Wow! McConnell’s Dud Senate, Trump Plays Samson, Losing GOP Senate candidates, Infamy at NRA, Liberty U. Scandal, GA QAnon Conspiracy winner, FL Sheriff exiles masks

It’s getting so the Democrats won’t have to leave their basements to be successful campaigners. Or offer more than decent-sounding promises that simply acknowledge transparent problems and challenges. Many national Dems have only to pay attention, look rational and act like educated adults. The entire rightwing brigade of wingnuts is stumbling backwards, in a dramatic, ragged retreat. Gosh, does the right really think racism, white supremacy, low billionaire taxes, reckless deregulation, and gross negligence on the worst pandemic in a century define a winning strategy? Never in our history have so many partisans shot themselves in so many personal appendages in such a short time.

The handwriting isn’t only on that mythic wall, but broadcast every day by hellacious headlines that Dems couldn’t buy for five billion bucks. You don’t even need my nuanced analysis to get the blatant messages: the rightwing house of cards, a featherweight propaganda cartel on good days, is having a bad week, no, a bad month, no, a bad season. And the Fall campaign and November election (and full confirmation of reality) still loom on the horizon. The times they are a-changing – and fast.

The pandemic rightly exposed the dead-end void of rightwing brainpower and compassion – let alone high school biology and simple infection patterns –  crowned by the smug, malicious Loony-in-Chief. All Biden-Harris have to do is honor basic logic, represent the majority, and smile a lot – all the while Trump takes the stage only to eviscerate his own image, credibility and electability. Have we ever seen such a party clown car crashing into one wall after another, and learning nothing, getting repeatedly staggered by its own stupidity?

Okay, not every Republican. The ex-GOP-packed Lincoln Project, pumping out scathing ads dripping with sharp edges, is demolishing Trump, Trump politics and Trump suckers. Never-Trumpers like ex-Ohio governor John Kasich is not only declaring for Biden but will do so at the Democratic National Convention. That’s right, that rational, moderate conservative Kasich from Ohio, hardly a Democrat. Talking to CNN’s Don Lemon, Kasich was fed up: “I’ve had enough of this. I’ve had enough of the division and everything else, and not getting anything done . . . I’m not going to be for Trump and not lend my support to somebody [who] doesn’t make sense for me this time around.” There will be more non-Democrats who leave the sinking ship, especially when being glued to Trump’s tail is a guarantee ticket to permanent disgrace.

Look at the befuddled Mitch McConnell, whose malfeasance exiled "his" Senate from the pandemic bailout decision. And more personally, catch this charming Wash Post headline, An economic crisis in Kentucky has workers, businesses furious with McConnell. Just google “kills Republican voters” and up pops this compassionate headline, Trump And Southern Governors Team Up To Kill Republican Voters. Or this one from the Guardian: Trump is killing his own supporters – even White House insiders know it. Or this one, older but still a goody: Republican Says Trump Is Committing Political Suicide. Or this recent whopper from the Post: White House acknowledges there is less jobless aid than Trump first said. How marvelous are such explicit revelations from allegedly fake-news artists!

With such whoopee headlines, who needs to study the articles to get the overall drift? Drift? More like a tsunami of bad news that feeds on itself, driving ever more desperate nonsense. Remember those half dozen vulnerable Senate Republicans up for election, only half of whom who must lose to reverse Senate control? Behold this from Common Dreams: Republican Senators Commit Political Suicide by Holding Up Stimulus in Election Year. And just to pour it on, read the New Yorker: Trump’s Unprecedented Attacks on Our Public-Health System, with this main sentence, “Trump’s denialism and hostility toward public-health officials has greatly increased America’s share of suffering and death.” Just the perfect messaging any president up for re-election in a few months dreams about – well, when having nightmares!

And the fallout reaches way beyond the big boys and big issues. How about the end of the ultimate rightwing icon, now in crash and burn mode? From the Wash Post this week, reporting on a NY DA’s indictment? The NRA is doomed. It has only itself to blame,” with this subhead, “The warning signs of the group’s collapse were there before New York’s lawsuit.”

And speaking of desperation, this shocker from Politico: The Wedge Issue That’s Dividing Trumpworld, subheaded, “Social conservatives want the president to embrace anti-transgender issues to reverse his sagging poll numbers. Some Trump advisers think it’s political suicide.” Further, who thinks tie-ins to a truly deranged conspiracy, QAnon, will help national Republicans, typified by this morning's headline, QAnon supporter, with Georgia primary victory, is poised to bring far-right conspiracy theory to Congress? Or this gung ho libertarian, pro-individual rights whopper, ‘This is no longer a debate’: Florida sheriff bans deputies, visitors from wearing masks. Think Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods is a rightwinger or a progressive?

Can’t buy me love

And Trump won’t get love or ballast from other angry Republicans who could cross over. MD Gov. Larry Hogan? NV’s former governor Brian Sandoval or fierce Never Trumper Bill Kristol, along with "rebels" like Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), former senators Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee, former Florida congressman David Jolly and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker. Such Republicans don’t have to endorse Biden, just refuse support for the worst president in our history, a title that's reinforced with scary consistency with every Tweet. 

This is not a hard argument to make – and all evidence to the contrary is notable by its absence. For months and months, Trump and Rethuglicans have scored not one election-related win. Amidst this chaos, Trump even got rebuffed by “his” Supreme Court for lawlessly withholding personal tax returns (when demanded by a legitimate prosecutor) and maliciously going after DACA (which he can’t ban).

I found all these headlines in an hour. And every day Trump the “Constitutional vandal,” in ex-McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt's terms, tries to “burn everything down to win the presidency a second time,” more voters will turn away. The game is over, and the entire reactionary brew of losers is toast. Every time Trump calls a smarter, more experienced woman opponent “nasty” (the first thing out his mouth when assaulting Kamala Harris), his vandalism will rebound on himself and his party. The bottom line: Trump politics are in shambles, whatever he and lackeys try boomerang, and why should anything change in the next five months? Except perhaps get worse for incumbents. My only nagging question, "why in hell did it take so long"?