The Meltdown Has Begun
Just hours after Kamala Harris announced her VP pick, Donald Trump went into full panic mode.
by Ben Cohen
I don’t like to brag about being right. But when events play out almost exactly as you predict in a matter of hours, I think it is warranted.
Yesterday I predicted that Kamala Harris choosing Tim Walz as her running mate would send Donald Trump into a tailspin of panic and anger. Within hours of the announcement Trump posted this on Truth Social:
This is special even for Donald Trump, and is a sign of what is to come over the coming months. The post gives a great deal of insight into Trump’s state of mind, most notably that he is genuinely terrified by Kamala Harris’s candidacy — so terrified that he is publicly begging Joe Biden to get back in the race. It also reminds us of what Trump always does when his back is against the wall. He goes full racist. The deliberate misspelling of Kamala Harris’s name and the capitalization of Barack Obama’s middle name are all signals to his base about what kind of race this is going to be.
Trump’s entire political career began with racist conspiracy theories about President Obama’s birthplace, and the 2016 election proved, at least to a certain degree, that it could work. Eight years ago there were enough motivated racists for Trump to eke out a victory via the Electoral College. Study after study has confirmed this, so it isn’t a far left conspiracy theory, just a fact that many in the media seem to be afraid of saying out loud.
Trump is now reverting to what he knows best, but unfortunately for him, the formula is almost certain to fail. Firstly, attitudes have changed quite considerably in America, particularly over the past decade. It is no longer remotely controversial that a mixed black and Indian woman is running for the highest office of the land, so the racism and misogyny just aren’t going to land the same way.
Secondly, we should never underestimate how lucky Trump got in the 2016 election. He lost the popular vote by a considerable margin, and only just scraped through the Electoral College, and only after getting a huge assist from FBI Director James Comey, who announced just days before the election that he was reopening an investigation into Hillary Clinton. Clinton had run a pretty bad campaign, and was not a popular candidate by any stretch of the imagination, so it was hardly the great victory Trump declared it was.
Other than that, Trump has lost every pretty much every election for himself and the GOP since. He lost the House in 2018, flopped badly against President Biden in 2020, and MAGA candidates across the country fared terribly in the 2022 midterms.
A Trump victory in 2024 was only really possible because of President Biden’s age. Now that Biden has dropped out, we are seeing the realities of Trump’s prospects against a very good Democratic ticket. The Trump campaign’s veneer of confidence has evaporated, and all we have left is the racism.
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The Tim Walz Gambit
Kamala Harris smells weakness in the Trump campaign, and that is why she picked Tim Walz.
by Ben Cohen
I must confess to being surprised that Kamala Harris picked Gov. Tim Walz to be her running mate. My guess was that Harris would pick Josh Shapiro given the importance of Pennsylvania to the election this year (and the governor’s notable star power). Just take a look at how much money the Harris and Trump campaigns are pouring into the battleground state:
There are lots of factors that go into picking a Vice Presidential candidate, much of which the public won’t know about until after the fact. Generally speaking, a good VP candidate ‘balances out’ the Presidential candidate. Republicans lobbied Trump to pick a straight laced Christian in 2016 to ensure he maintained links to the evangelical vote. Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris in 2020 to make sure he would carry the black vote, and Harris is picking a straight white male in 2024 to pick off moderates and independents in crucial swing states. For Democrats at least, the candidates have to actually be qualified to hold the position, but there is no denying that identity plays a big role in the selection process.
So why did Kamala Harris pick a white dude from Minnesota, and not the charismatic Governor of Pennsylvania who would have helped Harris lock up the state? Tim Walz is an enormously popular governor and has a real folksy charm to him, but Minnesota is a solid blue state and won’t be going red any time soon.
I have a theory about this, but first we need to understand something about the psychology of electoral warfare, and more specifically, the psychology of Donald Trump….
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Trump loves to tell a lie that he thinks will be picked up as the truth by the media. Sadly, this has too often been the case (looking at YOU New York Times — be ashamed).
But these days, “I have agreed to a debate” and “I hear there’s a big movement to bring back crooked Joe” are just not getting the traction he thought they would. The media seems to be getting wise.
America is tired of slurry-voiced Trump croaking out the same old lies and lunacy they’ve heard ten thousand times before. Time to wear this "Kamala removes stubborn orange stains" t-shirt everyday until Election Day 👇 🤣
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We’re NOT going back. We’re going FORWARD!
My biggest fear now is Trump pulls a Hitler and kills himself in his bunker (the one just off the 8th hole fairway, no doubt).
We have GOT to see him tried and held accountable for his crimes. We have GOT to show his cultists that there ARE indeed consequences and the days of free passes for fascists are over. And if Trump dies before he can be tried, in ALL of his trials, all that just ends, unresolved.