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I admit it: I was wrong about Trump.
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A little less than four years ago - after Trump was elected, but well before he was inaugurated - I made three predictions: (1) Trump would surround himself by deplorables; (2) He would build support by going after plutocrats; (3) He would do anything to avoid losing in 2020.
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I laid out the reasons for those predictions here, but I was not entirely accurate, as it turns out.
https://moscowonthames.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/how-this-goes-down/
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https://moscowonthames.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/how-this-goes-down/
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Trump did, of course, surround himself by deplorables, but my assumption was that he would do so in order to look normal by comparison, to be the one saving us from the worst of their collective agendas.
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It turned out, of course, that Trump will countenance being second to no man -- even when it comes to being vile. And so there has been no relief from his onslaught on the Constitution, on civil rights, and on common decency.
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I had also thought - perhaps because I've spent too long studying Putin - that Trump would build support amidst a faltering economy by targeting billionaires and big business, bringing the DoJ and the IRS to bear.
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Having started out in that direction, he didn't have the skill or the patience for that kind of game, and so his attacks on the commanding heights of the economy have been almost entirely rhetorical. In my defense, though, even that has won him points among his base.
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Looking ahead to 2020, though, I was closer to being right than wrong. I predicted that he would return to his hard-right campaign agenda, attacking minorities and journalists with the force of the state.
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I thought, of course, he would go after Muslims or another, more easily maligned group. I did not know he would turn to violence against African Americans en masse, and that he would address all progressives as terrorists.
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I also didn't have Trump attacking the electoral system itself. But I was right about the core point: for Trump, winning or losing this election is existential, and so there is no end to which he won't go to get the result on which he pins his survival.
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My major mistake back in November 2016, though, was one of omission: I neglected to say that none of this works by magic. Trump can and will do a lot of things between now and 3 November to try to get the result he needs.
But he only gets it if _we_ give it to him.
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But he only gets it if _we_ give it to him.
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