It is August 5. The election is exactly three months away, November 5. Some observations:
Cheap Heat
In my last post I noted Donald Trump's confusion/anger/grievance about Kamala Harris's racial identity. Jonathan Last describes Trump's lie about Harris as a move straight out of professional wrestling. Desperate to draw attention away from Harris (whose campaign has generated overwhelming enthusiasm in its first two weeks) to himself, Trump deliberately generated "cheap heat."
As Last has explained, Trump has had a long association with WWE and "Trump’s forays into wrestling formed his understanding of how populism and demagoguery function." Wrestlers, both heels (villains) and faces (heroes), generate heat insofar as the audience reacts to them. With loathing or adoration; it doesn't matter. The heat shows that the audience "cares."
Trump, of course, loves to get a reaction.
Cheap heat is "when a wrestling heel says or does something in an obvious attempt to antagonize the audience and make them hate him." Trump, per Last, by playing the heel, succeeded in "recapturing the spotlight" (which interrupted the rapturous attention Harris was getting) and created "a tactical dilemma" for Harris (whose response might harm her campaign). Though in this case it didn't.
Crowd Size
In Trump's first full day on the job in the White House, he began whining/lying/obsessing over crowd size. He insisted that the size of the crowd at his inauguration was larger than the crowd at Obama's addresses. And for much of his term in the White House, Trump returned to this obsession.
So, when Trump spoke at a rally last weekend, in the same venue as Harris has spoken earlier -- he returned again and again to the size of the crowd he had drawn, compared to Harris.
Trump can't help being Trump. And that has become increasingly obvious at this stage of the 2024 campaign.
Fat Elvis
With Biden's exit, Trump is now the old, out of touch guy running for president. He continues to draw on a well-worn repertoire of tricks, but he doesn't have much new to offer. He is in the Fat Elvis stage of his career. As Charlie Sykes put it, "Don’t ignore the evidence of your eyes: Donald Trump is floundering, stumbling, and fumbling. Like a superannuated Fat Elvis, he’s desperately trying to play his greatest hits — Racism! Insults! Bullshit! — but it’s not landing the way it used to, is it?"
While Harris continues to generate enthusiasm a day before introducing her running mate, Trump's campaign is giving off a whiff of desperation.
Invisible Hand
Speaking of Biden's bowing out, Nancy Pelosi offered remarks today on her role in persuading the president:
“My goal is defeat Donald Trump,” Ms. Pelosi, the former speaker, said in a recent interview before the release this week of a book on her years in Congress. “And when you make a decision to defeat somebody, you make every decision in favor of that. You don’t mess around with it, OK? What is in furtherance of reaching that goal? I thought we had to have a better campaign.”
Not surprising to learn that Nancy Pelosi doesn't mess around.
Still Tight
We're a 50-50 nation, or close to it. This election will be hard fought. And Americans will decide: Do we accept the allure of Make America Great Again? Or do we insist that "We're not going back!"
We'll see soon enough.