Alan Zendell, October 21, 2024

People who are seriously concerned about the prospects of another Trump presidency are in woe-is-me mode as they watch Trump’s antics on the campaign trail become more erratic, profane, and deranged. Yet, the other half of the country thinks Trump is great entertainment. With fifteen days until the election ends (it’s already going on in several states,) it’s urgent that Kamala Harris’s campaign staff get their own heads on straight.

Trump is mentally ill and failing physically, but I don’t buy the hype that his bizarre behavior means he’s cognitively impaired. All the hand-wringing and lamenting over his inappropriate behavior isn’t doing Harris or her supporters any good. In fact, it’s helping Trump. Every time his words or actions stir up a media frenzy, (in other words, every day between now and November 5th,) it drowns out the serious message Harris offers.

We don’t know whether Trump is deranged or this is merely an extension of his ability to create chaos, and that only matters if it helps Harris find a path through the madness. That doesn’t address the question of why nearly half the country seems poised to vote for Trump. It’s an issue that will generate hundreds of scholarly books, as “experts” in human behavior seeking a new career path seize on analyzing Trump. But that will all occur long after this election has been decided, assuming Trump is unable to appoint a book-banning czar.

Whichever interpretation is correct, Trump is getting what he wants. He was crude and offensive at the Al Smith dinner, but despite all the criticism, he walked away with a photograph of himself and the Cardinal who hosted the event that he can display whenever he targets church groups. For nine years, the broadcast media have fallen for this trap, either deliberately or inadvertently enabling Trump’s chaos.

Albert Einstein said that continuing to do something that always leads to failure is the definition of insanity. Yet, that’s exactly what Harris’s campaign staff and all the rest of us have been doing. Calling Trump unfit and unhinged may be accurate, but it only seems to make his antics more entertaining. Forget about Trump’s and Harris’s bases for a moment. What are the few centrists and independents who have yet to make up their minds to think?

A discussion of Arnold Palmer’s penis won’t influence them any more than hearing Harris repeatedly tell them Trump is dangerous, no matter how true that is. More likely, Trump’s constant litany of apparent craziness will convince them to stay home on election day, which is precisely what Trump wants. Low turnout = Trump victory.

The urgent matter at hand is understanding Trump’s appeal and finding a way to counter it before it’s too late. Trump has shown himself to be a despicable human being who always puts himself first and has no concept of morality or decency. Foreign leaders are in two camps, one consisting of people like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Viktor Orban, and Kim Jong Un, who cozy up to Trump because they know they can manipulate him to their advantage. The other is the one where most of our allies sit. They are horrified by Trump, and as mystified as we are about how America got here.

How do we break through to voters who are still listening? Many of them will watch CNN’s Town Hall Wednesday evening. Harris’s team needs to prepare differently. When the inevitable question about inflation is asked, they must remember that her target audience is the well-educated center. She should play the videos from 2020, during the COVID lockdown, in which farmers told us that with markets closed they were having to destroy their herds and crops. They explained that everything would be dirt cheap in 2020, but in the following years they would have to replant and rebuild their herds from scratch.

With supply chain shortages, food and other vital commodities would be scarce and very expensive. Next, she could reprise videos of economists explaining how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine created a critical energy shortage that caused gasoline prices in America to exceed $5.00 a gallon. She should invite a reputable economist to explain why it takes time to counter runaway inflation, and how Biden/Harris’s policies brought inflation back to normal, while averting a recession. Record low unemployment, record high equity markets, lowering interest rates – that’s what voters care about.

When the January 6th insurrection comes up, Harris should replay the statements of Trump supporters like Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and MAGA Republicans running for the Senate who publicly lambasted Trump on January 7th, but now hope voters have forgotten. Finally, she should read choice excerpts from Project 2025, and identify which of Trump’s key allies wrote them. No noise, no hype, just a respectful discussion with people whose minds are still open.

The change in Americans’ temperaments that made so many of them adore Trump must remain a mystery for now. Harris and her supporters must reach the relatively sane middle, every day until November 5th.