He, Trump, Wept.

It is all falling apart. This charade of a presidential campaign is finally disintegrating as it should have before it ever started. I would like to direct your attention to Ed's post at Gin and Tacos entitled Salt The Earth on the topic of what happens when a vulgar talking yam comes to realize the depth of his failure and in the end, there are simply not enough dummies in the American electorate to buy his confidence scheme through to victory. In other words, Trump is a loser. Now that he finally seems to realize that he is going to lose, what happens next?

So much spewing from the pie hole about the game being rigged, as though democratic governance were a game. So much arrogant posturing that He, Trump could only lose if every fiber of "the establishment" were against him and conspiring to ensure his defeat and humiliation. It is the voice of privilege speaking that brags so loudly about his ability and greatness in spite of the many failures of Trump. It is the voice of sociopathy that can bray about the personal failures of his opponent without the slightest quiver of shame or conscience amidst the mewling. The oft-repeated labels of narcissist, bully, racist, sexist apply in spades, also that of confidence man. It takes an absolute sense of self-confidence to sell fascism to the deplorable masses as though it were as American as apple pie.

With one tweet, the Republican nominee for president essentially kicked off a month of what promises to be pure scorched Earth politics. If he can't win, then causing as much misery and destruction as possible on his way to the losers' podium is the next best thing. I still expect this to culminate with an insistence shortly before Election Day – timing the announcement to cause maximum damage to the GOP he now hates as much as the Democrats – that his supporters shouldn't bother voting, that he never really wanted to be president anyway, and that he's come to the conclusion that America does not deserve his genius. He's been laying the groundwork for his post-defeat narrative since the summer, creating a "Stab in the Back" legend before the ballots even had his name printed on them.

He, Trump was never more than a callow opportunist, sweeping up that basket of deplorables built up over the last two decades or more by hate radio and fox news. The perennial lament from loyal "conservatives" I know, or knew, or overheard in bars or taking up space at McDonald's was why is it that every time they voted for republican candidates to stick it to poor brown and black people, all they got was pandering to big business and religious groups. Trump says out loud what used to be preceded by a glance over each shoulder.

Now that the bragging, self-congratulatory con is over, since Hillary Clinton took Trump apart in the debates we move to, as G&T so aptly puts it, "the scorched Earth" phase of the campaign. What happens now is anyone's guess really. Historians can try to predict, as Ed did in this post, what could happen based on what we know about the past. But this election season has been, not to put it in too cliched terms, unprecedented.

I do not for a moment relish the opportunity to see "unshackled" Donald Trump. If this has been him behaving, trying to appear likable, attempting to play within some kind of set of rules, then it strains the imagination to think of how much worse he can get.

Well, it can really go in two different directions, or probably many more. One is the republican mouth-breathing authoritarian followers who foisted Donald Trump on us will become disillusioned and move to more local acts of brutality and anti-social awfulness. The other is that the real "Werewolf" movement of violence, intimidation, and terror will arise from the dead-enders. It could be a combination of these, with some really fun attacks on the internet from hackers, including state-directed hackers.

Trump weeps for himself. The last debate performance was barely a whimper. It remains to be seen how well Democrats can tag their opponents down ballot with this utter loser or how many of the Trump republicans will decide to stay home but the first step for any of us is to register and vote. Run up the score, don't get complacent. A landslide will (hopefully) suck some of the oxygen out of their "movement" and they will tuck tail and shuffle home instead of patrolling polling places while armed. I have my fingers crossed that this whole ugly episode will soon be behind us and we can look forward to prying the tea partiers out of their obstructionist place in government at all levels to finally get something done in this country.