Trump Has Lost Whatever Magic Touch He Ever Had— And It Isn't Something JD Vance Ever Had At All

Republicans Are Their Own Worst Enemy— Not The Media

I could lose this one, but I’d be willing to bet that Vance is relieved he’s arguably no longer the weirdest one involved with the Trump campaign. After that awkward, cringey donut shop incident in Valdosta, Georgia last week, Trump’s transactional embrace of RFK Jr couldn’t have come soon enough for Vance, even if it is an embrace which certainly has its own awkward, cringey components as well.

Obviously, Kamala’s steady rise in the polls and Trump coming face to face with the fact that he will probably lose his bid for the White House (also a bid to stay out of prison) is making the cult leader even more unhinged that usual… and more... and more obviously unfit for office. Chris McGreal reported yesterday that Señor T “is ramping up doubts with each chaotic, disjointed speech as he campaigns around the country. While rambling discourse and outrageously disprovable claims, interspersed with spite and vitriol, may seem nothing new to many of Trump’s supporters and critics alike, the former president appears to have been driven to new depths… [He] characterised Harris as both a communist and a fascist, and described Harris as ‘dumb’ but then told CBS he didn’t mean it as an insult because it was ‘just a fact.’ … Trump seems particularly obsessed with the size of the crowds at Harris’s rallies… Trump also claimed to ‘have been the best president for Black Americans since Abraham Lincoln.’”

And now he appears to be trying to persuade women— or at least super-low-info women— that he’s “great” on reproductive rights— this after publicly boasting that “he has ‘no regrets’ about appointing the Supreme Court supermajority that overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling on abortion rights. Maggie Haberman and Shane Goldmacher wrote yesterday that his “use of the specific phrase ‘reproductive rights’— the language used by abortion-rights advocates— appeared to be an effort by the former president to refashion himself as essentially supportive of abortion rights and as a political moderate on an issue that has the potential to be damaging to him in November.”

Yesterday, Politico reported that Trumpanzee “is expected to lean into school politics next week at a Moms for Liberty summit, making the case that culture war issues still resonate with core supporters. Republicans show no signs of changing their strategy. But the party faces new challenges from a Democratic agenda— embodied by vice presidential nominee Tim Walz— that is redirecting the divisive education issues promoted by conservatives during the pandemic into a vehicle for highlighting free school lunches and affordable child care. ‘We’re in the middle of a cultural revolution in America, and one of the biggest battlegrounds is the schools,’ Moms For Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice said in an interview. ‘We didn’t start this fire, but we’re going to put it out.’” I don’t think Tiff was one of the Florida Moms For Liberty co-founders who was having random threesomes with her GOP official husband and other women they picked up in bars… but I could be wrong about that. But from polling I’ve seem, even in Florida voters don’t want the government interfering with individual liberty, banning Choice, whether in bed, doctors’ offices or libraries.

Let’s look at this from a conservative perspective. Hard right Republican Mark Antonio Wright stipulated for the right-wing National Review that the media is in the bag for Kamala but that it doesn’t matter because Trump is going to lose anyway— and not because of them. The Republican Party is going to lose in November because it “picked a very unpopular 78-year-old retread as its candidate. Yes, this summer when the public was faced with the choice between the Democrats’ unpopular, probably senile, octogenarian Joe Biden and the Republicans’ unpopular, definitely nuts, septuagenarian Donald Trump, it seemed like the American people would reluctantly go with Trump. But at the same time, American voters for two years running had loudly and repeatedly told both parties, pollsters, and anyone who would listen that they preferred a different set of choices. The dominant emotion that most Americans felt about the coming election was dread. And then, in a remarkable turn of events, the Democratic Party gave Americans another option: Kamala Harris… an alternative to Trump/Biden, and that’s probably going to be enough.”

The bad news for National Review readers: “[T]he fundamental dynamic of this election… is this: The GOP electoral coalition is the smaller, weaker coalition. It’s lost the popular vote seven out of nine times in my lifetime (I’m 36). It has lost the Electoral College three out of the last four cycles. Conservatives might not be very eager to hear this, but “We the People” are mostly Democrats.

Donald Trump won by a razor’s edge in 2016 and yet has carried on as though he was given a huge national mandate and enjoys major popular support when there’s zero evidence for that proposition. The Trump-led Republican Party got crushed in 2018, Trump himself lost in 2020, and Republicans underperformed in 2022. Despite a relatively strong economy during his presidency, Trump has never been popular. According to Gallup, Trump never topped 49 percent in his approval rating during his presidency. Not once. And it was often much lower. During his shambolic initial response to the pandemic and his regular appearances on The Trump Show, those lunatic pandemic-era daily press briefings, his approval rating fell to 39 percent. After rising a bit to 46 percent during the stretch run of the 2020 election (enough, of course, to still lose), Trump’s approval crashed to 36 percent after the January 6 riot.

Moreover, during the current 2024 cycle, Trump has never been close to popular, even when it looked like he might defeat the politically mortally wounded Biden campaign and regain the presidency after last June’s debate. In mid July, before Biden dropped out and while Trump was building what looked like a solid lead in the polls, Trump’s approval rating stood at 42 percent. Almost 54 percent of Americans told pollsters that they disapproved of Trump!

So why is anyone surprised that, with the American people having been given another option— an option that isn’t Joe Biden, isn’t Donald Trump, and isn’t a million years old— Trump is showing such weakness?

For twelve years, Donald Trump’s version of the Republican Party has acted like it’s a majority party when talking to itself, while its political and electoral strategy was always limited to “How can we squeeze by, by the hair of our chinny-chin-chin, in a few key swing states?”

…Trump isn’t losing because Kamala Harris is being hyped by the press and fluffed up to kingdom come. He isn’t losing because the press is being unfair to him. He’s losing because he’s a weak, unpopular, undisciplined candidate running at the head of a weak, minority electoral coalition. That’s the truth, whether anyone wants to hear it or not.

The question for Republicans is: Are they ready to stop whining and complaining about the press and work to build a true majority coalition— like the ones they used to form— topped by young, charismatic, winsome candidates and built to win big, crushing majorities that turn blue states purple and purple states red? Because if they are, I’m not seeing any evidence for it. Are you?