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I wrote soon after Kamala Harris become the de facto Democratic nominee that I did not think that Donald Trump had the mental acuity, stamina or energy to fight for the presidency from behind. As long as he was a bit ahead — very durably a bit ahead — his energy and focus didn’t seem to matter. Everything I’ve seen since then has confirmed this judgment. Tuesday’s debate did so perhaps more than anything. But what I’ve also been increasingly aware of is that Trump has two campaigns in a way that is almost unique in modern presidential politics.
First, there’s Donald Trump, the guy we saw in the debate, the guy we see at the rallies and the guy Trump is, mostly, on social media. (People like Dan Scavino tweet for him sometimes. But even then it’s more an impersonation of feral Trump.) This persona was really the entirety of the campaign in 2016 because there just wasn’t any campaign infrastructure around, though a bit was built up in the last couple months. This campaign is mostly about Trump’s anger and grievances and shows all the signs not only of his longstanding degeneracy but his cognitive and personal decline over the last decade. Let’s call it the Trump campaign. But then there’s an entirely distinct and relatively traditional campaign being run by Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles. That campaign wants to talk about inflation and the southern border. That campaign is running a vast and complex TV air war across all the swing states. Let’s call this the “Trump” campaign.
Obviously, these operations are related. The folks running the “Trump” campaign want him to be President and they know what he’s like. His singular, final-battle-line focus on the southern border is what he shoved into the center of American politics back in 2015. They’re following innovation there. They’re just trying to do it with daily message focus. They’re part of that now decade-long story of trying to take an idea of what Trump represents and make it efficient and successful. And that means keeping the focus on the things that will win Trump the election — specifically, many people’s instinctive belief that their economic life was better before mid-2020 than it’s been since. And then, secondarily, the desire to (depending on who you are) either bring some order to the southern border or close it to all immigrants and deport everyone here.
For the “Trump” campaign, those issues are the two big winners. You want to have them be the conversation every day. The big loser is abortion. You want that out of the news and when it has to be talked about you focus on letting each state make their own decision, an appeal to democratic choice which as a general matter has deep resonance and favor in American political culture.
You and I live in the national media conversation where Trump himself is the dominant story — his tirades, lies, chaos. But in the swing states it’s different. That’s where the “Trump” campaign is at least trying to and may be able to hold sway. There it’s all about the 30-second ads and other kinds of paid messaging. (That’s one of the reasons I’m so interested in the mailers. Keep the reports coming in.) When I speak to people running things in the swing states, that’s their worry: that the “Trump” campaign may simply bury Harris in 30-second ads, knocking down her favorability and making her seem too risky a choice, regardless of what Trump himself might be doing on any given day.
Mind you, I’m not saying they think that is going to happen necessarily. And it’s not like Harris’ campaign and it’s allied super PACs don’t have money of their own to run 30-second ads. But that’s where they see the threat.
It’s seemed to me for a while that there is something increasingly like an arranged marriage between these two Trump campaigns. They can’t control each other. They’re both living their own lives. And that’s just how it is. You do your thing; I’ll do mine. No reason to break up. It would just upset the kids.
I was reminded of this when I received this morning’s Mike Allen Axios email. It has two extended discussions of this topic. First is why Trump got prepped on all the things to absolutely do and absolutely not do during the debate and proceeded to do totally the opposite. He knew where to hit her; he knew which bait not to take. He did the opposite. Then comes an extended discussion of how and why Trump will absolutely, positively never change. We’ve seen these write-ups before from the same publications. It’s not the standard. But it’s also not new. What I took from this is a degree of recognition in their sources that they’re going to have to win this on the airwaves in the swing states. And I think a hint of what neither the campaign nor the Axios reporters want to say out loud, which is that it’s not just that Trump will never change. It’s that he’s in decline. He’s not the 2016 guy or even the 2020 guy. We saw that Tuesday night. Harris was masterful in that appearance. But it wasn’t just her. He’s different.
I say this not to cue up any big punch line or revelation. I just think it’s the best way to understand the 2024 campaign and Trump’s side of it. There really are two campaigns, really operating pretty independently of each other, in key ways even trying to counteract each other, at least from the “Trump” campaign LaCivita/Wiles side. And like any marriage of convenience, I guess you could say it continues because in a disjointed and distant way it works, or might work. Trump keeps the hardcore degenerates on side through his stage show, albeit in a diminished form, and the swing state air war aims to pull in the occasional and lightly politicked swing voters.
Of course they can’t truly remain separate. The swing states are not hermetically sealed off from the rest of the country or the national political discourse, which is driven by the most politically engaged but which increasingly splashes over into the rest of the population in the heat of a national campaign. Just how much these two campaigns interact, get in the way of each other, or keep to their own assignments untroubled will likely play a big role in the outcome of the election.