Donald Trump just admitted he’ll have to cave on the Post Office

| 9:00 pm EDT August 13, 2020
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Donald Trump knows full well that he can’t just break the Post Office and leave it broken through Election Day. By that time, even his own supporters will be demanding to know why their prescriptions and Social Security checks didn’t show up on time. For that matter, plenty of Republicans will be looking to vote by mail in the pandemic.

Trump is simply trying to do two things. First, he’s trying to damage the Post Office’s reputation as throughly as he can, during whatever brief window of time he can get away with it. If he can bait the Resistance into running around telling everyone that Trump has killed voting by mail, then Trump will have succeeded in his gambit, even if the Post Office is back to full functionality by Election Day. After all, when you tell people that voting by mail isn’t a safe option, what a lot of them will hear is “Don’t bother to vote.”

Trump’s second goal here is to hold the Post Office hostage as a bargaining chip in his ongoing economic relief negotiations with Congress. If this wasn’t already clear to you, Trump flat out admitted it during today’s press conference when he admitted that if House Democrats want the Post Office fixed, they’ll have to negotiate for it. Trump figures he can get concessions in return from House Democrats in exchange for the Post Office being fixed.

So yeah, we have to keep fighting Trump on the Post Office. The more we influence public opinion on this, the less Trump will be able to get in return from Congress when he caves on the Post Office. It’s simply how politics and negotiations work. But if you’re running around telling everyone who will listen that Trump has already killed the Post Office and the election is now rigged, you’re the one who’s costing Joe Biden votes.

Fatalism is always harmful to your own cause. If you want to win in politics, you have to start by understanding how leverage and negotiations work. Even Donald Trump understands he won’t be able to just magically kill the Post Office, or magically rig the election by going after the Post Office. Nothing is ever that simple. Even Trump just (stupidly) admitted that this is a mere negotiating ploy. Our job is to accurately understand this, so we can effectively fight back against him.