Kill Biden Voters In Swing States
Trump’s COVID-19 strategy is disturbingly simple: let the pandemic kill Biden voters in key Electoral College states. He is not pushing to end shutdowns as a pivot to favorable and familiar economic campaign issues. His assumption is that a raging virus will kill people and suppress voting in the right places on the Electoral College map.
The United States got into this crisis through Trump’s well-documented incompetence. Bankrupt of compassion, skill and imagination, Trump has only resolve for re-election guiding his actions. After February denials and March flailing, come April, Trump settled on a plan.
When early April reports of how COVID-19 infections and deaths disproportionately fell onto communities of color, Trump saw a way out. If Biden lost more voters than he did in Purple States, that was a net win.
Trump and the GOP fully embrace death as a path to Electoral College victory.
Purple Death Trade-off
A presidential election is not a national event, but rather it is 51 discrete ones.
Trump voters will die, but mostly in solid Red States, so he will still win those electoral votes. Solid Blue State deaths are also irrelevant. But if urban Detroit, Milwaukee or Minneapolis are hit hard, that can swing states. Texas, with some challenging polling of late, could be tightened up with a sizable Hispanic death rate. Trump won the presidency with 100,000 well-placed votes that cracked the Blue Wall in spite of losing by millions nationwide. COVID-19 is Trump’s plan to reach that position again. Trade one MAGA death for three Biden’s voters in a Michigan or Wisconsin or Minnesota, that is a net gain.
The Simple Evil Calculation
Do not overthink what is happening. The only driver for Trump COVID-19 strategy is winning the Electoral College by killing Americans strategically. His Liberate tweets aimed at swing states tells all.
Trump’s team looked at the COVID shambles and worked up a way to win that fits with Trump and his universe. Kill and virus suppress more Biden voters than your own in Purple States. Push MAGA there to open states to drive up virus deaths. Anticipate the second wave, where the FEMA-confiscated medical supplies from spring will be distributed according to political needs to protect victory.
This Kill Purple approach engages all of Trump’s key constituencies. Big capitalist donors willing to kill workers for profit. Panicky Wall Street traders yearning for normal. Mar-a-Lago friends always looking for largess. MAGA voters whose distrust of government has them frothing victimhood. There is something for everyone.
The AstroTurf Reopen movement is not about the economy; its design is to force death into the Electoral College results. All the moving parts pushing opening, from toady governors to armed demonstrators, run from the same diabolical engine turning in the White House.
Planning Death
Pundits can elaborate on Trump’s latest pivot or the current dementia speculation. Reporters can use “White House sources” to illustrate administration disharmony and dissent. Trump and his staff, however, plan in terms of reality television. They use Trump’s narcissism and sociopathy to program themselves to look dramatic, conflicted and confused. But take Occam’s Razor to the two views of his COVID-19 response today and which is more likely? One is confused flailing, controversy and psychopathology within an administration unable to lumber to any credible solutions in spite of obvious evidence of how to proceed. The other is a clean decision to walk away and let nature take its course for political gain.
Trump and the GOP fully embrace death as a path to Electoral College victory and their plan is as set as the Wannsee Conference.