The Backchannel

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.

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.

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.

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.

I wanted to share with you some of my findings about the mass mailing of Trump mailers to registered Democrats in swing states across the country. It’s a bit of a rabbit hole. So in part, understand it as such, an entertaining mystery. But I think it’s potentially a bit more than a rabbit hole. It also sheds some light on the dynamics of the campaign, specifically on the Trump campaign, which has firepower heavily weighted toward a series of super PACs and outside groups both for messaging and ground operations.

As I’ve discussed in a few posts, I started hearing from readers who are registered Democrats with long histories of straight-ticket voting who are being inundated with Trump mailers. In some cases it’s as much as two or three mailers a day everyday. Others aren’t quite that level of saturation. But lots of readers who fit in what we’ll call the category of “poor target” are getting them. The reports come from all the swing states, though they’re concentrated in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and North Carolina. They’re also in Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada, but it seems to be a bit less there. In all cases the recipients have never seen anything like it before. So it’s not just that this is what always happens in swing states. Getting this many flyers from any Republican campaign is totally new. It all seems to have started in the last couple weeks.

Here are just a few facts and observations to keep in mind as we move toward Election Day.

• I have heard from numerous TPM readers in swing states, registered Democrats with long histories of voting for Democrats, who are being deluged by Trump flyers, sometimes as many as two or three new ones a day. I’ve heard from enough of them that I don’t think this is just a few people on the wrong list. I think it’s something more general. In the cases where I’ve been able to ask, it’s either mostly or all from Trump super PACs rather than the campaign itself. I don’t know yet whether this is evidence of very inefficient spending or whether the spending is so mammoth that this is in effect the splash created by unprecedented levels of spending.

I wanted to flag two articles to your attention, one from the Post and the other from CNN. They both cover similar ground but in different ways. The gist is that the Trump campaign has essentially given up on trying to improve voters’ impression of Donald Trump and decided the only path to victory is driving down Harris’ favorability numbers. When I first read the Post piece, it had the feel of what journalists call a “source greaser” — a favorable piece aimed at generating good will on the part of the subject and sources of the piece. The quote from GOP consultant Josh Holmes captures the tone of the piece: “I think it’s a serious paper tiger we’re dealing with here. I don’t think for 60 days they can keep the train on the tracks.”

Just before Labor Day, often treated as the quasi-official kick-off of the presidential election season proper, I wanted to share some notes on the state of the race — what the polls say, what they mean and whatever other scraps of information I’ve been able to pick up and glean.

Overall, I see a race that remains close, uncertain, but in which Kamala Harris holds a small but general advantage.

Let’s start with the shift from mid-summer and Harris’ entry into the campaign. When Biden left the race he was three or four points behind Trump in the national polls and was behind in all the swing states. This represented a small but critical drop from where he was in June before the debate. (Much of that drop was in the week prior to leaving the race.) Over the course of August, Harris moved from that starting point into a three- or four-point lead in national polls. So a shift of seven or eight points in Democrats’ direction, where she more or less remains. At the state level, Harris is now ahead or roughly tied in all the swing states. North Carolina, meanwhile, is now firmly in the swing state group, where it really hadn’t been under Biden.

This story of the “incident” at Arlington National Cemetery has blown up pretty dramatically. In case you haven’t heard about it yet or aren’t up to date on the details, let me try to explain what we know.

Three days ago, the Trump campaign held a campaign event at Arlington National Cemetery. The idea was to lay a wreath honoring the 13 members of the U.S. military who were killed during the evacuation of Kabul in 2021 and film a political ad. They would distribute the video and attack Vice President Harris and President Biden for not “showing up” for their campaign event, which they sought to portray was an established memorial. As soon as the video circulated, military policy experts I know said right off the bat they were shocked that the campaign had been allowed to hold a campaign event on the grounds of the cemetery and circulate video of it. It isn’t just unseemly. It’s against the law. How were they allowed to do that?

That turned out to be a good and prescient question.

Something happened during the Democrats’ excitement-packed Chicago convention that has drawn relatively little notice. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he was considering changing or open to changing or may change the filibuster rules next year to pass a federal Roe law, enshrining national abortion rights. Schumer said that he would pass two voting rights laws under a filibuster exception. On abortion he said, “I have to discuss that with my caucus. This is one of the issues we would have to debate and discuss and evolve.”