Last week was brutal for Donald Trump.
The weekend brought him no respite.
President Joe Biden’s exit from the presidential race has created a powerful release that has caught everyone by surprise, even the Kamala Harris presidential campaign.
“We did not expect we would have cat lady news cycles,” a Harris campaign aide told The Washington Post. “This is organically happening without us pushing. … I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s so weird.”
That campaign aide was speaking specifically about Trump running mate JD Vance, but really, you can say that about the entire campaign. Trump isn’t just under siege from an energized Democratic base and a media that has become shockingly competent overnight in covering the race. Even more so, he’s under siege from the culture. The campaign has become a meme, and Trump-Vance are the butt of its jokes.
So let’s take a look at Trump’s delightfully brutal weekend.
Speaking at Turning Point Action’s “Believers Summit” of Evangelical Christians in Florida on Saturday, Trump told attendees that, “You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.” The comments have gone mega viral.
It’s not the first time Trump has said something like that. Here he is on June 22 saying, “You gotta get out and vote. Just this time. In four years you don’t have to vote, okay? In four years don’t vote, I don’t care. But we’ll have it all straightened out, so it’ll be much different.”
The difference is, on June 22, the press was hyperfixated on Biden’s age and the growing chorus of prominent Democrats urging him to drop out. Now, the press is back to covering the broader campaign, and Trump can no longer escape scrutiny.
But even beyond that, his words get scarier, more menacing, more dictatorial by the day. On June 22, he seemed to be saying, “the hell with voting unless I’m on the ballot,” which I’m sure his Republican pals loved to hear. But the new formulation is basically, “I’m ending voting.” Trump can no longer confine those words inside his bubble. The broader electorate is finally paying attention.
What’s even crazier about that poll is that 12% of Republicans are enthusiastic about Harris. Hello, Nikki Haley supporters! Come on over, the water is warm!
There is plenty of actual material to work with, and Vance is getting raked on policy grounds. But what’s amazing is that he’s the butt of jokes that literally have nothing to do with him. All the couch jokes and memes? Those are based on a Twitter joke about Vance writing in his seminal book “Hillbilly Elegy” that as a kid, he had sex with his couch. It’s not true, and it was debunked almost immediately, and it didn’t matter. The memesters and jokesters went to work, and the results have been devastating for Vance.
As John Oliver put it, “If you told me the reason you find coins in between couch cushions was because JD Vance always leaves a tip, I’d be like, ‘Yeah. That sounds right!’”
The culture is ravaging Vance (and Trump), and there’s nothing they can do about it.
Bonus viral TikTok video here.
The poll tracked candidate favorability in the key Midwestern battleground states, and it wasn’t good news for Trump.
Former White House aide Keith Boykin was right: Trump absolutely lost his mind.
Trump shouting “IGNORE THOSE PHONY POLLS UNLESS THEY’RE IN MY FAVOR” is the funniest thing I saw this weekend.
But aside from the schadenfreude, the merits of that poll are quite stark. These aren’t head-to-head polls, but likability matters. The reason that Harris has surged in the polling in these key battleground states is precisely because she presents such a clear and refreshing contrast to Trump.
Amazingly, 66% of her donors were first-time donors, and I’d venture a guess that the vast majority of them were small-dollar donors nowhere near maxing out. She’ll be able to easily double (if not triple) that amount in the coming months. The Harris campaign won’t have any financial troubles.
Furthermore, her campaign announced that she signed up 170,000 new volunteers, which are just as important—if not more so—than the cash. Much of that money will be pissed away on television ads that won’t do anything to move numbers. But the volunteers? That army will win us the election.
And speaking of the culture, her TikTok account gained 2.7 million new followers in a single day. In a tight election, everyone matters. But if those young Zoomers deliver their votes, it won’t even be close.
A new ABC/Ipsos poll released over the weekend found that Harris’ favorability rating is now 43% favorable, with 42% unfavorable. That compares to 35/46 a week ago, or a whopping +12-point net swing in just a single week!
All those stories about Harris being a particularly unpopular politician? They’re all obsolete. On the other hand …
In that same poll, Trump went from a 40/51 favorable/unfavorable rating a week ago, to 36/52 today, or a net -5 point drop.
Seriously, that might be unprecedented. Candidates always get a boost from their conventions (not to mention assassination attempts). Trump somehow managed to miss both those opportunities. His -16 net favorables are now significantly below Harris’ +1 net favorables.
Vance is weird. Trump is weird.
About the only insult worse than “weird” might be “creepy,” and both of the men on the GOP ticket are that as well.
After spending decades trying to come up with a way to brand Republicans as effectively as Trump branded “Crooked Hillary,” the holy grail has been found. And for Republicans, the problem is that it’s true. Their obsession with sex is weird. Their archaic notions about the role of women and autonomy over their bodies is weird. Their dalliances with white supremacists and Nazis are weird. Their love for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is weird. Their hysteria over the Paris Olympics is weird. Much of what’s in Project 2025 is weird.
Yes, they’re obviously dangerous, but weird captures the zeitgeist far better than any alarmist language (no matter how justified).
This was in my inbox on Monday:
Biden dropped out a week ago, and the Trump campaign is still sending out fundraising appeals attacking “Sleepy Joe” (as if we want to “match” that stupid camouflage hat). This is not a campaign firing on all cylinders or adapting to the changing realities on the ground.
Harris’ campaign team was Biden’s campaign team. It’s the same people cranking out all the things a campaign must crank out. But check out what a difference a candidate makes.
The Biden campaign, two weeks ago:
The Harris campaign, this weekend:
One campaign sounded like it was still running something straight out of the 1980s. The other is tapped into the cultural zeitgeist and is fueling the memes and narratives that are currently defining the race.
If the ongoing white-male audition to be Harris’ vice president has taught us anything, it’s that we have a deep bench and a wealth of incredibly effective surrogates:.
Here’s Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg:
Or Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz:
Or Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear:
Oh man, so good! Whoever Harris picks as her running mate, we’ll be in great shape.
All of these bullet points aren’t even all of it. There’s the flailing GOP effort to brand Harris, which continues unsuccessfully. It’s clear that trying to attack Harris for being joyful (“Laughing Kamala”) isn’t landing. And Trump’s supporters are distracted by the shiny new toy that is the Olympic Games in Paris. It must be exhausting being a conservative, going from meaningless outrage to insipid outrage to self-destructive outrage. And there’s all the continued great economic news.
The conventional wisdom is that this high can’t last: Eventually Trump will find his magical insult, the press will turn its guns on Harris, and her rise in the polls will return to earth.
But what if that doesn’t happen? Why is that a given? Trump gives us new material every day, and the bumbling Vance is a gift that keeps on giving. Harris has come out of the gate strong, but her campaign is still gearing up. We haven’t seen her in full campaign mode yet.
Public attention will be focused on the Olympics, and we have Harris’ veep announcement to look forward to (and as noted, all the top contenders are fantastic). The Democratic National Convention is coming up, and unlike the dreary, boring affair the Republicans stage, ours will be a legit party.
Then we’re into September, with Harris having dominated the news cycle for a full six weeks. Will Trump debate Harris? If he doesn’t, there’s even more fodder for the media and memesters to attack him with. If he does, the contrast will be brutal. He loses either way.
And the entire time, Biden can keep announcing popular things from the presidential dais, giving Harris a further incumbent-like boost.
So what can Trump and his allies do to change the trajectory? Resort to sexism and racism, or talk about how Harris is “vapid,” for no other reason than she’s a woman?
Guys, we don’t just have a chance to win, but we have a chance to win big. And winning big doesn’t mean just nipping any second Trump insurgency in the bud. It means lifting up all electoral boats—the Senate, the House, state governorships, and legislatures.
Trump had a shitty weekend, yes. But our side is just opening up to the possibilities of what can be.
Let’s keep the momentum going with a contribution to the Harris campaign. Donate now!
