Trump Wishes All The Worst On America
Ed Yokley reported that Señor T has lost his advantage on voters’ concerns about the presidential candidates’ age and fitness Kamala makes up ground on a number of positive traits following Biden’s departure from the race… Kamala “is performing better against Trump than Biden did on gaining voters’ trust across a range of key issues… Compared with Biden before he ended his campaign, our latest survey shows voters nationwide are far more likely to say Harris is in good health (71% to 30%), mentally fit (64% to 35%) or a strong leader (48% to 38%). Not surprisingly, Harris’ replacement of Biden has now erased the Democratic Party’s age problem with the American electorate. That burden has now shifted to Trump. Beyond age, Harris also performs better than Biden on questions of trustworthiness and empathy (‘cares about people like me’), a theme that our Bloomberg News survey shows persists at the swing-state level.
36% of voters— including 45% of independents— said it is unlikely Trump would be capable of serving a full four-year term in office if elected in November. “Roughly half of all voters said they’re concerned about Trump’s erratic behavior due to his age, including 4 in 5 of those who questioned whether Trump will be able to complete a full term. Similar shares say the same about his decision making abilities, while roughly 2 in 5 voters said they’re worried about diminishing America’s strength abroad.”
Harris has widened the trust advantage that was held by Biden on handling abortion (her biggest lead), climate change, education, health care and protecting American democracy, while the numbers between her and Trump are much closer than they were between Biden and Trump when it comes to gun policy, crime, the economy and foreign policy.
…Roughly 2 in 5 voters said they think Harris has had a negative impact on immigration policy in the United States, compared with 31% who think she’s affected the matter positively, marking the highest impact score among the nine issues tested. On the other hand, Harris gets her best marks on abortion, with 43% saying she’s had a positive impact on the issue.
Harris has wiped out the Democratic Party’s age problem and has the chance to shift that narrative against Trump given voters’ concerns about his behavior and erraticism. With Biden out of the race, the environment for Democrats regarding empathy and trustworthiness has also improved, though Trump is still competitive on those fronts.
When it comes to the issues, Harris’ biggest challenge will be to stave off the Republican Party’s immigration attacks that have been building for years given the unpopularity of Biden’s immigration policies— and her early public involvement in them. She’s more in line than Biden was with voters— both nationally and in the swing states— when it comes to the economy, which is consistently voters’ top issue, though she also has work to do on that front.
Republicans are worrying about Trump having a public nervous breakdown. A quartet of Politico writers reported that “Trump spent Monday morning labeling the turmoil in the global financial markets the ‘Kamala Crash,’ giving Republicans hope that he might turn his focus to an economic message. It didn’t last. By midday, the former president was already back to re-litigating his controversial appearance in Chicago last week, where he questioned Kamala Harris’ Black identity and suggested a major network journalist should be fired — ‘I didn’t know who she was, she was nasty,’ he told a livestreamer.”
Over the last few days Republicans had been watching on in various degrees of horror as he praised Putin again while carrying on that Kamala has a “low IQ” and is “dumb” (more projection from someone who does and is) and throwing in a vicious attack against the popular Republican governor of swing-state Georgia.
GOP strategist and former Trump administration appointee Matthew Bartlett said “This is what you would call a public nervous breakdown… [T]his is a guy who cannot come to grips with a competitive presidential race that would require discipline and effective messaging. And we’re seeing a candidate and a campaign absolutely melt down.”
Republicans who saw their party lose the White House and both chambers of Congress during Trump’s presidency have worried before about Trump’s lack of discipline. But Trump’s venting now comes at a critical point in the election, with Harris surpassing him in fundraising and gaining ground in some battleground state polls.
“Democrats are racing to remake Kamala Harris from real life Selina Meyer into the female Obama— and Donald Trump’s lack of discipline is letting them,” said a national Republican strategist who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Every day Trump swipes at shiny objects— attacking the popular governor of a swing state, questioning the race of his opponent, or battling cat lady comments by his VP— is a day he is letting Harris define herself on her own terms.”
…And Kemp wasn’t the only Trump-endorsing Republican governor that the former president went after in recent days. On Friday, Trump fired off multiple Truth Social posts excoriating Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, the chair of the Republican Governors Association, for being a “RINO.” Lee’s sin, according to Trump, was that he had months ago endorsed an incumbent GOP state senator, while Trump had more recently endorsed the challenger.
Trump’s posts left Lee’s aides “baffled,” and appeared to come “out of nowhere,” according to a person with knowledge of their reaction who was granted anonymity to speak freely. Lee, who initially stayed neutral in the Republican presidential primary, citing his role as RGA chair, quickly endorsed Trump after his Super Tuesday victories in Tennessee and elsewhere, and praised Trump onstage at the GOP convention just last month.
“Lee is going to vote for him, Tennessee is going to vote for him, whatever,” said a Republican strategist in Tennessee. “It’s just indicative of a total lack of focus on the point.”
Yesterday, Joe Perticone said aloud what everyone already knows: Trump and his cronies are wishing all the worst on our country, quietly hoping— or in Trump’s case, not so quietly— “for bad news that makes the Democrats look bad— even the kind of bad news that could harm their own constituents, because it could create an opening for them to launch new attacks. That’s why Monday’s sharp drop in the stock market has stoked concern among Democrats and celebration among self-proclaimed patriots in the GOP. A major, sustained dip in the stock market can be taken to signal the country is heading towards a recession, even if that’s not actually what’s happening. So when the markets tanked— even if only to levels they were at eight weeks ago, which are still significantly higher than they were at the peak of the Trump administration’s economic achievements— it sent Capitol Hill into a frenzy. Trump immediately celebrated the market fall.
Other Republicans followed his lead. Within hours of Trump’s posts, the House Republican campaign arm had dubbed the market dip the #KamalaCrash, and many GOP lawmakers promoted the hashtag campaign Twitter, including Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY) and Richard Hudson (R-NC).
For MAGA to hold on to an idealized picture of the Trump administration’s economic achievements, it’s necessary to react with hysterics to any semblance of instability under Biden’s leadership— and, by extension, Harris’— to create a narrative of decline. But it’s hard for that sort of narrative to survive an encounter with the economic realities, which don’t typically follow tidy arcs described by politicians. Case in point, the morning after Monday’s 12 percent dip, the Japanese Nikkei rebounded 10 percent. Meanwhile, U.S. markets showed a mostly jittery response to what happened Monday, but they didn’t give signs of a larger crash. Naturally, GOP jubilation at the prospect of a market crash and follow-on recession quickly dissipated.
As Republicans raised flags and shot flares, Democrats remained largely silent on the issue. That’s because there’s no political upside to drawing any attention to a market event like this, regardless of whether it turns out to be a blip or a sign of larger problems to come.
The Dow closed 300 points up on Tuesday.
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