View this email in your browser

AUGUST

**26, 2020**

Kuttner on TAP

Trump: Crazy Like a Rabid Fox

****

You probably rolled your eyes when you read that Mark and Patricia
McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who pointed guns at BLM protesters in
front of their house, spoke at the RNC. Well, think again and watch the
video
.

It is darkly brilliant, obviously scripted by professionals. Here you
see a nice white couple, describing their fear and outrage as a "mob"
descended on their home. Of course they had a right to defend it,
wouldn't you?

And leading the radical mob was a woman with a bullhorn yelling, "You
can't stop the revolution!" That would be Cori Bush.

"That Marxist revolutionary," Mark McCloskey said, is going to be the
next representative of Missouri's First District in Congress. And so
she is.

Joe Biden's Democrats, he added, no longer see "the government's job
as protecting honest citizens from criminals, but rather protecting
criminals from honest citizens."

"What you saw happen to us could just as easily happen to any of you who
are watching from quiet neighborhoods around our country," Patricia
McCloskey added.

She accused Democrats and Joe Biden of wanting to "abolish the suburbs"
by ending single-family zoning, bringing "crime, lawlessness, and
low-quality apartments into now-thriving suburban neighborhoods."

This is all poll and focus group tested, and you have to admire the
propagandistic genius of the narrative. Peaceful protesters are
criminals. Efforts to overcome decades of exclusionary housing will
destroy the safe, white suburbs. Only Trump stands between you and this
anarchy.

Will it work? It certainly will for the hard core who live in their own,
alternative Trumpian universe. Polls suggest that it works less and less
with key swing voters-suburban moderates, older people who defected to
Trump in 2016, and even with segments of the white working class,
especially when measured against the collapsed economy and the pandemic.

But don't underestimate Trump. His campaign marries the Republican
professional media messaging that goes back to Nixon with the dog
whistle racism of Lee Atwater and company, and Trump's own demonic
talent as a demagogue.

Forty percent of Americans are enthralled with a cultish freak. The rest
of us need to work overtime.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

[link removed]

Unconventional: The Republicans, Day Two

The Melania Mystery, the Kudlow Confusion, and the two-track convention
BY HAROLD MEYERSON

Populism After Trump

Josh Hawley's communitarian nationalism echoes the 'social'
nationalists of Europe. BY JUSTIN H. VASSALLO

Reaganland and the Rise of the New Right

Rick Perlstein in conversation with David Dayen BY PROSPECT STAFF

To receive this newsletter directly in your inbox, click here to
subscribe. 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

YOUR TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION SUPPORTS INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM

Copyright (C) 2020 The American Prospect. All rights reserved.
_________________

Sent to [email protected]

Unsubscribe:
[link removed]

The American Prospect, Inc., 1225 I Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC xxxxxx, United States