The more deranged Trump becomes, the better his polling seems to get. Is this why?

So Kamala Harris has spotted that Trump is pretty much the dictionary definition of a fascist. Who knew eh? Everybody?

To my eye, he is almost the reincarnation of Mussolini - the same gait, the same posture, the same look in his eye. I started off, months back thinking he was going to win. Biden was a disaster on the campaign trail. Thank God he stepped away. Then Harris came along and the momentum started to go her way. In early September I thought, yes, she could do this.

Now - I think I'm personally calling the US election - for Trump. A truly cataclysmic outcome, and there's just no way of feeling anything but dread and fear about that. Why do I think he's going to win?

First, the more deranged he becomes, the more electable he looks - to a certain type of voter in key swing states. In his derangement he is publicly refusing to 'behave', to 'tow the line', or say what he 'should'. This is likely because of his deteriorating mental condition, his textbook narcissistic psychopathy and his age. There is credible talk of Alzheimer's. But it's completely on brand. The more the US talk show hosts or his opponents deride him, the more powerful he gets - he is standing up to them by taking no notice, by repeating lie after lie (none of which matter, it's simply sufficient that he is attacking the liberals), by insulting them and provoking them to their faces, rejecting their 'evidence', uncowed as he doubles down on his vile rubbish. In doing this, he is - bizarrely - demonstrating his seeming strength to millions. He simply doesn't care how it looks to his opponents and for millions that makes him seem self-confident, self-believing and unassailable. Someone who can't be pushed around (of course the fact that he'll be stiffed by Russia and China from day one, as he was before, has no bearing on this).

Second - a related, but wider point. The Democrats don't seem to understand how with inflation down and the economy booming, people aren't flocking to Harris? Why haven't they received credit for pumping money into the economy, creating jobs and rescuing the country after Covid?

The reason may be that the context and timescale many voters are using is not just the last four years, but the last twenty, fifty, or even longer. They are holding in mind the cultural changes that have taken place in the US since the 1950s. The fact that when adjusted for inflation, the 2024 federal minimum wage in the United States is over 40 percent lower than it was in 1970 (the percentage of the population living in poverty hasn't changed since 1970s though amongst working age adults it's actually gone up). The poor are relatively poorer than they were then. Trust in major US institutions (the Presidency, Congress, the police, military, and five other spheres measured by Gallup each year) has halved since 1980 - to just 26% (and only 8% of Americans trust Congress). Overall, US living standards haven't changed much since 2000, whilst the gap between the very richest and the middle classes in US society has exploded. Only 42% of Americans think that their kids will have a better life than they did (15 years ago it was around 70%). Median household income has been dropping since 2006 and life expectancy since 2015. The system has failed American citizens, or so many believe with some reason, because behind these dry statistics are, of course, lives. Complacency, staggering capitalist greed (ironic that Trump has become the beneficiary of the backlash against a system in which he is entrenched)...all that stuff about the Deep State. Coupled with a concerted and consistent narrative of attacking and demeaning Federal government and undermining trust in it that the Republican Party launched in the 1970s. In this setting, anyone who emerges from that background, as Harris and Biden have, are ripe to be tainted with failure.

I saw this guy being interviewed on Jimmy Kimmel's late night show the other night. The show was running a 'gotcha' at a Trump rally at Coachella, asking MAGA supporters about various policies, in the hope that they would look like morons. The interviewer would ask "What do you think of DEI initiatives?" knowing full well that the interviewee would condemn them, as Trump has, without having the slightest idea what DEI is - as then became clear. The same with questions about Trump's plans for the US GDP, or Critical Race Theory. I always have deep misgivings about the public humiliation of MAGA supporters in this way because framing them as idiots and publicly humiliating them might make you feel smug and superior but it only makes them (and the many who look to themselves and wonder if they really know what Critical Race Theory is) hate you even more. It makes them more certain in their beliefs that you have only contempt for them - which you are showing by your easy humiliation of them. Tellingly, one guy was asked "What would you like to change?"

"Everything", he said. "I think he should change everything".

That got a laugh - it was meant to...thereby completely missing the point. This is Mass Disillusionment at work. And when Trump refuses to listen to what the establishment tells him, acts deranged, doubles down on saying the unthinkable, he is channelling that. It's the Reject Everything, Destroy Everything Position. Punish those who, he claims, presided over working class Americans becoming disconnected from their own country - the sickening irony being of course that he cares nothing for them and is absolutely part of a system (at its forefront in fact) that has ruined people's lives. In this frame, Trump doesn't need to have answers, so when his answers don't appear, are incoherent, fascistic, or simply deranged, it doesn't matter. The hate and opportunity for retribution are the point. That's the offer.

So, I believe that Trump will win, just (and we can assume that if he doesn't violence will follow). Because the people who are going to vote for him often do not care what he stands for. His voters care about what he hates, which is why he uses so much time in his speeches expressing hatred - and is doing it more and more. It makes his voters feel comforted, validated, safe and seen in their fear and distrust of those targets too; from the unseen liberal bureaucrats of The Swamp, to the minority groups who have become more visible over the years - immigrants, Muslims, trans people, foreigners. The instinct to hurt, to take revenge on someone (in spite of the fact that these groups have had nothing whatsoever to do with the distress they have felt, whilst the exploitative, venal, criminal hyper capitalism that is in Trump's blood has had everything to do with it) is powerful electoral dynamite - and Trump uses it every day. Expect Trump to incite them more and more in the next couple of weeks.
Voting for him is a middle finger and that's all it needs to be. Now, even more than 2016, after Covid, after years of lies from Trump, they'll unthinkingly burn everything to the ground, including all their own remaining civil rights, to get the chance to do it.