Trump fatigue? From Watergate to Waterloo

Like in every presidential election year, it's harvest time in American politics. 

As of June 2020, it seems that chickens are coming home to roost for President Trump. His past 3 months have been a dangerous, self-defeating demonstration of poor management and even poorer leadership and the polls are starting to show an ominous trend.

What seemed a few months ago very likely reelection is slipping away from Trump as a consequence of a powerful mix of economic downturn, erratic pandemic management, and an ill-advised, touch Nixonian "law and order" response to racial tension and protests.

Trump took for granted that a sharp recovery before November would be enough to stay in office regardless of his behavior (as he once proclaimed during his election campaign he could shot a person in 5th Avenue and get away with it)

Trump based his reelection strategy on that factor, turning up his cultural war rhetoric to please its unconditional base. He seems to be betting that 40% of the vote can re-elect him regardless of the rest.  The electoral map and polls increasingly dispute that assumption.

The problem with this "silver bullet" strategy is that Trump has alienated almost all other voting groups to an extreme that looks hard to revert. 

Piling up death tolls, lockdowns, abrupt and induced recession, and racial strife, there are growing signs of "Trump fatigue". Trump himself looks increasingly out of touch with reality like his mentor Richard Nixon during the Watergate days. 

Nixon's farewell speech comes to mind. He discovered too late that hate-based politics can be self-defeating:

Instead of reaching out to decisive voters and seeking a middle ground, Trump looks increasingly absorbed in being his own campaign chief and distracted on blowing dog whistles on irritating issues such as Confederate monuments and rallies in defiance of pandemic guidance and racial sensitivities. 

Trump's bet on partisan polarization is clearly backfiring.

This election could not only rend Trump a one-term president but cost GOP both houses of Congress 

The forecasts for the Presidential election show anti-Trump waves forming even in formerly safe states

And the possibility of losing control of the Senate grows

This would be a catastrophic farewell for a President that promised a string of "wins". A ticket from Watergate to Waterloo not only for Trump but a potential reversal of fortunes for the entire GOP and whichever "win" he might have claimed so far.

This is clearly not good for Trump and his supporters, but -much more importantly- it might be not good for the economy and the country.

Given the current Democratic party platform's sharp turn towards the progressive Left, a Biden-Warren Presidency would mean big government, tax-heavy solutions could delay or even destroy what is already a hard but promising recovery.

Also, it would swing the cultural wars pendulum from Trump's Tea Party to Warren's anti-business, BLM's identity politics, and Biden's unions' protectionism rather than calming them.

That might be Trump's presidency's worst legacy. A full opposite of all his presidency tried to accomplish. And a huge step backward for sensible pro-growth and the free market,  free trade policies that are the only way for the US to come out of a mountain of 30 trillion debt without a major recession.

Neither the economy nor Trump seems to be able to avoid it.

Perhaps the economy can make it -after all this is America-.

How about trying to be more like the best of it?