Alan Zendell, August 9, 2024

When Donald Trump was asked by a reporter why he wasn’t campaigning in battleground states, he did two things a politician should never do. First, he attacked the reporter, calling the question stupid in his uniquely hateful way. It was an entirely reasonable question, but one Trump didn’t like, as his second answer clearly showed. He claimed he didn’t need to campaign because he’s way ahead, and he was waiting until the Democratic Convention was over.

One thing we all know about Donald Trump is that he can’t stand being out of the limelight. If we count from Trump’s rally in Atlanta, waiting until after the Democratic Convention ends would mean that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will have the media to themselves for a full month. That doesn’t compute, but maybe it will when we consider the first part of what Trump said. I looked at 538.com, the generally accepted, nonpartisan gold standard for polling data. What I found surprised me.

Polls in June and July had shown Trump up nationally by two to six points. Between July 30th and August 8th, sixteen respected polls across the political spectrum showed that Harris has reversed that completely. Trump was ahead in only one, by 2 points and two had them even. In the other thirteen, Harris was ahead by 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 3, 1, 2, 5, 1, and 2 points. That’s stunning, and it makes his answer to the reporter he insulted a lie.

Trump’s not out campaigning for several reasons. One is that his narcissistic bubble of confidence has been punctured by Harris’ meteoric rise in popularity. Many who know him well, including most recently, Vincent Scaramucci, report Trump is scared. He has never been able to face a strong, competent woman, and the idea of having to compete with a biracial woman whose parents were nonwhite immigrants has him unhinged.

Harris has taken the age issue away from him – he’s nineteen years older than she is, and as his rants are becoming more detached from reality, his age is showing. It’s the same Trump we’ve seen for nine years, but his act is stale, and few outside his base are buying it. Calling Harris incompetent, claiming she’s not smart enough to be interviewed by the press, and referring to her as stupid is as counterproductive as it is offensive. He also warned that America is on the precipice of both a second 1929-style Great Depression and nuclear war. The first assertion is too absurd to merit a response; the second might contain a grain of truth, but the blame belongs to Iran and Russia, not Harris or Joe Biden.

Trump lost any perceived advantage on the southern border issue thru his own action when he forced House Speaker Mike Johnson to scuttle the bipartisan Senate bill that satisfied almost every Republican demand. With Mark Kelly, whose stance on the border is popular in Arizona, behind her and strong positive statements by both Harris and Walz, Trump’s talking points are vapid. Everyone who tracks border happenings has reported that illegal crossings and the number of asylum seekers have dropped dramatically since President Biden’s Executive Order on the border. Phoenix’s mayor, Kate Gallego told CNN that it’s safer in Arizona than it’s been in years, and she loves the idea of a former prosecutor and State Attorney General who has prosecuted illegal border crossers running for president against someone who talks about it but has no record of accomplishment.

About those poll numbers, I have previously suggested that polls cannot be trusted to be accurate in 2024 because there is no evidence that their sampling universes are representative of registered voters. That’s still true, but whatever bias exists in the sampled populations has far less impact on month-to-month trends in the data. Even a skewed, unrepresentative sample that shows a massive swing in momentum like what Harris has generated in less than three weeks has credibility, as was proven in the final weeks of the 2016 election when Trump overcame Hillary Clinton’s lead and shocked the country.

Trump had his press conference, and the result was that his handlers and supporters are in complete disarray because he can’t or won’t control what comes out of his mouth. They’re terrified of putting him out in public – what might he say next? Mr. Scaramucci made an interesting comment about that during his interview. He said he doesn’t believe Trump is intentionally lying most of the time. Rather, the problem is that he’s mentally ill, and he distorts the truth in his own mind. I’d ask which is worse, a president who has no respect for truth or one who invents his own truth and isn’t even aware he’s doing it?

Kamala Harris must love watching Trump self-destruct and salivate over debating him.