It was almost impossible to watch the Trump campaign's blazing incompetence this week and take it seriously. When Joe Biden announced Kamala Harris as his vice presidential pick, the campaign had literally failed to compile a set of attack lines ready to deploy, producing the most flat-footed political response in modern memory.
Trump also appears to have taken over every aspect of the campaign's communications, including writing mass emails now. The post-announcement fundraising email blasted out by the Trump-Pence campaign sounded like it was scripted by a third grader, no lie.
"Kamala Harris is the meanest, most horrible, most disrespectful, MOST LIBERAL of anyone in the U.S. Senate, and I cannot believe Joe Biden would pick her as his running mate," read the first line of the missive.
No one but Trump could have written that line. No one. Apparently, locked away with nothing to do but tweet, watch Fox News, and drink in a little limelight at his coronavirus briefings, Trump's putting his highly valuable touch on everything.
What became obvious this week in just about every way is that the Trump campaign has zero chance of winning of fair and square. Joe Biden's roll out of Kamala Harris as his running mate dazzled, drawing both accolades and a record-breaking $48 million in 48 hours for the campaign. Coronavirus, the issue Trump has been bungling for eight months and counting, now appears to be foremost on the minds of Americans as they prepare to start casting their votes next month. And Trump's campaign—in the traditional sense of trying to win votes—is comical.
What also became perfectly clear this week is that Trump doesn't plan to win the election by winning votes, he plans to steal the election by launching an endless number of unconstitutional attacks on it. While Russian President Vladimir Putin works to denigrate Biden, Trump is mobilizing the apparatus of both the Republican party and the U.S. government to siphon votes away from Biden and systematically disenfranchise Americans trying to cast their votes by mail.
The Putin threat, not to be discounted, is something we all knew was coming. But the corrupt efforts by Trump to field a handpicked third-party candidate and kneecap the ability of the U.S. Postal Service to transport ballots in a timely fashion came into full view this week.
Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner has been speaking regularly with rapper Kanye West, who launched his campaign website and platform this week. Following a New York Times report that Kushner and Ivanka Trump had met up with him in Telluride, Colorado, last weekend, Kushner told reporters he had been having "a general discussion more about policy" with West—a lauded policy wonk. Oh, and coincidentally, GOP operatives have been actively trying to help West get on the ballot multiple states.
But not to be outdone by Boy Blunder, Trump offered up his own doozy, outright telling Fox News that he was blocking funding for the Postal Service to disenfranchise the nearly 180 million Americans who are eligible to vote by mail.
“They need that money in order to make the post office work," Trump said Thursday of the $25 billion in aid for USPS that Democrats included in their coronavirus relief bill. “If we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money,” he added. “That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting. They just can’t have it.”
By Friday, the full contours of Trump's vote-stealing scheme came into focus when the Washington Post reported USPS had warned 46 states and the District of Columbia last month that it couldn't guarantee timely delivery of all ballots cast by mail. And none of that incapacity is organic. Rather it's been orchestrated by the major GOP donor Trump installed as Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy. In fact, since June, DeJoy has had 671 mail-sorting machines removed from high volume areas of the country, reducing mail sorting capacity by 24.1 million pieces of mail per hour.
Let's take time out here for a public service announcement from a helpful thread by Yahoo! News political writer Jon Ward: You do need the Postal Service initially to receive your mail-in or absentee ballot, but you do not need the Postal Service to deliver your vote. You can return your ballot to a local elections office any time, or an in-person early voting location, or a drop box. Not every state has drop boxes, but every state has local elections offices, and all but five have early voting. Ward has a story here for more information.
So as scary and as brazen as Trump's unthinkable vote-stealing scheme is, it also carries an unbelievable amount of political risk with it—risk that Trump certainly wasn't smart enough to game out ahead of time.
First, Trump is taking a hatchet to the most popular federal agency in the U.S. government, with a 91% favorability rating, according to Pew Research. That means Trump, by admitting to Fox News that he was intentionally hamstringing the Postal Service, took responsibility for anything that goes wrong with mail delivery. Rural areas of the country—which include many of the GOP's most loyal voters—are particularly dependent on the mail to receive lifesaving medications (including VA prescriptions), Social Security checks, and unemployment checks, just to name a few critical items.
But don't take my word for it. One of the most conservative Democrats in the U.S. Senate, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, was in a lather Friday on MSNBC over the Trump-DeJoy sabotage of an institution so many of his constituents depend on.
"The post office is a lifeline to many West Virginians," said Manchin, who serves as vice-chair of the Senate Democratic Policy and Communications Committee. "A lot of areas of rural America and rural West Virginia do not have good connectivity, so broadband, high speed—all that's not available. That's the only lifeline they have."
Manchin said any effort to privatize USPS would get "one heck of a fight" from him and many other Democrats and Republicans. He also lamented that his Republican colleagues haven't spoken, saying they have "the same concerns" he does.
Manchin, who visited several USPS sites in his state Friday, said he’d been contacted by a local county sheriff and veteran who's diabetic and hadn't gotten his medication in the mail. He said six post offices in his state had postings saying they were going to close, but when he called up to inquire about it, they said it was a mistake.
"I accept a mistake if a human error was made, but I guarantee you, there's not one of those people did that on their own," Manchin said. "It had to come from up above. It's showing me their true intent."
Asked if he had confidence in the Postmaster General, Manchin didn't mince words. "Not at all, Chuck, not at all," he told Chuck Todd.
Asked if DeJoy should resign, Manchin offered, "He shouldn't even be there to begin with, and any way you can get rid of him, please do so... He won't even talk to us." DeJoy has apparently declined to speak with lawmakers.
Manchin said he warned postal workers he met with Friday that if they let these changes from the top down ruin the agency's reputation and stoke distrust of them in the community, "we may lose the Postal Service as we know it—and I'm not going to let that happen."
Asked about Trump's involvement, Manchin was equally as frank. "This is wrong," he said, "basically he's trying to have a scapegoat if the election doesn't go his way." Manchin also impugned Trump for harming Americans solely for his own political benefit. "They're going to hold the people hostage in this country because of what they think would be harmful for them if we have the mail-in voting," he noted.
Say what you will about Sen. Manchin (and I have taken issue with him plenty), but he knows West Virginia politics, and he's clearly all in on this battle. That means Republicans from rural states are sweating this out because anything that goes wrong with the Postal Service can be hung around their necks in November. And every one of those GOP senators should be made to answer for it.
Sensing an opportunity to drive a wedge between Republicans and many of their base voters, Democrats are already "blanketing the airwaves," according to the Washington Post.
In Georgia, Democrat Jon Ossoff put his rival, incumbent GOP Sen. David Perdue, on the spot. “Sen. Perdue needs to take a stand on principle for once in his career and demonstrate that his oath to the Constitution and his constituents is more important to him than his allegiance to President Trump and his Political Party,” Ossoff said. “And if he allows the president to sabotage voting by mail, he will be condemned by history as an accomplice to this attack on our democracy.”
But House Democrats can and must go further. This is a hair-on-fire moment, as former Obama advisor David Plouffe noted Friday. “We’ve never needed Democrats in Congress more than we do now. The whole enterprise is on the line,” he tweeted, calling for prime time hearings, subpoenas to Trump White House and campaign officials, visits to local post offices with cameras to show people what is happening, and events with constituents who are getting their prescriptions late.
Trump has no idea what he unleashed with this gambit. We should probably thank him for admitting publicly, on national television, that he's personally responsible for any delay in delivery of the many critical items veterans, seniors, and rural residents receive through the mail. It's a story that is quickly getting a staggering amount of front-page pickup in news outlets across the country, as Politico's Jake Sherman noted Saturday morning.
Trump hasn't just picked a fight with Democrats here, he's launched an attack on the American people that cuts across party lines, rural and urban divides, and unites a conservative senator like Joe Manchin with a freedom fighter like South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn in common cause.
"I never thought I would ever see a political party allow the head of its party to do to the Constitution of the United States what this guy is doing," Clyburn told MSNBC Friday. "Forget about political parties, let's think about preserving this democracy."
Republicans will never put our democracy or the public ahead of their own self interests, but they can be counted on to protect their own seats. And Trump has just created a giant political dilemma for all those vulnerable GOP House members and senators who desperately need an energized rural base to survive the headwinds Trump is creating. It’s both frightening and presents a giant opportunity all at once to destroy Trump and the deplorable party that built him.
COVID-19 is ravaging the country, and we have no idea whether it will even be safe to vote in person come November. With Turnout2020, you can start calling swing state voters now—and help them request an absentee ballot. No one should have to risk their health to exercise their right to vote. Sign up to volunteer today.
