Trump campaign strategy has taken form

Donald Trump’s campaign theme has taken form. It is clear now what Trump intends to do while seeking re-election as president of the United States.

He is going to denigrate, degrade, disparage his Democratic Party foe, Joseph Biden. Donald Trump will not offer a clear vision for the future. He won’t tell us what he intends to do during a second term. Trump likely won’t even boast about what he allegedly accomplished during the term he is serving.

I have seen the TV ads that Donald Trump has approved. They speak to Biden’s mental acuity. They say the former vice president “is slipping.”

Well, I am not going to defend Joe Biden’s mental snap, other than to say that I believe he has plenty left in the tank to compete head to head against the Liar in Chief.

I have no intention of offering this critique of Trump to prompt him to develop a winning strategy. I do not believe he is capable of crafting a theme on which to run for re-election. He instead is wired to pummel straw men. He continually lambasted Hillary Clinton in 2016 over the email matter, suggesting nefarious motives for her use of a personal server while she was secretary of state.

Trump likely will copy that page from his winning playbook strategy in 2020. Joe Biden’s team must be aware of it — and I have no doubt it is — must be prepared to answer every single innuendo that Trump intends to hurl against the proverbial wall.

Donald Trump’s political career by all rights should come to a screeching halt once they count all the voters’ ballots cast on or before Nov. 3.

How might Biden respond? I hope he intends to tell us how he would react to crises and pledge to improve on the feckless, reckless and pointless response to the COVID-19 crisis we’ve seen from the Trump administration. I also hope he intends to speak passionately to the issue of civil rights, which is a topic that is foreign to Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is likely to bring the nastiness to a full boil quickly and will sustain it during the length of what looks to me to be the most vile presidential campaign in memory.