Three Weeks. Why am I so nervous?
Why is this even close? Alas, we are about to find out who we are. I am not hopeful.
I read plenty of different opinions, ‘stacks, and even the “hard” news, and the one thing I take away from this is that I am terrified of November 5th.
On one hand, Kamala Harris has been running about as flawless of a campaign as you can expect. Not perfect — no campaign is perfect — but damn good. Sure, she could do some more traditional media hits, but let’s be blunt, the legacy media (I hesitate to call it “mainstream” or “corporate”) is in a tizzy because she’s not sitting down for unscripted long form chinwags. Alas, they seem to have not got the memo that literally nobody that matters gets their information from outlets like the NY Times, Washington Post, or even the Atlantic. And the old-line cable news outlets (cough CNN cough1) have become jokes that they aren’t in on.
Instead, she is meeting the “reachable” voters where they congregate. Whilst I am not the target demo, apparently the podcast “Call Her Daddy” is the second largest audience in the US, behind Joe Rogan’s podcast, and by all measures, even the fuddy dudiest of the Never Trumpers2 admitted that her appearance there was masterful.
Still, there is a steady chorus that she’s hiding out and not doing anything hard hitting.
What utter bullshit. So she’s going to go on the Joe Rogan podcast, and she’s going to be interviewed by Brett Baier on Fox News.
Surely that will shut the Never Trumpers up.
Just kidding, they will find something else to bitch and moan about. It is never enough.
Then there’s the polling. You have JVL at The Bulwark painting his darkness about how fucking horrible Harris is doing, and that it really is a coin flip election.
Countering that is Jeff Tiedrich, Jay Kuo, and Rick Wilson countering that the low quality, biased polls is flooding the zone with shit. I would like to believe that, but …
I am a science dude, having studied physics, and with it a shit-ton of hard stats, and frankly, I can’t shake the fact that there is something there.
And anecdotally, I am having plenty of discussions with peers (I work in Tech, and whilst people think that Tech employees are liberals, the truth is there is a huge hard corpus of libertarian/deeply conservative people. And my conversations with them reveal that they don’t believe all the terrible things Trump says, and they think it is all talk. From the NY Times (gifted link), this matches many conversations I have had:
One of the more peculiar aspects of Donald J. Trump’s political appeal is this: A lot of people are happy to vote for him because they simply do not believe he will do many of the things he says he will.
The former president has talked about weaponizing the Justice Department and jailing political opponents. He has said he would purge the government of non-loyalists and that he would have trouble hiring anyone who admits that the 2020 election wasn’t stolen. He proposed “one really violent day” in which police officers could get “extraordinarily rough” with impunity. He has promised mass deportations and predicted it would be “a bloody story.” And while many of his supporters thrill at such talk, there are plenty of others who figure it’s all just part of some big act.
And no amount of jawboning I do with them will dislodge this disbelief. In fact, they all call me a bed-wetting lib (hiding their natural inclination to add the pejorative “tard” to the lib).
Nope, all those supposedly “gettable” Republicans that the folks at The Bulwark tell us we should be angling for really aren’t gettable.
And that fucking terrifies me. All the R’s that could be gotten were gotten, probably in 2020. Worse than that, many of them are headed back to Trumplandia because they love them some tax cuts, or they hate regulations.
I listened to the Focus Group podcast this weekend (because I am a glutton for punishment) and it was dispiriting to hear how many of the Trump-Biden voters were unsure about Harris because they don’t know enough about her. The implication if she would just do some more interviews, sit for magazine profiles, they might know enough to go with her over Trump.
Are you fucking kidding me? Are you all too fucking lazy to google her? Go to her campaign website? Are you just upset that she’s not being spoon fed to them?
For fuck’s sake, are they just not even trying to learn about her? Because it seems like they are completely uninterested in actually reading.
But of course, Sarah Longwell is certain — just positive — that more pieces in the Times, the Post, the Atlantic, and the like will appease these people’s impossible standards.
Just kidding, these people are not consumers of any of that legacy media. Never have been, never will be.
Then there’s the sane washing. Yesterday (Monday, October 14) in Pennsylvania at a town hall, Trump just decided to stop taking questions, and instead just rocked out to his playlist, doing the white-boy overbite for a full fucking 39 minutes.
If Joe Biden did that prior to July 21, it would be an hair on fire, blasted from the rooftops, and an indication that Biden was in the throes of dementia.
But for the Diaper Stain, it was largely downplayed as one of his many idiosyncrasies. I fucking swear to God that nothing breaks through that Trump does.
The advice from the Never Trumpets? They fault Harris for not grabbing the news cycle.
At this point, I think the only thing that will capture a news cycle would be Harris jumping up on the desk at the Brett Baier interview, dropping trou, and bending a biscuit on the desktop.
And then she would be blamed for being insane.
The asymmetry in the coverage is remarkable, blatantly unfair, and one has to wonder what the editorial staff at the legacy media is vying for.
My latest guess is that they are all terrified that if Trump wins, and he starts executing the “enemies within” that they want to be sure that it is the Never Trumpers who are lined up against the wall and shot, and they will be spared because they were “nice” to Trump.
Nope, I am thoroughly dispirited, and at this point, I am back to where I was in late April, sure that Trump is going to win. At this rate, he probably isn’t going to need to “steal” the election.
Oh well. 248 years is a pretty good run for the American experiment.
The best thing CNN has done in the recent past was firing Chris Cilizza
These all seem to be late middle aged white men, like Bill Kristol. It was good to hear him say she nailed that session, and was super relatable.
Here’s a small consolation prize: a friend saw my yard sign and asked me about Harris because she really didn’t know much (I know, I know) but will absolutely not vote for Trump. I explained some background and why I’m voting for her and sent links to Harris’s site. 🤞🏼
You were one of the first writers I subscribed to when I got on Substack, and you helped me weather some heavy shit earlier this year (and more recently, too). Your levelheaded analysis and fact based commentary were always spot on. Between you, Tiedrich, Alicia and Jess, I got over the hump and justifiably reclaimed some hope.
Your music reviews always seemed to come right when I was getting overloaded with pessimism and gloom. Perfect, bite sized breaks of sanity just when I needed them. Like anti fascist alka seltzer. So maybe I can return the favor..
Take a big breath, my dude. He’s become so erratic that even WaPo can’t sanewash it. I’m seeing/hearing people pushing back HARD on the MSM narrative. And I swear to gawd, Harris is solid AS FUCK. Brass balls big enough to go in Faux Nooz and sit with America’s most tragic plastic surgery disaster. She’s gonna eat him for lunch and have room for dessert.
I understand the trepidation, the outright fear, you’re feeling.. I remember 2016, I remember 2020 and the insurrection and how he had to be pried out of the Oval Office with a crowbar. I’ve factored all of that into my (admittedly non-scientific) calculations. It’s not going to happen. He may not get the shit kicked out of him like he deserves, but that fucking guy is NOT getting elected.
Touch grass, my friend, play some guitar, grab some headphones and check out the new singles The Cure just dropped. Get off the internet and center yourself again. We’re good, don’t give up now when we’re so very fucking close! We’re not going back!!!