Trump’s Damage Control & Kamala’s Fallout – Top 3 Takeaways – September 12th, 2024
- Damage control. The date was October 7th, 2016. Hillary Clinton’s national polling advantage over Donald Trump had already averaged 4.7 points and then the Washington Post dropped the infamous Access Hollywood tape that day. Take for example Rolling Stone which later summed up the day's events this way: October 7th, 2016 was the day that Hillary Clinton appeared to win the presidential election. She was ahead in the polls in every contested state, with twice the field offices as Donald Trump and twice the cash on hand. She had been blanketing the airwaves with ads and was on her way to being endorsed by 95 percent of all newspaper editorial boards. And then, at 4:05 P.M. EST, the Access Hollywood tape dropped. Journalists set to work writing his political obituary. Surely, no candidate would survive such a scandal. And yet. And it wasn’t just the willing journalistic community that was busy writing Trump’s political obit. Many political pundits declared that the presidential race was over, and many weak-kneed Republicans began running for the exits. It was on that day that Senator John McCain and House Speaker Paul Ryan both publicly pulled their support from Donald Trump and in fact, along with then-RNC party chair Reince Priebus attempted to pressure Donald Trump to exit the race – only a month and a day away from Election Day. The narrative that Trump was done was so strong that day that perhaps you had been convinced that Trump’s young political career was over too. Now, the news media establishment certainly isn’t more objective or honest than they were eight years ago, the way ABC News moderated the debate is exhibit “A” in that respect, however they are far more cautious than they were eight years ago. Take for example the Washington Post headline following the presidential debate: Harris dominated Trump in the debate, but tight race is still ahead. In the story it is said: Still, this was but one moment in a campaign in which so many voters seem locked into their choice. For all the upheaval of the past two months, and for all that Trump has said and done, including his felony convictions and personal attacks on Harris, the 2024 election could hardly be closer. For Democrats, the mere fact that they are back in the race has been a morale boost. But There’s a warning from past elections that continues to give them pause. In both 2016 and 2020, Trump outperformed the polls. In his first campaign, that was enough to win. In 2020, it wasn’t. Right, so the WaPo which is highly representative of the godlless, soulless and slanderous news media establishment, which did it’s level best to attempt to take him out in 2016 and still pontificates on just how awful of a big bad Orangeman Trump is...you know because of all that he said and done and let us not forget his felony convictions...but even they acknowledge it’s not appropriate for Democrats to begin declaring victory following Harris’ perceived win in Tuesday night’s debate. Even they are quick to issue a warning to their fellow Democrats about becoming overconfident. Donald Trump has historically been a master of damage control. And to the extent that damage may have been done to his campaign (if any) following Tuesday night’s debate consider this. Trump was running 3.6% ahead of where he was the day the Access Hollywood tape was dropped. The current situation would seem to be far more manageable for the former and perhaps future president of the United States. That’s especially true when you consider...
- What the debate was mostly about. And here’s a hint. It wasn’t Trump. What’s your opinion of Donald Trump today? What was your opinion of Donald Trump on Monday? What was your opinion of Donald Trump seven years ago today? Has it changed? There’s no more clearly defined presidential candidate in modern American history than Donald Trump as he’s now into the homestretch of his third presidential campaign. The debate was mostly about Kamala Harris and her effort attempt to define herself for causal voters and to attempt to redefine herself for slightly more informed voters who are aware that her voting record most closely aligns with a socialist - Bernie Sanders. Perhaps the most important question was whether she was able to do it. We won’t know for sure until after votes are counted on Election Day, but consider this story and consider the source of this story. Reuters: Some undecided voters not convinced by Harris after debate with Trump. The revealing story goes like this... Reuters interviewed 10 people who were still unsure how they were going to vote in the Nov. 5 election before they watched the debate. Six said afterward they would now either vote for Trump or were leaning toward backing him. Three said they would now back Harris and one was still unsure how he would vote. Well, shut the front door. You mean to tell me that despite the widely held belief that Trump was waxed Tuesday night, it was possible for a control group of undecided voters to break for him following debate night? As the story goes on to say... Harris and Trump are in a tight race and the election will likely be decided by just tens of thousands of votes in a handful of battleground states, many of whom are swing voters like the undecided voters who spoke to Reuters. Although the sample size was small, the responses suggested Harris might need to provide more detailed policy proposals to win over voters who have yet to make up their minds. Five said they found Harris vague during the more than 90-minute debate on how she would improve the U.S. economy and deal with the high cost of living, a top concern for voters. The encounter was particularly important for Harris, with a weekend New York Times/Siena College opinion poll showing that more than a quarter of likely voters feel they do not know enough about her, in contrast to the well-known Trump. The Trump converts said they trusted him more on the economy, even though all said they did not like him as a person. They said their personal financial situation had been better when he was president between 2017-2021. "I still don't know what she is for," said Mark Kadish, 61, an entrepreneur in Florida. "There was no real meat and bones for her plans." Four of the voters are women and six are men; eight are white and two are Black. All have voted for both Democratic and Republican candidates in the past. Right. As I’ve always said...
- You can lie to people about policy and those who are inclined to believe you will, but you can’t lie to people about what is or isn’t in their wallet because they know. Trump could have been far more effective in driving home that point in the presidential debate, but for those very few remaining people in the middle, who still claimed to not know how they intended to vote... They know what was in their wallet when he was president. They know what isn’t in their wallet now, and the impetus in the debate was on Harris to convince these people she had a plan to make their lives better. It was the first question in the debate. She didn’t even answer it. You don’t have to like Trump to vote for him. Millions who don’t already have. And what the Reuters focus group showed is that on the issues that matter most, a majority sided with the former and perhaps future president on those issues. On that note consider this from the same Reuters article/focus group: Robert Wheeler, 48, a security firm executive in Nevada, was leaning toward Harris before the debate. He now says if the election were held tomorrow he would vote for Trump, largely because he thought Harris didn't provide clarity on her policies. "I felt like the whole debate was Kamala Harris telling me why not to vote for Donald Trump instead of why she's the right candidate," Wheeler said. Imagine that right? Kamala Harris most certainly didn’t win the debate in Robert Wheeler’s mind. The hardest thing for any of us to do is to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. I know who I’m going to vote for. Nothing that happened in the debate had the possibility of changing my vote. You know who you’re going to vote for. Nothing that happened in the debate had the possibility of changing your vote. But for the Mark Kadish’s and Robert Wheeler’s of the world, they didn’t know how they were going to vote. And now they do. For Donald Trump. The debate about whether Harris could convince these people that she’s something better than what she’s been. She didn’t do it. But hey...Kamala did win over Taylor Swift because that vote was in doubt. After all she did her homework. But the bottom line with some of the early returns is that it’s possible that Kamala Harris won the debate in terms overall public perception but in the process lost the election.