Trump, His Own Worst Enemy

            When it comes to national politics, we seem to be living in two different universes revolving around the singular figure of Donald Trump.

            The left sees the president as the source of all evil. The El Paso massacre gave the Democrat presidential hopefuls and their media sycophants all the ammunition they could possibly want. It was no longer enough to call Trump a racist or a Nazi and a fascist; he was now the leader of the white supremacists. The president’s speech writer might as well have written the killer’s Manifesto…Trump probably wished it to happen…the killer was acting out Trump’s wishes in targeting Mexicans. No accusation was too extreme, too vile, too obscene.

            Trump’s acolytes on the right cried foul or changed the subject. Some on Fox News ignored El Paso altogether to focus on “the greatest scandal in the history of this country,” i.e., the soft coup attempt by leaders of the FBI and the DOJ to remove the president from office. They were positively giddy at the release of classified information that confirmed the conspiracy theory they have been pushing for months.

            It was like the two sides were lobbing lethal missiles at each other to persuade the independents in the political center to come over to their side.

            Meanwhile, the man in the middle, our dear president, took to the air and to Twitter to counterpunch, as he always does, not realizing or admitting that his pugnaciousness is in large measure what provoked the war. He is a fighter who appealed to the “deplorables” in defeating Hillary Clinton, but he is also the thin-skinned egotistical leader who turned off the independents who switched to the Democrat party in 2018 and cost the Republicans the House.

            Policy proposals from Democrats on the left (Medicare for all, free tuition, open borders, etc.) in ordinary times would be a sure prescription for disaster. But as long as President Trump continues his impulsive, ill-considered, and abusive attacks on his opponents, Democrats will focus on him in the coming elections. It worked in 2018, it will again in 2020.