Last week it was brutal for Donald Trump.
The weekend brought them no respite.
President Joe Biden’s exit from the presidential race created a powerful release that took everyone by surprise, including Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.
“We didn’t expect that there would be cat lady news cycles,” a Harris campaign aide said said The Washington Post. “This happened organically without us pushing. … I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s so strange.”
That campaign aide was specifically talking about Trump’s running mate JD Vance, but really, you could say that about the entire campaign. Trump is not only besieged by an energized Democratic base and a media that has become incredibly adept overnight at covering race. Even more, it is under siege from the culture The campaign has become a meme, and Trump-Vance are the height of their jokes.
So let’s take a look at Trump’s deliciously brutal weekend.
Speaking at the Turning Point Action “Believers Summit” of evangelical Christians in Florida on Saturday, Trump he told the participants that, “You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what? It will be fixed, it will be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. The comments have gone mega viral.
This is not the first time Trump has said something like this. Here it is on June 22 saying“You have to go out and vote. Just this once. In four years you don’t have to vote, okay? In four years you don’t vote, I don’t care. But we’ll get everything done, so it will be very different.”
The difference is that on June 22, the press was hyper-focused on Biden’s age and the growing chorus of prominent Democrats urging him to step down. Now, the press is back to cover the wider campaign, and Trump can no longer escape scrutiny.
But even beyond that, his words become more frightening, more threatening, more dictatorial by the day. On June 22, he appeared to say “to hell with voting unless it’s on the ballot,” which I’m sure his Republican friends loved hearing. But the new wording is basically, “I’m watching the vote.” Trump can no longer confine these words in his bubble. The wider electorate is finally paying attention.
What is even more crazy about this survey is that 12% of Republicans they are enthusiastic about Harris. Hello, Nikki Haley supporters! Come on, the water is hot!
There’s a lot of actual material to work with, and Vance turned to it for political reasons. But what is amazing is that he is the butt of jokes that literally have nothing to do with him. All couch jokes and memes? Those are based on a Twitter joke about Vance writing in his seminal book “Hillbilly Elegy” that as a child, he had sex with his couch. It’s not true, and it was debunked almost immediately, and it doesn’t matter. The memesters and jokes went to work, and the results were devastating for Vance.
As John Oliver said, “If you told me that the reason I found coins between the couch cushions was because JD Vance always leaves a tip, I’d be like, ‘Yeah.’ That sounds good!'”
The culture ravages Vance (and Trump), and there is nothing they can do about it.
TikTok Viral Video Bonus here.
The poll tracked the favorability of the candidates in the main battleground states of the Midwest, and it was not good news for Trump.
Former White House aide Keith Boykin was right: Trump has absolutely lost his mind.
Trump yelling “IGNORE THOSE POLLS UNLESS THEY ARE IN MY FAVOR” is the funniest thing I’ve seen this weekend.
But schadenfreude aside, the merits of that poll are pretty strong. These are not head polls, but likeability matters. The reason Harris has surged in the polls in these key battleground states is precisely because he presents such a clear and refreshing contrast to Trump.
Surprisingly, 66% of their donors were first-time donors, and I would venture to guess that the vast majority of them were small-dollar donors who did not approach the maximum. It can easily double (if not triple) that amount in the next few months. Harris’ campaign will have no financial problems.
In addition, his campaign announced that it has signed up 170,000 new volunteers, which are just as important – if not more so – than the money. Most of that money will be pissed away on television ads that will do nothing to move the numbers. But the volunteers? That army will win us the election.
And speaking of culture, his TikTok account gained 2.7 million new followers in one day. In a close election, everyone matters. But if those young Zoomers deliver their votes, it won’t even be close.
A new one ABC/Ipsos survey released over the weekend found that Harris’ favorability rating is now 43% favorable, with 42% unfavorable. That compares to 35/46 a week ago, or a huge net swing of +12 points in just one week!
All those stories about Harris being a particularly unpopular politician? They are all obsolete. On the other hand …
In this same pollTrump went from a 40/51 favorable/unfavorable rating a week ago, to 36/52 today, or a net drop of -5 points.
Seriously, this might be unprecedented. Candidates always get a boost from their conventions (not to mention assassination attempts). Trump managed to miss both opportunities. His -16 net favors are now significantly below Harris’ +1 net favors.
Vance it’s strange. Trump it’s strange.
About the only insult worse than “weird” might be “creepy,” and the two men on the GOP ticket are just that, too.
After spending decades trying to come up with a way to brand Republicans as effectively as Trump branded “Crooked Hillary,” the holy grail has been found. And for Republicans, the problem is that it’s true. His obsession with sex is it strange I know archaic notions about the role of women and the autonomy over their bodies is strange. His delights with white supremacists and Nazis are weird. I know love for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin it’s strange I know hysteria for the Paris Olympics it’s strange Much of what is in Project 2025 is strange.
Yes, they are obviously dangerous, but strange captures the zeitgeist far better than any alarmist language (no matter how justified).
This was in my inbox on Monday:
Biden left a week ago, and the Trump campaign is still sending out fundraising appeals attacking “Sleepy Joe” (as if we want to “match” that stupid camouflage hat). This is not a campaign that is firing on all cylinders or adapting to the changing reality on the ground.
Harris’ campaign team was Biden’s campaign team. They’re the same people who screw up all the things a campaign is supposed to screw up. But check what a difference a candidate does.
The Biden campaign, two weeks ago:
Harris campaign this weekend:
One campaign looked like it was still running something straight out of the 1980s. The other is tapping into the cultural zeitgeist and feeding the memes and narratives that currently define race.
If the ongoing audition for the white male to be Harris’ vice president has taught us anything, it’s that we have a deep bank and a wealth of incredibly effective surrogates:.
Here is Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Or Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz:
Or Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear:
Oh man, so good! Whatever Harris choose as his running matewe will be in great shape.
All these bullet points are not all. There is the flailing GOP effort to brand Harris, which continues without success. It is clear that they try to attack Harris to be joyful (“Kamala Laughs”) did not land. And Trump supporters are distracted by the shiny new toy that is the Paris Olympics. It must be exhausting being a conservative, going from meaningless outrage to bland outrage to self-destructive outrage. And there is the whole continuum great economic news.
The conventional wisdom is that this high can’t last: Eventually Trump will find his magic insult, the press will turn their guns on Harris, and his rise in the polls will come crashing back down.
But what if it is not does it happen Why is this a given? Trump gives us new material every day, and the bumbling Vance is a gift that keeps on giving. Harris came out of the gate strong, but his campaign is still ready. We haven’t seen it in full campaign mode.
The public’s attention will be focused on the Olympics, and we have Harris’ veep announcement to look forward to (and as noted, all the main contenders are fantastic). U Democratic National Convention it’s coming, and unlike the dreary and boring business the Republicans are putting up, ours will be a legitimate party.
So here we are in September, with Harris dominating the news cycle for six weeks. Will Trump debate Harris? If not, there is even more fodder for the media and memesters to attack him. If he does, the contrast will be brutal. Lose anyway.
And all the while, Biden can continue to announce popular things from the presidential stage, giving Harris a further boost as an incumbent.
So what can Trump and his allies do to change the trajectory? Resort to sexism and racism, or talk like it’s Harris”vapid“for no other reason than she is a woman?
Guys, we not only have a chance to win, but we have a chance win big And winning big doesn’t just mean blowing a second Trump insurgency in the nose. It means lifting all electoral boats – the Senate, the House, state governors and legislatures.
Trump had a crappy weekend, yes. But our side is just open to the possibilities of what can be.
Let’s keep the momentum going with a contribution to the Harris campaign. Donate now!