Could This Week’s Developments Change the Race?
As you know, Nicole Sandler and I do a wrap up of the week every Friday. We tape at 12PM ET, 5PM my time, and 9AM Nicole’s time (through daylight savings). It may show, but I usually walk into those recordings with no sense of what happened in the previous week. These weeks have all been so momentous for so long they’ve each felt like a year running into the next one.
This week, though, I think it important to assess the week as a whole, because I think it’s possible that events of the week will have a substantive change on the results of the election. No promises. But it is possible.
Start with the baseline: The race is statistically tied in all seven swing states. The race is close to tied nationally. If nothing happens, the race will be determined by two things: first, which side can get more of its voters to the polls, and second, how much Trump’s expected fuckery can thwart the actual vote from being counted.
At this stage, all we know is that people are voting — Jimmy Carter, a record number of early votes in Georgia, and even people from the hardest hit areas of North Carolina stood in line and voted in strong numbers yesterday. There are promising signs of greater than historic early vote from women (though Trump’s men could come in late). Nevada’s Clark County has still not posted the bulk of votes there, so it’s too early to tell if the Republican narrowing of registration in Las Vegas can swing the election. Early turnout in Arizona has been 44% Republican as compared to 33% Democratic, but the abortion referendum may affect how even Republicans vote.
It’s just too early to tell, yet.
As for fuckery? In Georgia, at least, there’s been some pushback against efforts to disrupt certification, including (again) from Republicans. NBC has done an update of how Trump deliberately stoked tensions at the TCF counting center in Detroit, and how Trump is training vote observers to do so again. Most counties in Michigan, however, will count early votes ahead of time. Meanwhile, Republicans — and one gambler who might be a certain South African billionaire — are using voting markets to create the illusion that Trump is winning, which will stoke distrust if that turns out to be fake, the same way shoddy GOP polls did in 2020.
It’s a tied game, and Trump has tried to systematize the ways he attempted to cheat in 2020.
Before we turn to whether events of the weeks might change that deadlock, consider why it’s tied.
It’s tied because 35 to 40% of likely voters are cult-like followers of Donald Trump. Those people live in a hermetically sealed world of his propaganda. Short of cognitive collapse, none of those people will abandon their Donald (though a surprising number of them are not voters).
It’s tied because 8 to 13% of voters believe a number of things that credit Trump with more success than he had and taint Kamala Harris with things she didn’t do. They blame Biden for global post-COVID inflation. For some justifiable and some unjustifiable reasons, they believe the economy is in worse shape than it is. They often forget how poorly Trump handled COVID. They may not know of Trump’s epic corruption. Because of a number of changes in the media, they don’t regularly access credible descriptions of the truth. Many of these people recognize that Trump is a horrible person, but because they credit him with successes he didn’t earn, they’re willing to vote for him anyway.
A significant chunk of these people can be motivated by the grievance politics that dominates the Trump cult — that’s why this year’s election will significantly pivot on education levels. Trump’s grievance politics are significantly based on his false claims to have been unfairly persecuted and his false claims never to have persecuted others. (This dynamic is a big part of what I’ve been trying to explain in the Ball of Thread podcast I’ve been doing with LOLGOP.)
In short, the reason the US is a knife’s edge away from electing a fascist is significantly a media problem, both the existence of the hermetically sealed world of Trump propaganda and the collapse and/or abdication of credible media for other reasons. The people who would make this election a blowout loss for Trump are often not accessing truthful information.
I read an anecdote on Bluesky that exemplifies this: Someone chatting about voting with two guys who planned to vote for Trump who believed that all of his criminal cases had been dismissed and who had no idea that Trump has been exhibiting signs of mental instability. It’s a media thing. Given that virtually no media outlets correct Trump’s false claims about his criminal exposure, you can’t expect voters to know better. And thus far, the press has sane-washed Trump’s recent decline.
Three things happened this week that may chip away at this dynamic for key voting blocks. Those are:
- Trump’s meltdown in Oaks, PA, followed by a series of canceled events and poor showings
- October 7: Trump cancels 60 Minutes interview, leaving Kamala Harris a solo opportunity
- October 14: Trump sways to music for 39 minutes in Oaks, PA after giving word salad answers to the questions he did take
- October 15: Bloomberg editor John Micklethwait savages Trump’s economic plans; Trump cancels Squawkbox appearance
- October 16: Trump misses a few answers in a fluffed up Fox News town hall for women then really blows the Univision town hall
- October 17: Trump pulls out of an October 22 NRA event in Savannah; Trump “postpones” October 21 NBC. interview
- Cracks in the curtain of disinformation pulled across Trump’s failures
- October 10: Harris appears at Univision town hall.
- October 15: Coverage of Harris’ Charlamagne the God appearance focuses on the label, “fascism”
- October 16: In Fox interview, Kamala Harris calls out doctored clip of Trump attacking “enemies within” and makes reference to Mark Milley’s attacks on Trump (though without using the word “fascist;” she also references all the Republicans, including former Trump aides, who’ve just appeared with her in Washington’s Landing
- October 17: CNN exposes the editing Fox News did of the women’s town hall and Bret Baier confesses they didn’t show the “enemy within” clip (but takes the blame himself)
- The likely release, today, of the appendices behind Jack Smith’s immunity brief
To show why I think these developments might matter, I want to go back to Ramiro González, the man at the Univision town hall who asked Trump about January 6. As this person on Xitter noted, González actually asked a question at both Univision town halls. He asked Harris (mostly in Spanish, curiously enough) about rumors that the Biden administration wasn’t serving Republicans in FEMA relief.
In Harris’s response, she first asked if his family was okay. Then she addressed the disinformation about FEMA recovery. She told her story about never asking, as a prosecutor, whether witnesses and victims were a Republican or a Democrat, but instead whether they were okay. “We have seen where … people are playing political games,” she described Trump’s deliberate attempt to suggest that the Biden administration was playing politics. “You have a right to you know that your government and its leaders are putting you first, and not themselves.”
In the same appearance, Harris answered a question about whether she had been installed undemocratically, by describing Trump’s attack on rule of law. She listed the Republicans who were supporting her (including Alberto Gonzales, who is, whatever else you think of him and trust me I do, one of the biggest success stories for a child of migrants in US history), and described the mob on January 6. She stated that January 6 was one reason why Republicans were supporting her.
Those answers were on October 10. Less than a week later, González was back, noting explicitly that he had been a registered Republican, but was no longer registered as such. González pitched his question as a chance for Trump to earn back his vote. I think González sincerely wanted Trump to do so. González asked about January 6, about COVID response, about Pence not supporting him anymore.
Yes, this response was riddled with lies. But even basic ones, like his claim that “we” didn’t have guns, are going unchallenged even when journalists claim to fact check these claims. Still, Trump also didn’t answer the question, and that matters. He was asked about his inaction on January 6, not why people came to DC. He spoke instead about how many people wanted to hear him speak.
Importantly, it’s not just González who seemed to find this answer ridiculous. As the camera panned, several women sat with their arms folded; one looked shocked when Trump claimed no one was killed.
What I think we can see in these two appearances was what happens when Harris has a chance to break through the disinformation that Trump has been spreading. González and Mario Sigbaum, the guy who asked whether she had been installed undemocratically, came in to the Harris town hall believing bullshit that Trump had fed them. The Biden administration was withholding relief from Republicans. Harris had pushed Biden aside and gotten herself installed undemocratically. I have no idea whether her response worked for Sigbaum, but in answering Sigbaum, Harris said things that González would raise a week later with Trump, including that his former people were no longer supporting him.
This is the task before Kamala Harris, as more low-information voters head to the polls. She has to find a way to crack through the wave of disinformation that Trump has spread. These two clips show, I think, that when she has a chance to do that, either what she says or the references she makes or the empathy and leadership she models can be successful in persuading people not just that she’ll put their interests first, but that they’ve been lied to.
To be fair, they’re still getting lied to on social media. This week, for example, Christopher Rufo has been trying to seed claims that Kamala Harris plagiarized her book by cutting and pasting from a press release that the book cited. Many in the traditional press are still not telling the truth about Donald Trump — not about the guns his supporters brought to the Capitol, not about his obvious meltdowns, not about his criminal exposure.
But Trump’s public meltdown and his string of cancellations has finally titillated the chattering class whose claim that Harris couldn’t handle a tough interview was soundly debunked in the Bret Baier interview. Trump’s own fitness has become an issue again, eight years after the press got bored with that story so instead turned to Hillary’s emails.
And it has become clear, in the last week, that Harris’ events with Republicans have started to serve an additional purpose, in addition to giving Republicans permission to support her (though to be clear: González is the kind of self-identified Republican for whom that permission may be important). Those events, and Harris’ discussion of them, are a way to describe how many Trump Administration veterans, how many Republicans, have found him to be unfit.
Have found him to be a fascist.
They offer a credible way to make Trump’s unfitness a story. It’s the kind of story that may have helped to persuade González.
Again, I make no promises this will work. If it doesn’t, we’re looking at turnout and knowledge that Trump’s planning fuckery, even if we only know the half of what he plans.
But events of the last week may finally have stripped some of the curtain of lies that Trump hides behind.
Just an anecdote to share here. I’m at the bar yesterday talking with the bartender, and the topic of the election comes up. He’s of Mexican descent and notes that Mexico recently elected its first female president. Then he goes on to say that women stopped letting men boss them around (I “translate” that to the US, where women ARE increasingly independent). He figures that having women as heads of state will lead to them all getting together to set things on a better course. Could happen.
I was drinking as part of my Election Celebration (I tend to look at the bright side, but am sure of it). Can never start too early.
I only wish. But as Karl Rove said: “Politics is TV with the sound turned off.” Even regular voters usually pay very little attention to what’s going on. Since there is no consensus reality any more, they can’t even pick up things by osmosis. I have no idea who is going to win in November, but–barring the usual dead girl or live boy–I can’t see anything new getting into the voters’ heads.
Every time I see that quote from Rove, I think about Oliver Sacks’s anecdote about the patients at a psychiatric hospital watching Reagan on TV, with the sound off, and laughing dismissively. Then I think that Rove should have chosen a better analogy; then I realize that what he said is nonsense, even on its own terms.
I have trouble believing the statistically tied assessment (though I think it’s wise that Harris continues to paint herself as the underdog) given that there are structural problems with quite a few polls (random sampling is hard; questions couched with inherent bias etc.) as well as some hacking (Russia, China, Iran et al.)
Another thing about low-information voters is that they tend to want to stay with the current party of the White House dependent on factors mapped out by Lichtman and Kellis-Borok. They won’t listen to the false reports about how the economy is awful, they will walk into the booth and vote based on how full their belly is (so to speak). That definitely pulls in Harris’ favor.
Plus this week (as noted) Harris showed the strength/power that voters want in their PotUS and Trump is looking weak.
So I think there are elements in place that the glass is more than half full (even before this past week’s events).
I’m not ignorant. I get to see too frequently how grass roots volunteers have been misinformed or understate the severity of the mis/disinformation out there. And Dems still suck at messaging. But Harris has got this, she’s doing an amazing job given how short her campaign had to be!
“We are all ignorant; just about different things.”
— Mark Twain
It isn’t just turnout, which does favor the Ds because of a superior GOTV operation. It’s also POC coming home to Ds, young people with no voting record, Dobbs women and men, and really a massive GOP crossover to Harris. This won’t be evident in polling or if it is, not until November 5.
I would add, the Michigan Palestinian bloc caving in for Harris, since they see Mariam Adelson’s money on Trump’s side and likely are informed enough to see a threat of Trump pushing annexation of occupied territories as a quid pro quo. They seem activist enough to not be stupid about their choice.
Parker Molloy has a piece in Substack noting that both the WaPo and the NYT have run pieces with extended quotes from transcripts of Trump’s crazy answer to a question at the Fox town hall, asking how he’d reduce grocery prices. https://open.substack.com/pub/readtpa/p/letting-trumps-words-speak-for-themselves?r=52hi3
It’s shocking how disjointed his sentences and sentence fragments are. Of course there isn’t a cogent answer, but there isn’t even a connection to the question. It feels like he says a few words, one or two of them tickle another set of words, and so on until he runs out of words or just gets bored.
He calls his evasive answering style “the weave” and brags about it. I hope enough voters have grown tired of his schtick.
Ed Walker, your last sentence is a perfect description of his speaking style.
Some early voting data to consider: https://targetearly.targetsmart.com/g2024?demo_filters=%5B%7B%22key%22%3A%22modeledParty%22%2C%22value%22%3A%22All%22%7D%5D
“one looked shocked when Trump claimed no one was killed.”
It wasn’t just that he said no one was killed. It was the sentence that immediately preceded that one that broke that woman’s brain: “Ashli Babbitt was killed… no one was killed.”
He remembered her and erased her in 5 seconds.
Yes. Thanks for reminding me of that! It was shocking!
With the headline as is, my guess, no. EW regulars likely followed some of the things Marcy mentioned, not all, and they are enthusiastic followers of what info they can find or read of here. The general public? No. The Harris FOX thing reached unlikely Dem voters, but she may have turned some people. That may have the most impact of things Marcy listed. The “I’m the candidate, respect that, let me answer” approach worked.
What I think is inadequately understood, Trump seems so decrepit that if he wins, four years from now Vance will be running as incumbent. Seeing it that way should favor Harris.
We tape at 12PM ET, 5PM my time, and 9AM Nicole’s time …
I’m here to be the pedant who insists that 12AM is fine for midnight but there is no such thing as 12PM. Meridiem is Latin for midday. Midnight starts a day and is before noon, but midday cannot be after itself. 12PM is an abomination created by digital clocks.
PS I’m more optimistic than EW on the votes that are going to be cast, but the real fight will start late in the evening of November 5th – lawfare and whatever Trump’s mobs have planned.
From all the trashing of NYT and WaPo here, do many people believe that last minute newspaper endorsements matter? If they ever did, do they now? The outlets act as if they feel their endorsements will tip the balance. Will It?
I ran down a strange rabbit hole this morning. I noticed that Fox and Newsmax were both touting trump’s performance at the Smith dinner, pumping him as the funniest president ever. So, with half an hour to kill, I watched his whole speech.
He bombed badly; even admitted three times that a line had just failed to land.
Yet Fox and Newsmax just continued to spend many minutes on his triumphal speech.
It seems to me that the cynical supporters of trump have internalized that he is ruining his campaign and have decided they will have to carry him across the finish line. Can they do it? No clue. In the bad old days, centrists sometimes won the presidency despite the near uniform opposition of the newspapers. But newspapers lack the intimacy of radio or teevee.
I also just watched his speech. First thing I noted was that he read much of the speech with some ad libs. For the most part, he was coherent, but affectless. When he veered from the prepared remarks he became less so. The speech was largely mean-spirited and grievance oriented. The nasty political jibes were met with polite laughter from many and applause from some, who I assume (hope) are his retinue.
The guns !
The rapid response teams.
The thousands who refused to go through the Mags because they were armed.
The secret service transmissions
reporting people in trees who had AR 15’S.
Seems like one could make an interesting commercial from the records relating to gun play on Jan 6.
I’d like to learn more about possible manipulation of prediction markets. It sure looks plausible.
Thomas Miller at Virtual tout says” “Prediction markets and forecasts that rely on prediction markets have been highly volatile in October, showing an election that could move in either direction during the final days of the race to the White House.”
That’s a vast understatement.
Excellent summation of the state of the race and the past week filled with October surprises.
I sure hope you get a peek at Jack Smith’s 1500 page appendix before you tape with Nicole today!
Thanks for this excellent analysis, as always.
For those low-information voters out there – and there are quite a few – I honestly wish they would at least watch the monologues of late-night comedians like Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and hosts of The Daily Show. They’ve been doing an excellent job of covering Trump’s obvious mental decline by showing clips from his events and his written posts, while also demonstrating that Kamala Harris is more than capable of doing the job. I no longer have cable, but I at least watch the monologues on YouTube the next morning.
I’m hopeful that Trump’s Unavision town hall will have some impact. Both Colbert and Kimmel covered it with actual clips of Trump giving nonsensical non-answers, and the crowd’s extremely skeptical reactions. The folks in the crowd asked really excellent questions; better than most so-called journalists. It’s an important but not monolithic voting bloc, so the more attention it gets, the better for Harris.
ew: Because of a number of changes in the media, they don’t regularly access credible descriptions of the truth.
Does anyone else remember Biden telling reporters [maybe it was at a WH press conference in the summer], that they “should talk [or maybe “write”] about it”…whatever they were asking him about?
I am trying to find that, and it’s driving me absolutely nuts.
Just found it: It was part of Marcy’s post here:
Boiled Frog Journalism: Is Trump an Agent of Saudi Arabia, and Other Pressing Questions Buried under Biden’s Age
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/07/17/boiled-frog-journalism-is-trump-an-agent-of-saudi-arabia-and-other-pressing-questions-buried-under-bidens-age/
Not a journalist…a Democratic Rep. Jason Crow…
As I said at the time:
Exactly! What do these Dems think? This is just going to fall into our laps?!?! FFS.
HARRIS is happily NOT one of “these Dems” :-)
Phew…now I can get back to the rest of my day! lol.
Trump’s cancellation of interviews, etc., over the past forty-eight hours could be related to the information in the Smith Appendix of Exhibits Judge Chutkan will release today.
In order to maintain his current lifestyle residing in America, Trump needs to become president again, or he’ll need the SCOTUS to rule in his favor again in all future rulings.
Of course, he’ll lie, cheat, and try to steal this year’s presidential election.
Regarding SCOTUS and the ability of the six conservative Justices on it to continue ruling in favor of Trump, that may be in jeopardy now if Ginni Thomas’s testimony under oath in front of a D.C. Grand Jury was taken and is part of the Appendix being released today.
Trump has always depended emotionally and legally on both Ginni and Clarence Thomas helping him avoid accountability in his cases.
“Short of cognitive collapse, none of those people will abandon their Donald[.]”
When he’s crawling on his hands and knees eating grass like king Nebuchadnezzar, his followers will throw away their lawn mowers.
Watch as his cognitive decline continues, as it only can; there is no reverse gear. So say the experts. It’s not simple “aging.”
Thanks for the weeks summery.
Trump is disintegrating each day. Some Republican politicians see this continuing to make excuses rewarding abusive behavior. Finally, the MSM calling out his age, stamina and mental health. Better late than never.
Meanwhile, Vice President Harris shuts down hecklers beautifully with humor and wit.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kamala-harris-shuts-down-hecklers_n_6711918fe4b0e33eefb276ca
And
Bret Baier Says He Made A ‘Mistake’ In Kamala Harris Interview, Played Wrong Trump Clip
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bret-baier-kamala-harris-mistake-interview_n_6711c922e4b0b6831a128fed