I came here to post exactly this. This line caused me to stop taking the entire article seriously.
The only thing working in Donald Trump’s favor was that he was able to convince independent voters that Biden is too old to run again, and even that was only having limited success until that disastrous debate performance where Biden seemingly confirmed everything Trump was saying about his mental capacity. That’s it. That’s the only thing that had been going in his favor, and even then it was only significantly in his favor for a couple of weeks until Biden finally dropped out.
Once Biden dropped out, taking the issues about his age with him, Trump was exposed. Voters who were now able to see beyond Biden’s age saw that Trump has nothing to offer them. Virtually everybody predicted what we’re seeing, even if they didn’t think it would happen this quickly.
Another thing this guy didn’t bring up is Project 2025.
That is literally the worst 900 pages of policy to hit before an election in the history of the US. Expect the month of October to be a non-stop blitzkrieg of the attack ads for it featuring Trump giving his little keynote speech at the Heritage Foundation din din.
There was a policy document called “Fightback!” published by the Australian Liberal Party (who were in opposition at the time) ahead of the 1993 federal election. The Labor government was behind in the polls, but they ran a massive scare campaign about the deeply unpopular policies in Fightback and managed to win a historic 5th term with a slightly increased majority.
The lesson both major parties took from that election was to never release detailed policies in advance of an election, because you give your opponent time to attack every detail and put you on the defensive (and if you’re defending, you’re losing). Publishing Project 2025 before the election may well turn out to be one of the biggest mistakes they made, because it’s given the Democrats the opportunity to get the news out about all the deeply unpopular things they want to do.
This is also a warning that even if Harris and the Democrats win this election Project 2025 isn’t necessarily dead, and they may learn to hide it better next time. The majority of policies in Fightback did end up happening to some degree over the following 30 years.
Actually… being a little charitable and assuming Luntz’s head isn’t just filled with wet newspapers here (which is maybe a little bit too charitable), we could say that maybe the issues he’s concerned with are, who’s going to give tax breaks to the rich people, who’s going to gut the federal agencies, who’s going to kneecap the IRS so it can’t go after rich tax cheats. Things like that that are highly of interest to this lumpy bad haircut criminal, his criminal friends, the criminals that run the media, and so on.
I think Trump is so bad that he will cause problems for even the people whose main political alignment is “who will stop making problems for me while I rape the working class and have peasant-hunting parties with all my criminal friends”. But I think a really surprising amount of the rich criminals somehow haven’t figured that out and are supporting Trump because they’re still all bent out of shape that Biden was raising their taxes and letting the FDA continue to exist and etc.
Well said.
Luntz isn’t an idiot. He’s a republican, but he’s a keen political analyst and very savvy about political messaging. He’s the person that advocated “climate change” over “global warming,” for instance.
And, not for nothing, he literally partially blames his two strokes on not speaking out forcefully enough against Trump.
The pollster is kind of right - on paper the economy should be an issue in Trumps favour. We’ve just come out of a period of high inflation and people are feeling the cost of living. Immigration is also supposedly an issue that should be favouring Trump.
That’s not to say that Trump has the answers - he does not - but in a conventional election cycle he would be in the stronger position as the “outsider” attacking the incumbents.
Yet instead the entire news cycle is dominated by Harris and Walz at the moment. Republicans are desperate for Trump to get back “on message” but instead he’s flailing around as his ego can’t take the Dems attack lines, biden dropping out and Harris apparent popularity.
So although the pollster is obviously biased as a Republican, I think he’s right in the sense this not playing out like a conventional election.
Also, I have to say as an outside observer from the UK, the excitement around Harris reminds me of Obama’s first election. Obama came from no where in the primaries and huge momentum built behind him as the hope candidate. Harris has emerged much later in the election cycle, and oddly she feels like the exciting unknown candidate even though she is Vice President. Yet it does feel like the momentum is with her and she drawing in people who have been otherwise alienated by the republican / democrat arguments over the last 4 years.
I have no idea if it’ll carry on to election day. But I must say on a personal note, the more I see of Harris, the more I warm to her. I suspect a lot of voters will feel the same. Her humour, and warmth are in stark contrast to Trumps meanness and petty nastiness. I’m beginning to think Trump is not capable of beating Harris.
Harris has emerged much later in the election cycle, and oddly she feels like the exciting unknown candidate even though she is Vice President.
Every day I’m waiting to wake up and read about the fever finally breaking and the collective illusion shattering about this. But she also genuinely acts differently (better!) now than compared to only a few years ago, almost like she’s been spending the time as VP away from the spotlight secretly taking public speaking classes or something.
I really hope this momentum carries.
