“Weirder and weirder”

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Polls don’t win elections. But if Donald Trump’s very small lead over President Biden was held up as supposed proof that Trump was on track to win, then it’s a whole different story now that VP Kamala Harris has a small lead over Trump and a historic level of momentum.

So what happens if Harris keeps pulling further ahead down the stretch? My guess is that the Trump cult will go out not with a bang, but with a whimper. These are people who don’t like how their lives have turned out. Trump has convinced them that their own failures are some other group of people’s fault, and he’s allowed them to believe that they’re the real winners. That delusion is rapidly coming up against reality.

Monty Python legend John Cleese tweeted this about where things are headed: “I confidently forecast that Trump and his followers will get weirder and weirder the more that they panic. And panic they should, because what’s happening is not the end of the world. It’s the end of their world.”

That sums it up well. Trump cultists have equated their own sense of self worth with their worship of Trump. As long as they’re able to stick to the belief that he (and therefore they) will come out on top in the end, they get to keep their delusion about being the real winners. But as Trump weirdly and feebly limps down the homestretch, his weird and feeble cult is likely to become even more weird and feeble as they try to convince themselves that it isn’t happening.

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