mtutiger

Another banner day for the stenographers at the Times...

We need to be honest with ourselves: Joe Biden had to step aside for a performance that was less bad than that. It isn't acceptable, but our "fourth estate" continues to just treat all this as business as usual.

After trashing Josh Shapiro, he's now trashing Jewish voters for considering not voting for him.

If he weren't running and if he didn't have a legitimate chance to win... and if he weren't so dangerous.... I'd feel a little more sad about this. It's hard to watch someone fade away like this (even him).

He's always meandered, but this actually is worse. I don't know if it's the shooting or the aging. It may be both honestly

Going after Brian Kemp again....

His answer on Josh Shapiro was incoherent... did he mix him up with somebody?

He sounds.... unwell

What would really concern me about the GOP's future is that, beyond Trump, what does this party look like? Who ascends to the top? (no, JD Vance isn't gonna cut the mustard) This is the problem with personality cults (I'm sure some will dispute the characterization, but if we're being honest, it is one).... when the leader ages out and / or dies, it leaves a massive vacuum behind. This party has currently wrapped it's identity in this one person, but there really isn't any evidence that "Trumpism without Trump" works at all.

I did listen to Hacks on Tap for the first time in a while this week just cause I was curious to hear their take on things. And Axelrod and Mike Murphy sparred over this quite a bit. Murphy was right, he's the one who looks like the chicken, and it kinda confirmed a little bit about Axelrod's political instincts not being quite up to speed with this current moment IMO

In theory, not necessarily against. But I think it would be a huge mistake to cave and let him back out of the previously agreed September 10th debate. He's the one without the leverage here.... he's the one who looks weak. Make him twist in the wind.

Keep calling Orange Chicken's bluff...

But in order to sustain objections, two-thirds of the Senate would be required to vote to sustain. Which, even if the GOP takes control, isn't going to happen. I'm not saying there isn't reason to be concerned, I just think worries about individual states (particularly Georgia) or even the threats of violence that he'll try to whip up are more concerning to me IMO

Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022 There's more to worry about at the state level than there is in terms of the actual Congressional certification IMO

Defensive Coordinators.... definitely not important to the success of any football team. Just incredible.

His campaign this year is a mix of competent and incompetent... the people at the very top (Wiles and LaCivita) are probably better than either of his first two runs, honestly. But the rest of the operation leaves a lot to be desired, and the candidate is almost impossible to manage in terms of keeping on message.

Nikki Haley has since boarded the "Trump Train".... but her comment back during the winter that the first party to ditch their 80 year old nominee would win seems prescient in retrospect. Regarding 2016 being eight years ago, aside from people possibly being tired of the show, demographics change as well... generational attrition has happened since then. Millennials and Gen Z are going to make up a larger piece of the electorate in 2024 and, on balance, these aren't groups that are more favorable to Trump than those they are replacing in the electorate. The suburbs are also much different over the last 8 years, both in terms of how they vote and in terms of how they are diversifying (both in terms of age and ethnicity) Not saying that everything is sunshine and rainbows for the Ds, certainly think concerns with Latinos and younger men remain.... but it's just hard to compare 2016 to now. It's an entirely different world.

FWIW, this Marquette poll is likely an outlier, but directionally, it still confirms that this is a much different race and, at least nationally, is one that Harris is opening up a small lead in.

Yeah, I've been wary about entirely attributing this purely to a honeymoon period given how much Biden's struggles in the polls prior to leaving the race were attributed simply to base enthusiasm issues. Don't mean this to downplay Harris' rollout, because it has more or less gone about as well as it could have given the circumstances, but if you eliminate the issues with base consolidation, what is happening now is kind of what you would expect to happen.

Part of the issue here is that, to the extent that there is anger about the economy as it pertains to inflation (easing now, but 2022 and 2023 were legit bad), voters have associated it far more with Biden. In all of this polling since he left the race, when the question of the economy shows up, it has tended to show a much closer split between Harris and Trump. In other words, Harris isn't being penalized for whatever uneasiness people still have with the economy, fair or otherwise. Immigration is still a bigger gap, though maybe slightly smaller than before. But it's not as salient as it was, particularly as border crossings have fallen steeply during 2024 and as the migrant busing issue (which once dominated the nightly news where I live) has faded into the background. Ultimately, the economy is where the rubber meets the road. And an environment where Trump is only slightly ahead and where he's not clobbering his opponent on the issue is one where he absolutely can lose. This all again goes back to the month between the dropout and the DNC... the clock is ticking, and paid media alone isn't a sufficient strategy for countering the earned media bonanza that Harris/Walz are now benefiting from IMO.

I hadn't considered this possibility as to why he's not out as much, although his schedule has been a lot lighter throughout this campaign regardless.

It's not even that he didn't try, although that's a valid point, it's the fact that he doesn't have any sort of message discipline. The campaign of course is producing ads, and they have generally been hitting Kamala on the areas that you would expect them to (ie. immigration, economy, etc). But when he has had public appearances, such as the Atlanta rally over the weekend, he not only didn't focus on or reinforce any of those issues but actively made life harder by, for instance, going after the wife of Governor Brian Kemp. To be clear, he wasn't clear and concise and rambled a lot in 2016 as well, but the degree to which he is consumed by grievance and articulate any sort of substantive message is markedly different when you compare to videos of him from that campaign.

This is true, and thinking about it more, it's really strange that they aren't counter programming better. The other part is that, we are less than two weeks from the DNC... the most common refrain after Biden dropped out and endorsed Harris was that the time between that point and Chicago was a race to define Kamala Harris. We are halfway between that point and he beginning of the convention, and unequivocally, Trump's campaign is losing that race. And with his schedule this week, is actively wasting time that could be used in that effort. It raises a ton of questions... I don't think it's purely campaign strategy, I'm sure Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita know what to do. But there's only so much you can do with a bad candidate.