The 2024 Presidential Race: What a Week!

Things that make you go hmmm…?

The Trump campaign is falling apart at the seams. 

While the Harris/Walz team pulling in $47 million in the 24 hours after the debate, and completely filled (25,000) North Carolina’s biggest indoor venue, the Trump team had to pay $145,222.70 upfront for a Tucson Arizona venue (capacity 2500, which was not sold out) because the campaign owed the city $81,837 from a 2016 rally. 

Both rallies were essentially continuations of the Tuesday debate, with the Vice President repeating Trump’s most outrageous statements to raucous disapproval, and the former President making an almost-incoherent two hour grievance-laden speech. 

I know that many Americans are already set on who they intend to vote for, but there are significant developments occurring.

In fact, as Josh Marshall has pointed out, there are two Republican Presidential campaigns.

There’s the feral Trump campaign, the one you saw at the debate/his recent rallies, built around his grievances and cognitive decline, and then there’s the donors' fantasy effort, with Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles at the helm. 

Exhibit A for the feral campaign thesis would be the ex-President’s traveling companions on the way to the Philadelphia debate: Laura Loomer, Matt Gaetz, and Tulsi Gabbard. There isn’t a rational thought between the three of them and any of them would do well as the host of an augmented reality game show on Japanese TV.

Loomer’s emergence as part of Trump’s entourage has triggered a split in MAGA-land between people who will blindly follow Dear Leader and those who recognize the dangers of having a loon whispering in his ear.

Congress critter Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has cast herself in the role of being the adult in the room (really!) along with Sen. Lindsey Graham. Watching the squabbling on social media is akin to train wreck footage. There are raised eyebrows in the donor-loving Trump camp about just how handsy their candidate has been with her.

Josh Marshall:

• 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.

The donor-charged Trump camp is hoping to carpet bomb swing states with TV ads ginning up fear and denigrating the Vice President. Problem here is that the Harris/Walz campaign is capable of going toe-to-toe with them, while continuing to tweak Trump with ads aired at whatever landing place he chooses.

There’s another problem for campaigns relying on high-propensity older voters; satellite TV is crashing and burning, along with cable. Directv and its competitors are losing the roof dish market as providers offering streaming also have many customers’ internet access. AT&T, which owns Directv, is able to redirect users to Wifi based connections. (They’re competing divisions) The dish provider’s current squabble with Disney is simply exacerbating the exodus. 

Via the New York Times:

• The numbers bear out a dire situation for satellite TV. Just 13 million U.S. households subscribe to it, a decrease of about 15.3 percent from last year, according to figures from MoffettNathanson. (Cable TV subscriptions fell 11.2 percent from the previous year, to about 33 million U.S. households.)

Having internet-based TV takes some getting used to, and the intermediary services like Roku don’t necessarily make cable/broadcast choices for things like Fox a first choice. 

This shift in viewing access/habits makes social media more important than ever. And here the Trump campaign has stepped on a rake. Twice. For whatever reasons, companions of the feline persuasion have a sacrosanct place in the social media bubble.

Candidate Vance started a not-good trend with his reference to “childless cat ladies”. Taylor Swift used that descriptor as a sign off on her endorsement of the Harris/Walz ticket which was seen by God-knows-how-many-people. The question about this endorsement isn’t whether or not Swifties will actually vote, it’s that the impression landed with an even more global audience.

Candidate Trump leavened this mess with his reference to pets being eaten by immigrants, and the consequences are just starting to roll in. Everybody –and I mean everybody– is aware of his verbiage. 

My personal favorite response came from comedian/musician Steve Martin, who, after Trump spoke of migrants stealing geese to eat in Arizona, said:

• To any wacko heads who believe this story I invite you to go find a goose in a pond and carry it away.

• Call me if you live.

Media are rushing to report on Springfield, Ohio, repeating his words as socially unacceptable, and increasing public awareness of the stochastic terrorism the man from Mar a Lago unleashes. I believe this will bounce back on Trumpsters in what many people will say is a negative way.

Speaking of media, while the high ratings (67 million) for the debate have been widely reported, print and online media featuring the face off also got a boost, with the Washington Post, Slate, and even The Daily Show all reporting record traffic.

CNN is premiering a news/comedy/quiz show on Saturday (9pm) hosted by comedian Roy Wood. "Have I Got News For You," is an American version of a long-running British comedy news quiz show. Each week Wood will be joined by two team captains, Amber Ruffin and Michael Ian Black, and two guests. Assurances have already been made by the host of Trump's pet-eating claims being a major topic. 

This is more important than you might think at first glance. If we get to the point where misinformation is subject to ridicule rather than repetition, it will be a changemaker.

Another development worth mentioning has to do with gambling on elections. As the courts consider legalization, companies are queuing up to take wagers on political contests in the United States.

Via Politico:

• Americans are about to vote with their wallets in a big way.

• Financial exchange startup Kalshi on Thursday got the green light to begin offering day traders, wannabe political pundits and financial institutions the chance to wager thousands of dollars on whether Democrats or Republicans will control Congress next year. Some financial firms will be allowed to bet as much as $100 million.

• The Silicon Valley-backed company debuted the first fully regulated election-betting markets in the U.S. shortly after District Judge Jia Cobb in Washington rejected a bid by Wall Street regulators to temporarily block the company from launching them. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the top U.S. derivatives cop, says the markets violate federal and state law.

• How long the markets will last is unclear. The CFTC quickly appealed the judge’s ruling, and the agency’s lawyers indicated they plan to ask for a stay. But Kalshi’s markets are already drawing interest: As of 3:30 p.m. Washington time, 50,000 contracts had been traded, according to the company’s website.

The legalization of sports betting is, according to the American Psychological Association, related to increasing gambling addiction among young males. With all those AK-47 owning “incels” floating around, betting on specific races could end up being a security threat to candidates targeted by sore losers or those wanting to influence an outcome.

 And then there will be the ultra-rich, hoping to influence perceptions in electoral contests, even though betting margins aren’t necessarily a good predictor of results. I see this development as something that will be as consequential in a negative way as Citizens United in terms of its impact on politics.

I’ll end by coming back to the debate, with commentary by Mark Sumner:

• Harris not only managed to fit her answers into the two-minute space allocated for responses, but she also ensured that each one of those answers included a shiny bit of bait that Trump was physically incapable of resisting. 

• She played him like a fiddle. And a very big audience came to her concert.

• ”THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE,” Trump screamed on his Truth Social platform on Thursday.