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Pearl River Trump is in trouble, and it’s getting worse. Reportedly, top Republicans and their political strategists are trying to tell him that his daily press meanderings are hurting him, and that he needs to step aside and let the health experts handle the news. He can’t seem to stop. He’s addicted to the ratings, even this narcistic drug kills him at the polls. A CNN poll found that registered voters were considerably more likely than nonvoters to give the federal government’s handling of the pandemic a bad review with 57% of voters rating it as poor, while 39% gave it positive marks. His core constituency of seniors over 65 is also eroding rapidly as they fearfully watch his horror show at home.
Every Friday evening in our shared workspace, I sometimes hear bits and pieces of the weekly call of ACORN’s affiliate, A Community Voice, and its leaders in New Orleans discussing plans for the week and the impact of various issues, including the pandemic on their members. These calls often run over ninety minutes, and then there are sometimes members who call to talk more after the formal call has ended. From the other room, I can hear them opening with singing and sometimes closing with a long prayer. When the call is on a speaker phone, it is frequently moving.
Last night one of the old members returned a call, answering a message from earlier in the day. She hadn’t been able to copy the call-in number quickly enough. She was an old lower 9th Ward member, who had been forced out by the post-Katrina economic squeeze. Taxes and utilities were too high. She now lived on the West Bank in Gretna and her utilities were only $40 a month and her taxes were about the same. She didn’t necessarily like it, but she could afford it there. She had had a tough week in the pandemic. Her 78-year old brother, who she was extremely close to, had died. Earlier he had gone into the hospital and been sent home with a diagnosis of pneumonia. A little more than a week later he was back in the hospital and the test confirmed coronavirus. He was dead within days.
Mi companera shared her grief and sorrow and asked about her best friend and running buddy at many actions and meetings who lived in the Treme. This ACV activist was trying to hold on to her house. The bank seemed to be allowing her to make some partial payments. The taxes in this gentrifying area were suffocating her. Tragically, her brother also died in the same week as her friends. Covid-19 claimed another older African-American man in this city where death per capita is virtually leading the country. In our lives, death seems everywhere now.
These women are not the core demographic for President Trump, but older men and women of all races and ethnicities are going to be more than able to judge how the president decides whether they are his priorities or whether Fox News, Wall Street Journal editorialists, Wall Street, and his rich and business friends matter more to him than their lives.
Real life and real tragedies in the pandemic, rather than the bubble around the Potomac are going to drive the polls more than the ratings. If the elderly are fearing for their lives, Trump should fear for his political life, and right now he’s on a death watch whether he knows it or not.
