I keep finding news stories about how the Trump “ground game” is a mess. Today I found another one, by Reuters. Trump dismantled the RNC’s existing GOTV structure in favor of getting by on the cheap and relying on a largely Elon Musk-funded operation thrown together this year. The canvassers are doing a hit-and-miss job, by all accounts. Meanwhile, the Harris team has built the single largest get-out-the-vote effort in modern history, it says here.  At the same time, Republicans continue to worry that Trump’s efforts are not getting the job done.

Not even Republicans are convinced Trump’s on-the-cheap effort will work. As early as last year, some party insiders griped that “nobody wants to admit” the former president’s efforts are not yielding winning results. “That’s why we’re losing elections,” one veteran GOP strategist told NBC News.  

They aren’t wrong. Studies dating back to 2007 have shown that volunteer canvassers who join a campaign because they are highly motivated outperform even highly paid field mercenaries. That shouldn’t be too surprising: Volunteers who feel they are fighting for their values will work harder and care more about the outcome than canvassers simply in it for the paycheck. In their effort to leverage billionaire fortunes as an organizing force multiplier, Republicans have hired a wave of apathetic, disconnected canvassers.  

This was published recently in the New York Times:

With 2,500 staff members located in 353 offices, the Harris campaign is working to convert the strongest backers into volunteers and to ensure that sporadic but supportive voters cast a ballot, all while winning over independents and moderate Republicans. Last week, the campaign said, it knocked on over 600,000 doors and made over three million calls through 63,000 volunteer shifts.

Mr. Trump’s team is largely operating under the assumption that Republicans who voted for Trump in previous elections will once again back him in large numbers. His campaign is focusing on a smaller number of infrequent voters who his team believes will back Mr. Trump if energized to vote. 

It has to be noted that ground operations have not always made a difference in presidential elections.

Both sides agree that a bigger ground game doesn’t ensure victory. In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s campaign boasted about its operation, while Mr. Trump had almost no field staff in the key states. Four years later, the second Trump campaign bragged about knocking on one million doors weekly, while the Biden campaign conducted no in-person canvassing out of concern about the Covid pandemic.

But today the Guardian reports that some of Elon Musk’s canvassers appear to be lying about how many doors they knock on.

Donald Trump’s campaign may be failing to reach thousands of voters they hope to turn out in Arizona and Nevada, with roughly a quarter of door-knocks done by America Pac flagged by its canvassing app as potentially fraudulent, according to leaked data and people familiar with the matter. … leaked America Pac data obtained by the Guardian shows that roughly 24% of the door-knocks in Arizona and 25% of the door-knocks in Nevada this week were flagged under “unusual survey logs” by the Campaign Sidekick canvassing app.

But the Sidekick canvassing app also has been a mess. It often doesn’t work in rural areas with little wifi, but such areas are where Trump’s voters live. And one would think that in such a close election, turnout in swing states is critical. It’s also the case that the canvassers are being hired and supervised by local contractors, and the contractors are loathe to fire people because they’re getting paid to get bodies out door-knocking. It’s not exactly a well-oiled machine, in other words.

Meanwhile, Trump is planning to hold one of his last big rallies in Madison Square Garden. Yes, New York City. This will be Sunday night, October 27. It’s been noted that he’s been making campaign appearances in blue states, It’s argued that he gets good national publicity from these appearances, but I wonder if ultimately this is about Trump’s vanity and possible delusions that he could win California or New York or wherever. Do read A week before the election, Trump will hold his most unsettling spectacle yet by Sidney Blumenthal at The Guardian. Very nice bit of writing and analysis. (And can he fill Madison Square Garden’s 19,500 seats? I guess there are enough Trump supporters in the greater NYC area to do that. We’ll see.)

As promised, Judge Tanya Chutkan did release a big pile of J6 evidence yesterday. Much of it was already public, and much of it was from the House J6 subcommittee. I don’t believe any big, new revelations came out of it, but Jack Smith’s case seems substantially reinforced..

Public notice: Along with swearing off articles about the polls, I am also swearing off articles about undecided voters. As they say, The Stupid– it burns.

Moving on.

Today Judge Tanya Chutkan is expected to unseal the appendix to Jack Smith’s motion about why John Roberts’s immunity proclamation wouldn’t prevent Trump’s J6 trial from going forward.  The appendix contains the evidence that Smith says is admissible to support the charges against Trump.

Yesterday Trump’s lawyers filed a request that the appendix remain sealed until after the election. Releasing the evidence before the election would be election interference, the lawyers said. Judge Chutkan responded, “If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute—or appear to be—election interference.” Read Joyce Vance for more details.

There has been much muttering about Trump’s several last-minute cancellations of interviews, some of them with big-time venues like 60 Minutes. And according to Trump, he was “hoodwinked” into the interview with John Micklethwait of Bloomberg News at the Economic Club of Chicago. Trump was expecting to give a speech, not submit to an interview.

After Trump brushed off an interview with a podcast, The Shade Room — Kamala Harris did that one earllier this week, I believe — producers of The Shade Room said they were told Trump was too exhausted to schedule the interview this week, but that might change. When The Shade Room made Trump’s exhaustion public, the Trump campaign denied they said such a thing. But I’m betting that’s exactly what they said. Better “exhaustion” than “sundowning.” Still, if he can’t keep up the pace of a campaign, how is he going to keep up the pace of being POTUS?

And I hope that we don’t have to find out that I’m right about this, but … I’m betting J.D. Vance is already planning to “25th Amendment” Trump some time next year if Trump and Vance win. Vance is, obviously, a snake. See also Trump’s Age Finally Catches Up With Him by Philip Bump at WaPo.

See also Dana Milbank, Donald Trump’s hysterical closing argument: Save the cows!. Because according to Trump, Kamala Harris plans to eliminate cows. She’s also going to tear down all the buildings and replace them with buildings with no windows. And note that he made exactly the same prediction in 2020.

Let us remember that Trump is still refusing to release his medical records.

Yesterday I saw a headline saying the betting markets now are predicting a Trump win. Oh, wait …

Over the past two weeks, the chances of a Trump victory in the November election have surged on Polymarket, a crypto-based prediction market. Its bettors were giving Trump a 62% chance of winning on Thursday, while Harris’s chances were 38%. The candidates were in a dead heat at the start of October. 

Trump’s gains on Polymarket have cheered his supporters, and they have been followed by the odds shifting in Trump’s favor in other betting markets. Elon Musk flagged Trump’s growing lead on Polymarket to his 200 million X followers on Oct. 6, praising the concept of betting markets. “More accurate than polls, as actual money is on the line,” Musk posted.

But the surge might be a mirage manufactured by a group of four Polymarket accounts that have collectively pumped about $30 million of crypto into bets that Trump will win. 

“There’s strong reason to believe they are the same entity,” said Miguel Morel, chief executive of Arkham Intelligence, a blockchain analysis firm that examined the accounts.

This election can’t be over fast enough.

Whenever Kamala Harris makes a public appearance, the right-wing press rushes forward and declares it was a train wreck. So it’s not surprising that her appearance on Fox News yesterday had one commenter wondering if her “meltdown” on Fox News ended her campaign. Um, no.

In another example of news from another planet, someone at Breitbart reported Bret Baier saying that four Harris staffers were waving their arms and demanding the “interview” be ended. The rest of news media had Baier saying four members of Fox News staff were waving at him to wind up the interview because it was going over time. The New York Times was one of those. Also accocrding to the NY Times, Baier was irritated with Harris even before the interview began because of a last-minute schedule shift by the Harris campaign. Yes, Baier was irritated with a Vice President of the United States and major party presidential nominee because he had to adjust his plans to accommodate her. Some humility lessons may be in order for Mr. Baier.

It was widely noted that Baier was acting more as an agent of the Trump campaign than a journalist. It also was widely noted that Harris held her own. He often interrupted Harris and wouldnd’t allow her to respond to his questions. Baier’s bias and gaslighting were so blatant Lawrence O’Donnell was apoplectic.

As much as Baier kept trying to get Harris rattled, she kept her head and came back at him. When he wasn’t talking over her.  Margaret Sullivan at The Guardian called Baier’s interview “grievance theater, not political journalism.” And see especially Greg Sargent at The New Republic, Harris’s Harsh Takedown of Fox’s Bret Baier Exposes MAGA’s Biggest Lie. Sargent makes the point that Fox has built a “fictional information coccoon” around Donald Trump. And Baier’s questions were from the fictional world of the coccoon, not the real world. “How much public support would Trump have right now if Fox and other right-wing outlets had not been pumping out sanitizing propaganda about him and his presidency for the last 10 years?” Sargent asks.

Trump, meanwhile, held a surreal “town hall” with an all-women audience. By some coincidence, the audience was made up of entirely of Trump-supporting Republicans. See Donald Trump’s Roomful of Suspiciously Friendly Women by Helen Lewis at The Atlantic.

Rachel Maddow knocked it out of the park last night with this opening bit.

If only everyone in the U.S. could watch this. For that matter, why aren’t other news people reporting this? (See previous post.)

By now you’ve heard about Trump’s Bizarro Bandstand episode from last night. But I think his performance today at the Chicago Economic Club was more interestng. Trump was interviewed by John Micklethwait, the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News and previous editor-in-chief of The Economist. Micklethwait challenged Trump on tariffs Things got weird. After Micklethwait explains all the negative effects Trump tariff ideas would have on the U.S. economy, citing (among other authorities) the Wall Street Journal. Trump simply told Micklethwait that everybody else is wrong.

“What does The Wall Street Journal … they’ve been wrong about everything,” the former president continued, before turning his ire on Micklethwait. “So have you, by the way.”

The crowd in Chicago erupted in laughter and cheers.

“You’ve been wrong,” Trump said again.

Trump is very certain that his tariffs will force companies to build their factories in the U.S.  Continuing,

Micklethwait noted Trump’s plans would essentially halt trade with China, place at least a 10 percent tariff on European nations and have a drastic effect on the U.S. economy, where 40 million jobs rely on trade.

“That is going to have a serious effect on the overall economy,” Micklethwait said.

“It’s going to have a massive effect — positive effect. It’s going to be a positive effect,” Trump responded. “It must be hard for you to spend 25 years talking about tariffs as being negative and then have somebody explain to you that you’re totally wrong.”

Judging by the audience reaction, the business leaders of Chicago are as dumb as Trump. See Trump Crumbles When Pressed on Economic Policy in Tense Interview in the Rolling Stone. But I’m not sure who crumbled, Trump or Micklethwait. Micklethwait was a real nonpartisan journalist trying to get actual answers out of Trump, and his exasperation was palpable. But I predict this was the last real interview Trump gives. From now on it’s talks with friends-of-Trump only.

This weekend much discussion broke out on the Web about why the “legacy” media keeps normalizing Trump while nitpicking Harris. See, for example, this substack article by Margaret Sullivan, who was a media columnist for the Washington Post and before that the public editor for the New York Times. In brief, in the headlines Trump’s racist ranting gets normalized, while Harris is unnecessarily criticized in what Sullivan called a non-story.

There’s not a simple explanation for this. See, for example, Josh Marshall, Yes. Political Journalism Remains Wired for the GOP.  Josh says the uneven coverage is not being driven by money or even partisanship but by deeply ingrained institutional culture. And I think he’s right. This has been true for many years, from way before Trump got into politics. If anything, the bias was worse during the Bush II years than it is now, IMO. Remember Media Whores Online? It was all about calling out the right-wing bias in news media. That site went offline 20 years ago.

Speaking of right-wing bias, Kamala Harris has agreed to be interviewed by Fox News. I’m not sure that’s a good idea. But it probably won’t hurt, I guess.

Under the heading Why Is This Election So Close? — The Guardian reports that the app being used to coordinate the Trump’s campaign “ground game” is a mess. The app doesn’t work half the time, leaving the campaign partly blind as to where their canvassers are going and what they are actually doing. The campaign insists everything is fine.

And under the heading What Trump Hath Wrought — FEMA efforts iin North Carolina are being hampered by threats against FEMA workers. One fellow was arrested today .

Yesterday in Michigan:

Trump: These things were coming cylinders, no wings, no nothing, and they’re coming down very slowly, landing on a raft in the middle of the ocean someplace with a circle, reminded me of the Biden circles that he used to have.. then I heard we lost pic.twitter.com/5rtC7wJH00

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 10, 2024

I found this transcript on Facebook:

He was speaking to the Detroit Economic Club, in Detroit — and bashed Detroit. At one point he called Detroit a “once great city.” At another point, he warned his audience that if Kamala Harris becomes president, the whole nation will be Detroit. “It will be like Detroit. Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president,” Trump said. “You’re going to have a mess on your hands.”

I take it this did not go over well. I suspect he didn’t entirely understand where he was. Early stage Alzheimers would account for this. If I’m right, at this point the man is on autopilot. He isn’t entirely certain where he is, but his handlers can put him in front of a microphone and he can still do his free-association rambles. He still knows people and things he’s known for a long time, but he can’t retain new information. And the old stuff probably gets jumbled. He may have notes or a teleprompter in front of him reminding him that he’s supposed to talk about the economy. But if I’m right, he’s going to forget how to read soon. And I’m betting his children and his top campaign advisers know this is happening and are working to keep it hidden, at least until after the election..

If I’m right, there won’t be any more one-on-one interviews of Trump, or forums in which Trump has to answer more than one question. That would lay bare his inability to take in new information. He may not be able to follow multiple questions or remember what he just said. The only exception might be if he talks to a partisan interviewer who understands the situation and gives him prompts to keep him on topic, and who would allow the video of the interview to be edited.

There are still people, like this guy, who think Trump’s verbal strangeness is part of some master plan. I don’t think so.

Note that Trump, having dropped out of the 60 Minutes interview, now wants CBS to lose its license for going ahead with the Harris interview.

In recent days, the former president has lambasted the Harris interview, accusing CBS News of editing the sit-down with correspondent Bill Whitaker. On Thursday, Trump used his Truth Social platform to again take aim at what he alleged to be “a giant Fake News Scam,” accusing “60 Minutes” of replacing Harris’ answers with another to “make her look better.”

“60 Minutes is a major part of the News Organization of CBS, which has just created the Greatest Fraud in Broadcast History,” Trump wrote. “CBS should lose its license, and it should be bid out to the Highest Bidder, as should all other Broadcast Licenses, because they are just as corrupt as CBS — and maybe even WORSE!”

Um, this isn’t rational. But it’s consistent with Alzheimers. People with Alzheimers sometimes imagine wildly random threatening things. And giant faucet, anyone?

See also Michigan newspaper issues correction after Trump claims he won man of year award.  More evidence Trump is seriously confused.

Other Stuff to Read

ProPublica, by Robert Downen and Jeremy Schwartz. In Texas’ Third-Largest County, the Far Right’s Vision for Local Governing Has Come to Life

Slate, by Dahlia Lithwick. John Roberts Has Lost the Public. Does He Care?

The Atlantic, by Jim Nichols. The Moment of Truth. Lovely essay.

I hope everyone made it through the hurricane. Let’s hope that’s it for this hurricane season.

Yesterday, after Donald Trump denied he had sent covid test machines to Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin confirmed that he had. But the Kremlin denied that Trump and Putin have been talking on the phone since. What to make of this? Maybe Putin thought Trump needed a reminded that I own you. Also, Woodward cited an intelligence analyst as the source of the covid machine story, so it must be assumed the intelligence agencies knew about this. Whether the intelligence agencies know about the phone calls isn’t clear.  See also Marcy Wheeler.

I found a news story from April 2020 in which Trump brags about these  particular test machines, by Abbott Labs.

A coronavirus test made by Abbott Laboratories and introduced with considerable fanfare by President Donald Trump in a Rose Garden news conference this week is giving state and local health officials very little added capacity to perform speedy tests needed to control the COVID-19 pandemic.

“That’s a whole new ballgame,” Trump said. “I want to thank Abbott Labs for the incredible work they’ve done. They’ve been working around-the-clock.”

Yet a document circulated among officials at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency this week shows that state and local public health labs were set to receive a total of only 5,500 coronavirus tests from the giant manufacturer of medical devices, diagnostics and drugs, according to emails obtained by Kaiser Health News.

Elsewhere — I’ve been working really hard at ignoring the polls. But the polling issue gets in my face sometimes anyway. One issue that keeps coming up is that in both 2016 and 2020, Trump voters were undercounted. I keep seeing headlines saying that Dems are terrified Trumpers are being undercounted again. Now I see in a Newsweek story that pollsters are now “correcting” for the undercount in various ways. Maybe they’re over-correcting? A recent article by Nate Cohn in the New York Times goes into more detail about different ways polls are being “weighted,” arriving at different results. See also Josh Marshall’s miscellaneous thoughts on polling. It’s entirely possible the race isn’t quite as close as the polls are saying.

Getting back to hurricanes — Trump, Vance, and other right-wing tools have been flagrantly and shamelessly lying their butts off about the FEMA response to Helene and Milton.  (For some reason, I keep wanting to call yesterday’s storm “Winslow.” Maybe there will be a Hurricane Winslow some day.) Vance wrote an op ed for the Wall Street Journal about the Biden-Harris mismanagement of Helene, which of course I can’t read. Meanwhile, politicians of the affected areas, including Republicans, have been heaping praise on FEMA and the rest of the feds. The people whose lives have been impacted will, sooner or later, figure out who’s telling the truth. Although I understand there are people who refuse to ask FEMA for help because they’ve been told FEMA will confiscate their houses.

At Slate, Ben Mathis-Lilley writes Trump Is Doing His Best to Make the Hurricane Into a Bad Issue for Him. Mathis-Lilley reminds us of times that Trump tried to politicize or otherwise unnecessarily inject himself into situations and got burned in the process. The Bible Stunt and the Bleach Suggestion, for example. He may well be overplaying his hand now. I guess we’ll see, won’t we, North Carolina?

Those of you in Florida, or trying to get out of Florida, please stay safe. And please check in when you can. I’ve just read that highways are jammed and gas stations are running out of fuel.

I watched a bit of the 60 Minutes interviews with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Today the legacy media types are all writing columns saying some of her answers could have been better, but there are no major screaming controversies about anything that was said. There is possibly about as much commentary on Trump’s non-appearance. CBS provided details on the communications between CBS and the Trump campaign about the interview. Trump had agreed to do the interview weeks ago, and CBS and the campaign had worked out a schedule for when and where the interviewing would take place. And then last week Trump cancelled for bogus reasons and denied he had ever agreed to the interview.

I agree with Lawrence O’Donnell (beginning at 4 minutes) that Trump’s mental decline would have been way too obvious in such an interview. Especially if he is in early stage Alzheimer’s, as I suspect, he would be unable to follow a series of questions or remember what he just already said. I’m betting the family and senior advisors talked him out of it.

Regarding interviews, do read Josh Marshall, Insider Newsletters Still Struggling to Make Interview Fetch Happen. Mainstream media continues to grumble that Harris is avoiding “serious” and “substantive” interviews, meaning from legacy/mainstream media. Never mind that Trump avoids such interviews more. She’s appearing on television talk shows and on popular podcasts and other places that are watched by people who are not necessarily news junkies. Sounds like a plan to me. But this part of the article speaks to what I’ve been thinking about a lot of “serious” interviewing.

Harris has now taken questions from the inside-the-Beltway press, in impromptu sessions, in a sit-down interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, with reporters at the National Association of Black Journalists convention, where Daniels was actually one of the questioners. But again and again these interviews have focused on process questions and restating opponents’ attacks and asking Harris to respond. In Dana Bash’s interview with Harris and Walz, the most focused questions were over whether or not Harris had “flip-flopped” on fracking and why Walz had said he and his wife used IVF rather than a related but distinct fertility treatment. In other words, they actually haven’t been very substantive at all. They are more confrontational, but absent a basis in policy particulars it’s not clear why that’s better than an at-length interview in which potential voters get a feel for who the candidate is and that discusses issues like abortion rights or jobs or foreign wars or immigration policy in ways that actually connect with people’s lives. The whole proposition becomes more a matter of candidate feats of strength for campaign gatekeepers than questions that are particularly substantive or ones that campaign reporters have an especial ability to address.

I should note here: I’m not picking on Dana Bash. Her interview is what we now expect from a major media interview. The problem isn’t the interviewer but the format, the genre of interview. Not only are these interviews not terribly valuable for the candidate; they’re not terribly valuable as journalism. You can tell your favored candidate to blow off the prestige MSM interviews guilt free.

Amen.

Bob Woodward is about to release a new book. I don’t intend to read it. Bob may be a genius at sniffing the inner lives of U.S. leaders, but he’s a dull, stiff, boring writer. Possibly the juiciest bit to come out is that in 2020, as the Covid pandemic was getting serious, Trump sent test kits to Putin for his personal use. He has also remained in touch with Putin these past four years. They’ve been on the phone with each other several times. No surprise there.

Speaker Mike Johhnson has joined the Republican chorus ripping the Biden Administration’s response to Hurricane Helene. At the same time, he’s refusing to call the House back into session to appropriate more money for disaster relief. Today’s Republican party in a nutshell. See also Newsweek, How Mike Johnson’s Big Decision Could Impact Helene Relief Efforts.

Liz Cheney has been saying that if Trump loses in November, what’s left of the Republican party might have to form a new party. Zachary Basu of Axios also writes that a Potential Trump loss threatens destruction of the modern GOP. “Never before has a party’s identity been so deeply entwined with the fate, fortunes and flaws of one man. Four consecutive poor election cycles would unleash a wave of sustained scrutiny that the GOP — as it currently exists — may not survive,” writes Basu. 

If the Republicans suffer significant losses, including the White House, in November, then certainly the MAGA movement can’t survive as a political force except maybe as a local or regional entity. It won’t die right away, of course, but since it’s a cult of personality it won’t survive without Donald Trump.

And Trump is being eaten alive by senlility with every passing day. Whether he wins or not, I expect that by some time next year the Trump family will be forced to admit he has Alzheimers. His short-term memory issues are getting more pronounced. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he’s already been diagnosed and the family is keeping it secret as long as possible, And most likely MAGA will go the way of the Temperence Movement once he’s no longer able to lead it. Do read this weekend’s New York Times exposé of Trump’s mental state.  See also The Media Is Finally Waking Up to the Story of Trump’s Mental Fitness by Michael Tomasky at The New Republic.

If MAGA dies in a timely manner, IMO there might be enough left of the old GOP establishment to reconstitute something approximating the old GOP. And if the MAGAts stomp out and form their own party, so much the better. But Cheney and Basu apparently think it’s more likely that the remnants of the old establishment will have to form a new party and let the Republican Party die from MAGA cancer, so to speak. And they’re closer to the thing than I am.

But if Trump wins, the Republican Party is still toast. It will be utterly consumed by MAGA, and MAGA is not a political party but only a caricature of one. The real question then will be if the United States survives, especially as we’ll end up with President J.D. Vance. I don’t even want to think about it.

Meanwhile, the rhetoric coming from Trump and his allies is increasingly dangerous. Now they’re openly claiming that Democrats were behind the two assasination attempts.

At Talking Points Memo, David Kurtz writes that West Virginia is considering secession if Trump loses.

Take, for instance, the resolution that four GOP lawmakers introduced Sunday in the special session in West Virginia. It’s as extreme as anything I’ve seen in the last few years. The proposed resolution, inter alia, calls on West Virginia not to “recognize” the results of the 2024 presidential election if “election fraud in any state was a major reason that resulted in a candidate for President obtaining a majority in the Electoral College.”

“Election fraud” is defined in the text very broadly to include a laundry list of bogus right-wing claims ranging from non-citizen voting to “prosecutions for apparent political motives.” By this definition, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s ongoing prosecution of Donald Trump could be sufficient grounds on its own for West Virginia to refuse to recognize a victorious Kamala Harris as the legitimate president. 

This is from the draft resolution:

That, the State of West Virginia will not recognize any election of the Democrat candidate for President during the 2024 election cycle if the Republican presidential or vice-presidential candidate is assassinated, seriously injured during an assassination attempt, incarcerated, de facto eliminated or barred from the ballot in any states, or is the subject of legal actions that preclude their effective campaigning …

This probably won’t go anywhere, of course, but the fact that actual state legislatures are thinking about this is worthy of note.

Just letting you know I’ll be away from my computer until Sunday. Spending some time with my children and grandsons. Please feel free to leave comments about whatever is going on.