The vile Access Hollywood tape that surfaced in October 2016 should have been the nail in the coffin for Donald Trump’s presidential aspirations. Of course it wasn’t. In fact, I believe that without the release of the Access Hollywood tape, Trump may actually have been defeated. I know, it sounds absolutely crazy, but there is some logic to my madness. In a election contest where Hillary Clinton lost vital states like Michigan and Wisconsin by a sliver of a percentage, how many potential Clinton voters were demotivated against showing up simply because they knew, (like we all knew), that Americans would never let that putrid voice on tape bragging about molesting women sit in the Oval Office. Heck, even Trump himself seemed resigned to defeat in those final weeks.
The reality, of course, was that Trump’s disgusting admissions on the tape had no effect on his voters. They stuck by him...after all they wanted the very chaos, destruction, and hate he epitomized on that tape. Meanwhile, those either supporting Clinton or merely opposed to Trump acted like he had already been defeated. Go back to November 2016 and imagine that tape had never been released...perhaps all of us, including then-candidate Clinton, would have worked a little harder to prevent the catastrophe of a potential Trump presidency.
Well guess what folks….it’s happening again. In recent weeks, Donald Trump has started his best possible strategy for re-election: acting like he’s already lost. His very public sad-sack walk after the Tulsa fiasco, his recent melancholic musings on Fox that Biden will win, and now the media speculation that Trump will drop out of the race are a repeat of 2016. Trump and his allies will dangle the prospect of him quitting, resigning, withdrawing and conceding repeatedly for the next four months to convince those of us who desperately want him out that we’ve already won. He has played this game very effectively not just in 2016, but also during the Mueller investigations and in his business practices...broadcasting his feebleness while behind the scenes consolidating a path to power. I hope that we don’t fall for it again, no matter how pathetic and defeated he presents himself to us over the next four months. His core voters will turn out with the same passion and dedication as they did in 2016 (and there are a lot of them!). Trumps possum act has no impact on their loyalty or devotion...that’s what makes it such a powerful strategy!
