Every time I think the 2024 campaign can’t get stranger, it does. I’m trying not to use the W word because it’s been affixed to MAGA Republicans like a scarlet letter. You know shit is getting weird when I make a Hawthorne reference, y’all. Oops, I slipped and used the W word. Oh well, what the hell.
Since things are so weird, I’m going to take a random approach to this post. It’s hard to fly your freak flag when there are so many freaks, geeks, and misfits involved in this campaign.
Last night this happened:
Trump on the debate: They didn’t correct her once and they corrected me, everything I said practically.. and the audience went absolutely crazy pic.twitter.com/H2SEsIDUg2
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 19, 2024
There was, of course, no audience. It’s another fantasy. No wonder they call his ambit Trump World. It’s a whole ‘nother universe. This *should* inspire the legacy media to take a closer look into the windmills of Donald’s demented mind. but will it? Your guess is as good as mine.
Perhaps this song will serve as a musical prod for them to wake up and smell the proverbial coffee:
Team Trump continues to get the electoral math all wrong. I’m not talking about polls; I’m talking about basic math: addition and subtraction. Campaigns are supposed to be about adding voters to your coalition. Ever since Joe Biden passed the baton to Kamala Harris, Republicans have forgotten that basic rule of politics. Team Harris has not: There’s been a steady stream of former Republican officials and retired military endorsing the Veep.
Repeat after me: Campaigns are about addition, not subtraction.
Remember when the audience went wild at the Philadelphia Beatdown when the Insult Comedian said that he was not only pro-IVF but a leader in fertilization? Me neither, but he did say that. The majority of Senate GOPers didn’t get the memo and voted against IVF yesterday. Props to Chuck Schumer for scheduling the cloture vote, which received 51 votes. JD Vance was absent. I guess the fertilization leader didn’t order him to attend.
Speaking of J Donut Vance and what Josh Marshall calls the Fido and Felix BBQs, one of the best things I’ve read about the whole mishigas comes from the anti-Trump right. Here’s a fancy link to the piece:
The author Kevin D Williamson is a lapsed Republican who gets off one of the best lines about JD Vance thus far:
You can send little J.D. to Yale to make him polished, you can send him to Silicon Valley to make him rich, and you can send him to the Senate to make him powerful, but you cannot stop him from being what it is he apparently wants to be: Cleetus the Gap-Toothed Twitter Troll.”
In a word: Ouch.
On the other side of the political equation, Team Harris continues to add voters to its coalition. They have momentum both nationally and where it really matters, the swing states. I continue to be a human outlier and believe that the election won’t be as close as everyone else thinks. Why? Donald Trump’s negatives are stratospheric. He’s an obnoxious asshole and I’m convinced that a majority of voters are sick of his shit. There’s a reason I call him the Insult Comedian.
Vice President Harris has added a new phrase to her campaign lexicon: Trump abortion bans. It directly ties the Kaiser of Chaos to the wildly unpopular abortion bans enacted by red state leges. It not only scans, it’s accurate even if horse race obsessed reporters still don’t understand that abortion rights is a winning issue. The malakatude, it burns.
Repeat after me: Campaigns are about addition, not subtraction.
We have a two-headed last word for this and future Campaign Notes posts. In addition to our regularly scheduled musical last word, I’m reviving a feature that I used during the 2018 midterm election. It’s a countdown meme featuring Harold Lloyd in Safety Last. That’s right, Harold and Buster are reunited, and it feels so good.
The musical last word goes to Yes:
The countdown last word goes to Harold Lloyd:
