It feels like it was about twenty lifetimes ago but just a few weeks ago Donald Trump had all the political momentum in the world. Following President Joe Biden’s poor performance in the presidential debate, Trump’s supporters were rallying to him after he was shot at.
But then President Biden made what I think history will look upon as one of the more astute political acts in American history and decided to step aside for Vice President Kamala Harris. And everything has changed.
Harris’ energy, now alongside her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, has electrified the Democratic Party and the country in general to something we haven’t seen since 2007-8 and the height of President Barack Obama’s first campaign. Something is happening in America, and it isn’t Trump.
The energy of Harris’ campaign is highlighting a feature of Trump that has been hiding below the surface for a while: He sucks at this. Yes, he is now the three-time Republican presidential nominee and he won the 2016 election, but the guy is more lucky than good.
Like his fellow failed Republican president George W. Bush, Trump was the beneficiary of our outdated electoral college system. He has twice lost the popular vote, first by nearly 3 million votes to Sec. Hillary Clinton and then by over 7 million votes to President Biden. During the entire time he held the presidency, the aggregate of support for Trump never went above 50%. Not a single day. At all. That has not happened to any other president in modern polling, from Reagan to both Bushes to Clinton and of course not to Obama.
Now in his third presidential campaign and facing Harris, the cracks are showing in Trump’s foundation. Not that he was running that great of a campaign against Biden, but against Harris, the tiredness of his effort is on blast. Even by the low standards of Trumpism, he hasn’t come up with any lines of attack or rhetoric that echo anywhere outside of his Fox News-reinforced echo chamber.
Things have gotten even worse with his selection of J.D. Vance, who has made the previous GOP running mate dud choices like Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan look like dynamic selections, by comparison.
After Walz was picked, Trump’s campaign all but signaled surrender with the line of attack they chose: Socialism. It’s always socialism or communism when the Republicans have got nothing. Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden — and now Kamala Harris have all been invoked as the avatars of socialist takeover by the right. Somehow the most liberal person in the planet is always the Democratic presidential nominee, at least if you listen to the right-wing. Absurd.
The socialism attack, which Fox News of course jumped on like a lion running after its prey, is a sign of failure. It’s always been questionable how truly potent this attack is — I would argue that Democratic Party fear of it is overblown — it certainly does not hit in 2024 like it did in 1994 or 1984.
We are living in a world following the Great Recession. The press doesn’t speak about it because they have the collective memory capacity of half of a goldfish, but I believe in the grand scheme of things the recession had a major impact on how Americans relate to their government. We saw the global markets melt after big business was allowed to write its own rules and police itself. The fallout was widespread and devastating. While the people at the top were bailed out, retirement savings were destroyed, homes repossessed, and millions of jobs were lost.
Recovering from the recession required massive government expenditure, as we saw with the Recovery Act under Obama. Yes, the legislation had too many conservative ideas and was more watered down than it needed to be, but it did the job. This was soon followed by COVID-19 and another situation where we all saw what an inept government response, led by Trump, caused death and financial destruction.
Biden got us out of it, by deploying the vaccine response and with legislation like the Rescue Plan and Inflation Reduction Act.
While these responses may not have had to be as dramatic as the New Deal, I think the collective sense for many outside of the MAGA cult is that just giving everything up to business, like in the massive tax cut that Trump sent to his corporate donors in 2017, doesn’t work.
It’s hard to argue “socialism” with a straight face when the reality people faced is Vice President Harris’ tiebreaking votes for legislation that has led to low unemployment and massive job gains. It’s tough to claim that Gov. Walz is the demon of communism when his actions in Minnesota took the form of lunch for children and protecting abortion rights for his state’s residents.
Trump embracing this same loser message, which previous failed Republican candidates like John McCain and Mitt Romney also ran with, is a sign of a campaign that is losing. He’s bad at this, and when his adversaries aren’t stumbling like Democrats too often do, Trump is exposed.
But of course, the race is far from over. It cannot be assumed that — despite all outward appearances — that Trump and his party will fumble around until November, trapped in a couch of their own creation. The hubris of 2016 should never again rear its ugly head. As Trump experienced, events can careen far out of control and the unpredictability of our elections and elections elsewhere should not be discounted. Eternal vigilance.
Yet. Yet. Right now. At this moment in history. Right now. Donald Trump is losing. He looks like a loser. He acts like a loser. He sounds like a loser. Everyone, including his own party and even the media (who can see a Trump-fueled payday slipping down the drain), sees it and feels it. Loser Don has entered the chat yet again.
Now it is on the voters to once again ratify what we all see standing before us.
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— Oliver
Follow me, Oliver Willis, on Threads @owillis1977
Exclusive Kal-El Photo
By contrast, Kal is winning. He’s winning and he’s always been winning, and folks, he’s not tired of winning — ok?
*gives scritches to Kal-El*
When you are as handsome as Kal, winning comes easily and deservedly