During my last session with my therapist, he said something that really resonated with me.

To paraphrase, he said “you can’t beat an emotion with logic. An emotion is never wrong. The ways at which you arrive at the emotion can be wrong, but the emotion itself isn’t.”

As a practical matter, I think that tidbit helped me in my personal life. And it also might help to explain why myself and so many liberals across the entire spectrum of the left are so exasperated as Papaya Pol Pot dances from one political controversy to the next. We are trying to use logic to explain a man and his supporters who only act on emotion.

On it’s face, nothing that Trump and his cronies are doing makes sense. Let’s try and look at everything that’s happened in the last 7 months and boil it down to just pure, logical, political sense.

Even if Trump thinks COVID-19 is no big deal, it makes more sense for him to pretend it’s a big deal. Because history has shown us that the times Donald Trump has briefly been able to sort of kind of look and speak almost like what a President should maybe almost be like, the end result is positive. The times when he divides and doubles down always come back to bite him. As a matter of pure logic, then, the only logical thing Trump could have and should have done in this pandemic was to fake it until he made it. Relinquish a little control, let the actual smart people develop policies, and then have him announce them, being able to suck up all the credit for other people’s work.

That would put Joe Biden in a bind, as the beginning of the pandemic showcased that Biden wasn’t initially prepared to attack the President. Doing so would have made Joe look petty. It would also put Senate Democrats in a bind, for reasons that are the same. Essentially, this entire thing could have been Trump’s 9/11 moment; the moment when (white) people look at the President and decide that he’s not as bad as the Democratic Party chosen one, who many of us aren’t exactly enthusiastic about. That would set up Trump for a reasonable run at re-election, wherein voter suppression could potentially have him squeak out a victory that looked even better than his 2016 run.

All Trump had to do was appear even the least bit like a rational, human adult, and not only would the COVID-19 pandemic look a lot better, it would give Trump more than a fighting chance to win re-election.

That’s the logical side.

But Mango Mussolini does not run on logic. Trump is all emotion.

He doesn’t feel like COVID-19 is a big deal, and therefore it isn’t. It does not matter how many numbers and charts and graphs or how many countless preventable deaths you show him, his feeling is that this is all overblown and will end in a few weeks. He’s been in that state for the entirety of the pandemic, from COVID-19’s emergence in December of last year until now. He’s upset not because COVID-19 is killing Americans, but because he can’t understand why more people don’t feel like how he feels.

When we look back at 2016, Trump stans usually say that he “told it like it is” and that wasn’t afraid of being shunned by polite society and wasn’t spoiled by political correctness. That has been used as a baseline for how someone like Joe Biden can win back these disaffected voters. Throw logic and reason at them and hope they see the light.

But you can’t reason with an emotion. Perhaps more than liking what Trump said, what truly resonates with his base is the belief that he feels how they feel. When Trump has rallies, notice that he doesn’t have any policy positions. He has nothing substantive to say, no promises to make, none of the traditional markers of politicians. Instead, Trump speaks straight to what emotions his base are feeling; anxiety, anger at their slowly slipping grip on the majority, fearing the world has left him behind, their irrational prejudices against people they’ve never met.

It’s not like liberals are immune to this. I’m always staggered when (mostly white) liberals talk about feeling betrayed by Barack Obama, because his soaring rhetoric never showed itself in a progressive (enough) way. But Obama never ran as anything other than a centrist. His plan for the public option was slightly more liberal than everyone else, but still carved out a role for private health insurance. Obama didn’t support gay marriage, only civil unions. He talked about repealing the Bush tax cut, but curiously never really talked about going after big banks and still created a huge bailout for the industry once he was in office. Obama’s policy positions would be attacked as too far-right if he were to run today; even Joe Biden is running to the left of 2008 Obama on some key issues.

Obama would still go on to pass a lot of progressive laws, but his goal to bring Republicans to the table in good faith was an act that ultimately doomed his agenda.

But when Obama speaks, it’s hard not to feel emotion. It’s hard not to get fired up. I’ve never understood why more people don’t just straight up jack Obama’s oratory style, even if they can’t quite articulate it in the same way he could. Obama’s speeches are full of policy, but also full of personal anecdotes that poke at your feels, make you think, make you laugh, make you angry, make you inspired, make you chant “YES WE CAN!” at the top of your lungs.

Anger at Obama for not being progressive enough has more to do with how he made people feel than what he said.

You see this desperate desire to appeal to emotion in everything Trump does. He doesn’t want to upset his fragile base, so he refused to make a definitive statement about wearing masks. His daily tweet storms are stream of consciousness rants with (more or less) zero substantive thoughts whatsoever. Elizabeth Warren raised her national profile overnight by constantly provoking Trump into emotional outbursts.

When Trump was tasked with announcing sanctions of China in the Rose Garden, he instead had an impromptu bitching session about Joe Biden and John Bolton and anything else that happened to be pissing him off that day. Meanwhile, when tossed a ridiculously slow softball by Sean Hannity about what second Trump term would look like, Trump could only sputter out something about how being in Washington gave him experience…before moving the conversation back to John Bolton.

This “all emotion, no substance” approach worked in 2016, butting against Hillary Clinton’s desperate pleas to show that Trump wasn’t fit for office using facts, figures, knowledge and common sense. But by setting the bar so low for Trump, it took relatively little effort for Trump to be able to clear it; all Trump had to do was remember a couple facts about NAFTA and he seemed mildly capable of learning something. In 2016, when everyone was emotional and it seemed no one could agree with anything, Hillary’s logic came across as cold and unthinking.

Trump’s struggles to repeat this feat against Joe Biden are twofold. One reason is, in spite of Joe Biden being Joe Biden, people actually like Joe Biden. Trump can’t find something that people don’t like about Joe and hit him with it over and over again. It’s why his “Creepy Joe” and “Sleepy Joe” barbs haven’t stuck. Any of the flaws Trump could point out in Joe, Trump is worse on. Seriously, think of an issue Biden sucks on, and the counterpunch is and will always be “yeah, but Trump is a million times worse.”

The other problem, and probably the more important one, is that the COVID-19 pandemic and America’s continued reckoning with its own racist history require a more logical viewpoint. They require someone who can at least appear thoughtful and formulate a plan. It’s hard to appeal to emotion when all anyone is feeling is fear and desperation for an adult in the room to take charge.

But that’s where Trump fails. When Trump tried to look like he knew what he was doing, he kept hammering home half-truths and misinformation. When he was on TV every day trying to remain Presidential, it only exposed the fact that Trump had nothing interesting or reassuring to say. When presented with scientific data, Trump could only kind of nod his head and then talk about how maybe injected disinfectant could kill the disease.

It’s no wonder Trump has decided to give up even pretending COVID-19 exists. The only thing that path led to was one in which he exposed himself as a fraud and an idiot.

And so, in a rare instance of Trump having something I’m going to call “insight” but is probably more like instinct, Trump pivoted to the thing that bought him to the dance last time; raw emotion. Praying on white people’s fears. Trying to incite anger and violence at protesters. Latching on to whatever jerk praises him and lashing out at whoever he perceives to slight him. Trying to humiliate Joe by calling him old. Tear-gassing protesters because he thinks what evangelicals want is for him to appear near to a church with a bible. Re-opening the economy because he feels like the economy will immediately rebound and appeal to down on their luck, white small business owners. Trying to reopen schools early to appeal to white, surburban moms. Threatening that if he’s not elected, the suburbs will be eradicated.

Whereas before, Trump’s inability to coherently state a plan of action was a plus, in a time of literal, actual crisis, every move he makes backfires. His emotional responses to the crisis, especially absent of some sort of adult presence in the room, threatens to doom him.

More importantly, Trump can’t rely on those same emotions working with the audience in the same way.

Sure, there will still be those who vote for Trump specifically because doing so would piss off liberals. Again, that’s an emotional response rather than a logical one. But Trump keeps doing things that are peeling off once solid pieces of the GOP base. Gassing protestors for a photo-op at a church? Turns out most church going folk don’t like that shit! Trump and his surrogates insisting that old people would be willing to die if it meant the economy could stay afloat? Big ol’ swing and a miss there, as it turns out old people don’t want to die if they don’t have to. Re-opening schools and exposing children to a deadly virus? Who could possibly know that white suburban mothers loved their children and didn’t want them to get ill! Demanding “law and order” while police arrest protesters and shove over old white men? No idea how that didn’t play better on TV.

It’s not that the rats are fleeing the sinking ship. There are still Republicans out there, and the only thing Trump has going for him is that the people who are enthusiastic for him are really enthusiastic, in a way that the rest of us aren’t for Biden.

Forced to take action divorced from how he feels, Trump has instead clung on to his emotions, at great political expense. Trump’s emotions can’t be wrong. How he feels is how he feels, regardless of how he arrives at that point.

But as yet another poll shows Joe Biden with a double digit lead over Trump, it’s worth asking how long he’s going to cling to those emotions. Because deep down, the emotion that Trump doesn’t want to admit he’ll feel if/when he leaves, the one that he’ll try to ignore when he inevitably questions the legitimacy of the election, is right around the corner.

Because if/when Trump loses, the greatest emotion he’ll feel is the same one most of the rest of us will.

Relief.