President Trump's prospect for re-election is sinking faster than the Titanic, especially in the battleground states where he is now losing badly to Joe Biden, the presumptive Democrat nominee, who is resonating among Americans looking for a return to stability and sanity. Trump's spectacular fall from grace in states he won in 2016 is largely self-inflicted. It began in earnest with his refusal to heed the multiple warnings available to him regarding the approaching COVID-19 storm. Ironically, he could have still emerged from that debacle a heroic figure by leading the country out of the abyss he helped to create. But he has failed to do that as well. Instead of promoting the universal acceptance of face masks, for example, as a necessary inconvenience for combating the spread of the virus, he has chosen instead to politicize taking that precaution. And that failure of leadership has only contributed to further confusion, discord, and a rising rate of infection throughout much of the country. The net result of Trump's ineptitude is that America is experiencing in real time what President Lincoln meant when he observed, "that a house divided against itself cannot stand."

America cannot afford four more years of division at the hands of Donald Trump.

Jack Welch

Ledyard