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THE BIG SWARM: Donald Trump seems to be under attack from more directions and more sources than at any other time in his contentious presidency. And there’s a palpable sense that his enemies think that they may finally have him cornered going into the final four and one half months of the presidential campaign.
Trump’s troubles make a long list: Start with coronavirus. Then the economic meltdown from the effort to control the virus. Then nationwide protests and racial turmoil. Then the resistance jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, which on Thursday put aside commonsense standards to rule that Trump could not rescind Barack Obama’s DACA program. Then the reappearance of former national security adviser John Bolton, who is getting a lot of attention with a book attacking Trump, claiming the president, among other things, sought Chinese help for his re-election. Then the attacks on Trump’s decision to resume campaign rallies Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, suggesting the rally will be a coronavirus superspreader.
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And now, news reports claim Trump is flipping out under the pressure. Just look at the Drudge headlines: PRESIDENT WHACKED FROM WITHIN! AIDES DESCRIBE ALARMING CONDUCT. And then the New York Times published a story: “Does Trump Want to Fight for a Second Term? His Self-Sabotage Worries Aides; Advisors and allies say the president’s repeated acts of self-destruction have significantly damaged his re-election prospects, and yet he appears mostly unable, or unwilling, to curtail them.”
Plus: the polls look bad. The latest Fox News survey has Democrat Joe Biden leading Trump by 12 points, 50 percent to 38 percent, in a national match-up among registered voters. Other national polls in the RealClearPolitics average of polls have Biden in the lead by 8, 9, 10, 14, and 7 points. The former vice president’s lead in the RCP average of national polls is 8.8 percentage points.
What to do? First, take the problems seriously. Some Trump supporters completely discount polls because they remember those Hillary-Clinton-has-a-98%-chance-of-winning assessments from 2016. If they were wrong, then all the polls today must be wrong. They aren’t. Trump really does have a lot of problems, some of his own making, some not.
But the swarm effect is building. News accounts will portray Trump as beleaguered, under attack from all sides, going nuts in the White House, headed for historic defeat. His adversaries will see him as wounded. Smart strategists will advise Trump to counter that by staying focused and getting things done. There’s a good chance things will be improving by November, and that will be an enormous boost for the incumbent. But not if he is bogged down in needless fights with his enemies.
