Richard Wolffe - The only thing Trump seems to fear is running out of fear itself

By Dilip -
By this stage of the Trump presidency, our greatest of great leaders promised, we would be winning pretty much in every sphere of human civilization. The economy, the military, healthcare, fantasy football, the Mega Millions lottery. You name it. In fact, he predicted that all this orgasmic winning would be so awesome that we would obviously be tired and begging him (please!) to stop with all the winning. “You’ll say, ‘Please, please. It’s too much winning. We can’t take it any more. Mr President, it’s too much,’ he told a rally in Albany, New York, in 2016. “And I’ll say, ‘No, it isn’t.’”

This game of fantasy politics is not just some alternate universe that occupies an alarmingly sizable proportion of the president’s very, very large brain. In his delusional nirvana of the future, Trump understands, nobody will ever be truly happy. His exhausted fans/lovers will beg him to stop, but he will deny them even that shallow pleasure. It’s less Morning in America than our Recurring Nightmare in America. Which helps explain the curious crisis of Trump’s closing arguments in these midterm elections. As Friday’s jobs data vividly underscored, this should be – at least economically speaking – an optimistic time in American politics. The economy is stacking up historically large numbers of new jobs, continuing a winning streak that awkwardly started under, um, Barack Obama all of 97 months ago. The unemployment rate stayed at the winningly low rate of 3.7% (a 49-year low) while wages rose 3.1% over the year.

For most politicians, this would be a frabjous day of well-nigh full employment and fatter paychecks. But there are no calloohs or callays in this Trumperwocky. There are just rock-wielding caravans of disease-plagued murderers invading a fragile nation at risk of imminent collapse from the enemies within: notably the media and a bunch of radical leftwing mobs in cahoots with a suspiciously Semitic man called Soros. If you haven’t already spat out your dentures, you’re not watching Fox News. This is not a small challenge for Republicans across the country and for the Trump campaign as it looks to 2020. Much has been made of Trump’s determination to play to his base and alienate suburban voters – especially Republican women – who could, you know, decide these contests.

But Trump has an even greater limitation than his love of his own loving base. He is the candidate of crisis: not just a smash-mouth street-fighter but a peddler of the impending apocalypse.

This type of candidate gains traction after a genuine crisis, such as a once-in-a-lifetime financial collapse whose suffering lingers on for many years into the recovery. Such a candidate might live off the fumes of crisis as long as distant terrorists unsettle us... read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/03/donald-trump-midterms-fear-immigration-fox-news

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