the Republican Party. Also understand that there are tens of millions of Americans still either in his thrall, or worse, are now more radical than he is.
Here’s the conundrum for Republicans (and to some degree for all of us): A majority of Republicans believe they can’t win much without Trump. And they increasingly see their wins will be quite limited with Trump. It’s dangerous to make political forecasts two years out, but it seems impossible now that Trump could win a national general election unless the Democrats ran someone like Charlie Manson against him.
It’s going to be an amusing year watching the war inside the Republican Party and watching the way their congressional delegation behaves as re-energized Democrats confront them with legislation regarding abortion, DACA, health care and other core Dem issues.
And precisely because it is foolish to make such long term predictions, I am wondering how many Democrats and others on the center-Left will be undertaking efforts to protect and guard and extend democracy and democratic rights, including voting rights as we coast into 2024? Will Democrats repeat the patterns we have seen when Democratic presidents get elected and the rest of the party, including the grass roots, promptly go into hibernation? I’m hoping not.
It’s not just the Dems who dodged a bullet last week. We all did. But our job is far, far from over.
HOW DID THE MEDIA GET IT SO WRONG?
Let’s first acknowledge that it was, in fact, a general FAIL when it came to the media and the election predictions. There’s no lack of theories about what ails the American political media, and I have on occasion indulged them myself. But this time around I want to float a guess as to why things were so far off. Yes, there is bias, and institutional prejudice in the media. Isn’t that always the explanation by the Left for its failures. I think in this case the answer is much simpler and can be reduced to one word: Laziness.
As a reporter who has covered American politics for more than 40 years, I have been to umpteen election events, speeches, straw polls, party conferences, presidential conventions and similar events. I can’t tell you the number of times I have been backstage, or penned up in a press room with dozens of other campaign reporters when the dominant conversation is always the same: What are you hearing? Anything new? And so on.
Reporters nervously checking with each other to make sure they have not missed anything, or more important, checking to see if anybody is daring to break whatever the Conventional Wisdom is at the moment. I’m not saying there aren’t great campaign reporters out there, because there are many. But there are just as many and more who spend more time in the field talking to other reporters rather than The People. And that is why, some weeks before any election there is always a Dominant Narrative whose broad outlines gain total dominance. Often there is a secondary opposite narrative but it is always a reverse mirror of the primary.
Now, consider the role of TV pundits who arguably have the greatest public influence. Pundits are almost never in “the field.” They hang out in their TV or university offices far from the fray. And TV pundits must always be instantly ready with a smart sounding answer to any and every question thrown at them, usually by anchors who have quite a pinched knowledge of politics. One answer you will never, ever hear from a TV pundit is a simple “I don’t know.” Imagine the horror of such an occurrence on live TV.
So where do the pundits get their info? Well, they are not getting any from voters who are usually hundreds or thousands of miles away from the action. Some, a few , have real lived experience that greatly informs and enriches their views (I’m thinking of Steve Schmidt and Lawrence O’Donnell types). Most do not. So in between TV appearances, they are on the phone, usually chatting up one of their own news organization’ field reporters – who, of course, promptly feeds them the Conventional Wisdom. Or they are reading (and memorizing) the CW they get from MSM newspapers and their own field reporters.
Subscribed
I don’t do any TV or radio punditry any more. But I will cop to the same syndrome. On most occasions I had not secret info. Just my opinions which were sometimes right and sometimes wrong. The point is, if you are a pundit you absolutely need to have a strong opinion and the safest of those are always the conventional wisdom – nobody wants to be wrong in public.
For this election, the Dominant Narrative wrote itself. A president at barely 40% favorability. Record inflation. The heavy history of midterms where a loss of 40 House seats raises no eyebrows. And the presence of a seething, restless “populist” (neo-fascist) social movement intent on regaining power. Knowing nothing else, hell, a Red Wave sounded about right. If I had been interviewed a week before the vote, I probably would have said the same. I pretty much did.
The good news is that we all won a very needed reprieve. Let’s make the most of it and we do that by always hewing as closely as we can to understanding reality as it is, not as we’d like it to be.
Stay tuned and please subscribe. The changes I announced last month to Coop Scoop will soon take effect. And we will be in good shape to cover these crucial next two years. And a preview of my next issue: A discussion of what Democrats must do in the lame duck session and in-depth look at that WA 03 congressional race, my district where Marie Perez took out pro-insurrectionist Joe Kent.
The Coop Scoop by Marc Cooper is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Paid subscribers will start benefitting from additional content. ++
I do want to make a pointed plea today asking you to donate, subscribe or give a gift subscription. The best way to do support the Coop Scoop is to sign up at Patreon and become a sustainer for as little as $4 a month.
You can also subscribe directly to Coop Scoop using the link below.
If you prefer you can make a donation via Paypal and any contribution will be considered a subscription.