Trump thinks he gets to be president of just the Republican states: But they're a total mess
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Trump thinks he gets to be president of just the Republican states: But they're a total mess
Donald Trump and Republican States (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images)
What do the poorest and least educated states in the nation have in common? Take a wild guess, Mr. President
Bob Cesca September 15, 2020 12:00PM (UTC)
Donald Trump appears to be seceding from the Union, which is bizarre given his status as the president of it. Make no mistake: Trump appears to be deliberately marginalizing himself by repeatedly insisting that he's not responsible for certain states and cities, despite technically being the president of the entire United States.
We've all heard him say it. On topics ranging from poverty to crime to COVID-19, Trump never hesitates to defer all the blame for whatever onto state and local Democrats rather than acknowledging that he's supposed to be the president of those cities and states, too.
Earlier this year, for example, Trump tweeted , "The homeless situation in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and many other Democrat Party run cities throughout the Nation is a state and local problem, not a federal problem." Trump, of course, is the president of those cities, and has been for nearly four years. Has he proposed any national solutions to the homelessness problem? Nope. He's simply seceding himself from those cities.
On Sept. 3, Trump tweeted , "Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York has the worst record on death and China Virus. 11,000 people alone died in Nursing Homes because of his incompetence!" Trump apparently doesn't realize he's the president of New York as well. Bob Woodward, by the way, confirmed that Trump's much-hyped travel restriction against China prompted tens of thousands of travelers simply to return from China to the U.S., by way of Europe, through New York's JFK airport, sparking the massive New York infection rate early in the pandemic. Turns out, that was the president's doing. We'll circle back to the pandemic presently.
Meanwhile, on Monday morning, Trump tweeted the following whiny lament: "Our people have all left Drudge. He is a confused MESS, has no clue what happened." Note the use of the phrase "our people." Trump's people are, technically, all Americans, but once again he appears to only give a rip about the people who support him.
Over the weekend, Trump visited Las Vegas, where he told reporters , "And by the way, every city that's in trouble, every state. You look, Democrats, liberal Democrats — they've run them into the ground, every city." Here's our refrain again: He's the president of all those cities and states.
Again, Trump clearly blurted that "every state" in trouble is run by "liberal Democrats." So let's take a look at which states are, in real life, doing the worst. But first, to be abundantly clear about all this: Issues like education, crime and poverty are always considerably more complicated than the party affiliations of the various mayors, city councils, governors and legislatures that control those places can possibly explain. But since we're playing Trump's leadership-cherrypicking game, we'll play by his rules for the sake of argument.
- States with the highest poverty rates : 1) Mississippi, 2) New Mexico, 3) Louisiana, 4) West Virginia and 5) Alabama. What do all those states have in common? All except New Mexico are solidly Republican and delivered their electoral votes to Trump. Three of the five are controlled by Republican governors.
- The least educated states : 1) Mississippi, 2) West Virginia, 3) Louisiana, 4) Arkansas and 5) Alabama. All Trump states, and all but one controlled by Republican governors.
- States with the most violent crime per 100,000 residents : 1) Alaska, 2) New Mexico, 3) Tennessee, 4) Arkansas and 5) Nevada. Three of the five are Trump states governed by Republicans.
- States most dependent on federal handouts (the "taker" states): 1) Nevada, 2) Kentucky, 3) Mississippi, 4) West Virginia and 5) Montana. Are you catching the pattern here? Trump carried four out of five in 2016, and three have Republican governors.
So these are mostly Trump-Republican states, and if he wants all this on his record, I'm OK with that. After all, he's rejecting wealthier, better-educated states as "Democrat-run." It's also germane to note that among large cities, the two " most dangerous " cities in America per 100,000 residents are Springfield, Missouri and Spokane, Washington — each run by a Republican mayor.
One thing is certain: whether we like it or not, Donald Trump is the president of the United States. That means all of it . Therefore he's responsible for all of it . There's nothing in the Constitution that says the president can disown the states and cities that hurt his feelings or make him look bad.
Perhaps Trump's most egregious abdication of personal and presidential responsibility has been his response to the pandemic. One thing has become shockingly obvious in the last couple of days: Trump was privately aware of the deadly seriousness of COVID-19, calling it deadlier than the most " strenuous flus ," but chose instead to publicly lie about it, telling the nation that COVID was, in fact, just like the flu and that it would go away "like a miracle" when the weather got warmer.
Seven months later, we're nearing 200,000 American deaths and 6.2 million cases, with no end in sight.
Trump could have borrowed and rebranded, as his own, the paint-by-numbers pandemic instructions left to him by the previous administration. He could have framed the national effort with the same kind of hyper-patriotism we experienced after 9/11. But he refused to take the reins himself. Instead, he walked away, delegating the response to governors and mayors. And now he wants to blame all the bad news on the states and cities, while washing his stubby hands of all responsibility.
Trump and his disciples don't understand, nor do they care to grasp, that a national crisis requires a national effort in response. For example, the local governments of New York City and Arlington, Virginia, both attacked by al-Qaida on 9/11, didn't fight the war on terrorism alone. We fought, as we always do, as a nation. When imperial Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, we didn't send Hawaii to storm the beaches of Iwo Jima. Americans from the entire nation engaged in that war.
By the same token, when a pandemic strikes the entire nation, the entire nation has to respond in unison, otherwise there's about as much chance of containing the virus piecemeal as there is containing piss in a hot tub. Trump and his loyalists will never understand this basic leadership dynamic.
And he's not only blaming the states and cities, he's actively sabotaging them, too, probably so he can blame them for everything that happens as a consequence of the sabotage. Along those lines, on April 13, Trump told Woodward that the virus was "so easily transmissible, you wouldn't believe it." Trump elaborated with a story about a meeting in the Oval Office in which someone sneezed, sending everyone, including Trump himself, running for the exits. Again, that was on April 13. Four days later, he tweeted, " LIBERATE MICHIGAN ," deliberately undermining Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's pandemic response by exploiting the bully pulpit to insist upon reopening the economy, while knowing how transmissible the virus was.
From there, Trump's loyalists followed his lead, leaving responsible behavior to the rest of us while they gratuitously engaged in pool parties and biker rallies, insisting that caring for others and acting in the national interest was a trespass against their liberty.
The childish, self-indulgent, Q-amplified irresponsibility of 30-40 percent of American voters — including their messiah in the Oval Office — is precisely why we're still enduring a thousand deaths a day, eight months into this madness, while Canada and other allies have reduced their respective death tolls close to zero.
Why is Trump so afraid to take responsibility himself? The answer is obvious: Because he's a coward and a shirker, vastly out of his depth, painfully outmatched and fatally incapable of handling a crisis of any magnitude, much less this one. When the going got tough, Brave Sir Donald ran away, stealing credit for the upside while blaming everyone else for the downside. The impact of his ineptitude is worsened, by the way, though his grisly fascination with stirring up chaos all around him, not unlike a malicious tween boy who shakes up an ant farm just to watch the ants freak out. Anyone who buys his "I don't want to create a panic" nonsense is dumber than he is.
In the end, if Trump only wants to be president of the places that aren't mean to him, if he doesn't want to be president of the entire nation, it's time for him to step aside and allow grownups who aren't afraid of being responsible leaders — who aren't afraid of being presidential — to take the wheel. The entire country, including the people who voted for him, will be better off for it.
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Interesting side note:
Those states were among the poorest in 1959, too, with all Democratic control.
Same for 1979, with largely Democratic control.
It would be more accurate to say "Those states were among the poorest in 1959, too, with all white conservative Christian control" which hasn't changed. They are still the poorest and least educated and still controlled by those same white conservative Christians and their descendants and are still flying their confederate flags and defending confederate monuments.
So you are admitting it really doesn't matter which party is in charge nationally, state wide or locally,
contrary to the President's beliefs ( or at least his many tweets).
Good to be able to agree on this.
Damn!
You are right.
I keep forgetting how Democrats of today pretend that the Southern Democrats weren't really Democrats at all!
Have you ever once even wondered why no one ever says Northern, Eastern, or Western Democrats?
Or Western, Eastern, Southern, or Northern Republicans?
Perhaps you should.
Beats the hell out of trying to rewrite history.
Okay, and thank you for admitting the hypocrisy of trying to blame those states standings on purely political leanings and pretending they only got that way because of Republicans.
Glad to see us agree!
Yes, I am. Or are you trying to claim that those who have been in charge of the Southern former confederate States weren't white conservative Christians?
Well that's a completely false statement. I know the Southern Democrats aka Conservative Democrats or Dixiecrats did indeed use the word Democrat in their party name. The facts show that Conservative Democrats were ideologically opposed to Northern Democrats.
"The United States presidential election of 1860 formalized the split in the Democratic Party and brought about the American Civil War. Stephen Douglas was the candidate for the Northern Democratic Party, and John C. Breckinridge represented the Southern Democratic Party".
"The monopoly that the Democratic Party held over most of the South first showed major signs of breaking apart in 1948, when many white Southern Democrats, upset by the policies of desegregation enacted during the administration of Democratic President Harry Truman, created the States Rights Democratic Party, which nominated South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond for President. The "Dixiecrats" won most of the deep South (where Truman was not on the ballot). The new party collapsed after the election, while Thurmond became a Republican in the 1960s. Following the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, which were signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, although a southern Democrat himself, led to heavy opposition from both Southern Democrats and Southern Republicans. Subsequent to the passage of civil rights legislation, many white southerners switched to the Republican Party at the national level. Many scholars argue that Southern whites shifted to the Republican Party due to racial conservatism. Many continued to vote for Democrats at the state and local levels, especially before the Republican Revolution of 1994".
"In 1980, Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan announced that he supported states rights. Lee Atwater, who served as Reagan's chief strategist in the Southern states, claimed that by 1968, a vast majority of southern whites had learned to accept that racial slurs like "nigger" were offensive and that mentioning "states rights" and reasons for its justification had now become the best way to appeal to southern white voters. With Reagan's success at the national level, the Republican Party moved sharply to the right, with the shrinkage of the liberal Rockefeller Republican element that had emphasized their support for civil rights.
Along with race, economic and cultural conservatism (especially regarding abortion and school prayer) became more important in the South, with its large religious right element, such as Southern Baptists. The South became fertile ground for the Republican Party, which was becoming more conservative as it shed its liberal "Rockefeller Republican" faction. The large black vote in the South dramatically shifted towards the Democratic Party. Well-established Democratic incumbents, however, still held sway over voters in many states, especially in Deep South. Although Republicans won most presidential elections in Southern states starting in 1964, Democrats controlled nearly every Southern state legislature until the mid-1990s and had continued to hold power over Southern politics until 2010. It wasn't until the 1990s that Democratic control began to implode, starting with the elections of 1994, in which Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress, through the rest of the decade."
Please do try and refute any of the facts contained within before admitting defeat by attacking the messenger.
The only ones trying to rewrite history are those who are trying to white wash current white conservative Christians of their sordid Southern past who still live in and control the former confederate States as they've done since our nations founding. It doesn't really matter what party names they've used throughout history, whether it was Southern Democrat, Conservative Democrat, Dixiecrat, the States Rights Democratic Party or today hiding behind the skirts of the GOP, they have always been the same white conservative Christians. They continue to fly the confederate flag, defend confederate monuments and blame all their problems on liberals, progressives, minorities, non-Christians and immigrants.
You're kind of missing the point. Trump says only Democratic states and cities are problems. Arkansas doesnt have a really big city, so I guess they have no problems, eh? Same with a number of red states. They don't have cities of any mega size. Their problems are unaddressed by the governors.
Fancy-dancy rewrites are still just plain old rewrites.
Yours qualifies easily.
Thanks for not disappointing.
Fucking impossible.
No one could EVER miss your points, JR, they are ALWAYS the same!
"Orange Man Bad" and "Orange Man Unqualified".
It's your replies that are always the same - nothingness.
Thanks for essentially admitting that you can't refute the facts I quoted by not countering a single one and just deflecting with empty rhetoric.
You're welcome.
Please do tell me what the real difference is between the white conservative Christians who created the confederate flag, revered confederate ideology and erected confederate monuments in the past or the white conservative Christians who today fly the confederate flag, revere confederate ideology and defend confederate monuments? The only difference I see is one group used to call themselves Conservative Democrats and the other group today calls themselves conservative Republicans.
The States Rights Democratic Party 1948
The Republican Party 2016 - 2020
I've no doubt that the conservative white Christians of the 1940's and '50's would have LOVED dishonest Donald, just like the conservative white Christians do today.
Keep it up.
Haven't Democrats learned yet that alienating large swaths of the voting public is, well, to put it bluntly, stupid as hell?
Hard to believe that the successes of "deplorables" and "clinging to their guns and bibles" are so soon forgotten.
Long time ago. That's why Black's and Latino's historically vote Democrat. In many religious groups they vote GOP, except Jews, they almost exclusively vote Democrat. The flip side of that is that religious but not affiliated overwhelmingly vote Democrat.
In most groups that are not White, Democrats usually get the lions share of the votes.
You can also look at the ethnic make up of congress to get an idea of which party embraces diversity.
If supporting diversity and equality is "alienating" anyone that's their problem, not mine. If xenophobes, homophobes, Islamophobes and misogynists aka "the deplorables" are offended, then they can go fuck themselves. To those clinging to their bibles and guns, no one is trying to take those things away so you can calm down and stop being so clingy, right wing extremists are just using irrational fear of your fellow citizens to control you. The vast majority of Democrats, liberals and progressives consider themselves Christian, whether they be white, black or any other skin color, and all are welcome except those who refuse to welcome others. If your dream is to rebuild the white Christian patriarchy of old then perhaps you'd feel more comfortable moving to the anti-gay, anti-immigrant white nationalist authoritarian Russia.
it is the infantile name-calling as evidenced in your last post I am referring to. Jeez, you don't get it without it being spelled out explicitly for you?
Is Trump president of Mississippi, West Virginia, Alabama, and Louisiana? Some of the most backwards places in the country? I think he says he is.
Those states were poor under Democratic Presidents, too.
Even under Obama!
Nice, but clearly not the topic.
Hey, you brought it up.
You should probably read post #2 then.
I live in Arkansas. Some of these people think there was no other pres before him or should be after him