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Notes -
The Political Horse Race Two Weeks Out
Apologies to our foreign or American friends who may be bored by the non-stop election coverage, but I just can't get enough.
A couple weeks ago I predicted with 50% confidence (the ultimate in weasly predictions) that we'd see an October surprise timed for maximum damage to the Trump campaign. I think we just saw the attempt. It was dumb as you could expect.
Yesterday, nearly every single media outlet in the country ran the same story. The story? John Kelly, Trump's former chief of staff, supposedly once said that Trump told him "Well, Hitler did a lot of good things". Kelly also said something about Trump praising Hitler's generals. The story was first reported in 2021. It was denied by Trump the next day.
Somehow, three years later, it was front page news in nearly every mainstream outlet. It was an incredible example of media discipline and coordination. See for yourself:
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=trump%20hitler%20comments
So... did it land? No I don't think so. Comparing people to Hitler is the oldest game in the book. Does anyone remember the Lyndon Larouche campaigners with their Obama-as-Hitler posters? Moreover, we've heard everything about Trump. 99% of people have made up their mind already. And Trump is also omnipresent. Today's Hitler story is yesterday's news as Trump appears on Rogan or works at McDonald's or eats a burrito bowl or something.
Harris tried to make the story work. In between cringe videos of her latest town hall appearance, her Twitter account tweeted this:
So how are the betting markets taking it? Well, there were a couple more flash crashes in Trump shares on Polymarket. Around midnight, his odds briefly dipped under 60%. Was it manipulation? I don't think so. To paraphrase Stanley Druckenmiller, sometimes it's better to just buy the rumor and then ask questions later. Maybe it was worth a gamble to see if the attack stuck.
As of right now, Trump is up near 65% again. Interestingly, his chances of winning the popular vote have crept up to about 40%. In polls, according to Real Clear Politics, Harris's nationwide lead has fallen to 0.3%, while Trump maintains a 0.9% edge in the seven swing states.
It really is too close to call at this point. Will we see a "real" October surprise against Trump? It feels unlikely. There just isn't any more unspent ammunition. Will the Trump campaign produce some valuable oppo research against Harris? Again, unlikely, since the media wouldn't report on it anyway.
The election is 12 days out, and many ballots have already been cast.
What I don’t get is exactly how they thought a story first released in 2021, and that was debunked back then was supposed to move the needle. Not only is it old news, but the “my enemy is literally Hitler” game goes back to at least George W Bush. As an October Surprise, this is a nothing burger and the people pushing this narrative knew that. I suspect they have some other stories that this is softening the ground to build for.
There's a certain power that comes from knowing how everyone will react, and this drives a lot of things.
I keep coming back to the David Cameron PigGate scandal; there's a high chance it never happened to start with, the actual claimed behavior was little more than goofy fratboy jokes, but the initial book ran on a legal hack (Ashcroft reported only being told of the story) making it dangerous to contest under UK defamation law, while literally everybody up to the BBC could euphemistically reframe it to something far more serious, and everyone under that illustrious bar could reduce it to "Cameron fucked a pig".
It's establishing the room temperature.
See also the breathlessly-reported Epstein Connection (with a time paradox in the allegations) or a Trump Hates Vets (anonymously sourced, disputed by the family of the deceased vet in question).
Yeah, the media is constantly smashing the "damage Trump, hurt own credibility" button. They need to spend some years building up their political capital. The account so overdrawn they can't even damage Trump anymore, all they can do is further damage their own credibility.
I kind of agree here which is what makes this move so baffling. They know they’re not going to affect the outcome with this move, and they know that this kind of stupid reporting is only going to hurt their credibility. As it stands now, if the GOP candidate for 2028 were actually a Nazi, the credibility of the idea has been shot so badly that even if Candidate 2028 says “killing an entire ethnic group is actually a good idea,” who’s still listening? Very very people are still paying attention to the mainstream media as a source of information, and of those who are, it’s often as a sideline to looking for the same information from other sources less compromised by ideological capture. I don’t really pay attention to it. I don’t know of very many others who unironically believe anything coming out of a mainstream media outlet.
After all of the things done, and not even done well (I.e. the blatant edits of Kamala’s answers on 60 minutes), and in a biased way, I don’t see how any of these old journals can regain credibility. A “journalist” at this point is an ideological hack, unconcerned with accuracy, credibility, or neutrality. The mask is gone, and it’s almost impossible to restore the trust that they once enjoyed. For me, the only value in reading the NYT or watching mainstream news is to find out what the cathedral wants me to believe. Its value is in that area, but it’s no longer even directionally relevant or accurate.
If it doesn't make sense, and they keep doing it, and the disastrous results keep not happening, then perhaps your model is wrong. I think the part you've got wrong is thinking that their stupid reporting will hurt their credibility. Their credibility does not derive from them telling the truth. It derives from being credible institutions endorsed by credible institutions. Since the people behind them in fact control all the credible institutions, as long as they keep toeing the party line they will not lose credibility.
But it’s not exactly right. If you’re in a fact-selling business, being right is at least a small part of credibility. Which is why they’re failing as the source of information for the rabble who no longer believe what’s on 60 minutes and in the NYT or the mainstream press. And where that ends up is these “credible sources” can no longer see their purpose and therefore are abandoned. How can they be trusted enough to indoctrinate the masses when the masses are choosing alternatives and not taking American Pravda seriously? Samsdat is accurate at least, and that accuracy isn’t fake. It’s like the loudspeakers in North Korea. They were giving accurate forecasts of the weather, so people listened to them over the government news.
Then they're not in a fact-selling business, because it isn't. Even if they were, their readers will never check the facts.
No. Where that ends is pretty much here, where a majority still believe the NYT and 60 minutes and such, and some minority believes instead in Fox News and the Daily Caller. Eventually the majority group will take over Fox and bring some subset of the minority back into the fold.
Why are average people reading news then? I mean I can sort of get why aperachniks are reading American Pravda rags, but again, as a useful activity, a person reading the news would be looking for accuracy on things that matter to them. As it becomes more obvious to average people that a given source isn’t accurate, then it’s really only useful to the choir as the point of them reading and watching news is to know what to say in dinner parties or business talk or whatever. NYT might be useful for that, but if most people now see a NYT article as simply skimping for wokeness and global order and so on, it’s not going to convince them of anything. In fact, it would probably do the opposite— if NYT starts telling me about civilian deaths in Gaza, my first thought is “Israel must have gotten an important target.” Beyond a certain point, obvious propaganda starts pushing people in the wrong direction from the POV of the writers.
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