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I am surprised at how different Trump's 2024 campaign has been, stylistically, from his previous campaigns. And I am also surprised at how little attention these changes have gotten.
It was often claimed by Democrats, and many establishment Republicans, that Trump was incapable of change. I think the 2024 campaign is basically proving that Trump can change quite a lot as a politician and as a person, actually.
-Especially in his 2016 campaign, it seemed like there was a major campaign leak every single day, of some wild thing Trump had supposedly said or done in private. Reporters were FEASTING on leaks from Trump campaign staffers. And perhaps even some of the leaks came from Trump himself!
This time around, I can't remember seeing a single wild story sourced from a leak from Trump's campaign. It's like night and day. Either Trump has completely stopped doing crazy things in private, or he is running a much tighter ship (which would also be a major change).
I think this is responsible for a lot of why this Trump campaign feels so different, and why the media environment seems so different. Trump's staffers aren't constantly giving the media high ratings with wild new storylines. It's a much tighter ship. The Trump campaign narratives are more tightly controlled, and have less of the energy which the old chaos and controversy from the leaks used to bring.
-In 2020, I pointed out that Trump's website literally didn't have a policy page. This time around, Trump's campaign has an extensive policy page. https://www.donaldjtrump.com/issues and https://rncplatform.donaldjtrump.com/?_gl=17vvd3i_gcl_au*MjEwMzg1MDQ1MC4xNzIxODUxOTUz&_ga=2.104524672.1863252832.1725431494-503166579.1721851953)
In 2024, it's the Democrat nominee who doesn't have a policy page. Almost all of the emphasis on the Kamala website is on soliciting donations.
Although, Trump did have some self-declared policies in 2020, and Kamala's campaign has released a few policies so far this year. But it doesn't seem like Kamala '24 and Trump '20 wanted to focus on policy at all. Trump '24 seems to be more focused on new policies.
And perhaps some of this is just the challenge of being an incumbent, which Trump '20 and Kamala '24 are. If you propose any new policies, the obvious rejoinder is "why haven't you already done that?". Perhaps it seems smarter to just not have a policies page. But I think it's a lame thing to (not) do.
-Trump is, for the first time, competing in a political environment in which the Democrats have arguably flip-flopped to adopt some of his biggest positions, and some of his style. (This might be one of the most unusual political achievements of all time.)
Trump used to be considered outrageous for discussing major ways to secure the border. Now Democrats are campaigning on "Securing the Border", and issues with fentanyl and so on.
And Trump has been completely free to go even further, to discuss mass deportation, and this is somehow considered even less outrageous than the border wall was considered not that long ago.
Democrats used to campaign on "defund the police" and other stances hostile to cops. Now Democrats are campaigning on having put more cops on the streets- the old Trump stance!
Trump was also the first President to constantly rattle on about the stock market and gas prices and so on. Now Biden/Harris do that, too.
Trump even created controversy with his "America First" branding. But now Democrats are copying that in everything but name.
Democrats aren't anti-woke, per se. But they have abandoned almost all of their explicit pro-woke messaging, moving much more towards the Trump stance.
The only issue I can think of where Trump has moved closer to a major Democrat stance is abortion. Marijuana might also be an issue with Trump movement, but I don't remember Trump being memorably anti-pot in the past, anyhow.
-Trump wasn't posting on X/Twitter at all in recent years. And even now that his campaign is posting on X again, he doesn't feel as important to the discussion as he used to feel.
Obviously, some of this is due to Trump mainly being active on TruthSocial, his own social media site.
But the way I remember it, from 2015-2020 it always seemed like Trump was the key catalyst on Twitter, almost every single day. He would say something "outrageous", and then there would be a vast liberal response to his tweets, and then a large conservative response to the liberal response. And so on. Everything in politics started and ended with Trump.
His recent tweets seem to be getting a lot of "likes" and "reposts", but it feels like a lot of the liberal sphere and the conservative sphere are just doing a lot of their own thing, having the conversations they choose to have, instead of making everything about fighting against or defending Trump.
And the Trump tweets seem fundamentally less "outrageous". There are dozens of major conservative and liberal posters that routinely say things which are arguably more outrageous than what Trump's account posts.
-Aside from the fact that Trump was inactive on Twitter for a long time, I think this has something to do with Elon Musk paying X posters for engagement. A lot of people on X have figured out other ways to get engagement- and thereby make money- by talking about topics unrelated to Trump.
So even if Trump were to try very hard to be the main catalyst on X every day, a lot of people are going to choose, for business reasons, to ignore Trump and do their own profitable engagement schtick. Trump can try to make it as fun as ever to react to him, but if there's less money in it, then a lot of professional posters are going to ignore him.
Also, quite frankly, I feel like a lot of large accounts on X (of every political variety, and every non-political type) have developed a similar engagement-bait style, much like the style Trump seemed to be the original master of. Trump's old engagement bait schtick would have trouble standing out at this point.
(I suppose this goes to show that in some ways the world has become more like Trump, which creates the illusion of change on Trump's part. But even this is remarkable- how many politicians in the past century have indirectly created so much change in the culture, as Trump has done?)
-One of the old critiques of Trump used to be that he didn't do very many press conferences. Democrats like Obama, Hillary, and the Biden '20 campaign did a lot of press conferences and interviews.
But now Trump is doing a lot of interviews, and Kamala has famously only done one meaningful interview so far.
Even more interesting is Trump doing long-form podcasts, and other long-form videos. It seems particularly unusual for the Trump campaign to do that when they have the oldest candidate. (Putting Biden out in public killed Biden's campaign, after all.)
And yet, Kamala is doing almost no interviews, while Trump is acting confident.
-In '16 and '20, Trump was almost constantly attacking other Republicans, and other institutions like Fox News. And other major Republicans were almost constantly attacking Trump.
This time around, there seems to be much less of this. I remember a tiff with Gov. Kemp in Georgia, which was almost immediately sorted out, and not much else.
It seems like Trump killed the careers of a lot of the disloyalists, and they are mostly out of the public arena now. There are some professional Never Trumpers who are still attacking Trump, but they do that no matter what Trump does, and it's no longer news.
But it also seems like Trump is simply more disciplined now in his targets. He isn't constantly wildly lashing out in every direction.
I also frankly think that after hiring and firing enough people, Trump has finally ended up with a much more loyal staff than he's ever had before. (This is one reason for the lack of leaks to the media.) And he seems to understand the people in the political arena, better than he understood them before (which Trump mentioned in a recent podcast).
-Trump is literally less "orange" than he used to be. His "orangeness" used to be a common trait Democrats made fun of, but his coloring seems to have become more natural since then. (Although it's obvious that, like Kamala, plenty of makeup is being applied to his face before public appearances.)
His coloring is now so unremarkable that the "orange man bad" phrase wouldn't even make sense, unless you remembered what his skin tone used to be.
-Trump seems to have lost weight. I remember Democrats almost constantly making fun of Trump's weight. They don't seem to do that as much any more, because Trump is thinner. Who knows whether it's diet, exercise, or Ozempic, but it's noticeable.
-Perhaps partly due to having less physical heft, he isn't as audibly "loud" as he used to be. His voice tends to be quiet now. Being older might also be a part of it.
But his voice isn't just more quiet. It seems like he is deliberately speaking in a very mellow and relaxed manner in most of his interviews and campaign rallies, perhaps to make people less afraid of him.
I would describe it as Trump possibly trying to lean into a "nice Grandpa" vibe, rather than "angry rabble-rouser", like he was the last two times. The physical difference in his tone is huge.
"Nice Grandpa" might be a good vibe to lean into, politically. Ronald Reagan, Eisenhower, FDR, and Biden '20 did a good job of that, and had great election success. (Well, prior to Biden seeming outright senile...) But it's also a big change from Trump's vibe in '16 and '20.
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Anyway, I have been surprised at how little discussion there has been in the media, and in social media, about Trump's ability to evolve. I honestly had never expected Trump to evolve, and if he did finally evolve, I would have thought it would get more attention, since one of the major narratives about Trump used to be "Trump doesn't learn".
Regarding scandals, the first campaign had to contend about 50 years of scandals, the second with time in office (although it wasn’t hugely relevant), the third with a mere four years. Also, Trump’s old, something could come out but it seems unlikely he’s still sleeping with porn stars.
Regarding policy, I think Trump wants to win and I think he does care about polling. He’s also still close to a lot of coastal rich people (in private even if some won’t associate with him as openly) who aren’t social conservatives and who probably (correctly) flag abortion as something most people are moderately liberal about.
This election is personal. In 2016 I think there was a kind of civic impulse in Trump. Yes, it was bound up in ego and, sure, he wanted to be president and make everyone have to listen to him. But he was also angry about the country, about Obama and Hillary, about politics.
Today - despite the fact that his ‘punishment’ for losing will be much, much tougher than it would have been in 2016, his heart doesn’t seem in it as much. The anger has softened. He mostly just seems to want to prove his enemies and detractors wrong. I also don’t think he actually believes he might go to jail, which is interesting.
There’s a lot of things going on here, but Trump might just expect to plea out his charges if he loses.
The irony is that while Kamala is campaigning on being his figurative prosecutor just as he was being Hillary's, she'll have the same incentives to let it go as he did if she wins.
Some of the more Trump deranged parts of the American left will still want their pound of flesh though, and that includes some of those actual prosecutors.
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