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Well, this is the Trump experience. I mean this debate. He started out really strong, was totally defeating Harris for the first ten minutes or so. Then he just couldn't help but start rambling and making unforced errors. Why decide to bring up abortion and ramble about ninth month abortion? That's not one of the Republicans' strengths. Why bring up Marxism? Outside of the highly online left and right, people generally think of Marxism as some boring thing from decades ago, not as an important issue. Why bring up the Springfield pets thing? That's another highly online issue that plays weird to normies.
Why not just focus on your strengths of crime, the economy, and immigration? He's starting to try to pivot more back to those now, but now he's rambling and raising his voice and acting defensive, which looks bad.
This guy has always sucked at debates other than in the 2016 primaries and when he got to go up against Biden a few months ago, but almost anyone could have won that debate against Biden.
Kamala is a competent but relatively weak debater, a strong debater could easily run rings around her. But Trump has learned nothing, it seems, from past debate performances. He keeps making the same kinds of unforced errors and making himself look bad. He can't stop himself from getting defensive and rambling and bringing up stuff that most people don't care about, or even stuff that favors his opponent.
If he could have just stayed calm and focused, he would have this debate in the bag by now. Instead he is fumbling it. How the fuck can a man have nine years of experience at politics and political debating and not learn the simple lesson of staying calm and looking calm and tough when the context makes it the right decision, instead of getting flustered and emotional all the time?
The odds aren't low that, somewhere in the midwest, they can find an immigrant (or the child of immigrants, England has shown us that's close enough) who did something that vaguely looks like eating a dog or cat. In any sufficiently large group it will happen. And Democrats are going so all-in on denying everything, that there's no room to retreat. All you need is a black guy with a funny name being charged with animal abuse two towns over from Springfield, and the conservative media establishment will blast it to the sky.
That said, far more concerning to me is that Trump's campaign owes money to venues for unpaid bills from years ago, and increasing stories of campaign dysfunction and infighting with funds misappropriated to be spent on legal fees.
I've been wrong about him before, Trump always has a puncher's chance, but I share your feelings of why? Why, in eight years, haven't MAGA Republicans built any real organization outside of Trump's personality? Why, in eight years, is there no political heir to Trumpism? Why, in eight years, isn't there a policy apparatus behind Trump that Trump won't disavow? Why, in eight years, do we lack any MAGA candidates in the Capitol or Governor's Mansions who aren't complete weirdoes?
Because the footsoldiers and bureaucrats who build those organizations (attorneys, accountants, policy-wonks and other recent elite-college grads willing to swallow low salaries in exchange for proximity to power and influence) are overwhelmingly not MAGA, and even not Republican.
Because Trump has a lot more name-recognition than any other politician, and has a plurality of personal loyalists. He's also very good at attacking rivals, gets basically infinite amounts of free media from mainstream and liberal outlets horrified by him (but who don't realize that their coverage backfires and helps Trump with his base), and the people who rose to challenge him are either out-of-step with the modern conservative electorate (Nikki Haley) or too-online and actually not all that charismatic (DeSantis)
Because that would tie Trump to something that he didn't dream up, and his personal policy is basically an anti-NAFTA 1980's Blue Dog Democrat. His genius, such as it is, lies in realizing that policy rhetoric doesn't actually matter all that much.
Because MAGA is so incredibly low-status among wealthy and white-collar folks that only the complete weirdoes are willing to tie themselves to it. Also, Trump has a bad habit of cannibalizing his own supporters to buoy his own efforts. (Does DeSantis count as a weirdo in your view? If so, he's awfully effective for a weirdo)
Desantis we could probably argue over. I counted him as outside of full MAGA, but I might be exaggerating the differences between him and Trump after the primary. Trump hasn't, to my knowledge, been grooming him as an insider in his campaign. But you're right, they're probably closer together than I thought at first.
The number of Trump henchmen who wind up indicted is somewhat startling, and might deter some people. But electoral politics, contra Nate Silver, selects for risk takers.
DeSantis' problem is that he assumed that Trump had self-destructed on Jan 6th 2021 and was planning to succeed him, not to replace him. Had Trump not run, I think this would have worked and DeSantis would have been the nominee with broad MAGA support. But (at least from the perspective of Republican primary voters) Trump hadn't self-destructed and DeSantis acting as if he had was seen as disloyalty. In Q4 2023 DeSantis is very clearly floundering because he doesn't know whether he is doing a Vivek-style understudy run to position himself if Trump has a stroke before the election, or if he is running to beat Trump.
In other words, MAGA rejected DeSantis, not the other way round.
My model for DeSantis is that he was preparing into March or April of 2024 at least competitive, and hoping to consolidate the other non-Trump candidates as they started to drop out. His initial model had been MAGA-y but-competent, intending to pivot to slamming Trump once some big enough scandal hit to kinda force that, preferably something that let him emphasis the competent bit without having to step too specifically against conservative or MAGA positions.
And the first big scandal that hit in that time frame was the Bragg Indictment.
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Yes and as many people (including most eloquently TracingWoodgrains) have said, until you fix this problem the right is screwed in the US.
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