Blitz

I have various people I chat with through the day to compare notes about what’s in the news. I can’t remember who the conversation was with or whether it started with me or the other person. But in one of these conversations over the last few days I got to talking about the particular dynamics of a three-month campaign, something totally unheard of and unprecedented in modern American political history. American presidential campaigns last at least 18 months. In some ways they’re perpetual. But there’s nothing in recent American history to compare to what Kamala Harris is doing right now.

The Trump campaign is obviously furious about the switch. Vance called it a sucker punch. They essentially wasted their convention on the wrong candidate. You can understand why they’re mad.

But the key part that stands out to me is this: a huge amount of modern Republican campaigns are based on wearing down a Democratic politician over months and years in the right-wing echo chamber. We saw it with Clinton, Obama, Clinton, Biden, Kerry. It’s a well, well worn thing. But it takes time. There are seldom knock-out punches. It’s a slow osmotic process. And the critical part of it takes place at the nexus where what’s happening in the right wing echo chamber bleeds into and begins to shape mainstream media reporting.

Obviously we don’t know how this campaign is going to play out. Looks pretty good ten days in, but there’s ten times more days coming. But regardless of how it plays out, this blitz factor — something totally new and unexpected right as the true campaign starts — is clearly wreaking havoc not only with the Trump campaign but with the whole far-flung Republican political and media apparatus.

Obviously there was no planning any of this. It only becomes possible out of the ashes of an electoral disaster. But some portion of what we’re seeing now derives from the fact that this late switch simply breaks the structure of American presidential politics and has, at least for the moment, allowed Harris to begin the presidential sprint while her opponent’s campaign is still trying to make sense of what happened.