It’s amazing to the political pundit class how light the Trump/Vance campaign schedule is. Trump was in New York yesterday, a state which hasn’t been won by a Republican since 1984 but he believes that it might be winnable by him. Knock yourself out, Donald. Today Trump’s playing golf. Or something. He has no campaign event scheduled. Same for tomorrow. But he will mosey out to North Carolina on Saturday. And he’ll probably do this…routine, let’s call it, at the end of the rally. He’s got to find a new closer for his act since he’s legally enjoined from using “Hold On, I’m Coming.”
— Mayo 🤍 (@MayoIsSpicyy) September 19, 2024
“Cringe” “lame” “painful” are a few of the descriptors on Twitter. And what about Senator Vance? Where is he these days? At a donut shop or buying root beer floats to show what a regular guy he is? He’s scheduled to be in Pennsylvania on Saturday. Likewise, nothing for today or tomorrow.
Then the event sheet just stops so we assume that a new one comes out every week. This is an incredibly light schedule for the last 46 days of an election. This schedule can also be described as “cringe” “lame” and “painful.”
Every losing campaign has a different shape. Sometimes, campaigns lose because of insurmountable difficulties. John McCain had no chance of winning a third Republican presidential term against the backdrop of economic crisis in 2008; Bob Dole could not argue that it was “time for a change” amid the strong economy of 1996. At other times, the candidate simply does not fit the moment, as Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton found in 2012 and 2016.
Rarely, if ever, has a presidential campaign collapsed from seeming assurance into utter chaos as Trump-Vance has. The campaign seems to have stumbled into a strange unintended message: “Let’s go to war with Taylor Swift to stop Haitians from eating dogs.” The VP candidate wants to raise tariffs on toasters and worries that with Roe v. Wade overturned, George Soros may every day fill a 747 airliner with abortion-seeking pregnant Black women.
The stink of impending defeat fills the air—and so much of the defeat would be self-inflicted.
The words you just read are from an article in The Atlantic by David Frum. Frum has been on the receiving end of rage tweets by J.D. Vance. Frum’s thesis is that the vice presidential candidate has more time on his hands than any other candidate for that post in recent years and looking at the events calendar for the Trump/Vance campaign, that looks to be the case. Neither Trump nor Vance appear to be putting a lot of shoe leather into the last six weeks before the election, incredibly.
In the days following Trump’s Taylor Swift post, new polls for the first time showed Harris clearly pulling ahead of Trump—not only in the national popular vote, but also in individual swing states. Harris’s personal approval rating turned net favorable for the first time since the early months of the Biden presidency. Yesterday, a poll in Iowa showed Trump with just a four-point lead over Harris in that conservative-leaning state, down from an 18-point lead over Biden in a June poll.
Suddenly, it looks as if the Harris-Trump margin may not even be all that close—and that the Republican majority in the House may be at risk too.
Trump personally may not understand that he’s losing. His more cerebral running mate, Vance, does seem to have noticed, and that may account for the bitterness of his tone. Republicans don’t tend to offer second chances to unsuccessful vice-presidential candidates. After 2008, Sarah Palin had no future in politics. Dan Quayle’s bid for the presidency in 2000 fizzled before it started. If Trump loses in 2024—and especially if his defeat also costs the Republicans their House majority—Vance will get a lot of the blame.
The Haitian dog-eating meme is as patently false as it is absurd. And then Vance making it worse by admitting to Dana Bash that he made it up to get attention marks a new low in a profession known for cobbling together lies in order to trash an opponent in the final weeks of a campaign. But Swiftboat the Haitian pet-eaters meme is not. The story is just stupid and classless and it makes Vance look a lot worse than it makes Kamala Harris, its intended target, look.
This story started over a police report about a missing cat and then the cat was found a few days later hiding in the basement. No harm came to the cat, let alone at the hands of neighbors from Haiti. But this ugly conspiracy theory was promulgated by the Trump/Vance campaign and now it’s “real” insofar as it’s taken on a life of its own and MAGA believes it.
J.D. Vance and Donald Trump are a horrific ticket. They deserve to lose for a multitude of reasons. This is just one of them.
OMG! Is that really what Trump looks like from behind?! 😱 I now feel much luckier in my life. I’ve never been near Trump personally so thank goddess I’ve never seen him from behind!! The monstrous, hulking Frankenstein creature is so true!! [Much love to Boris Karloff, though! 🥰]
At least he’s wearing a suit. Without it, THIS is what you’d see:
Karloff’s Frankenstein may have been hulking but he was not obese.
Frankenstein at least could move his feet. I’d vote for Frankenstein over this evil child killing nazi.
Well, I haven’t heard any singing yet from the fat lady. I’m not counting any chickens until V.P. Harris is giving her inauguration speech in January. There are too many loose ends out there.
‘His more cerebral running mate, Vance, does seem to have noticed’
More cerebral, like a rat compared to a snake.