Trust me when I tell you that if you are in politics, and facing a tough election,  you do not want to make the enemies that Donald Trump has made in the past few weeks.

I call these people the Lions Of  The Great White Middle, and they are abandoning him in once unimaginable ways.

Historians are already suggesting that George Floyd’s death has proven to be more nationally and globally significant than the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

I’m no historian, but it feels awfully big to me. Another few feet in the giant hole Mr. Trump is digging for himself.

In a time of perpetual shock and crisis, Floyd’s killing has shaken the heart and soul of the country more than any other event I can recall in my lifetime.

This is something new, something different. This is turning out to be a great wave. And President Trump is on the wrong side of every part of it, retreating backward, ignoring the present, hiding from the future.

The Pandemic and the death of George Floyd has undone all the conventional wisdom in politics this year, creating a new reality that would not have been believable just a few days ago.

My apologies for thinking of him as being so shrewd.  He does have the instincts of an animal,  but then, look at what has happened to the animals in our world.

Trump no longer even pretends to speak to the people, only his people. He is clearly terrified to face the nation, he has no idea what to say to us.

“In my 35 years of polling, I’ve never seen opinion shift this fast or deeply,” Frank Luntz, a veteran Republican pollster, tweeted this week, according to the New York Times. “We are a different country today than just 30 days ago.”

Just a few short months ago, he seemed to have it made. Today he is close to losing everything.

Trump is a candidate on the run, he is now lunging almost desperately towards the election. He has chosen to make his last stand on 2016’s hit platform: insensitivity, cruelty, bigotry, indifference to life, and what he calls “law and order.”

Like someone who can’t breathe, he is desperate to get back to his oxygen source,  those roaring crowds in red baseball caps calling for blood. That is his safe place. It is his only safe place.

And there is no one around him strong enough or smart enough to grab him by the shoulders, and shout, “you are running the wrong way! Turn around!”

In an almost evenly divided culture like ours, the middle often decides who wins. About 40 percent of the country is loyal to the President,  approximately 50 percent do not like him.

These numbers do not change radically. They are the legacy of partisanship. Minds close and get all locked up. Change is very rare.

Thus the middle becomes critical in determining the country’s future. America will be fighting among itself for a long time, but I believe the true heart and soul of our great country is just beginning to beat again.

George Floyd helped to do that, but so did Donald Trump.

For all the feminist and racial turmoil, America is still run by a white, middle – class patriarchy – CEOs, certain politicians, and the rich and powerful men who operate influential, and wealthy corporate and cultural institutions like the NFL, the military, and NASCAR.

These men and their institutions together represent a vast swath of the country’s wealth, power, and cultural and, therefore, political influence.

Their shadows strike deep into heartland America, many have been core supporters of President Trump and Trumpism.  He has always given them what they wanted, and they are rich now beyond their wildest dreams.

Together, they have a much more powerful audience than Donald Trump’s Twitter account.

A few short days ago, NFL owners and the U.S. Soccer Federation were threatening to fire or fine players who knelt to protest police brutality.

A few days ago, the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff marched in combat uniform along with the President to support a  photo op that saw the military chase protesters away from the White House.

A few short months ago, before the Pandemic, the many millions of fans of Nascar, the sport of the American South, carried scores, if not hundreds of  Confederate flags to NASCAR races. There were so many confederate flags and some were so big they could be seen by satellites.

Throughout the black world, they were the banners of bigotry and slavery, more slaps in the face to the descendants of slaves. To many mostly white men, they were sacred icons of the past, like statues of Confederate Generals.

A week ago, Bubba Wallace, the only black NASCAR driver in the country, asked NASCAR to ban the flags.

A few short days ago, America’s most revered and respected General was keeping his silence and held his counsel after resigning a year ago as head of the Defense Department.

Over the past week, Donald Trump was rebuffed and abandoned by four of these men and all of these institutions and, inevitably, by many of their customers and followers.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell,  no left-wing radical,  said in a video that the NFL was wrong not to listen to its player’s protest of racism and police brutality and apologized to them for bending to President Trump’s demands.

On Wednesday, the head of the U.S. Soccer Federation announced it had repealed its policy requiring players to stand for the National Anthem.

In an extraordinary condemnation, James Mattis, the esteemed Marine General who resigned as secretary of defense in December 2018, denounced the President as a threat to the Constitution and for purposefully dividing the nation.

General Mark A. Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Of Staff, apologized for yesterday for walking alongside the President during his stunningly ludicrous and self-destructive march across Lafayette Square while holding up a bible.

General Milley said he should not have been there, and that the photo op “created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”

Days before Donald Trump is scheduled to speak at West Point, several hundred distinguished graduates of that academy published a letter warning  the cadets against a leader just like the one we have:

“When leaders betray public faith through deceitful rhetoric, quibbling, or the appearance of unethical behavior, it erodes public trust. When fellow graduates acquiesce to bullying and fail to defend honorable subordinates, it harms the nation and the Long Gray Line.”

On Monday, NASCAR responded to Wallace’s request and banned confederate flags at all NASCAR events. “The presence of the Confederate flags at NASCAR events runs contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all fans, our competitors, and our industry.”

Every one of these actions was taken in obvious defiance of President Trump and his values. In political terms, it was an earthquake.

All of these people represent vast, rich, and often influential constituencies, these are not people who walk alone or act on impulse.

The President’s daily gift today to his opponents was the announcement of his plan to resume his campaign rallies in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Juneteenth, (June 19) a holiday marking the emancipation of slaves in America. If he wanted to send a message to black America, it worked.

They got it.

Tulsa is a city with a history of the worst racial massacre in American history.

Black leaders across the country condemned the choice of the Tulsa rally as abhorrent, “a wink at his racist supporters,” and a “message to every black American: more of the same.”

When all of us, black and white, are looking for hope and healing, President Trump pours salt on every wound he can find, confusing rage and hatred with strength.

While Trump seeks to blame the social and racial unrest on unnamed “radical Democrats”, and various hobgoblin scheming lefties,  he is under siege from the conservative and very influential titans of the American heartland. They seem to be louder and more eloquent than many of his enemies on the left.

Even his former communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, called the event a “wink at his racist supporters.”

If it weren’t so sad, I would be laughing.

First, it was the spectacle of those nasty black and Hispanic women in Congress leading the country towards dread socialism. Now, it’s the young lefties as thugs,  burning buildings, tossing their glasses and books and Ipads at the police, and looting Target.

Is this really the best they can do? Aren’t there any fresh bogeymen around?

Any amusement park does better in its Castle Of Horrors.

And this at a time when the Trump campaign has invested tens of millions of dollars in a campaign to win over black voters before the 2020 election.

The White House said Trump plans to talk at the Tulsa rally about race and racial justice. Good luck with that.

I can’t think of anyone in public life other than Klan leader David Duke I would rather not listen to talking about race than Donald Trump.

Trump is hemmed in now.

The coronavirus doesn’t seem to have vanished as quickly as he promised it would. Americans want to go back to work, but they are also frightened, and Trump can’t or won’t reassure them.

His booming economy is not yet close to booming.

The governors and mayors all across the country that he has insulted and bullied are more popular than he is.

He can’t talk to us about the virus because he said it is gone. He can’t talk to us about race because he has winked and nodded at racism and white supremacists for four years. He can’t brag about his booming economy because it isn’t booming.

So what can he talk about? The Russian investigation, the impeachment hoax, and left-wing radicals taking over our country.  He can’t talk about the Washington establishment because he is the Washington establishment.

And now, he can’t even send federal troops into Seattle to bust up that police-free Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone demonstrators have taken control of around a boarded-up Seattle Police Precinct, as he threatened to do in a tweet.

Everybody knows by now that Hilary Clinton lost and Barack Obama isn’t in charge any longer. It’s not really a winning formula.

As the nation focuses so closely on race, what can this President possibly say to black people that would comfort or interest them?

Joe Biden, for all of his weaknesses, has one impressive strength: he can never really be branded a socialist or spear-carrier for the radical left.  He has spent his whole political life in the middle. He is part of the Great White Middle, they know him and trust him.

He will hug the boat, but he is not likely to rock it. What he is is nice, and people are missing nice.

Loyalty to country, ALWAYS, wrote Mark Twain. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it. African Americans are telling us that the government doesn’t deserve it now.

That is also a big deal.

The message to the military is loud and clear: You may not use us to control dissent and protest in American cities.

And there is a subliminal message as well that is very important, and that every political writer and every single soldier in America will have no trouble hearing. If this man tries to stay in power illegally, soldiers will go into the White House and drag him out.

That is a compelling and perhaps timely message. Biden said today his greatest concern is that Donald Trump will try to cling to power if he loses the election.

So this is the big  story, what reporters call “the take-a-way.”

The great danger to Trump has never come from the passionate progressives who find him so offensive and dangerous. There are not enough of them; there have never been enough of them yet to change America, except around the edges.

The danger to him comes from losing the center.

The white men who wear white shoes and play golf and who supported him when he called black players who kneel “sons-of-bitches.” The white Generals in the military who were happy to serve him and advance their notions of military power and weapons sales.

The white social warriors who make NASCAR the most potent cultural entity in the South.

The danger that has most frightened people is the danger that our civil structure – the workers, politicians, soldiers, business, and cultural leaders – will, as the Republican Senate has done,  do nothing to stop the relentless power-grabbing and Constitutional corrosion by Trump that has been so brazen.

Much of the country has said they don’t really care about justice and freedom, or even the Constitution. They want money in the bank, fewer immigrants, and the disruption of an increasingly corrupt system they have come to hate.

I believe – and have written before – that Trump is a great gift to those people who preach compassion and generosity if only they will open themselves up to it.

All of the things I listed above, all of the limits, the guardrails that have preserved our system of government, are being affirmed, and all because of him.

People see some signs of progress. He did it.

We were asleep and are now waking up. And making noise that is shaking our world.

This man is doing himself more harm every single day than all of the hand wringing of the progressive movement had done in four years. Tulsa is his next catastrophe waiting to happen.

I believe this is a time for me to be strong and clear, not afraid. The America I love is rising and asserting itself in the way that Martin Luther King prophesied before he died.

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”

In my fumbling way, this is why I am called to write about this year. My conscience told me it was right.

The time has come.