Trump and the attack of the invisible anarchists

On Thursday morning I walked across much of Manhattan and back again. (Why are all the doctors’ offices on the

East Side?) It was a beautiful day, and the city looked cheerful: Shops were open, people were drinking coffee in the sidewalk seating areas that have proliferated during the pandemic, Central Park was full of joggers and cyclists.

But I must have been imagining all that, because Donald Trump assures me that New York is beset by “anarchy, violence and destruction.”

With only two months left in the campaign, Trump has evidently decided he can neither run on his own record nor effectively attack Joe Biden. Instead, he’s running against anarchists who, he insists, secretly rule the Democratic Party and are laying waste to America’s cities.

There’s not much to be said about Trump’s claims that people “in the dark shadows” control Biden and that mysterious people dressed in black are menacing Republicans, except that not long ago it would have been inconceivable for any majorparty politician to engage in this kind of conspiracy theorizing.

There’s a bit more to be said about his claims of rampant violence and destruction in “anarchic jurisdictions” — namely, that these claims bear little resemblance to reality.

But invisible anarchists are all Trump has left. To see why, let’s talk about the real issues: the pandemic and the economy.

A few months ago the Trump campaign clearly hoped it could put the coronavirus behind it. But the virus declined to cooperate. It’s not just the fact that premature reopening led to a huge second wave of infections and deaths. Equally important, from a political point of view, has been COVID-19’s geographical spread.

Early in the pandemic it was possible to portray COVID-19 as a bigcity, blue-state problem; voters in rural areas and red states found it easier to dismiss the threat in part because they were unlikely to know people who had gotten sick. But the second surge of infections and deaths was concentrated in the Sunbelt.

And while the Sunbelt surge appears to be slowly subsiding now that state and local governments have done what Trump didn’t want them to do — close bars, ban large gatherings and require masks — there now appears to be a surge in the Midwest.

What this means is that by Election Day almost everyone in America will know someone who caught the virus, and will also know that Trump’s repeated promises that it was going away were false.

When it comes to the economy, all indications are that the rapid snapback has leveled off, with unemployment still high. Furthermore, the politics of the economy depend less on what official numbers say than on how people are feeling. Consumer confidence remains low. Assessments by businesses surveyed by the Federal Reserve range from unenthusiastic to glum. And there just isn’t enough time for this to change much.

What’s not clear is whether Trump’s anarchist lies lies will help him, even if people believe them. “America has gone to hell on my watch, so you must reelect me” isn’t the greatest pitch.

And polling suggests fear is not the president’s friend. By a large margin respondents to a Quinnipiac poll declared that having Trump as president makes them feel less safe. Reactions to Biden were much more favorable.

Still, expect Trump to keep ranting about those invisible anarchists. They’re all he has left.