Trump and the RNC had hoped to sow division and discord within the DNC base, fomenting fears of Biden’s cognitive capabilities and his age. It would appear now that Trump is the dog that caught up with the car, and now he has no idea what to do. With Biden’s departure from the 2024 race, the Democratic base is just as determined as it was before to stop Trump, but now there is renewed energy within the base as Harris has a free hand to go on the offensive.
Biden spoke about a battle for the “soul of America,” echoing Jon Meacham’s words, creating the image of being a kindly grandfather and a wise leader. Harris is feeding off of America’s craving for catharsis, turning the DNC into the party of “law and order,” and creating the image of a rowdy boxer. Harris is presenting herself as the opportunity for America to finally bring justice to Donald Trump and MAGAism, ending their chaotic affronts to democracy. Harris has changed the narrative to a battle of “the law” vs. the convicted felon Trump. Republicans from the Lincoln Project certainly seem to see the changing tide, as the Harris leads the DNC to assume the mantle of Defender of American law:
So, Trump now has a problem. Trump, the RNC, and the media tried to make the narrative be, “oh Biden is too old and is in cognitive decline.” The narrative caught on and succeeded in making people within the DNC base question Biden’s capability to win in 2024, let alone even finish the remaining 6 months of his term in office — regardless of the narrative’s credibility. What Trump and the RNC hadn’t counted on, however, was Biden actually stepping aside and giving Kamala Harris a bouncing board to propel her to success.
The result has been this:
Harris is running to continue Biden’s fantastically successful agenda, take it steps even further, the DNC base and others are rallying behind Harris, and this is all while Harris is not “too old to run” by anyone’s standard.
Whoops.
Trump has now created a narrative where it is assumed to be a problem to have someone “old” running for president; he and the RNC helped spread the narrative that dementia comes with age (www.cdc.gov/….). Now Trump is the oldest presidential candidate in US History, is running against someone who made their career off of convincing regular people to convict felons, and he is a convicted felon. Hoisted on his own petard.
But surely Trump has a masterstroke hidden up his sleeve, yes? He has some trick to show to voters he still has what it takes to rally in support, right? The 2016 victor has some evil plot to make his Project 2025 a reality, naturally? Not really — not so much. Since Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Kamala Harris, Trump has been imploding.
Trump is running out of steam.
By night, Trump has been rage-tweeting on Truth Social (www.rawstory.com/…), saying things like:
“Lyin’ Kamala Harris has absolutely terrible pole (sic) numbers against a fine and brilliant young man named DONALD J. TRUMP!”
By day, Trump has been avoiding things by playing golf.
And as far as video recordings go, Trump isn’t playing golf very well either:
Trump is even struggling on FOX News, making incoherent and slurred ramblings as concerned FOX hosts tried to cut him off.
“We have lawyers and every poll booth… in fact my instruction— we don’t need the votes. I have so many votes.”
Trump is telling people in his base they don’t need to vote… This is when Trump got 91% of the Republican vote in 2020 and still lost. Trump needs proportionately more votes than he got in 2020 in order to clinch the 2024 election. He needs more than 91% of the RNC vote, and he needs more independent voters than he got last time. This is when Trump struggled to get 80% of the vote in the Republican Primaries in 2024, and he has completely flubbed the “unity” narrative after his assassination attempt. These 2020 numbers are pre-Covid-19 deaths too, where Covid-19 has disproportionately effected Republican numbers (www.cidrap.umn.edu/…).
And all of this is occurring while JD Vance is pulling a Sarah Palin, talking about Mountain Dew and cat ladies. Bear in mind, Vance said this when the RNC is still in hot water with voters because of their attacks on in vitro fertilization (among all the other reasons).
Oof.
I wonder if Vance can see Russia from his house too. Maybe since he’s from Ohio, Vance can say he can see Canada from his house.
Despite what we may have felt for the past few years, Trump has been losing steam for some time now. Even Trump’s own rallies, the bread and circus shows for his MAGAist fanatics (en.wikipedia.org/…), have been withering out since Trump’s defeat in 2020. www.politico.com/… This wheezing of enthusiasm and energy is especially apparent when you look at the ratings for the RNC Convention.
About 25 million people tuned in to watch the convention, and viewership peaked at 28 million viewers at 10:45pm, while Trump was speaking (www.nielsen.com/…). About 18.3 million of the people who watched the RNC convention were over the age of 55. This was while Biden was still in the race, and this was literally days after Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt. Yet, the RNC 2024 ratings were still worse than their 2020 ratings (www.hollywoodreporter.com/…).