Dem
48
Ties
1
GOP
51
The Trump campaign has finally noticed something that we figured out, what, 5 or 6 years ago? In short, he's not ever going to be any more popular than he already is. Taking a macro view, he has been a politician for about 10 years, he was a reality TV star for 10 years before that, and he was famous-for-being-famous for nearly 30 years before that. Taking a micro view, he crushed his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, survived an assassination attempt, picked a running mate and held a convention, and it changed nothing. The needle just DOES. NOT. MOVE. OK, that's actually not true—sometimes it moves down a little. But his ceiling is about 48% of the American public, and that is as immutable as gravity.
To that end, as both CNN and The Washington Post are reporting, the Trump campaign has given up trying to make him and/or his ideas more popular. He doesn't really have many ideas, anyhow, and as to the candidate himself, everyone in the country long ago made up their minds as to how they feel about him.
So, what's a presidential candidate to do, if they can't run on their own merits? The answer is: Tear down your opponent. And so, going forward, Team Trump's plan is to spend all of its money and energy on attacking Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. And the focus largely isn't going to be on anything substantive; it's going to be personal attacks on top of personal attacks on top of personal attacks. Or, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, a slur wrapped in a conspiracy theory inside a falsehood.
One wonders how the Trump campaign finally got to this place. It seems improbable that Chris LaCivita sat the candidate down and said, "Donald, 52% of the American public just doesn't like you, and never will." More likely is that there was some shallow flattery about Trump's gut instincts, and how he should go with that, without any explanation as to why. Alternatively, maybe the people running the campaign realized that Trump was going to go with his gut and his propensity for mudslinging regardless, and the new "strategy" is just wrapping that in a pretty package.
Whatever the case may be, things are going to stay ugly for, presumably, the rest of the campaign. Indeed, since Trump's personal attacks really haven't been landing, it figures that things are going to get uglier and uglier, as he gets more and more desperate. If you live in a swing state, and you have your TV on for more than 5 minutes a day, we don't envy you.
As chance would have it, the rules by which Trump is going to play are apparently the exact rules by which the Democrats want him to play. First of all, behaving like a troll will serve to remind voters of the kind of man Trump is, and of the exhausting way he behaved while president. Second, many Democrats believe there's no way to wage this campaign based on policy, and that Kamala Harris needs to talk mostly about the differences in personality. If Trump is behaving like his worst self, that makes that conversation all the easier for the Democrat to have. Third, in his rallies or ads, Trump may (inadvertently) say something that is very offensive to some group, for example, women, and then Harris can use that material in her own ads. Fourth, by focusing on tearing down Harris instead of talking about the issues, Trump may be giving up on the one or two issues that actually work for him, namely inflation and immigration. Harris would definitely prefer Trump to run a racist and sexist campaign than remind people that eggs cost more than they did in 2000. (Z)