For much of last week, the Kamala Harris campaign insisted that her rival, former President Donald Trump was "exhausted," and senile, and that, fueled by anonymous leaks, his supposed mental decline was now so obvious that it had to be addressed head on.
This week that absurd talking point has been retired and Trump is back to being a tireless and evil genius, in fact this time around, a literal fascist.
Even for Donald Trump, this was a remarkably quick medical recovery.
Now we have learned Trump’s former Chief of Staff and Marine General John Kelly says that the former president fits "into the general definition of fascist," and admired Adolf Hitler’s generals.
I have no idea what "the general definition of fascist," means. It sounds a lot like the Dude in "The Big Lebowski" criticizing the Sheriff of Malibu, but I do know this; voters on the ground are not moved by the ten thousandth iteration of Donald Trump is Hitler.
In fact, one can imagine, at Harris HQ, the communications staff stroking their chins, deep in ponderance, until one quietly offers, "Ok, well what’s worse than Hitler? We can call Trump whatever that is."
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There are a few reasons why this late-in-the-game attempt to paint Trump as a fascist is not going to work, and they are so glaringly obvious that you can see them from space. They are also all things I have heard directly from voters across the country.
The first, of course, is that Trump was already president for four years and little to no fascism ensued, no roving bands of Brownshirts, not even armbands, and the Trump administration didn’t lock up its political enemies.
That brings us to the second point, which is that voters know the Biden and Harris administration has locked up its political opponents in the form of Pro-Life activists and January 6th defendants, and are actively seeking to put Trump in jail.
But Trump being Trump, somehow, the more they indict him, the closer he gets to the presidency.
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The former president's iconic mugshot, far from a point of shame, has become a popular T-shirt among his supporters and among those voters who are not already die hard anti Trump, I have never had one bring up the legal cases as a reason to vote for or against him.
As one San Francisco Democrat said to me back in August, "Suddenly he has four cases all at once in the election year? Come on."
Come on, indeed.
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Then, of course, there is the matter of the two assassination attempts on Trump, after both of which Democrats wrung their hands decrying political violence, promising to tone down the rhetoric, only to start drawing little Hitler mustaches on every picture of Donald Trump they could find about three days later.
But the biggest, most important--put it on a Broadway billboard--reason why Kamala’s flimsy fascism attack is failing is that it says nothing to voters about their own lives.
Harris insists that Trump is only interested in himself, but what voters see clearly is that it is actually Harris who is only interested in Trump, it is Harris who refuses to offer a positive message for her own candidacy and always reverts to the "blah, blah, blah," unique and present danger of Trump.
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What makes matters more cynical and dangerous is that the Harris campaign is directly implying that half of the country supports fascism, an absurdity, but one that is sure to only further divide families, friends, and coworkers, all to secure power for the Democrats.
Kamala Harris said, at a town hall on Wednesday night, that Gen. John Kelly’s sudden "bombshell" revelations about Trump kinda sorta being a fascist was a "9-1-1 call to the American people," and he is responding to an emergency, but its not Trump’s alleged authoritarianism, its Harris’ 4 alarm dumpster fire of a campaign.
To put that fire out, Kamala Harris has to do the one thing she cannot, she has to be herself, to be authentic, she has to make voters want to vote for her, not just against Trump.
In the twilight of the campaign’s final days, the curtain is closing on her chances to do so.
Calling Trump a fascist, again, is not going to get Harris elected, but it has a very good chance of hurting the country.
The only conclusion to draw is that the Democrats just don't care.
