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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 greatest Trump sin of 2024 is that he has lost the touch. All the criticisms of his rambling, incoherence, inchoate arguments or whatever, all that is secondary to his greatest strength: hitting the opponent where it'll hurt.
Crooked Hilary resonated as there was sufficient baggage in the info sphere to make it plausible that she was a corrupt incompetent burying bodies on her path to unearned power. Sleepy Joe was obvious to everyone who actually saw Biden speak from 2023 onwards, regardless of right-wing twitter edits. Lyin Ted, Fat Chris, etc... its all the same principle.
And if its not personal, its hitting on values. 2016 Trump hit the immigration nail beautifully with Build The Wall, and he got supercharged with the anger of normies following the Deplorables incident. Frankly he should have swung for the fences in 2020 with Defund the Police, but he fumbled the responde and Biden disavowed Defund from the start, leaving that round a dud in the Trump gun.
That was then. Now? He's got JD Vance, an attack dog that is whining more than biting, a right wing media ecosystem catastrophizing Ring Of Fire disasters out of very real but currently statistically ineffective culture war pain points, and weak attacks against Kamala. He isn't funny, he isn't hitting the pain points of economy and immigration with sufficient focus, and he's ultimately BORING.
Even the supercuts of Trump best lines are boring and inaudible. Theres nothing funny about HIS attacks on Harris and the Democrats, and without that what do we have? A boring rambly mess that doesn't even make me angry at the democrats.
Overall an absolute fumble for Trump. His concept of a plan to win is less tangible than SV pre-ideation startups that strode into VC offices with a dream and a rejected application to Caltech.
Yeah, the campaign feels very online. The Haitian thing is incredibly specific and the sort of thing you think lands when you follow too many DR accounts.
It feels like in 2016 Trump was saying things that people felt but couldn't hear on cable news or the debate stage. Now it feels like he's digging up things a lot of the people who wanted that would see as the theories of online weirdos.
The Haitian question is a race between whether right wing researchers can dig up a case that gets close enough for plausibility before someone insane yelling about cats murders a Haitian or beats them up with a baseball bat or burns down a house full of migrants. A sort of stochastic terrorism roulette.
It's catchy, but dangerous.
Actually the race is between the right wingers yelling about cats REALLY being eaten by Haitians vs right wingers yelling that cats don't have to be being eaten by haitians in order for the threat to be recognized as extant but its irrelevant anyways can we please for the love of god stop talking about the cats.
Guess, uh, guess what's actually catching the attention of the right wing media ecosystem.
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