Not lackadaisical that I recall. Clinton outspent Trump 2-1 in 2016.
It looks like Trump is again being outspent.
Since the topic has come up, I will say that I don’t think Trump will be able to “win” by stealing the election this time. Reasons:
- He wasn’t able to do it last time when he still had control of the executive branch. He will not be able to declare martial law, call a mob to the capitol–anything like that.
- The whole country would say, “Oh, this shit again!” He wouldn’t have the surprise factor, and it would be obvious that he simply intends to contest any election he loses instead of having concrete issues about a particular election.
- While it is plausible that there are Trumpers in certain counties in certain states that can try to obstruct the election, unless such efforts add up to throwing off an entire state’s count, then they can’t affect the outcome of the election. Further, even if an entire state could be stolen, that might not create enough of a difference in the EC count to affect the election. Finally, all of this would be challenged in court, and they would have to win those cases. IOW, a lot would have to go right with the plot in order for it to work.
- Any scenario in which the plot actually works would not be subtle or plausible, as Bush/Gore was in 2000 (still terrible, of course). It would be a baldfaced cheat and power grab. Nor can I imagine a scenario in which the Supreme Court is not involved–and we know how much they are loved and trusted these days. The Democrats would definitely not go, “Whoops, you got us!” and leave quietly. If the election were to be thrown to the House based on the cheat, do you think the Democrats would even participate in the process? Of course not. The US would instantly be plunged into a constitutional crisis and maybe even a civil war. It would not be a clean “win” for Trump. It would be an open war in which he would either become dictator or go down trying.
Trump didn’t need to raise and spend money, it seems-He got most of it for free. From your link: “Trump did so with thin traditional campaign spending. His chaotic and often divisive campaign drew constant eyeballs, earning him billions of dollars in free media and allowing him to spend comparatively little on television ads and ground operations.”
Trump doesn’t need to cheat to win. It’s stupid and Trump-like to say he does.
Only at golf.
Bullshit. Trump lies, cheats and steals, and to say anything different would be “Trump-like”.
I didn’t say he doesn’t cheat at things. I said he doesn’t need to cheat to win the election (the topic of this thread).
Hillary Clinton and the emails.
My guess is the Republicans have something in the bag that they plan on releasing right before the election. Some made-up scandal they can throw at Harris too close to the election for her to convince people it’s not true.
They most likely haven’t told Trump about it. He can’t keep a secret or hold a thought for three months. If he knew about the plan, he’d talk about it and ruin the timing.
Also bullshit. If he is just squeaking by while lying, cheating and stealing, then he will definitely lose without them.
Maybe they have something. The thing about Clinton and her emails, however, was that it was something that Trump was able to bludgeon Clinton with from the beginning of the campaign. Further, it was a real thing that she didn’t deny. Finally, we had the Comey affair.
If something is sprung on Harris as an October surprise, etc., it has to be extremely big and have evidence to back it up, or I don’t think it will stick or do damage. They tried to do this in 2020 with Hunter Biden’s laptop, and it wasn’t clear whether it was bullshit or not, and the damage was minimal.
I wish I could agree, but the democrats’ messaging around the Jan 6 insurrection and just generally with Trump shows them to be pretty toothless. Our institutions, too, are far weaker than I would’ve guessed. Jan 6 was one of the most incompetently executed coup attempts the world has ever seen, and yet it almost worked for lack of anyone willing to oppose it, and the subsequent investigation and prosecutions were very weak. This was our big chance to purge ourselve of fascist radicalism and our response was tepid at best. The overall message from Jan 6 was basically “keep trying until you get it right”
I have no idea how you guys are so confident. Everything has been going as well as could be expected for the democrats over the last few weeks and as poorly as could be expected for republicans, and yet if the election were held tomorrow, Harris would be what, a 55-60% favorite to win at best? That’s not something to be confident about, let alone overconfident.
The American public is fickle and unbelievably stupid. It’d just take one brown person doing something bad between now and then for a couple of extra million “centrists” to decide we need to get hateful to feel secure again. Harris’ lead is so thin that it couldn’t withstand basically anything going wrong.
The best shot is to continue to pressure Trump and have him completely melt down, which I do think is a strong possibility. He’s worn out, he’s old, he’s demented, he’s raging at all times, he’s losing it even more than he has in the past. Keep poking at him until he starts having moments where he can’t even try to string a sentence together or he starts dropping N-bombs on TV.
I’m pleasantly surprised at how the last few weeks have gone but I am not confident about this at all. We’ve found out that our country is almost evenly split between people rooting on fascism, people who don’t care, and people who aren’t doing a very effective job at all at fighting against it.
Yes.
Same with Harris, should she be bold enough to say she already has enough money and stop fund-raising. She can take on a FEMA oversight role, traveling to natural disaster sites (big tropical storm now in the Carolinas) on the government’s dime. And she can agree to interview requests.
Holycrapfuckno!
You don’t play nice with Trump-You bury his sorry ass.
Seriously.
This has moved up from in the hole into a toss up but he can win the toss up. Team Harris has continued to keep their momentum and possibly will continue to do so through the DNC. Then the DNC is over and Trump will have a chance to capture the news cycle. Team Harris will make one or more mistakes, just realistically.
How can he win? Very easily.
If you don’t think Trump has a legitimate path to victory then you and I live in different realities.
This is how Trump wins—an October surprise. They’ll find something in Harris’ background that they can use against her. Nothing is too trivial or too far in the past. Maybe she had a few beers while underage, or maybe she joined her high school’s French Club (and we all know about those French). To you and I, such things are trivial, but if that’s all that Republicans can find, well, those will work for them.
And I agree that Trump is currently in the dark. The Republicans’ PTB know that he cannot keep a secret, and would blab it well before October, ruining any surprise.
Most of the physical participants in the insurrection have been successfully prosecuted. Then we had the Jan. 6 Commission, which was about as successful as communication was going to get.
Had it “worked,” we would instantly have been in a civil war. On its face, the insurrection was an attempt at a violent takeover. It wasn’t some subtle machination that could have given Trump a plausible route to remaining in power.
I disagree. Prosecuting the perps actually in the government was bound to be a challenge from the beginning, as they had not physically participated and had some level of plausible deniability. I’m not satisfied either–I think Trump should have been in a cell the day after Biden became president. But I understand why things have played out as they have.
I was confident that Clinton was going to win in 1996, since he always led in the polls and Dole was a supremely weak candidate. Further, it was a totally normal election. This year ain’t that. Chaos reigns, and we are battling a fascist insurgency in which 30% of the population and an entire political party are complicit. Nothing is normal. Even if we win, things won’t feel truly normal for another ten to twenty years at least.
That’s what’s happening, and the rate of his deterioration will be a big factor in the outcome of the election.
Fair enough, but if it’s truly a tossup, then Harris can win “very easily” too.
I think the big difference between the campaigns right now is that Trump is not adapting at all and almost seems to be trying to lose, while the Democrats are in 24/7 wing chun mode.
Perhaps it is the vast difference in approaches that makes me feel that “tossup” isn’t the right word…
(edit, re-post)
He may have a legitimate path but is he capable of following it? What would he need to do? YMMV but I think he’d need to start behaving like a responsible adult and start acting like the job means more to him than just keeping himself out of jail which let’s not forget is the entirely of the reason why he is running. If Trump remakes himself into a rational alternative he can reach a wider audience. But he won’t. He’ll keep running around with his hair on fire screaming about American carnage and sharks and batteries and the late, great Hannibal Lecter and shit. I’m glad the Harris campaign is branding him as weird. He is weird, not in a good way and not in a way that is going to win an election. Walking the path to victory means getting rid of at least 80% of this nonsense and Trump has shown us that he can’t do that even with a literal gun to his head.