The Midterm Elections Are a Referendum on Donald Trump

[riversedge]

November 5, 2018 Issue

The Midterm Elections Are a Referendum on Donald Trump

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/05/the-midterm-elections-are-a-referendum-on-donald-trump
Explosive devices were sent to prominent critics of the President at a moment of national division—one generated by the President himself.

By David Remnick


https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5bd395b9daf42d0501bd4c7d/master/w_649,c_limit/181105_r33160illuweb.jpg
Illustration by João Fazenda

What is there left to know about Donald Trump? Robert Mueller, various state officials, and a legion of reporters around the country are dedicated to penetrating any stubborn mysteries that still linger, yet who can argue that there is insufficient evidence to make a rational judgment about the character of the man, the nature of his Presidency, and the climate he has done so much to create and befoul?

Last week, with the midterm elections fast approaching, law-enforcement agents pored over an accumulating pile of crude explosive devices that had been sent to some of the President’s most prominent critics: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Eric Holder, Maxine Waters, George Soros, Robert De Niro, Tom Steyer, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and, at the CNN offices in New York, John Brennan and James Clapper. A tinfoil-hat brigade of reactionaries immediately insisted that the cunning “Democrat Party” had run a “false flag” plot designed to boost its chances on Election Day. On Friday, near Fort Lauderdale, F.B.I. officials arrested a suspect named Cesar Altieri Sayoc, a man in his mid-fifties with an extensive criminal record. Officials also seized the suspect’s van, which was plastered with pro-Trump stickers, as well as one that read “CNN Sucks” and another that had a picture of Hillary Clinton in the crosshairs of a gun.

Law enforcement will continue to investigate the incident in the days ahead. But what’s already clear is that it occurred at a moment of tragic division and conspiracy-mongering generated, foremost and daily, by the President of the United States. The right has no monopoly on insult and incivility—the online universe can be a sewer of spite—but there is no real equivalence: no modern President has adopted and weaponized such malevolent rhetoric as a lingua franca.

Trump is a masterful demagogue of the entertainment age. His instruments are resentment, sarcasm, unbounded insult, casual mendacity, and the swaggering assertion of dominance. From his desk in the Oval Office, on Twitter, and at political rallies across the country, he spews poison into the atmosphere. Trump is an agent of climate change, an unceasing generator of toxic gas that raises the national temperature.



.........................................The G.O.P. is now Ted Cruz writ large, a political party that has debased itself in the image of its standard-bearer.


The midterm elections are being held in an atmosphere of immense national stress. It could only be so when the singular actor in the drama is Donald Trump, who thrives on the idea that American life is a daily cliffhanger, in which the hero bravely sets out to deepen the divide between his supporters and everyone else, to dismantle international agreements and alliances, and to protect corporate interests over the interests of working people and the natural world. There are, unquestionably, countless local and regional issues being debated, but, above all, this election is a referendum on Trump, a contest between his base and those who feel that it is in the national interest to establish at least some brake—a new majority in the House of Representatives, a new crop of governors and state legislators—to slow his disintegration of American life and his despoilment of the national spirit. Two years ago, the prospect of a Trump Presidency represented an emergency. Tens of millions of voters found a reason to stay home. This year, the polls are tight. The stakes cannot be overstated. ?

[vlyons]

1. "done so much to create and befoul"

"Befoul" is the operative word here. Make no mistake, the vile, vulgar, degenerate in the WH befouls everything and everyone he touches. and he doesn't care! He is indifferent to the hatred he spews and the damage he inflicts in the weak, deluded minds of others. He tears everything down, so as seem in his own mind to be better, greater in comparison. New chaos every day to churn up and maintain confusion in the minds of his followers. His perpetual rallies are his personal butt show, where he spews vomit out his mouth and sets it up on a velvet pillow for his followers to admire with awe.

Many many people fear that he will foment a military junta take-over, or start a war, or drop an atomic bomb. There is nothing reassuring about Trump. He is a criminal at heart and in deed. He needs to be removed.

[dalton99a]

2. There is no redeeming value in him.