We cannot tell time with only the minute hand of a clock, so it stands to reason that we mustn’t look at anything in politics just one issue at a time – without context.
When moron-in-chief Donald Trump took to tweetstorming Sunday and Monday about four minority, liberal congresswomen whom he said should “go back” where they came from (no, he didn’t say s—hole countries, but he knew most of us would remember his old and now-famous line), he wasn’t just being a bigot. He was being a strategist – at least by his standards.
He was running for re-election on a weekend after he lost his bid to have a citizenship question put on the 2020 Census and after his July Fourth military parade was roundly panned. He was running for re-election after his much-touted massive ICE raids fizzled. He was running for re-election in a country where, despite rosy jobs and stock market numbers, most Americans think the economy only works for the top 1 percenters.
Most of all, of course, he was – and is – running for re-election under the spectre of the upcoming Mueller testimony – at a time when head-to-head polls last week found him nine percentage points behind Joe Biden, seven points behind Bernie Sanders, five points behind Elizabeth Warren and one point behind Kamala Harris.
Just as much as Trump’s tweets were blowing the dog whistle to his 35-ish percent share of fanboys and fangirls and trying feebly to stoke the wedge he thinks – wrongly – will divide the Democratic Party, he also was screeching: “Look over here” to the media and the rest of us.