The stench of defeat hangs over Trump.

Good.

Now that we’re in the Democratic Moment (fantastic, and who knew a month ago? Not me), it’s clear that it’s likely that former President Donald Trump and Sen. JD James David Hamelbowmanvance will lose, probably about as badly or worse than than the rotting corpse of the formerly organized Republican Party (Ike? Nixon? Reagan? Bush Senior? Bush Junior? Anyone? Bueller?).

Fine by me.

What’s weird (hello, Word of The Month—thanks, Coach!) is that there are still about 23 states, give or take, that are perfectly happy living under a fascist dictatorship. Maybe Harris pries North Carolina back, and that’s 22.

I don’t get it.

I get that those states are conservative, but most of them are taker states (that’s a state that gets more in federal aid than it contributes), and when your GOP nominee is in the thrall of authoritarian-adjacent billionaires like the nutty Miriam Adelson, the better-than-a-war-hero heir to the filthy lucre of her creepy spray-painted husband, Sheldon, you’re looking at a quasi-Civil War redivivus.

Not too many shots will be fired, because you can’t feed the revolution through the McDonald’s drive-thru. Bubba is kinda out of shape, and all that marching from the sofa to the fridge for a Bud and back isn’t going to win the war.

No, the war is going to be won by a Black woman with a nice smile and a regular guy running mate who is preternaturally inclined to do and say the right thing.

JD Vance, the poor dear, was the first salvo of the Trump’s campaign. He was hand-picked by Trump’s moron sons, instead of, say, Nikki Haley, whose moral and ethical flexibility leaves me breathless and apoplectic. Or even the generically bland North Dakota Gov. Doug Burghum, who oozed normalish with his presidential coiffure and owlish glasses. Heck, he even ran against Trump. Why? Because he and Haley knew that Trump would be a catastrophe.

Whatever Haley’s future might be is likely to look a lot like sitting on some pleasantly corrupt corporate boards.

Trump, the delicate little blossom that he is, along with his fellow narcissistic sociopaths, is tres upset with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who took it to him the other night.

“Kathy Hochul, the very unpopular Governor of New York, was the nastiest speaker on Monday evening (at the Democrat National Convention) as it pertains to your favorite President, me…Her total hatred, and statements made about me, had no bounds.”

Gee. Do you know anyone like that, a guy who would call the sitting Vice President someone with a low IQ, a race-chooser, a strange laugher? Oh, and he’s more attractive than Harris, too. He loves ripping on women’s looks. Rosie is a fat slob, or women he assaulted aren’t his type.

Trump bleated this on his “Truth” Social propaganda platform: “Number one, I did a GREAT job in New York, employed thousands of people, built some of the most beautiful and successful buildings, and paid billions of dollars in taxes…Number two is that, on the very distinct possibility I will win the Presidency, wouldn’t it be better for the people of New York State to have a Governor who got along with the President? Adversarial relationships are not good in politics!”

Except for the 34 convictions, the Fair Housing Act violations, the stiffing of untold numbers of contractors, the fraudulent draining of his scumbag father’s estate to bail himself out, he’s a GREAT New Yorker.

When Trump is cornered, and he is, he will literally do anything to emerge from the putrid filth of his sick world and throw out anything he thinks will stick.

He is cornered, and he won’t win.

What does that mean? Repeating for all needing: he’s running for president to avoid jail, which he won’t, unless the 47th president of the United States pardons him, which I doubt she will and wouldn’t go over very well with her currently-enthusiastic new and old supporters.

Let’s go back to Vance, if you want to hear a guy who knows he’s going back to Ohio.

He’s ripped into postmenopausal women, women who can’t have children, women who are single and own cats, and has the temerity to accost Walz of avoiding a deployment he knew nothing about. Oh. Where did that come from? The same bottom feeder who engineered the Swiftboating of Sen. John Kerry in 2004.

Huh.

Well, Cpl. Vance, here’s the deal. Good luck in your future endeavors that won’t involve presiding over the U.S. Senate, a residence at the Naval Observatory, or having access to a very cool Air Force jet.

Trump had the election close to into the bag a moment after a .223 slug crashed through the tip of his ear in Butler, Pennsylvania. National sympathy, a small but durable lead in most of the swing states, and the opportunity to show some humanity and humility after the assassination attempt was squandered nearly instantly. Why?

Because he can’t help it. Because he’s mentally ill. Because because because.

He can’t change because, had he been smart in 2017 when he assumed the presidency and played nice, pivoted toward the center, actually got some infrastructure built, and didn’t pick fights with every single political associate starting with his own cabinet appointees, he might have been re-elected.

But he didn’t.

He was and is, after all, Donald John Trump, the three year old in a red tie.

Because he feels it slipping away, what does he do?

Does he campaign hard and stay on message? No. He sits on his disgusting flabby ass at his golf resorts and stews, mocks, accuses, and whines. He doesn’t get his ass on up to Sheboygan, Kalamazoo, or Allentown and make his case.

Instead, he stages frightening, rambling, incoherent news conferences about crowd sizes.

Size matters to Mushroom Man, I guess.

Trump is now seeing hundreds of people dribble out of his rallies early, tired and bored of his silly BS. Can’t have a big crowd if you can’t hold your audience, which seems to consist of lightly educated angry white dudes and platinum blonde cult members with weird—yes—costumes.

Weird, really. Politicians need to be able to relate to their voters. Here are areas where Trump can’t relate.

He hasn’t held a job that wasn't handed to him by primogeniture. He never worked at a fast food place. He never studied hard, and paid people to take his tests. He hasn’t operated a kitchen stove, a lawn mower, a weed eater, an outboard motor, or a dishwasher.

He has never prepared his own meal. He has never had a library card. He has never used a coupon for ten percent off at Target. He has never coached Little League. He has never served anyone other than himself, whilst being waited on by paid enablers. He has never made his kids work. He has never gone to an auto supply store. He has never jump-started a car when it was snowing. He has never gone to grocery store. He has no idea what anything costs. He hasn’t used a snowblower. He hasn’t had keys made. He hasn’t talked to a mechanic. He hasn’t gone to the dry cleaners. He hasn’t operated a washing machine and made sure the reds weren’t accidentally mixed with the lights.

This is why he’s going to lose.

The man can’t even smile properly. He smiles like the car salesman who won’t show you the invoice. It’s a kind of weird (yup) tooth exposure, like an ape would do.

Any sensible politician would, in the words of former First Lady Michelle Obama, do something. Anything. Go campaign. Craft a new policy. Think. Read. Reflect.

But no. He’s just watching it all happen in the basement he dwells in with his supporters, most of whom don’t know the U.S. Constitution from the Declaration of Independence.

This is who he is.

It’s not who most of us are.

So on Election Night on November 5, when the Democrats take the presidency, the vice presidency, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, he will do what he was going to do all along, and what he routinely accuses the Democrats of doing: he will cheat.

It won’t work.

He will slink back to Mar-A-Lago, to Bedminster, to wherever he’s in his Bubble Boy echo chamber, and spend lots of time sitting with his hack lawyers, trying to stay out of the clink while he watches a Black woman and a regular guy who knows how to fish for walleyes and field dress a buck take their oath of office.

The only oath Trump will take, the loser, the Biggest Loser, the clown who got “You’re Fired!” thrown back in his make-up covered fat jowls, will be in courtrooms across the country, saying he swears that he won’t lie.

Losing with grace? Naw.

Just an obese loser.