The Trump administration has recently gone through a bad stretch. The New York Times report of Trump’s slippery tax avoidance/evasion has shocked nobody paying attention. His boorish performance during his debate with Biden was an embarrassment for him, and for the nation that claims to be the model of democracy that we hold before the rest of the world.

His failure to condemn hate groups, advising them to “stand by,” served to welcome their assistance in “monitoring” polling sites. His constant harassment of Michigan governor Whitmer to “liberate Michigan” gave thinly disguised encouragement to armed hate groups to carry on. The agenda of one group, “Wolverine Watch,” included kidnapping the Michigan governor and to put her “on trial,” with the possibility of execution. Fortunately, the plot was foiled before any harm was done.

The expected reaction of any sane President upon revelation of such a plot would be to reach out to her, offering and assuring support, and vow that justice will be served. Instead of offering even the slightest sympathy and support during the trauma that anybody having experienced such a threat would experience, Trump continued to excoriate her. Such crass response would be despicable from any man, let alone the President of the United States.

Trump’s continuous denial of COVID-19 as a serious national threat, only to catch it himself, illustrates the consequences of denial. Instead of his infection prompting him to identify with other victims, he claimed his rapid release from hospitalization to signal his relative strength compared to other victims, and further “proof” that the virus was not as serious as made out to be. His Mussolini-like pose on the White House balcony, as he was gasping for breath, along with murky information by his medical team, did nothing to reassure the nation.

If Trump’s bizarre behavior were not enough, the demands that his Attorney General and Secretary of State indict and incarcerate Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton are the stuff of a tin-pot dictator, and, prior to this presidency, unimaginable and universally unacceptable for a U.S. president.

In 2016, with the aid of the Clinton campaign in which everything that could have gone wrong did, and the aid of a system in which the majority of votes does not assure election victory, Trump capitalized on discontent and anxiety to win a narrow victory in the Electoral College. In contrast to 2016, Trump now has a record to defend — a record of total failure. As of this writing, over 216,000 deaths and the worst economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s, with no end in sight.  

Blaming it on China, insisting that it “wasn’t his fault,” and, if not for his “foresight,” it would have been much worse, doesn’t cut the ice. 

History demonstrates that when presidents preside over failure, including much less dramatic failure than Trump’s, they lose — forget whether it was their fault of not. Trump’s prospects at this time appear bleak. His best shot is a combination of discouraging voting, invalidating ballots, and, to the extent he can get away with, not counting ballots.

Meanwhile, he has a campaign to run before creating enough confusion and delay with legal challenges to throw the election to the courts. Without a defensible record on which to run, what’s the next best tactic? Attempt to scare the electorate with the alternative, a “Socialist” Biden-Harris victory.

That’s a mark of sheer desperation. It’s quite a stretch to label Biden with his long record of centrism as a “Socialist.” Biden’s home state of Delaware has long been friendly, and home, to large American corporations. Biden has often been criticized by some Democrats as being overly friendly to corporations and financial interests. A “Socialist,” Biden definitely is not.

It’s an equally fictitious stretch to label Harris as “the most liberal senator” of that chamber. Take that, Bernie and Elizabeth — it’s Kamala who is the “real Socialist,” in addition to being “a monster,” according to Trump’s ranting.    

Tarring any kind of government program as “Socialism” and politicians as “leading us down the road to tyranny” goes back a long way. When FDR introduced Social Security as fundamental to the New Deal during the Great Depression, it was denounced as “Socialism.” Today, it’s a popular program, claiming the support of even most Republicans, including those who would like to privatize it. It is the bedrock of retirement programs for many Americans and, for many, their sole source of retirement income. This includes senior citizens in declining rural small towns in some of our nation’s reddest states.  

How about another popular program — Medicare?  Where would senior citizens be without this program? And spare us the fiction that this is solely a transfer of wealth to the aged. Medicare takes their children and grandchildren off the hook for making hard financial choices. “Do we put junior through college, or do we pay for grandpa’s bypass surgery?”

Medicare is a program on which we all depend. We should recall that before his foray into politics, Ronald Reagan was employed by the American Medical Association to lobby against any such program. That was “Socialism,” and would lead us to tyranny, Reagan insisted.  

Social Security and Medicare are now accepted, popular programs. While some critics on the far right remain, these programs are now seldom referred to as “Socialism” even though they involve the federal government.  

The point is that the word “Socialism” is a red herring. This is not legitimately a debate between “Socialism vs. Capitalism.” The successful economies of the world are what economists refer to as “mixed systems,” that is, a mix of capitalism and government action to make the system work for all.

The legitimate debate is over the role of government under capitalism — there is plenty of room for legitimate debate here. “Socialism” is a straw man. Biden and Harris are not “Socialists,” and neither will a Biden-Harris victory make this a “Socialistic” nation.

It’s about what works, programs to make capitalism work for all.

— John Waelti of Monroe, a retired professor of economics, can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net. His column appears Saturdays in the Monroe Times.