Do we care?https://t.co/G1CZKK1xLA
— Barbara Tokay (@sci_writer) August 24, 2024
Well, it’s always nice to know that Karma is still working, however slowly. Per the Washington Post, “Trump allies try to energize him as he struggles to adapt to Harris”:
… [A]ides did not want a situation where he was watching the [DNC] convention every night, getting angry, and then just golfing all day and stewing, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private interactions. Trump also had grown annoyed with the news coverage that depicted him as not working as hard as his opponent, one person who talked to him said.
So the campaign launched back-to-back events over the past week, with the goal of counterprogramming the Democratic convention and securing news coverage, as other campaigns have often done, but also as a way to keep Trump busy.
The candidate, though, often appeared reluctant. He frequently departed from the policy themes assigned to each day’s event — an attempt to keep him focused on poll-tested messages over his pugnacious impulses — illustrating his continued struggle to find his footing in a changed race.
“The stakes for Trump this election are arguably the highest they’ve ever been. His criminal cases don’t go away if he loses. Yet he seems to be phoning it in, running a remarkably low-energy, undisciplined campaign,” said Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former White House spokeswoman who quit after Trump supporters attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “From spending days off the campaign trail golfing to coming up with frankly weak nicknames like ‘Kamabala,’ it feels like he’s lost his mojo.”…
Asked about the perception that the change in Democratic candidates had thrown him off, Trump responded: “No, I think we’re doing great.” He proceeded to complain about how “unfair” the change was.
“I spent $100 million fighting against a man that won in their party, and we had a debate and the debate was good for me,” he said. “And then all of a sudden they take him out and they put somebody new in that never got a vote.”
Trump has publicly acknowledged his challenge in defining Harris, describing his goal as to portray her as a “communist.” His frustration with his advisers burst into public Wednesday when he mocked them for telling him to focus on politics instead of personal insults. He then polled the crowd on which they preferred and, when they predictably cheered louder for personal attacks, Trump joked, “My advisers are fired.”…
Trump tried to cut into Harris’s acceptance speech by live-blogging his real-time reactions on Truth Social, responding with insults, deflections and non sequiturs. He then called in to both Fox News and Newsmax to continue his attacks.
“Donald Trump immediately melted down and hasn’t recovered since,” Harris-Walz spokeswoman Sarafina Chitika said. “Voters are watching an unhinged and unserious man rant on Truth Social, rave on Fox News and hold bizarre rallies where he rambles for hours about his own problems and throws out strange and dangerous ideas.”…
Most of his allies offered little defense of his character. There was no rapid response operation to respond to Democratic criticism that he inspired a riot at the U.S. Capitol, paid hush money to an adult film actress or was found liable for sexual abuse. Instead, surrogates and aides attacked Harris and Walz for not addressing Republican policy priorities and made a website portraying Harris’s policy record in a negative light…
We must also break his spirit https://t.co/C4UNpUp9J9
— Xenomorphs for Harris-Walz (@TonyMoonbeam) August 24, 2024
Happy 1 year anniversary yall pic.twitter.com/GnXu6fYdXh
— CT Dem ???????????? (@CTDemocrat8) August 24, 2024
More likely, he was told he wasn’t getting briefings and is trying to save face.
Either way, good news. https://t.co/IRP6EeNqzD
— Angry Staffer ?? (@Angry_Staffer) August 22, 2024
this is the tragedy of the tyrant: they are the most in need of homies to take their phone away when they're talkin crazy on social, and yet they have driven all their homies away https://t.co/UYRQehe1Yt
— Djinn & Tonic ???? ???? (@HegelwCrmCheese) August 23, 2024
I love his low energy speeches have to be in a little box now because too many of his fans match the mass shooter profile. https://t.co/yODtgjdfdA
— Shadow Of The Nerdtree (@agraybee) August 22, 2024
The vegetables in my crisper looking at me Doordashing yet another meal pic.twitter.com/zWa1ASn82v
— Tyrone (@TheTyronePalmer) August 19, 2024
What if the October Surprise is him dying https://t.co/KUKWY8Qdfd
— Environmental Services Weedle (@PartyWurmple) August 23, 2024
War for Ukraine Day 914: If It’s a Day Ending in Day, the Russians Are Committing War Crimes & Crimes Against Humanity
TS
He is either too scared to debate MVP or he is working out how to say the ABC was agin him
Gift link https://wapo.st/4dB3Bhr
Includes this little gem
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Trump’s social media post Sunday night.
So nice to know the Harris campaign does not comment on the weird old guy’s social media posts.
Connor
I’ve never had this opportunity, but I remember the tradition, so…
Frist?
[Edit: NOPE. TOO LATE.]
Ishiyama
Put him in a hamster ball!
Tony Jay
It – is – so unfair. All he ever wanted was to open The Donald Trump Center For Kids Who Can’t Business Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Like Treason Too, but those evil Democrats ruined it by running someone even more ridiculously good-looking than he is and his so-called ‘friends’ made it worse by booking all his speeches into buildings designed for ants! How is he supposed to teach Americans to learn how to hate if they can’t even fit most of them into the building???
This would all be different if he could turn left. But he can’t. So unfair.
MattF
@TS: He won’t debate if he thinks he’ll lose.
Villago Delenda Est
My Schadenfreude meter is pegged. As for breaking his spirit, make sure the spirits of his spawn are broken, too.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ishiyama: Putting someone in a hamster ball is not the traditional punishment for treason.
Jay
@Villago Delenda Est:
Hamster balls have air holes,……….so,…………
piratedan
seeing videos surfacing on BlueSky that are referencing extraordinary volunteer turnout in Arizona and… Tennessee. Hundreds waiting to sign up to help at the Harris/Walz offices.
seems that there is some enthusiasm carryover post the DNC.
piratedan
@Jay: not as cruel as 95% of P25
John Revolta
He then called in to both Fox News and Newsmax to continue his attacks.
They should’ve mentioned that he called Newsmax because Fox cut him off in mid-rant because Gutfeld was starting. Sad!
Baud
@piratedan:
Nobody wants to work anymore.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@piratedan: Here in Tennessee Democrats are thirsty for something positive. We have a GOP trifecta with legislative supermajority, many of whom are one document drop from waking up with people from the FBI (which now hires women, minorities and non-Christians—J. Edgar Hoover is spinning in his grave!) waving warrants at them.
So Harris/Walz is the relief we’ve been dreaming of. Carrying the state would be a heavy lift but just giving the SOBs a black eye would be awesome.
JWR
Anne Laurie: I’m still grinning at your “The Past Has Been Torched” title from last night. A belated Bravo!
@TS: I heard that he’s using Tulsi Gabbard as his Kamala Harris stand-in for debate prep, mostly because of one exchange from the 2020 Dem debate. I forget what was said back then, but the Repubs all say that Tulsi slaughtered Harris. In any case, this ain’t the same Kamala, and Trump’s not going to use whatever she’s able to “teach” him, anyway. At this point, he’s unteachable.
Baud
@JWR: IIRC, it was some “Kamala is a cop” meme.
JWR
@Baud: Yeah, it had something to do with Harris’ role in law enforcement, one way or another. But I’ll bet it wasn’t nearly as cutting as Harris taking Biden down a peg or two on the bussing stuff, with Harris saying that “she was that little girl” being bussed.
Jeffg166
The October surprise may his being carted off to the loony bin raving. He is cracking under the pressure.
TBone
When I read Heather Cox Richardson today, the word schadenfreude came to mind immediately. That’s unusual for her, I believe. She winds up today’s letter (which recounts his horrible, no good, very bad week) with this tidbit:
TBone
Also, tromped is a great word.
Splitting Image
@Tony Jay:
Of all the things I won’t miss about Donald Trump when he is (cross fingers) defeated in November and then promptly memory-holed by the Republican party, what I won’t miss the most is his incessant whining about how everything is so unfair.
Gloria DryGarden
Tromp rhymes w stomp…
he needs to be so tied up in court cases, that he has no time for disruption, after the election.
JPL
@TS: Kaitlin Collins told Bill Maher Friday night, that trump was afraid to debate Harris. His Sunday night rant is not a surprise.
Suzanne
I don’t know if he can die. I remain unconvinced. It’s never happened before.
RevRick
@Splitting Image: Trump won’t be memory-holed by the GOP until he dies. The base loves him, because he speaks the “truth,” which means he gives them unfiltered hate and the desire for revenge. He will be their candidate in 2028 if he is even remotely sentient. And since the GOP bench is as thin as the Democrats’ is thick, who would be his successor? MTG? The GOP base’s hunger is as bottomless as Trump’s. They demand performative ugliness and will not be satisfied with the bog standard mediocrity of a GOP governor or Senator.
Suzanne
@RevRick:
You think?
I keep thinking that, at some point, the rest of the GOP is gonna get tired of all the un-winning. And that the adults will reassert themselves.
But, like…. I honestly thought that would have happened by now.
Baud
@Suzanne:
He might not have been the candidate this time if it weren’t for the bad “vibes” that the media amplified against Biden over these last few years. It made Republicans think they had a good shot at Trump’s Revenge.
Who knows?
Suzanne
Man, this seems like a fuckup:
(A gentle reminder that Nate Silver hasn’t been at 538 for a while.)
geg6
@Suzanne:
You’d think, right? But this seems like it will end with vats of Diet Coke doctored with lethal doses of ketamine and bodies strewn all over MAL’s lawns, Jonestown style. We can only hope.
Geminid
@Splitting Image: Nobody likes a whiner. That’s one reason I think Trump will lose the Independent vote this November, and by a greater margin than he did in 2ü20. Indies may be confused about policy, but the more Trump whines the more the slogan, “We’re not going back!” will resonate with them.
Baud
@Geminid:
He’s always been a whiner, but I agree that quality comes through more right now.
TBone
Schadenfreude everywhere. I went out into (far) left field just now and they are so het up about Just Fucking Kidding, Jr. that front pagers there are issuing stern warnings about tribalism and comity, and threatening to shut down comments 😆
Pooty is displeased.
Baud
@TBone:
I don’t know what that means.
Suzanne
@Baud: Yeah, I have given up predicting. I was convinced that, after 2020, the Normal Evil of the GOP would be resurgent. Not in a Fuck you, MAGA kind of way, but in a We shall never speak of that again, down the memory hole kind of way. I was obviously so wrong about that. And I honestly feel two ways about it…… obviously I want “the Trump era” over as much as anyone else here, but I also think we’ve started winning in places like Arizona because of it.
I feel like something-like-normal has to return….. but, like, why do I think that? Just because that’s what usually happens doesn’t mean it’ll happen again.
raven
@Suzanne: Remind me why we don’t like Silver?
Suzanne
@geg6:
Insert gif of Michael Jackson eating popcorn here.
Geminid
@Suzanne: I think this election is is Trump’s last stand, and I think he knows it too.
Suzanne
@raven: Many people feel he’s crossed into opinion punditry that isn’t really based on data, when he came to prominence because he offered a more data-driven analysis.
Baud
@Suzanne:
His cult has never been a majority. And they really have no path forward except more extremism. But I agree there’s no guarantee of happy endings when taking about the future.
raven
@Suzanne: thx!
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne: I used to believe Repub oligarchs were the evil but cunning people who really ran the GOP and manipulated the base at will, but I was wrong about that. The big donors were desperate to rid themselves of loser Trump, so they lined up behind the hateful dud DeSantis and poured hundreds of millions of dollars into his campaign, only to be thwarted by Repub primary voters’ loyalty to the addled old convicted felon. It almost restores one’s faith in democracy. Almost…
Suzanne
@Geminid: What’s interesting to me is how short Trump’s coattails have been. The draw really is him and no one else. Kari Lake, Herschel Walker…..
Mr. Suzanne thinks that Trump picked Vance because one of the Idiot Failsons wants to run in the future on a Trump. Jr./Vance ticket, and that seems plausible to me. The only ones who could replace TFG would be Uday or Qusay.
Geminid
@Baud: Trump used to boast more than he whined, but now the proportions have been reversed. This reminds me of the Shih Tzu dog meme that shows a muscular dog standing next to a meek one lying on the ground.
lowtechcyclist
How dare they say his work habits might be lacking! Why, when he was President, he sometimes worked as much as two or three hours a day!
Andrew Abshier
@Betty Cracker: And DEESantis was so epically bad at campaigning there was no way he could win even if he ran unopposed!
Can’t wait for 2026, when we can elect someone new for Governor. Not so fast, Charlie Crist.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Suzanne: IDK how much more proof people need polling at all levels isn’t t an impartial measurement but just as politicized as everything else.
And sure, they totally NOT retroactively changing the methodology after the elections so that can claim the polls were right all a long and it’s the rest of us who incorrectly remembering wild misses.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Trump appropriated the tools of manipulation by applying them authentically.
TBone
@Baud: they’re upset that too many commenters indicated they are going to write in JFK, Jr., thereby taking votes away from Donold (and further weakening Pooty, their masculine hero), among other things 😆
lowtechcyclist
@TBone:
I think you meant Really Fucking Kidding, Jr.
Baud
I suppose this is consistent with the “don’t be complacent” message, but on MSNBC they’re talking about not getting excited about Harris’s lead in the polls.
Baud
@TBone:
Thanks.
TBone
@lowtechcyclist: oops, you’re correct, I’m still trying to get enough coffee in. Thank you for that yummy correction!
Baud
The one nice thing you can say about corporate leaders is that they don’t want to be seen as bigots.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Baud: Whining about a woman really makes him look like teen who is upset that his crush doesn’t like him.
Baud
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
He needs the incel vote.
MagdaInBlack
@TBone: I hope you’ve fully decontaminated from your safari into the danger zone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK0P1Bk8Cx4
Tony Jay
@Splitting Image:
My reply got eaten by sea otters.
To restate, when your entire concept of self is based on forcing people to smell your farts and being lauded for it, being doused in air-freshener can seem unfair.
Seem. It’s not, of course. It’s just consequences.
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: 😆
I dunno why I keep making the JFK / RFK mistake repeatedly today – maybe I am a bit shell shocked from being in that doom zone too long. It’s…well you’d have to see it and I do not recommend!
TBone
@Tony Jay: 🤣
TBone
@Gloria DryGarden: good plan.
His meddling in foreign affairs is so fukkn dangerous. No cell phones in the court room!
Let’s convert him from unindicted co-conspirator to fully indicted co-conspirator, Supremacists Court be damned!
Soprano2
@Baud: It was only part of his Schick before; since Harris became the candidate, it’s almost the only thing he talks about, how unfair it all is. Most of us learned that life isn’t fair a long time ago.
Betty Cracker
@Andrew Abshier: FL Repubs won’t have to look hard to find someone even worse than DeSantis, like the botoxed nepo baby Matt Gaetz. He might be a bridge too far even for this nutty state, but I wouldn’t count on that. Please no more Crist!
@Baud: I think that’s exactly right.
TBone
I keep a “listen live” link open for our college radio station. They are currently paying tribute to Donold’s new ticket 😆
🎶
https://youtu.be/D8Ci47X96H0
MagdaInBlack
@TBone: i spend enough time over there “spying” that I have some clue what you’re seeing.
TBone
@Betty Cracker: ugh, that thought gives me even more creepy willies! *shivers
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: my sister in arms!
Spanky
@geg6: Don’t threaten me with a good time.
Geminid
@Suzanne: Both Vance and that clunker Doctor Oz were weak primary candidates who won because of Trump’s endorsement Vance won with 32% and Oz got 33%.
When Trump sponsored Herschel Walker that same cycle he spoiled the best chance Republicans will ever have to knock Raphael Warnock out of the Senate. That was a safe Republican seat not that long ago, but they’ll never take it back from Warnock now.
That might have been a winnable race with a more standard Republican candidate. In that year’s Governor’s race, Stacy Abrams was a formidable politician with a well organized campaign, yet Brian Kemp won by around 5%. That tells me the votes were out there for a better Senate candidate, but after Trump went weird with Walker they stayed out there.
Princess
My understanding is he does his own makeup. From that last photo it looks like he’s lost his capacity to do that but won’t let anyone else do it either. My mother with Alzheimer’s is like that about some things.
different-church-lady
Even in an article where they are willing to describe him losing it they still use a tone as though he were legitimately qualified to be a major party nominee.
TBone
Oh dear LORT the cuckoo bananas of these weirdos is off the charts. In an article by Yves about Dems being the most likely to steal this election 😆, after slagging on the convention non-appearance of GEORGE W. BUSH 😆 there is this paragraph:
Weird Meter: about to lift off!
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
I just don’t see a path back to anything like pre-2015 normal for the GQP. To win, they need those 74 million voters who turned out for Trump in 2020. But the reason a good chunk of them, who didn’t used to regularly vote, turned out for him was that he validated their being racist, misogynist assholes, and told them it was A-OK for them to be that sort of people openly and publicly.
I could be wrong, but it’s hard for me to see them continuing to turn out for a GOP that goes back to something like pre-2015 normal and doesn’t openly validate those people and their racism and misogyny anymore.
The other thing is the GOP’s history during my lifetime – it’s gone only one direction over the past 50 years. Reagan, then Rush/Newt, then the Tea Party, then Trump. They would occasionally throw up some window dressing of moderation, e.g. GWB being a ‘compassionate conservative’ – HA! – but it’s always just for looks.
It’s hard for me to see anything ahead on the GOP side besides either Trump continuing to lead his cult – from prison, with any luck! – or someone new leading what would basically be Trumpism without Trump. But it’s hard for me to see anyone on their side right now with anything like his mojo. (Neither Uday nor Qusay has it, that’s for sure.) I suspect someone we’ve never heard of, or only barely so, will eventually arise to fill the void.
MagdaInBlack
@TBone: So the Dems are going to do a false flag A.I. alien invasion. Have I got that right?
Does seem to track with their usual fantasy scenarios.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Suzanne: I think the one and only way Trump has been useful is to pants the GOP intellectual elite and mainstream GOP as a total front to convince folks that the GOP had things like ideas, moderation, principles. Then Trump came along and pulled the mask off and proved that guys like George Will and David Brooks had about as much influence in the actual GOP as a box of rocks. And principled conservatives made up a vanishingly small portion of their voting base. And that based looked around amongst themselves and was like “you don’t believe any of that BS either?!?!”
And so they could let their impulses take over and go full hate, xenophobia and nihilism. Not sure the sane daddies, to the extent that they even exist in the GOP anymore, can manage to put the mask back on and the genie back in the bottle.
I loathed Trump from the beginning but he was unconventional and some people liked that. One of the reasons I think the media environment is so focused on policing Democrats is that they KNOW Trump can’t be policed in the conventional ways the press has traditionally policed politicians in both parties, because he’s so unconventional. They’re too lazy to figure out how to police him differently so they’ve just given up because why bother? But they still think they can police Democrats using those conventional tools so focus on doing that. It’s biased, unbalanced and lazy but it’s what they know so they apply it to the side where it still might have an effect.
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: 😆👽🛸
Narrator:
Orson Wells or Orville Redenbacher?
lowtechcyclist
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I disagree. The problem is, polling is simply way harder than it used to be, especially for polling at the state rather than the national level. Not only is it cell phones replacing land lines, and caller ID on every phone of either kind, but area codes don’t mean anything anymore either, they just represent the place you lived when you first got a cell phone. It’s got to be insanely difficult to get a representative sample by phone, and knocking on doors is way expensive – fortunately, that’s how government statistical agencies still do it, thank goodness. And even their response rates have dropped below 50%.
So of course pollsters are making adjustments, trying to figure out how best to make the sample they were able to get match up with reality. The formulas that were the most accurate four years ago probably need some serious tweaking now. And it’s hard to see how it’s going to get any different soon.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
That’s a good way of putting it!
TBone
CAP! 💙
https://showercapblog.com/frankly-i-found-beyonces-speech-wonky-and-off-putting/
Suzanne
@lowtechcyclist: I agree with you. I think polling is flawed (for many of the reasons you state) but by no means is it worthless. It’s more helpful to look at polls and the trends they reveal over time.
Also, what’s the alternative? Even more vibes?
Another Scott
@lowtechcyclist: +1
I ass-u-me that with everyone’s data being leaked/stolen that some aspects of polling will get easier (they’ll know who we are and where we lived, or were 10 years ago), but some will still be hard (because the stolen data has people listed who died 10 years ago contaminating the universe of possible respondents).
Maybe we can fight back and get some anonymity back by changing our cell phone number every year.
I’m sure AI will fix it!!
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
jonas
Trump had all the adults kneecapped and removed from the GOP. There are no more adults. The only thing that might eventually de-MAGAfy the GOP is if virtually every billionaire PAC donor they rely on were to announce they were cutting off the money supply until they see a more mainstream candidate. But even if they wanted to, it’s not going to happen. See above about purging all the adults. The GOP bench now is only MAGA and nothing but — Trump has seen to that.
They are screwed. Very badly.
different-church-lady
Which means that Republican surrogates and aides are still better at this than their Democratic counterparts were for a three week span.
jonas
And because he literally has no shame. When the media exposes something embarrassing about a pol, they typically expect the candidate to be all remorseful and contrite, and hold a press conference with much lip-biting and their humiliated spouse “standing by their side” or whatever. Scalp collected. Trump and his supporters just go “fuck you” and the media don’t seem to know what to do.
But that’s their problem, not Trump’s. It doesn’t just mean you go ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and decide to spend all your resources and energy going after Democrats because that party still consists of grown-ups who care about public service. It means you keep digging into Trump’s bottomless corruption, if not for your clicks, then for history and posterity.
CliosFanBoy
@Princess:
Good observation. I saw that with my Mom too. Dear Lord, it was painful.
WaterGirl
@TBone: Who is CAP and why do we care that he said that? :-)
Uncle Cosmo
Polling, like everything else in the everything-for-sale environment of late-stage (dare we hope end-stage) capitalism, is tailored to serve the ends of them that bought and paid for it.
Nowadays polls released to the public aim to further one of two ends. The end less damaging to democracy is the crass grubbing for “clicks” in order to lure advertisers to the website and increase advertising revenue by inflating the eyeballs-on-page count. The other end is to drive a (usually misleading if not totally bogus) narrative by inserting a meme into public awareness or generating the illusion of horse-race momentum to encourage the customer’s voters and dispirit the opposition.
There are polls taken by campaigns with the honest aim of establishing the state of the race or the mood of the electorate understanding what approaches or language best attract voters to the campaign/cause/candidate in question. As an retired applied statistician with >30 years in the field, I am convinced that there are some very sharp survey researchers out there who know how to extract useful information from the current confusing and largely hostile public opinion environment. But the public will never see these polls until (at best) long after the election; they are for “internal use only” and like trade secrets are kept very close to the vest. After all, it’s foolish to provide free information to rivals (unless you can use it to mislead them, viz., Heinlein’s “best way to lie” – “tell the truth and tell all of it but in a manner that convinces your audience you’re lying.”)
There are a myriad of methods to doctor a political poll to produce exactly the results the customer wants. Crassmussen, the most infamous Thuglican pollster, is notorious for filtering data through “turnout models” that presume every GOP voter will vote at least twice and 90% of Democrats won’t vote at all. (I exaggerate of course.) Not to mention altering question content and order to elicit Thuglican responses. But even he “adjusts” his methods as an election approaches, so that in the end his numbers track with the eventual result. Politically he is an unethical SOB, but he understands that bringing in non-political survey research contracts in off years depends on a track record of being able to get useful results for his apolitical clients.
BellaPea
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio): Amen to that, my friend! I’m fed up with Blackburn, Burchette and all of the MAGA lunatics in the state legislature. Governor Lee is just a religious zealot who lied throughout his campaign and posed as a moderate. As soon as I find out where the Knoxville Harris office is, I’m going to volunteer. It’s a state tradition!
Paul in KY
@lowtechcyclist: I wonder about Voldemort McGoebbels (Steven Miller). He’s very competent and evil and I wouldn’t want him to take over the GQP.
Would be like Heydrich taking over the Nazis.