Donald Trump’s latest bizarre meltdown gives something away
This morning Donald Trump woke up and proudly declared that he was “5 for 5!” It took a moment for everyone to figure out what he was even talking about. Was this his prison sentence? The number of Trump family members expected to be indicted? As it turned out, Trump was bragging that all five of his candidates won their elections last night. The trouble: that’s not true, and it would be meaningless even if it were true. Nonetheless, Trump went on to declare that it was a “RED WAVE!”
Four of the five elections in question were primary races, where his preferred Republican was merely running against another Republican. That’s not evidence that the GOP did well. It’s not even evidence that Trump personally did well, as he can’t take credit for having endorsed someone who was already in line to win. Further, at the time of Trump’s tweet, no winner had been declared in two of the five elections in question, because they were too close to call.
It’s difficult to tell the extent to which Donald Trump actually believes the delusion that he and the Republican Party somehow did well last night, and the extent to which he’s merely trying to convince his base not to lose hope. The real story last night was that, in the one key Republican vs Democrat race, which took place in one of the most deeply red districts in the country, the Republican candidate underperformed by thirty-six points. Even Trump felt compelled to make excuses for how poorly the GOP candidate did, tweeting late last night that it was a “very tough time of the year for voting,” whatever that’s supposed to mean.
The bottom line here is that last night was confirmation that the Democratic Blue Wave is still fully intact heading into November. When a Democrat does thirty-six points better than the previous Democrat did in that same district in 2016, that’s all you need to know. Trump tweeted that “if you listen to the Fake News Media you would think we are being clobbered.” That’s because the Republican Party is getting clobbered, and his own toxic unpopularity is the main reason for it.
