David Frum wrote a scathing article about the state of the presidential campaign in the current Atlantic magazine. Frum was a speech-writer for President George W. Bush who turned Never Trumper. He’s one of the best writers about American politics. His article asks, “Are these guys even trying to win?” There is Vance on Twitter, firing off angry ripostes. There is Trump, spending a day on the golf course only 50 days before the election. There is Trump, posting on his own social media, I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT. There is Vance, telling Dana Bash on CNN that he didn’t care whether the story about Haitians is true because it gets his anti-immigrant point across to the American people.
He writes:
A first draft of this story opened: “It’s not every day that a candidate for vice president of the United States rage-tweets at you.”
Backspace, backspace, backspace. Although it’s not every day that a candidate for vice president of the United States rage-tweetsat me personally, it is almost every day that Senator J. D. Vance rage-tweets at somebody. (I had tweeted, in part, this: “The difference: The upsetting things said by Trump and Vance are not true. The upsetting things said about Trump and Vance are true.” Vance responded: “I’d say the most important difference is that people on your team tried to kill Donald Trump twice.”)
But then here he was yesterday, for example, quote-tweeting one of the English-speaking world’s premier apologists for the Assad dictatorship in Syria, in order to assail Hillary Clinton. On September 14, he was mixing it up in the X comments with a reporter for The Intercept and the host of an online talk show.
In other words, to have J. D. Vance as your own personal reply guy is not such an accomplishment.
But it raises the question of how a nominee for vice president has so much time on his hands. Can you imagine, say, Dick Cheney, scrolling through his mentions, getting irritated, and firing off a retort? Neither can I.
So here’s my second draft: What we’ve been seeing from Trump-Vance is not the behavior of a winning campaign.
The day before Vance tweeted at me, former President Donald Trump was livestreaming to promote a dubious new cryptocurrency venture. That same day, he gave an interview to the conspiracy theorist Wayne Allyn Root in which Trump reverted to old form to denounce mail-in voting because the U.S. Postal Service could not be trusted to deliver pro-Trump votes fairly…
Trump golfs a lot, and campaigns surprisingly infrequently. When he does campaign events, he makes odd choices of venue: Today, he will appear in New York’s Nassau County. New York State has not voted Republican for president since 1984. In 2020, Trump won 38 percent of the New York vote. Yet Trump has convinced himself, or somebody has convinced him, that this year he might be competitive in New York.
Yesterday, Trump posted a pledge on his Truth Social platform to restore the deductibility of state and local taxes. That’s an important issue for upper-income taxpayers in tax-heavy New York. Trump did not mention that he himself, as president, signed the legislation that capped state and local deductibility at the first $10,000, to help fund the Republican tax cut of 2017…
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.
I hope this observation doesn’t upset Vance again. But he’s got 10 fingers, a smartphone, and the time, so he may want to express himself.
Go ahead. @ me.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
About half of potential voters according to the polls think Trump and Vance are fine …why? Are we living in a Kamala bubble or are the polls very wrong?
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Yes this is always the concern. To have a campaign run as terribly as Trump’s, to have a candidate so manifestly unfit for office, whose campaign has been completely imploding—to have those factors and to still be within the polling margins of error is very good news for Trump. He has outperformed polls in the past and we should not be shocked if he does it again.
I watched “Stopping the Steal” on HBO last night. I recommend it for anyone who has HBO.
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“Stopping the Steal” is superb. Gabriel Stirling and Brad Raffensperger are heroes.
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Yes, among others.
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We owe a lot to the many judges and other officials–Miley, Esper, Barr even–who stood up to Trump, who knows nothing of the Constitution and wouldn’t care about it if he did. The would-be dictator and utter ignoramus.
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Bob,
Is “Stop the Steal” streaming?
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It’s on HBO/Max and Hulu.
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Flerp said most of my comment, but I would add that a majority of Trump supporters who never encounter media that contradict their mythology concerning this social ruffian. This being true, The Harris campaign has the job of mining the population of apolitical voters in order to bring them into the political process and provide the winning margin. There are a lot of these voters. They are 35, gay, marginally employed. They are 28, have never voted, and find themselves at the mercy of state government that thinks government should get out of the individual lives except for policing their reproductive behavior. There are enough of these people to change the political landscape, but will they engage?
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At this stage (maybe at any stage?) it’s probably more about turnout than changing minds. Unfortunately it is so incredibly easy to not vote. Not voting requires no effort and is also perfectly rational given that fact that no presidential election ever turns on any one person’s vote.
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FLERP,
You are right! This election is about turnout and enthusiasm, not persuading undecided voters.
I suspect there are NO undecided voters. People either love or hate Trump.
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How come Trump voters don’t suffer from the belief that their vote doesn’t matter?
Maybe there needs to be a PR campaign from some foreign country targeted at Trump voters to convince them there is no point in voting, their vote doesn’t matter, there’s no difference between the two parties.
I don’t think they’d fall for that. Trump voters – and most Republicans – seem to know very well that voting is important.
Which is ironic since they are positive the elections they vote in a corrupt (unless their candidate wins).
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Two important things:
How are those polls being conducted? How many young people answer their phones to take a poll?
The polls don’t take into account Republican DISENFRANCHISEMENT efforts to scare people from voting. Or make it extremely hard for everyone who isn’t a Republican to vote.
We live in a weird era where nothing a Republican does makes him unfit or lose credibility with the liberal media. Politicians who are elected on the very same ballots they question are presented as if their fact-free views are just as valid as evidence-based truths.
We live in an era where Republicans can lie, approve of insurrection, say that the Constitution gives full immunity for presidents, and not just be worshipped by the far right media, but be normalized by the so-called liberal media.
We live in an era where the so-called liberal NYT can run an “opinion” column by a Republican who says “this is very bad what these Republicans are doing, but I am voting for them.” (No doubt German Jews heard similar “reassurances” from their Hitler-supporting neighbors.)
I have no idea how the election will turn out. I knew from reading the comments here in the summer and early fall of 2016 that the Democrat was in trouble. I take nothing for granted.
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These two are a pair of malignant narcissists. They believe that the world revolves around them which is why it is easy for them to manufacture their own version of “truth.” What is sadder is that so many ordinary people in this country continue to believe them.
I read on social media that Project 2025 recommends requiring the military entrance exams for public school students, but private school students would be exempt. I decided to research the validity of this this claim, and according to Verify this is true. It is one more indication that such a tiered system of military service is another anti-democratic aspect to this document. If we live in this country, we should have to share in its defense as our young people did before. There should no exemption simply because someone attends a private school. Democracy itself is on the ballot this November.https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/project-2025-verify/yes-project-2025-recommends-requiring-military-entrance-exams-for-public-high-school-students/536-6d799964-87b7-4cfc-9f1c-4925ab4dc22d
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It does not matter if they lose. He will continue to claim he won and the election was a fraud! The narrative has already begun!
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He said the election was rigged in 2016, then he won. He said it was rigged in 2020, even though he was in power.
Predicting that the election was rigged is a way of protecting his fragile ego: Trump NEVER loses.
Of course, he’s predicting it again.
He is a corrosive force who undermines our democratic institutions.
Our best hope is that he loses, stands trials for his crimes, and if convicted, goes to jail.
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We must also find a way to convince his disaffected minionions to come to understand that there is truth.
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The upside of a cult of personality is that it depends on one person. The GOP has been mangled so badly that I don’t think it will ever be a normal party again in my lifetime, but after Trump is gone, I think the minions will thin out because a huge part of what has engaged them is the entertainment that Trump provides. I don’t see JD Vance inspiring legions of blue-collar minions.
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Dictators want people to believe that truth is what they say.
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Diane, watch “Stopping the Steal” on HBO if you haven’t already.
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Flerp: I hope you are correct, but I fear Trump exists as a product of various personal manipulators who do not wish to be known. Some are foreign adversaries, some are domestic adversaries, but all share the goal of creating a turbulent political landscape to roil various views on policy. These background people will still see the possibility of using MAGA sentiment to disrupt American politics.
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People vastly underestimate the role played by Russian intelligence services in our politics in the United States. We are a relatively open society, and so it’s easy for Russian operatives to carry out their work here both in person, in the form of agents and assets, and remotely, via social media. Trump has been a Russian asset for decades. Not putting him behind bars has been the greatest intelligence failure in history. Russia’s getting its asset into the White House has to be, from their POV, the greatest intelligence coup.
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Roy, those malign forces behind the curtain need a figurehead. Trump’s the chosen one. I don’t see a likely successor.
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So true. Trump is fronting for a brigade of billionaires, right wing evangelicals, libertarians, would be anarchists and fascist leaders around the globe.
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Exactly. And along with the Kremlin exploiting our open society is the gaslighting that follows the agitprop tsunami. Remember Vlad characterizing their massive (and ongoing) interference as “a few Facebook ads”?
Global democracy is currently in an asymmetrical war against global fascism.
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There’s no need to campaign if the plan is to take power by violence. Frum doesn’t mention that possibility. Trump’s Nazis, White Christian Nationalists, Proud Boys and Three Percenters are standing by, waiting for their signal from Roger Stone and Steve Bannon.
I don’t believe the polling. It’s of a piece with the media’s framing of a horserace. 7 million more people voted for Biden over Trump in 2020 – are they all going to vote for Trump now? Electoral College aside, Trump won’t win the popular vote. What happens after that is truly scary. Look at this reporting on Mike Davis, one of Trump’s fixers, who might be attorney general in a second Trump administration.
It’s how mobsters roll.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/09/20/mike-davis-trump-potential-attorney-general-profile-00179358
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81 million eligible voters failed to vote in 2020, GOTV, Get Out The Vote will determine the outcome .. Harris’ entire campaign is based on GOTV
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Here’s a bit of comic relief from The Dispatch:
The same author, in a different post, opined: Trump is the Walter Mitty of Agusto Pinochets.
https://thedispatch.com/article/the-anti-americanism-of-donald-trump/
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Excellent, Christine!
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the Walter Mitty of Agusto Pinochets
OMG. THAT is hilarious
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Such a fitting accolade!
I haven’t stopped laughing about since I read it.
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BTW, there’s a marvelously dark movie about Pinochet called “El Conde”. Highly recommend. The revelation of the narrator’s identity is something else.
https://youtu.be/YGvX7ma7Xnk
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Thank you, Christine.
Not so comical (& certainly no relief), I’ve been concerned that there hadn’t been more made of it45’s glowing fawning over “strong leader” Viktor Orban in the debate.
I’m (sadly) doubting that most Americans a) even know who he is & b) are frightened that a candidate for U.S. President would proudly give V.O. such high praise, touting him as “a friend.”
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Trump is also the embodiment of the “Deep State.” . . . so twisted. CBK
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Watch Rachel Maddow’s “From Russia with Lev” if you want to see the Deep State at work.
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Diane: I watched “From Russia” already and will again today to connect some dots. (I wrote about it here earlier with some other stuff.) CBK
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It’s a fascinating program, for many reasons.
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Once again, Georgia a HUGE problem. Hand-counting ballots?
Brad Raffensperger (once again, doing the right thing), has spoken out against it.
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After 2020 election, Georgia hand counted three times . Trump still lost and still refused to accept the outcome.
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I think the Trump campaign knows what trouble they are in . . . and so the campaign strategy is to keep the Trump-Vance show doing more and more outrageous things so to keep the light ON Trump/Vance, etc., and OFF of Kamala . . . even if it offends SOME voters–at least it also keeps voters from having access to what Kamala might say or do. CBK
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. . . and the press just goes along following every shiny little thing. CBK
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