Josh Marshall
Trump’s Two Campaigns 
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.
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The Day After the Beating
I wanted to share a few more thoughts about last night’s debate. You can find my overnight wrap-up here.
There are two realities: First, the race is going to remain close. It’s going to be a slog right up to Election Day, and Trump could win. Second, Harris thoroughly dominated and even humiliated Trump from the first minutes of the debate right through to the end. These things are both true. We just don’t know exactly how those two realities are going to interact over the next two months as they combine with other developments, news cycles and possibly new shocks we can’t predict.
Kate and I just recorded this week’s podcast which was basically all about the debate. In those conversations there’s some urge to hold back on saying just how thoroughly Harris dominated him because you don’t want to sound too frothy or exuberant or give people any sense that that thoroughness will be reflected in changes in the polls. My best guess is that it may have a small impact on the horse race polls and drive some negative news cycles for Trump.
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Debate Wrap Up: No One Has Ever So Thoroughly Dominated Donald Trump
I feel obligated to note at the top that you can win a debate and lose the election. Donald Trump isn’t a momentary candidate. He has a big national political following that has remained loyal over almost a decade. Nothing happened tonight that is going to shake the confidence of his supporters. But with that said, this debate was an absolute rout. Harris had a minute or two of nerves in her opening statement. But from the very first exchange she maintained the initiative, kept Trump on the defensive the entire time and simply dominated him. I don’t see any way to contest that basic verdict.
She set a tone at the very start when she walked right into his space to shake his hand and made him almost pull back into himself in response. She was in charge and never stopped being in charge.
Read More10:38 PM: In any war, in any sport, you maintain the initiative and you’re on the road to victory. Harris has controlled the entire debate. She’s effectively baited him in a way no other candidate has ever been able to do. It’s not like she’s going to rocket into some big lead. People aren’t going to abandon Trump. But she needed to show she can dominate him, be the one in control. She has. It’s as simple as that. She’s also gotten him to spend most of the debate showing his most feral and angry self. This debate was a rout. I don’t think there’s any other way to put it.
10:19 PM: Is she actually going to overmatch him on the Afghanistan withdrawal question?
10:05 PM: Trump has simply been on the defensive for every moment of this debate. She delivers her messages, while also baiting him and he responds and gets angrier in a way that makes him even less coherent than normal. She’s controlling the tempo and frankly dominating the debate. Meanwhile he’s spent most of the debate talking about his worst vulnerabilities.
9:55 PM: Trump’s definitely not going to be a strongman and his character witness is Viktor Orban.
9:54 PM: They say you’re a disgrace. Wow.
9:48 PM: So Trump spent his time saying that Nancy Pelosi did January 6th.
9:44 PM: So I’m going to say that energy answer wasn’t great for Trump. Good lord.
9:37 PM: I keep hoping she’ll say one thing and then she doesn’t. But she says something better. She’s hitting her points.
9:33 PM: Obviously Afghanistan is a good issue for Trump. It is what it is. But Trump’s getting angrier and angrier. It’s visible.
9:29 PM: She’s just baiting him and he’s taking the bait. He’s hitting points he wants to certainly. But he is reacting to her.
9:23 PM: JD made a crunchy sound after Don threw him under the bus.
9:21 PM: Harris’s response on abortion was literally perfect.
9:20 PM: There are technical points I was hoping Harris would hit on abortion. But what she’s actually doing is much better. “Trump abortion bans”.
9:18 PM: This is a good example of a case in which his furry and fast talking could give the appearance of coherence. But it’s all nonsense. I’m listening now to the abortion answer. It just sounded like jibberish.
9:14 PM: She’s spinning him in the circles. I’m not trying to be over-optimistic. But every exchange so far is her pressing a point that is important to her campaign and he’s responding and often with a fugue of nonsense.
9:11 PM: She’s driving this debate so far.
9:08 PM: Harris started a bit nervous, a touch wobbly. But she’s hitting the points she needs to hit. She’s making him respond. That’s what I’m seeing so far.
9:01 PM: Why is he calling him “President Trump”. He’s the former President. He’s not Prsident.
Okay, let’s do this.
Getting Our Heads Around Tonight’s Debate
Tonight we have the second presidential debate of the 2024 campaign cycle and the first for this presidential campaign. Much as I would like to buck the conventional wisdom, the stakes are genuinely quite high. One poll I saw this morning showed a remarkably high, really impossibly high percentage of voters said that the debate would have a major impact on their vote: 30%. But as debate watchers we come back to a basic conundrum: if you’re paying enough attention to be worked up about the debate you are almost certainly not the intended audience. And not only are you not the intended audience but your experience of the campaign and politics generally is so totally different from that of the intended audience that absent a real suspension of disbelief, a real effort to separate yourself from your own impressions, you’ll have a hard time knowing how each candidate did for the audience that matters.
Read MoreI wanted to look at a decent number of new polls out today. They paint a mixed and complicated picture. There’s no other way to put it. Two new national polls have a tied race. On it’s face, that’s not a great sign for Harris. A tie popular vote is very likely to mean defeat. But it’s not that simple. The two polls are from Pew and the Harris Poll. Pew is a very solid poll but generally unfriendly to Democrats in recent cycles. So for instance at the height of the Kamala surge they had her up one point over Trump. Now it’s even. Not a big a difference. The Harris poll (really the zombie Harris poll now owned and operated by Mark Penn) meanwhile is not just extremely unfriendly to Democrats but closer to Rasmussen territory. (Just to avoid confusion, let’s christen it the Penn-Harris poll.) In other words, we’re not just talking a house effect generally unfriendly to Democrats but really a question in my mind whether it should even be considered a legitimate poll. Taken together I think it’s fair to assume there may be some leveling off of Kamala Harris’ support. But I don’t think there’s real evidence of some kind of sea change in the race.
Read MoreI wanted to share a few thoughts about the Times/Siena poll which has sent more than a few people reeling today. If you haven’t seen it, the new Times/Siena poll shows Donald Trump with a one-point lead over Harris nationally. That’s the first major poll to show Trump in the lead in weeks. What do I make of it? Not a huge amount. And I would recommend the same to anyone else.
It’s certainly possible that this is a leading indicator of a shift in support away from Harris after a month and a half of generally positive news and poll numbers. But you simply can’t change your whole theory of the race around a single poll. I’m not going to get into picking apart all the details of the poll. And I’m definitely not going to try to unskew it. It’s a quality poll. But it does show a very different race than other polls we’re seeing — ones taken over the same time period, ones with which we’re able to make pretty straightforward apples-to-apples comparisons. It’s not just the top-line number that’s different. It shows a more popular Trump, a less popular Harris, key demographics much closer to how they were when Joe Biden was still the nominee.
Read MoreSo after my last update below, new reports from TPM readers have confirmed that the Mailer Storm overwhelming the mailboxes of partisan Democrats in Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia are all coming from a single zip code in Jacksonville, Florida (32204) and presumably a single vendor. This notwithstanding the fact that they are all going out as sent from the respective Republican parties of the respective states. That’s not terribly strange in itself. Direct mail is a national business. It’s actually not okay to use state parties, which have preferential mail rates, as pure passthroughs, but I’m told it’s a widespread practice and rules against it are basically unenforced. The one exception may be the mailers going out in Pennsylvania. The mailers are all the same in every state. But the ones in Pennsylvania are the only ones that are from a state party committee rather than the state party, and their “nonprofit indicia” mark does not include the the zip code they are mailed from.
My Hunt After the Mailer Storm Mystery Continues!
I wanted to update you on the mailers story I discussed with you yesterday. Before getting to the details, I want to thank everyone who sent in reports. Really, really helpful. In fact, what I’m doing would be completely impossible without them. I’m going to assume you read yesterday’s post, which has various caveats and context. If not, you can read it here.
- First, there are a lot of people talking about this independently in different swing states. Like, it’s really a thing. I was listening in on a Zoom call yesterday about a state legislative race in North Carolina and the topic actually came up — how we’re all getting spammed by these Trump mailers. And to be clear, this was a call where everyone was either a party official or a partisan Democrat or actually a candidate. From this and other discussions with TPM readers it’s clear this is being discussed as a minor mystery among Democrats in each swing state but with everyone thinking that it’s just their town or state and not something that’s happening in all the swing states.