I’m not going to make any predictions! But right now, it seems as though the Democrats are doing everything right, and the Republicans are doing everything wrong. Further, while the polls are still close, Kamala Harris has taken the lead. I’m going to delineate what I see as the positives for the Democrats and the negatives for the Republicans. I think the only strength the Republicans have is the rabid and cultish Trump base. If you think I’m missing something, let me know.
Democrats: smart moves
Biden leaves the game. Once he made the tough decision, he executed this move selflessly and flawlessly. One of the most incredible plays in US political history.
Kamala enters the game. If you were a Colts fan like me watching Super Bowl XLIV in 2010, then you remember how you felt when the New Orleans Saints started off the second half of the game with a successful onside kick: Oh fuck we’re gonna lose. Guess what? The Republicans feel that way right now.
Everyone–I mean everyone gets on board. When has our party ever been so unified?
Tim Walz enters as VP candidate. Speaking of football, how about a football coach with solid progressive cred?! This man is already fucking up the fascist game with his brilliant “weird” epithet. He will tie the nazi brains in knots by combining believable folksy charm along with attack dog wit and tactics. He brings in both whites that feel ignored and left-leaning Democrats that feel… ignored! Amazing VP pick!
Democrats: superb strengths
Kamala is a stone cold, utterly charming, battle-tested badass. The moment she entered the race, she seemed supremely confident and ready to go. Her speeches have been great. She’s totally in the zone, and it’s a thing of beauty to watch.
$. Holy fuck we’re raking it in.
Strong surrogates. When’s the last time the avatars of the party looked so good? Buttigieg alone is a frickin’ dragon slayer. Whitmer and Shapiro have been superb. The list goes on.
Endorsements galore. We’ve even got Republicans endorsing our candidate in significant numbers.
Republicans: dumb moves
JD Vance is chosen. Need I say more?
Weak convention is held. Perhaps owing to overconfidence, the GOP held a cheerful but bland and boring convention full of inert, snoozy speeches. The fascists received a roughly 0% bounce in the polls from this affair.
Trump goes to the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ). This will go down in US political history as one of the most offensive, ugly, racist, and downright stupid appearances by a candidate. Even Fox News couldn’t spin this as anything other than a disaster for Trump.
No moves are moved. Trump and his bag of dicks are doing nothing in particular to counter the Dems. Trump is giving the same standup about electric sharks and Hannibal Lecter to diminishing effect, while JD embarrases himself on the daily at limp campaign stops. Where is the Sturm und Drang of 2016. Sad!
Republicans: woeful weaknesses
Nothing, nada, nicht, niente, nanimonaku sticking to Kamala! They have no dirt, no nicknames, no talking points doing any damage whatsoever the heroine of the story. They’'ll have no better luck with Walz, either.
Dementing Trump brain. Trump’s dementia is rapidly accelerating. He now exhibits multiple verbal glitches in a row in his speeches. He looks like shit and has no energy. He’s swinging wild and attacking Republicans like Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia. He has lost what message discipline he had. Not good!
Legal travails. Corrupt judges gave Trump a respite, but now the shitstorm is swirling again.
Sucky, sickening surrogates. These nazi punks can’t control their racist, misogynistic rhetoric and are only doubling down on the dumb shit Trump and Vance are saying. The celebs supporting Trump are also pathetic, has-been pieces of shit, like Hulk Hogan and Ice Cube.
Oceans of flop sweat. This occurs when the performer does poorly, the audience reacts negatively, and the performer senses the negative reaction and does worse because of it. This is where Trump and his fascists are right now. As mentioned above, even Fox News seems baffled as to how to handle it all. Lindsey Graham the other day was saying the election was Trump’s to lose and was begging him to focus on the issues.
So if Trump is going to win, how will it happen at this point? Can he make a bold move at some point to do… something? Will he barely limp over the finishing line while Kamala, despite doing everything right, just barely fails to overtake him?
Trump can cheat. Well, at least he can try. From 2020 he should have learned that it is not actually that easy to do. But he has installed cronies in a variety of state offices where they can pull shenanigans similar to the fake electors plot.
Trump can (and will) call upon his buddy Putin for some reinforcement from Russian trolls who will spread disinformation all over social media.
Trump can keep foaming at the mouth with anger (which he seems to be doing a lot lately almost like he’s got a bug in his ear or something) and hope for some stochastic terrorism. If he manages to pull off Jan 6 2.0 except this time with guns, he will accomplish chaos for a few minutes until reinforcements arrive and wipe out the Gravy SEALs.
“What are the chances that Crooked Joe Biden, the WORST President in the history of the U.S., whose Presidency was Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him by Kamabla, Barrack HUSSEIN Obama, Crazy Nancy Pelosi, Shifty Adam Schiff, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, and others on the Lunatic Left, CRASHES the Democrat National Convention and tries to take back the Nomination, beginning with challenging me to another DEBATE,”
Agree. We cannot get lazy with this one. They need to keep the pedal to the floor all the way to November, and beyond if needed. Go on the attack, control the narrative, and acknowledge but brush aside the petty and childish name-calling attacks. Talk about the issues, and stay on-message. Do not disparage Conservatives - make room in the tent for them - focus the energy on Trump and Vance, and remind people how awful Trump 1.0 was, while at the same time painting a hopeful picture of the future. Keep fighting! Especially in the several key battleground states.
I’m cautiously optimistic. IMHO the biggest mistake is that Republicans are counting on “keeping the band together” from the 2020 election. In addition to all the other things mentioned, I think the 1/6/2021 insurrection is a major factor that will hurt Republicans, especially with those voters that are actual conservatives. Admittedly there aren’t very many of those left, but my guess is they represent at least 10 percent or so of Trump’s popular vote total from 2020, and he is likely to lose a large number of them. In other words, Trump’s ceiling is likely lower than the 74 million votes he got in 2020, and my guess is probably by quite a bit.
I think the dynamic is different than in 2016. As in totally fucking different in every dimension. Trump was an unknown quantity then (at least as a politician), whereas Hillary was known–with lots of baggage to boot. That’s mostly reversed, but with Harris having the benefit of lots of experience. Plus, we relate to the media and polling much differently now. We’re not going to be chumped this time.
Yeah, keep hammering on abortion, J6, allies around the world, the economy (altho, not this week with the rough stock market ride, LOL), loss of freedoms, imposition of religiosity and non-secular thought in government…
I know of one case where I suspect this has happened. Someone a couple miles down the road from us had been proudly displaying “Trump was right about everything!” banners on the corner of their pasture fence. Wasn’t but a couple days after Trump’s NY conviction was announced that the banners disappeared.
What you mean? This was his Gettysburg Address, a soliloquy for the history books that will be quoted a century from now as the epitome of political eloquence, a sonnet of Shakespearian quality, inspiring to all across whose ears it passes. Trump is truly a poet of passion, a smith of semantics, a chaplain of chat, whose powerful rhetoric and irrefutable logic crowns him the grand master of grandiloquence. One may only hope that his everlasting wisdom will be carved into granite to be preserved for the ages.
Does that seem likely? In addition to providing the do-re-mi, we are volunteering in mass numbers. I myself plan to hook up with local Dems and volunteer in the next week or so. And write a big check to boot.
I’d say it would start with folks on the left getting overconfident, as stated by others.
I do see the pendulum swinging toward good at the moment, but there are a few months left.
I think that the sentencing could be huge, either way. If Trump is given any kind of real punishment in New York, especially if it involves any kind of detention, that would be a huge blow to him. (And I don’t buy the argument that it would just energize his base and get out more votes in sympathy.)
On the other hand, if there is any kind of result that might give anyone a plausible way to claim he was politically persecuted (for example, SCOTUS puts forth an argument in his defense that suggests such a thing), that itself could certainly swing undecided voters his way and truly energize his base. Let’s say that New York State says that Trump needs to serve 18 months in prison, appeals are made to SCOTUS that say that this interferes with the election process, and SCOTUS agrees, and somewhere in the opinion written by Thomas or Alito they say this gives the appearance of political persecution, that could be a nightmare scenario for Harris.
That’s the sort of thing that make me extremely nervous. Six months ago I might have thought such a thing could never happen, now I’m not nearly as sure.
