I have to say, this is moving along swimmingly. I was not expecting that the panic button would be getting hit so hard, so early in the game. But the MAGAs sense the same thing that you and I do, that’s it’s 2008 all over again — but with a spin. In 2008 Barack Obama was running against John McCain, who was probably the least despised Republican presidential candidate (by Democrats) of any GOPer in the past 50 years. In 2024, Kamala Harris, our Obama-equivalent, is not running against a respected statesman like Senator McCain, she’s running against the worst former president in American history, a man who claims he intends to be a dictator on Day One (but only for a day, right) and who told a group of Christians five days ago that if they would just go out and vote for him in November, they would never have to vote again. Ergo, we have 2008 on steroids. And if that keeps up, and it will, the Republicans have cause to panic. And here’s what that looks like.
Oh, we shall bookmark it. This is pure mindfuckery, right here. Trump will lose. Trump is an incoherent old man. And he ran against the gaffe prone Joe Biden, also up in years, so they were a match for one another. But now Trump is the only old man, or gaffe prone candidate in the race and the contrast is going to kill him.
The wind is at Kamala Harris’s back, for a lot of reasons, foremost among them is that Donald Trump is hated. And with good cause. January 6 proved who he was and why he does not belong in any elective office, let alone the highest one in the land.
Now go look at Step Two, “Republicans assume victory is a foregone conclusion.” That is flat out stupid. What that is, is the utter lack of a Plan B. And that’s on the GOP, not on us. Kamala Harris has been in the mix a while. It’s been foreseeable that something could happen to Joe, if by dint of nothing other than the actuarial tables. The man is 81, an American male lives to be 77. So both Biden and Trump are on borrowed time, in a sense, Trump more so, because he’s morbidly obese, doesn’t exercise, and had a bad diet.
Basically, it’s political malpractice to assume that Joe Biden simply was not going to listen to anybody or anything. Clearly he did and at least some kind of contingency plan should have been formulated. Clearly it wasn’t. Josh Marshell chimes in:
JD Vance, at a private fundraiser, referred to the candidate switch as a “sucker punch.”
This was a fascinating and I think unintentionally candid admission. A sucker punch is by definition something you feel is unfair. But more than that, it’s a painful blow that catches you unprepared. Fair isn’t really a meaningful metric in presidential politics. If anything, invoking it signals a kind of weakness. But it’s getting caught unawares and getting hurt that really comes through here. The day before Joe Biden announced his departure from the 2024 race the Times published an article based on interviews with top brass on the Trump campaign which reported that Trump was prepared to destroy any Harris campaign on the launchpad, including an avalanche of banked TV ads, oppo research and more. It would be some mix of Willie Horton and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, just with more velocity and power.
As they usually do with the Trump campaign, the Times reported the campaign’s bluster as simple fact. But at the time I found this threat quite credible. Not that I necessarily thought they would annihilate Harris before she even took flight as a candidate. But were they ready and willing? How could they not be? A Harris candidacy has been a distinct possibility quite literally for years. As we’ve endlessly discussed, Biden, like Trump, is an old man. It would be no actuarial surprise if he’d simply dropped dead during the campaign. It’s the most obvious thing to plan for. But we saw the reality just the next day. The Trump team was caught entirely unprepared and flat footed by the switch. And they still haven’t gained their footing.
We’re just one week into a 15-week sprint. So they not only may but certainly will regain their footing. But Vance’s candor tells the story. They were unprepared. They got hurt. And for the moment they’re unable to respond. It’s very low energy, as Trump would say. And along with Trump’s continuing refusal to agree to debate Harris, these visible demonstrations of weakness are not only reactions to Harris’s momentum, they are also fueling it.
We’ve spoken about OODA loops before, the military theory concept of getting inside and disrupting an adversary’s decision-making process, primarily by situating and acting quickly enough that you’re changing realities before an opponent can react to them. Harris got inside the Trump campaign’s OODA loops starting on the 21st and she’s stayed there ever since.
That’s why Harris is going to win. And don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we should be complacent. Au contraire. We should be campaigning at all times like we’re 30 points down. That’s the only way we’re going to bring it home in November.
If that fake-doctor had any legitimacy, he’d be on Twitter where he’d be fact-checked into obscurity. His “step 5” is absolutely false EXCEPT in some “red” states which have already been doing their best to play with election results (and, frankly, the purplish states need to put a stop on “elections officials” who willfully and deliberately attempt to refuse to certify election results by PROSECUTING the b-tards to the fullest extent of the law and remove them from office . . . but I digress). After 2016 AND 2020, the ONLY PROVEN CASES of WILLFUL “shenanigans” have been on REPUBLICAN voters–some of whom were party officials.
An election WAS STOLEN…by Trump. Watch Frontline’s documentary about ALL the ways he DID steal it. Some of his legal woes are DIRECTLY related to his lies and cover-up. Remember he was doing the same shit in 2016 BEFORE he was declared the winner. A phucking dark day in America where WE betrayed our heroes of WW2 by allowing a fascist traitor to have power for four years. IT’S ON US AMERICA. Trump shouldn’t have even been near the office if this country wasn’t built on hypocrisy and historical lies. Now it’s on US TO FIX IT. VOTE!
I share Ursula’s optimism, but we need a complete rejection of Trump and his white Christian minority. We need a landslide in the Presidency, House and Senate to right our Democracy and smack down the predictable claim that we have stolen the election, when the Nazis have lost by an impenetrable margin. We have a long menu: vote Republican neo-Nazis out of office, codify Roe v. Wade, impeach Roberts, Thomas and Alito and rectify everything Trump has broken. We are the Patriots, not the thugs in prison–and we need to keep them there.
A clarification:
The statement that an “American male lives to be 77” applies to males born in 2025 (actually 77.5 years), and is their life expectancy as based in an actuarial table. The same table shows that 78 year old males have a life expectancy of 8.27 years, which would allow them to see their 86th birthdays; given Trump’s diet and stress level, it’s doubtful he’d get that far.
Meanwhile, the life expectancy 81 YO males is 6.85 years, making it possible for these fellows to get close to, if not past, their 88th birthdays. Given Joe Biden’s history and healthy lifestyle, and him getting out from under the stress of being POTUS, I’m confident he’ll be able to dance, then urinate on Trump’s grave.
(At 79, my LE is 7.78 years (close to age 87); I never expected to live this long, but bypass surgery 15 years ago, a 3 year old pacemaker and 9 years on a set of titanium knees makes 87 look attainable.)