8/28/20
Finally, the Democratic and Republican conventions are over. Democrats broke ground with the nomination of Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.), the first Black woman on a major-party ticket, as presidential nominee Joe Biden’s running mate. They promised a return to decency and public service. The GOP convention, through a tissue of lies, sought to sell the Trump administration as a thing of beauty. It was tantamount to putting lipstick on a pig. Now to the business at hand: the Election Day firing of President Trump. Reaching that goal won’t be easy. The Founders’ doctrine of sovereignty — that the United States is governed by the people — is threatened. Trump believes he is the government and thus can do with it as he pleases. September and October will be battleground months in the coming war. The strategic goal — the vote: for Democrats, to preserve and turn it out; for Trump, to suppress it. We have trod this road before. In 2016, Trump campaign officials surreptitiously undertook a campaign to suppress the Black vote, which had favored Hillary Clinton. The suppression effort targeted three groups Clinton needed to win overwhelmingly: idealistic White liberals, African Americans and young women.
A few weeks before the polls opened, the Trump campaign started placing sly and misleading messages about Clinton to demobilize Black voters. Some went out via nonpublic Facebook “dark posts” — “Only the people we want to see it, see it,” a Trump campaign official said. The Russians pursued the same scheme. Shrinking the Black electorate is high on this year’s Trump campaign agenda as well. Meanwhile, Trump is working overtime to discredit mail-in voting. He has even said he wanted to limit mail-in voting by refusing new funds for postal operations. And under the guise of preventing fraud on Election Day, Trump said he would send law enforcement officers to the polls. He has also refused to say he would accept voting results. Wait, didn’t we hear such noises four years ago? Trump is a skilled manipulator and race-baiter who gets by with coded language and outright lies, and for whom “no” has no meaning. Will he get away with it again? Only if voters let him. Democracy defenders, double down.