History’s Most Incompetent Demagogue:

We can thank our lucky stars that Donald Trump has to be possibly the most incompetent demagogue in the history of the world. He has an intuitive feel for how to articulate grievance and keep his critics off balance. But his capacity to deliver is so impaired and incoherent that it precludes results. (It was the Republican Congress that delivered a tax cut, not Trump, and the tax act is already backfiring politically because its benefits are so skewed to the top.)

For the first 18 months of his presidency, Trump has managed to paper over a bizarre coalition between social conservatives angry about their economic condition and corporate plutocrats eager to grab even more. Globalist elites have closed their eyes to the ultra-nationalism as long as Trump was delivering tax cuts, deregulation, and the rest of the corporate agenda. Downhome Tea Party militants ignored the fact that the economic gains went mainly to the top as long as Trump delivered on the social issues.

But this cynical recipe, quite a straddle in its own right, did not require America becoming Russia’s toady; and that reality is alarming both camps. In the most recent Fox News poll, conducted July 9-11, just 5 percent think he has been too tough on Putin and 53 percent say he has not been tough enough.