In World War I armies fought other armies. By the next World War (after we had learned to number them) new long range bombers made it possible to attack citizens and civilians, to put whole populations at risk of annihilation. London, Dresden at first, then the apotheosis of this strategy, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By the end of the war the German innovation of attacking cities rather than troops had triumphed, even though they did not.

Trump’s campaign tactics have also triumphed. Strategies and tactics long considered cruel, ineffective and pointless have been re-introduced and normalized. Grotesque personal insults, outright lies, racist dog whistles replaced with regular, plain old whistles, base insults everyone can understand. Nixon would not have so openly smeared McGovern because he didn’t have to and because it could well backfire. He did, however, feel the need to create a positive vision voters could vote for. Trump has almost entirely dispatched with positive campaigning. Instead of promises about future policies he offers open contempt, belittlement and disrespect on a personal level. Insults are easy for everyone to understand, while debasing politics and a hope for a better future.

The corporate news media can hardly contain its glee. Trump’s relentless attacks on Harris for not being a white man provide the media with the foundation they need to talk about incendiary and baseless allegations, elevating them to equal status with actual high crimes and misdemeanors. Trump can compare his 10 minute cognitive test with Harris’s degree from one of the country’s top 20 law schools and the media shrug and say well, that’s just Trump being Trump. Nothing to see here, keep it moving. The fact-free tabloid press has fully taken over mainstream journalism.

Unlike in earlier Republican campaigns, Trump supporters do not seek to change policy.  They simply want him to express their resentment and hatred for non-whites and non-Christians. And in doing this, running an almost wholly negative campaign of vituperation and revenge, Trump can achieve victory in multiple dimensions. Harris and the Democrats are forced to go low, against Michele Obamas famous admonition. Trump reinforces the latent and expressed racist and gender insults his supporters hear so often as to believe them as empirical fact.

But to win an election with these tactics can be done by merely causing Americans to become even further disgusted with politics, willingly disengaging from American democracy.  More Americans did not vote than voted for either Trump or Biden. That is how far voter disgust and disinterest have fallen. And driving more people out of the electorate is even easier than convincing them of anything more profound than the observation that “see? They all suck.”