Here's why Donald Trump could possibly recapture the White House
It's not because Trump's popular but because of years of Republican work to corrupt our politics and our media make the unthinkable possible.
How is it possible that Donald Trump is still in a good position to win the election? This is a question I hear a lot. Reporters, a sorry lot these days, want us to think it is because Kamala Harris has not answered their questions. That’s bunk. The real reason is that the GOP has spent years corrupting the system to give them unfair advantages. Those advantages now appear in the media, and in our electoral system.
First, let’s dispose of the self-important claptrap from folks in the media. No one wins an election by describing the details of tax code changes. The same media folks who complain about Harris don’t even ask about Mr. Trump’s plans. Don’t get me wrong- policy ideas are very important. But that’s not what the press is concerned with. When they do get a chance to interview Kamala Harris what they don’t ask about policy, they ask about Trump.
What voters really care about is pretty simple: whose side are you on?
Mr. Trump is very clear about his side. He is on the side of anyone he can bribe with a tax cut and the side of white nationalist Christians determined to dominate the rest of us. There are many of these folks in America. They cheer when Trump says he will send armed agents to round up undocumented immigrants, put them in concentration camps, and eventually deport them. They cheer when he says Jews will be to blame if he loses. They cheer when he says he will execute his political opponents.
Kamala Harris is also clear about what side she’s on. She has centered her entire campaign on helping America’s middle class. Unlike Mr. Trump, she is not playing identity politics, attempting to win by consolidating animosities. She has reached out to Republicans as well as Democrats. This week her campaign picked up endorsements from 741 national security leaders, dozens of Republicans, and scores of Teamsters Union locals. That’s a broad coalition.
No one believes there are more people on Trump’s side than Harris’s. America is not dominated by folks who believe that Project 2025 is a good idea. We are not a nation that rejects our diversity. We are not a people cruel enough to celebrate ripping families apart and jailing innocents just because they disagree with us. On the contrary, we can see from lots of polling that we are a nation coming together to reject exactly those ideas.
So why is Trump nonetheless in a position to win?
One reason is that years of work to influence the American media have paid off for the right wing. Large numbers of Americans simply do not know what the candidates and their parties stand for, or who they fight for. Today’s right-wing media is the most powerful political propaganda machine in our history. When employment is up, inflation is down, and the Dow Jones Averages hit record highs, viewers of FOX’s business programs hear little about it. Instead, they are told that government regulation is driving the economy into the ground. This message is as divorced from reality as it is politically potent.
Even news organizations that are not part of the right-wing propaganda machine have buckled under pressure from right-wing politicians who complain about their coverage. The most influential among them, the New York Times, regularly publishes misleading headlines and stories that “sanewash” Mr. Trump. They now regularly publish more critical stories about Democrats than about Republicans. They even called Mr. Trump’s plan to deport 11 million people a “housing policy.”
The collapse of trusted local news outlets around the country and the transition of news consumption habits to social media platforms have made space for thousands of fake accounts — some run by foreign actors and others by right wing pundits getting paid by Russian operatives — to spread right wing propaganda.
It has taken decades, but the right wing has succeeded in their effort to capture enough of the media landscape to effectively keep many Americans from the truth about the candidates.
And yet, Americans can find good journalism and can learn about the candidates and the parties if they work at it. Many have. So, the right wing has gone a step further, to corrupt the electoral system itself.
The U.S. Supreme Court, under John Roberts’s leadership, has rolled back voting rights, legalized partisan gerrymandering, overturned campaign finance laws, and permitted unlimited dark money to pour into our political system. This amounts to a sustained and decades long effort to consolidate power in the hands of the wealthiest interests.
Compounding their loud propaganda machine and the effort of the Court to consolidate right wing power are the new efforts underway to corrupt the vote.
In Georgia, where Mr. Trump has been indicted for attempting to overturn the 2020 election, his team has pushed through rules that make it harder to vote, make it harder for college students to register, allow for tampering with the vote count, and permit post-election delays to result certification. As the Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger said, these new rules permit county officials “to break open the ballot boxes.”
In Arizona, Trump’s election deniers hold positions throughout the state and intimidation of election workers is at an all-time high. John Keller, who is part of the agency that investigates election threats says, “This new era in which election officials are scapegoated, targeted and attacked is unconscionable.” Meanwhile, the GOP is in court trying to require proof of citizenship to vote, something the courts have long held is an unreasonable restriction on voting.
The electoral college already favors rural minorities. George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016 lost the popular vote but ended up in the White House. Not satisfied with that advantage, Trump’s team pushed hard to change the rules in Nebraska to guarantee an additional electoral vote. Despite a carpetbagging Senator, Lindsay Graham, campaigning for that change, one Republican state legislator, a hero named Mike McDonnell, refused to go along and the attempt to change the rules at the last minute failed.
Efforts like these to corrupt the system these have gone on for years. These do three things. First, they limit votes for Kamala Harris. Second, they open up the possibility to avoid counting Harris votes after they are cast. Third, they undermine trust in the results, so that Mr. Trump can attempt, as he did in 2020, attempt to seize power even if he loses.
I’ve just provided a few examples, but these efforts are underway in dozens of states. They explain why Donald Trump, despite championing unpopular policies and being unpopular himself, is in a position to return to the White House. Meanwhile, the media are concerned that Kamala Harris hasn’t fully explained all the details of her housing tax credit.
Good grief.