Conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin called it fitting that President Donald Trump's campaign is going out the way it was ushered in: with misery. While Trump came into power with a flood of anger and division, he's leaving in the same way. This time, however, he may be taking the GOP with him.
In a Sunday column, Rubin cited incoming President Joe Biden lamenting that the November jobs report is "grim," showing "an economy that is stalling." Trump didn't comment, and it's unclear if he even cared. The slowing economy is something Biden told Congress must deal with as soon as possible if it expects to save America from the crisis.
"What has the current administration been doing to facilitate vaccinations?" Rubin wondered. "Next to nothing, apparently. Biden's prediction of 200,000-plus more deaths by the end of the year may be horrifyingly accurate."
Trump's focus has been on the election he believes is rigged. Oddly enough, after winning the election in 2016, he also thought the election was "rigged" and 3 million people voted illegally, stealing his popular vote away.
"Aside from the courts that he amply stocked with right-wing judges, Republicans can point to no benefit derived from his four years in office but plenty of damage," wrote Rubin. "Trump leaves behind a dumpster fire: a net loss of more than 3 million jobs and hundreds of thousands of dead Americans."
Republicans aren't much better off. They started 2017 with power in the House, Senate and White House. They now only have power in the Senate, and that could evaporate after the Georgia special election in January. The party is now more divided than ever, and Trump is at war with state Republicans who can't deliver an election to him. This week, Trump called Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) demanding he do something to deliver the state for Trump, even if it's impossible.
"No longer animated by a positive vision or policy ideas, the GOP is now simply a cauldron of writhing resentment and paranoia — a party that survives by spinning a web of lies and terrifying its own voters," closed Rubin. "Our only hope is that the Republicans who remain in Congress will be as ineffectual in obstructing progress as they and their defeated president were in governing."
