He’s so shell-shocked that
Michael Tomasky at The New Republic notes that Harris is good at fighting back, something the Dems are often not very good at.
And Donald Trump is freaked out in ways he never imagined were possible. He has faced a lot of opponents—from 1980s New York Mayor Ed Koch to all his many creditors to the 16 dwarves he ran against in 2016 to a Clinton campaign that thought the race was over to prosecutors he has known for years how to slow down, especially with corrupt hack judges having his back. But Trump has never had an opponent that made him go: “Oh fuck, these people mean business.”
Now he does. And that it’s a Black woman who means this business makes it so great, so much better. The New York Times reported over the weekend that he is so shell-shocked by the turnabout in this race that he’s doubling down on racism and “stop the steal” delusions. He is in full-blown meltdown mode, in other words.
Let’s not get too excited, because Trump still has the massive advantage of being the worst person on the planet and lots of people just love that. But still: it is indeed nice to see the other team not just flopping around helplessly.
Not to mention that he GOES TO JAIL if he loses and will therefore do anything to win . . .
I’m somewhat skeptical of this narrative that Trump is bewildered by the black woman. It feels like partisan puffery.
Yes the whole piece is frankly quite puffy and hyperbolic. But still. I do think Harris is not easy pickings for the boy from Queens.
Puffery for sure, but the grain of truth is that the Trump campaign is struggling. There is open infighting between MAGA proponents on social media as to strategy and to date the campaign seems to be appealing even harder to the committed core. That’s not going to move many uncommitted independents into the fold. If they liked that they’d have jumped in already. I think that Trump and his core team believe that they have a large untapped pool out there that can be motivated with base appeal – just as the Democratic Party demonstrably have a soft base that can be motivated. The difference is that trump is very unlikely to have such a soft base to be moved.
Forgot to add…
The real point though isn’t who can win the popular vote. It’s whether any swing to the Dems is large enough to overcome the inherent bias created by the heavy gerrymandering the GOP has been enacting for decades. In some states that will not be possible, at least in the ticket below President.