So an October surprise could give Trump a bump in the polls. Maybe Harris’ email retention policy isn’t as airtight as the press thinks or has been led to believe.
I’ll quote from today’s New York Times Pitchbot to give a flavor of what we might learn in October:
Opinion | I was a lifelong liberal Democrat. Then I learned that Tim Walz had a DUI in Nebraska in 1995.
All ten Jewish Senators are Democrats and 24 of the 27 Jewish members of the House are Democrats. Here is why Kamala Harris’s decision to choose Tim Walz shows that the Democratic party is hostile to Jews.
Will Tim Walz be too old too run for a second term in 2036?
Most observers see today’s stock market rally as good news. But X-user @cryptotesla1488 isn’t so sure.
Whether it’s J. D. Vance pretending to be from rural eastern Kentucky or Tim Walz actually being from rural eastern Nebraska, both candidates have shown a real connection with rural America.
I think that Aeschines, to his credit, has listened to feedback and dialed back the certainty. Furthermore, the OP was a masterclass on how to pitch a thread topic. Check it out:
Fighting ignorance in the political realm is a matter of weighing competing considerations. So Aeschines provides his take, then lists the pluses and minuses of his case and asks the board’s membership to provide other lines of argument as appropriate. That’s how it’s done.
Substantively, I agree with Exapno Mapcase that it won’t be a straight line to election day. If it is, that would be really unprecedented. But this is a well-framed thread.
There are any number of domestic/world events that Trump could heavily exploit - including an economic downturn, terrorism, a horrific violent crime like the one that has right-wing Britons rioting, Kamala or other Democrats saying/doing stupid things etc.
It doesn’t even have to be an actual event, what with disinformation bots working full time.
The race appears to be a tossup right now.
Any Democratic overconfidence at this point is ludicrous.
People didn’t like me making predictions, saying it was jinxing things. So I didn’t here. In any case, there’s nothing really to predict that’s interesting. It’s a close race.
I was rather certain that Trump would not debate Biden. So were a lot of people in the media. I was dead, crazy wrong with the way that debate turned out. LOL.
I wasn’t really certain about Trump not being the nominee. I just thought the possibility was an interesting one to explore and at least seemed plausible.
Short answer- cheating. They have election deniers in place in many counties in swing states, they may simply refuse to certify the results. Do this in enough counties in enough states and we could have a real mess resulting in the election being thrown to the House.
Agreed, but events could also help the Democratic ticket.
Harris could greet returning hostages.
Harris could visit tornado and hurricane victims, using the powers of incumbency to bring real assistance. And when Trump tried copycat visits, he could get negative publicity for interfering with relief efforts.
Harris, with Biden’s acquiescence, can thus harness the powers of incumbency. Trump cannot.
Harris may believe more in campaigning, and less in visibly doing her current job, than I do. But she may decide to do both. All Trump can do is campaign, and hope for national bad news.
I’m at the same point, so I can’t help but agree. Mock them. Will it change their minds? Almost certainly not. But these people don’t live in reality and you’re not going to convince them with facts anyway.
As a Canadian, I value democracy and the stability provided by institutions and tradition. These are imperfect, but for many reasons a Trump presidency would be more volatile. This would not be my personal preference.
Many quickly dismissed Trump’s chances in 2016. I did not. Although subsequent years proved my understanding of America was not nearly as good as I thought, I felt many Americans preferred entertainment to politics, liked outsider candidates, and that Trump had a gift for getting ample coverage to the extent journalists were asking him about his opinion on everything and stating this as news. Of course, events still greatly surprised me. The fact that half the cabinet members who served under Trump are unenthusiastic about his current candidacy says volumes, and may be without precedent.
Still, at this point Harris and Trump are essentially even. While I am optimistic at the improvement in Democratic morale, Trump could still win and his chances of doing so are surprisingly high. He has managed to maintain the support of many people. Only a few States may make all the difference, and the local apparatus matters.
There are many reasons people support him. Some still see him as a successful businessman and entertainer. Some prefer his views on “single issue” policies such as taxes. borders, social and religious issues, smaller government, foreign policy, safety nets, etc. regardless of consistency or actual effect. Giving donors the right to change or write policy is always popular with some. Plenty of folks think his legal issues unjust or political and are willing to overlook many concerns. Others simply enjoy his bombast, contrarianism and disregard for convention. I don’t claim to understand it all, but where people stand sometimes depends on where they sit and people and regions are anything but monolithic.
The Democrats are doing some things better but counting chickens is not yet helpful. Vance seems to be a polarizing figure, as is Trump, but I am not sure his base dislikes the choice as much as the media portrays. They’ve got things wrong before, of course.
Histrionics and hyperbole aside, how can Donald Trump win? Quite easily. The election is going to hinge on turn out in a few swing states. Excite voters in those states by less than a percentage point more than Harris and he has it. That’s a double edged sword of course and he could quite easily lose. What won’t determine the chance is levels of excitement in areas where either side has a considerable margin.
I mean if things stay as they are it’s pretty much a toss up. I really hope Harris will pull away and make the next couple of months a bit less stressful (and I really hope she will deliver a big enough win to end Trump’s career and destroy the MAGA movement) but that’s a hope not an expectation. Right now Trump stands approximately the same chance of winning as Harris.
That’s insane, utterly utterly bonkers, like there a thousand things about it that would have been considered flat out impossible a decade ago, but thats where we are
And indeed, the campaign against Trump in that year was lackadaisical because Trump was regarded as a joke candidate. Certainly at some point he has to settle down and start acting like a politician, right? Wrong, he redefined what a politician was, tapping into a vast reservoir of anger and resentment and xenophobia and declaring himself to be the answer. While this should not have worked, it is noted in the bible that the Anti-Christ will be obvious and people will fall for it anyway.
In this campaign, Harris knows that Trump is not a joke and that Trump is capable of a level of shitbaggery that has never been seen in US politics before, surpassing even the scheming and machinations of Trump’s previous campaigns. Harris is campaigning as if she is the underdog (which I don’t personally think she is but I am biased) and I think this will serve her well. Certainly better than a certain she-who-shall-not-be-named who campaigned in 2016 like the country owed her something.
How does Trump win in any situation where he is absolutely and resolutely fucked? By refusing to lose and refusing to recognize when he has lost, a talent that has taken him way, way beyond where it ever possibly should have. But he won’t be doing it unopposed this time. And he has dementia. And his unresolved mental trauma from getting shot in the head by one of his own supporters is clearly leading him to blustering out his anger anywhere and everywhere he goes. Refusing to lose won’t cut it any longer. He has used it all up. Like his NFT collection, what once was shiny no longer holds any value or appeal except to an insignificant few who cannot sustain him.
So all in all, the best way for Trump to win at this point is to die. If he dies, he doesn’t get sentenced for his 34 convictions and all the other cases go away. He doesn’t get humiliated in another debate. He doesn’t suffer a rout on election day where he will claim Harris cheated and no one will care. He doesn’t have to go through another round of his sycophants and lackeys betraying him for however long his hamburger grease-clogged heart can hold out. If Trump dies, the Republicans can run absolutely anyone (although I wouldn’t recommend JD Vance, I’m pretty sure that guy fucks couches) and they will get a better result.
Harris is also up in swing state polling. Nate Silver just put her higher than Trump for the first time.
Yes, it’s still close. But how is Trump going to “excite” voters more than he already has? He is coasting right now. He has not tried to do anything different now that it’s Harris and not Biden.
To me, it’s a bit of a reverse of 2016. Clinton was the favorite to win, but she had weaknesses and Trump kept rising bit by bit. Trump was the favorite to win before Harris came in, but now she has the momentum. I think these are the questions to answer at this point:
Can Harris keep rising?
Can Trump do anything different?
What do the polls say, and how accurate are they?
Will unexpected events continue to affect the race?
The word “tossup” wasn’t used in 2016, though in hindsight I think it was appropriate. It’s being used right now, and I don’t think it’s appropriate, although I can’t quite put my finger on why exactly.
I don’t agree Trump currently has dementia, though I do agree with much of your post. Reading about Walz in The Guardian, they quoted him as saying that in seven years in the public eye he could not recall Trump laughing. Is that true? Certainly he is more stern and serious than he was in 2016, but never?
He would get all that and get to live if he were to quit the race. I think that that would be the smart thing for him to do. But I’ve now seen more than one video of Russian soldiers choosing to die than to surrender to Ukrainians, and I think Trump is a dead-ender in this vein.
It’s funny, but I just saw Trump laugh a little in a video I saw like yesterday. I can’t remember which one. It seemed very odd because he does it so little.
Edit: I found an example that is similar to what I saw: