CLEVELAND -- Swing voters overlooked a lot before turning on President Donald Trump. For more than five years, they left pollsters with the unmistakable impression there was no such thing as a Trump tipping point.
From that moment in June 2015, when Trump rode down the escalator in Trump Tower to brand Mexicans as rapists and announce his candidacy for president, Trump seemed to live up to his prediction he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” without his base deserting him.
They stood by him for assassinating the truth almost every time his lips moved. For bragging about physically assaulting women, and for nearly two dozen credible accusations that he made good on that boast. For caging kids, mocking a disabled man, insulting war heroes and Gold Star families. For the many crimes committed by his appointees, pals and campaign officials. And for a mountain of evidence that he made military aid to a foreign government contingent on that government seeking dirt on Joe Biden and on his son.
For five years, this corrupt and incorrigible man convinced millions of Americans none of this stuff mattered nearly as much as Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Then, in a sudden and deadly way, it all fell apart for Trump. Those millions of swing voters began to abandon him on those days in March and April when Trump made it so readily apparent to them that he cares far more about winning a second term than he does about the lives of the more than 328 million Americans he took an oath to protect and serve.
Indeed, it was during those dark days of late winter and early spring when seniors and soldiers and women and young people figured out Election 2016 had produced the most incompetent and morally bankrupt president in its history.
Here’s how it happened:
On March 14, after spending six weeks largely dismissing the coronavirus as scarcely worse than the flu, that it was being exaggerated by his political opponents and would soon magically disappear, Trump attended his first televised briefing of his coronavirus task force.
In the weeks that followed, Trump took the world on a guided tour into the darkness of his soul. As the death toll mounted and fear gripped the nation, Trump offered not a whiff of empathy or genuine concern.
Instead of selling citizens on a thoughtful plan to contain the virus, as leaders of developed countries throughout the world have successfully implemented and nearly completed, Trump sowed chaos. He aired personal grievances. He lied. He touted preposterous, maybe deadly, cures.
By late April, Trump ended his five-week television run. It was a rating success and a political catastrophe.
So here we are, in the country with the greatest health care system on the planet and one of the highest coronavirus death rates. It’s not because hospitals and doctors failed us. It’s because the president lied, passed the buck, dragged his feet and failed to lead. An ABC News/Ispos poll taken in early July showed 67 percent of Americans disapprove of how he’s handled the crisis.
A July 10 editorial in The Washington Post put perfectly: “The nation’s dire situation is made worse by Mr. Trump’s ignorance and denial. He’s still claiming incorrectly that soaring case counts are due to more testing. He falsely and callously says ’99 percent’ of cases ‘are totally harmless.' The president is disconnected from reality.”
Most Americans are not disconnected from reality. When it mattered most, they wanted and deserved a measure of comfort. What they got from their president was an American carnage that has made the United States of America a global pariah.
Trump hates losers. As president, there’s never been a bigger one. The most mishandled health crisis in U.S. history wrecked two things – the economy and Trump’s standing with swing voters.
The economy will recover.
Exposed as a fraud, Trump will not.
Since late April, it’s gotten worse.
Like using the military to attack peaceful protesters outside the White House.
Like reports the president, who boasts of loving soldiers, ignored intelligence reports that Russian operatives offered bounties to Taliban militants for killing U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Like the law-and-order president nullifying a judge’s sentencing decision by commuting Roger Stone’s prison sentence after a jury had found Stone, Trump’s longtime friend and the holder of many Trump secrets, guilty of seven felonies.
Like Trump’s laughable and demonstrably false claims about vote fraud, a scare tactic desperately designed to suppress turnout for the Nov. 3 election. As evidence of his astonishing ignorance, on July 10, Trump tweeted, “Absentee Ballots are fine …. Not so with Mail-Ins.” Truth is, they are essentially one and the same.
And like rhetorically wrapping himself in the Confederate flag and running a campaign to the right of George Wallace, with pathetic and racist attempts to ignite a culture war over undeniable incidents of racial injustice.
Watch carefully how Gov. Mike DeWine and Sen. Rob Portman react in the weeks ahead when Trump brings his racist roadshow to Ohio. Both know Trump lacks an ounce of empathy, that his unchecked narcissism, along with his lies and cruelty, have harmed the presidency.
If President Trump remains far behind by Labor Day, he will become increasingly dangerous, willing to inflict as much harm on the nation as needed in a desperate grab for 270 electoral votes.
Absent a politically catastrophic mistake, former Vice President Joe Biden, far from an ideal candidate, will beat him.
Biden will beat Trump because Biden is a genuine human being. Trump can’t demonize Biden the way he did Hillary Clinton, though he’ll probably resort to even more outright fabrications in an effort to do just that.
And Biden will beat Trump because I suspect voters may have stopped paying attention to Trump. They’ve figured out little of what he says is true. They’ve grown weary of the clown show.
But most importantly, they know Trump made little more than a halfhearted effort to prevent Americans from dying of a virus that has already killed more of them than the Korean and Vietnam wars combined.
Trump won’t win those voters back by whining about the tearing down of statues of Confederate generals. Real Americans like presidents who don’t betray their nation.
Brent Larkin was The Plain Dealer’s editorial director from 1991 until his retirement in 2009.
To reach Brent Larkin: blarkin@cleveland.com
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Donald Trump is going to lose because he’s lost his grip on swing voters - and won’t get them back - cleveland.com
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