George Rebane
This is a lament. From his statements and recent – post Tim Walz – behavior it looks to me that Donald Trump has really gone off the rails and is headed for a massive defeat in November. As the record of these pages confirms and given the available choices, I have been a qualified Trump supporter ever since he became the Republican nominee in 2016. During the entire time I have been chagrined at his tendency for bombast, bravura, and exaggeration, especially when on the campaign trail.
Today, when finally presented with an ideal pair of very vulnerable opponents, and eight years of experience under his belt in how his off-track shooting from the lip has been received, he still pays no mind to the harm he does to himself and the Republican party by continuing on the same path. And he is doing it proudly as he has declared to his audiences that he has no intention of changing his gratuitous personal attacks on anyone that happens to cross his mind while on the podium.
So now the country’s conservatives, capitalists, and small government devotees have to suffer through daily doses of free leftwing talking points served up to the lamestream media by Trump. Their news stories and commentaries almost write themselves from the copy spouted by our former president. Instead of focusing on the rich trove of Democrats’ lies and policy screw-ups from the Obama and Biden/Harris administrations, Trump continues to be the petulant third grader on the playground focusing on lurid descriptions of his opponents’ real and imagined personal shortcomings.
Perhaps the most worrying aspect of his campaign is that he has no strong adult advisors in his inner circle who can tell him daily when he needs zip his lip. It’s hard for me to believe he doesn’t have a cadre or even a small clutch of such people in his inner circle. But it is clear that he is flying blind without the aid of such critical navigators. Were such people to exist, we would by now have seen them resigning one-by-one as Trump continued to ignore their counsel.
Given this ongoing travail, my own assessment of his probability of winning in November started with a paltry 0.45 and eked up to 0.48 (here) after the assassination attempt. But taking into account what has happened since, my belief in his chances for regaining the White House has plummeted to 0.22, or a bit more than one in five. This new assessment accurately represents the dour mood that the Trump campaign has me in.
rebanesruminations.com 
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