James Fallows is a veteran journalist with an illustrious history as a writer and editor. In addition, he was chief speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter. In this article in his blog, he interviews himself about the election and wonders why Trump is not appealing to anyone other than his rabid base. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris is getting endorsements from Republicans who want to stop Trump from returning to the White House, the latest being Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Fellows writes on his Substack blog “Breaking the News”:
Do we know what is going to happen?
No.
Oh, come on.
Last week I quoted the famed Democratic strategist, James Carville, and the famed Republican, Stuart Stevens, on the reasons both of them were confident that Kamala Harris would win.
For myself, I think that if what has been a hair’s-breadth race might “break” at the last minute, it would break in Harris’s favor. To put it in political-operative terms: Donald Trump might have solidified his base but reached his ceiling. Kamala Harris, by contrast, might not yet have “closed the deal,” as the pundit cliché goes, but still have potential for extra last-minute support.
If so, that would mean that polls had yet again missed the fury of many female voters, as happened before the midterms two years ago. They could also have missed the unease and disgust of Republican and centrist voters about everything associated with Donald Trump. The reasons would start with January 6 and the Dobbs decision and go on from there.
I hope that is the “surprise” in store for us. But I don’t know.
And is Donald Trump even trying to win the vote any more? Or is he just thinking about winning the count?
That’s the darkest fear: That Trump has given up even trying to draw newcomers into a majority-rule “big tent.” The fear is that he has skipped his sights past November 5 and is concentrating on what comes next. Intimidation, threats of violence, election-day victory claims, post-election lawsuits that reach an obeisant Supreme Court. That would be the logic behind revving up “Stop the Steal!” rhetoric now, to condition his followers to think a loss must have been rigged.
Only twice in the past few months did Trump strike me as running a “general election” campaign, aimed at more than the MAGA base. Significantly, both were while the vulnerable Joe Biden was still in the race. One was the opening 30 minutes of Trump’s fateful debate with Biden, when Trump was patient and relatively polite as he watched Biden dig himself into a deep hole. The other was the opening 30 minutes of his acceptance speech at the GOP convention in Milwaukee, when he more or less stuck to the “president of all the people” prepared text.
In each case, when those 30 minutes were up, Trump could no longer resist and let loose with insults and lies. But since that time, and after Kamala Harris’s debut as nominee, from Trump it’s been all grievance and lies, all the time. His rallies are all the same. Except for off-the-cuff economic promises—no taxes on anything, stiff tariffs on everything—they seem almost scientifically calculated to drive away anyone not already in his thrall.
From Trump himself, we assume this is not calculation but pure impulse. On that point everyone who knows him seems to agree. But for the party as a whole? Can they really be so calm as they watch their standard bearer rant and offend? Or are they acting so calm because they know that November 5 is just the beginning, and that far more disciplined strategists will get to work, on terrain they’ve already mapped out?
I mentioned my hope for a last-minute break in the votes. This is my corresponding fear: About the reserve army for the post-November 5 battle, which ranges from the Proud Boys to the majority on the Supreme Court.
Oh, come on (again). And was this latest Trump rally actually that bad?
Yes. It was.
Obviously you want to be careful with Nazi comparisons. Nothing in the modern Western world matches what Hitler’s Third Reich became, from industrialized mass slaughter to all-frontiers invasions and world war.
But Hitler started someplace. And while the United States in the 2020s could hardly be more different from Weimar Germany after World War I—the strongest and richest nation in the world, versus one defeated and bankrupted—the rhetoric and references between Donald Trump’s current appeals and those of the nascent Nazis are strikingly similar. Listen to the Madison Square Garden rally three nights ago. And compare it with the rhetoric of the 1934 Nuremberg rally shown in Triumph of the Will. Vermin. Poisoning our blood. Bad genes. The enemy within. Round them up and send them out. Floating island of garbage. It’s a closer parallel than you’ll find with any other major US party rally since World War II.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As long as Traitor Trump lives and can babble and ramble while hitting his key points, the repeated BIG LIEs, we are stuck with him until death do us part, the sooner the better.
Lose or win, I do not think the traitor will stop what he’s been doing all of his adult life and probably long before that all the way back to when he was a toxic child.
The convicted rapist, fraud and felon will continue to stir his witches hate-inducing garbage-brew, with help from the media that, for profit, leads with what bleeds the most.
And the malignant narcist, lifelong cheater and serial liar has promised a bloodbath of he doesn’t win. The corporate news media must be salivating, waiting for the profits that arrive with the promised red-flood, as they continue to sane wash and normalize a hate-filled lunatic and his followers, justifying them in print.
Lose and the odds are that the traitor will eventually end up living in an isolated prison cell for the rest of his toxic life, watched over, I hope, by guards who are all never Trumpers that hate him, while being worshiped by the White Supremacist gangs in whatever prison he lands in. After all, he is their Fuhrer. A rather inept one at that but the first Fuehrer wasn’t all that competent either. After all, Hitler also thought he was smarter than all his generals and didn’t listen to them, losing WWII, at a horrible cost to the world.
Still, that was before nuclear weapons. The cost for WWIII is going to be worse. Maybe destroy the planet leaving only cockroaches and rats to inherit what’s left.
Even after the traitor is gone, the fascist MAGA cult that worships him will be with us for at least three generations before they also become a memory for those who study history.
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I agree – November 5 is only the beginning of a long agonizing series of court battles, with federal & Supreme Courts now stacked by T during his term. If a lower court properly rejects a case due to zero evidence being presented, can the Supreme Court still reverse it?
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Hitler’s generals
I keep reading about how tRump repeatedly said he admired Hitler’s generals. He does not know very much about history. Every German had to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler & they did so –or else. Initially, most of Hitler’s generals were compliant, but over time, a number of them had problems with taking orders from someone who had only been a Corporal in WWI and who always thought he knew best. They attempted to assassinate him a few times, including in the very well-known Operation Valkyrie plot.
If tRump is fantasizing about requiring a loyalty pledge and a “Hail Trump” salute from everyone, I think he’s very likely to meet the same end as Hitler and his followers ultimately… (He really should read up on history.)
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