When it comes to Trump's support, think "Metal Fatigue" for a metaphor [View all]

[Tom Rinaldo]

Years have been spent debating whether this or that specific outrage would be the straw that broke the Camel's back when it comes to Trump holding onto a potentially winning share of the electorate. That intrinsically suggests that Trump's hold on the voters that he needs will stand functionally intact until a day when something new and ugly, no matter how big or small it might be, is added to the negative side of his scales, finally tipping the balance against him. Some now think that "last straw" was his comments calling soldiers suckers, and our combat dead losers. That will finally "cost him", it is argued, in a way that praising white supremacists in Charlottesville, or being impeached for soliciting foreign help to interfere in our elections, or repeatedly promising that the virus would simply disappear, or ignoring Russian bounties on our troops etc. so far had failed to do.

But for Trump the damage was already done, and it has been for a long time. It is, so to speak, already baked in. No new ingredient need be added to the mix. In the "normal" course of operations now his Administration, and his reelection chances with it, will inevitably fall apart. Trump may still seem air worthy today, but the wings that are holding him aloft, unseen by the casual naked eye, are riddled by metal fatigue.

Here is part of a definition of metal fatigue taken from Wikipedia:

"Fatigue failures, both for high and low cycle, all follow the same basic steps process of crack initiation, stage I crack growth, stage II crack growth, and finally ultimate failure...

... Once the cracks reach a critical size they propagate quickly during stage II crack growth in a direction perpendicular to the applied force. These cracks can eventually lead to the ultimate failure of the material, often in a brittle catastrophic fashion."

Just normal vibration from the engines, or routine stresses inherent to flight, can trigger that catastrophic failure. It is a process that once begun can not be reversed. Either the metal is replaced or it will fail. And for Donald Trump the stress of trailing in all the polls is putting added pressure on his "electoral wings". Unlike in the waning days of the 2016 election, Trump is no longer a man who can remain on script for more than 24 hours, even if doing so could help preserve his rule. Defection from the edges of his "wining" 2016 electoral coalition: the loss of more college educated white men, of white women from all categories, of many seniors, of many military voters, of increasing numbers of sane Republicans of all stripes from moderate to conservative, these losses force Trump to go all in on his feverish crazy to hold onto to his remaining core support, hoping to turn out more of those type voters in 2020 than he could in 2016. But he loses more voters than he can gain now by so doing, and that in turn causes him to double down again, which loses him more voters than he gains by so doing...

Trump is becoming more extreme daily. "Once the cracks reach a critical size they propagate quickly during stage II crack growth..." We are rapidly moving toward his catastrophic failure. It will be ugly. It may be violent, but he can not reverse it. And no I do not think it is a strategic mistake to talk about this openly now. A growing sense of the inevitability of Trump's collapse is an important element helping drive Trump's inevitable collapse.