Mike Littwin’s “Trump Period”

Picasso had his famous “blue period.” We’ll call this Mike Littwin’s “Trump period.”

As Littwin’s diehard readers know, he has found a lot of, shall we say, inspiration in Donald Trump. The Donald and his effect on the campaign, the electorate and the nation has been the subject of Littwin’s political opinion columns for many months now. Should you have forgotten what a long, strange trip it’s been, we offer the Littwin flashback. 

The Republican Convention: Plagiarism, Lock her up, Cory Gardner’s mini-rebellion, Ted Cruz’s major rebellion and Trump’s Dystopia in America (“I Alone Can Fix It”).

RNC Day One – Nixonian rhetoric and a bit of chaos

RNC Day Two – Cory Gardner opts out of Trump’s coronation

RNC Day Three – How Ted Cruz became the most reviled person in the room

RNC Day Four – Trump is right. This is a dark and frightening time in America.

The Democratic Convention: Two Obamas, two Clintons and two Khans

DNC Day One – How, 8 years later, FLOTUS brought the house down

DNC Day Two – Billary, the love letter

DNC Day Three – An optimistic Obama warns against Trump dystopia

DNC Day Four – The acceptance speech The Donald basically wrote for Hillary

Then July turned to August, and Trump said that maybe there’s something “the Second Amendment people” could do about Hillary Clinton. Yes, he really said it. No, you’re not really shocked.

Trump went on to stun the world in September by going to Mexico to meet President Enrique Peña Nieto, but forgets to insist that Mexico pay for the wall. Or did he?

Months before Comeygate, there was what one headline writer helpfully dubbed loogie-gate, in which Clinton very publicly semi-collapses with her publicly unknown pneumonia, and suddenly Clinton’s campaign is looking sick, too. What exactly is the cure for privacy paranoia?

Before the debates and before pussygate, Nate Silver had Trump at a 41 percent chance of becoming president. (And for those keeping score, he’s now back to 35 percent chance.) This, for Littwin, was a special kind of horror.

Then things started to get even weirder…

Debate No. 1, Miss Piggy, sex tapes, 3 a.m. Trump rants and a descent into pure Trumpian madness. It was just one of many times when it seemed certain that Trump had finally imploded, but, of course, there is no end  —Trump until at least Nov. 8.

Cory Gardner, rats and Darryl Glenn (briefly) jump off what looked like a sinking Trump ship.

Remember Darryl Glenn? He was for Trump before he was against him. He was also against him before he was for him. Littwin writes that Glenn’s indecision on Trump is a perfect metaphor for the clueless Glenn campaign, nearly as good as Glenn’s pronouncement that the national GOP wasn’t giving him money because they were confident he could win without it.

Littwin is old enough to remember when Trump said at the third debate that he wouldn’t necessarily accept the election results, also known as the will of the people. It seemed fair to ask whether Trump, who has a secret plan to defeat ISIS, also a secret plan to upend democracy.

Then came Pussy-gate, vote rigging and Trump’s flailing, pre-Comey campaign, at which point, Littwin wrote, Clinton’s lead seemed safe and everyone was talking blowout.

But no. James Comey stunningly put the FBI in the middle of the campaign. It was a rare gift directly to Trump –  even nicer than the portrait his Foundation bought for him – but how did Trump treat it? In two campaign stops in Colorado, he talked more about rigged elections in boringly clean Colorado than about Crooked Hillary. Meanwhile, the poll numbers have been tightening everywhere.

Keep reading, dear readers. Something tells us Littwin’s “Trump Period” isn’t over.

Photo by DonkeyHotey via Flickr Creative Commons