Beyond Weird

Susan Estrich on Oct 17, 2024

It started as a joyful campaign. When President Joe Biden dropped out, Kamala Harris, the president's pick and soon after the pick of every prominent Democrat, quickly secured the nomination. No one put themselves up against her. It was a relief and a joyful coronation. Her vice presidential nominee was the salt of the earth. Coach Tim. The convention was brilliant. Trump was "weird," not dangerous. She topped him in the debate. She should be comfortably ahead.

She isn't.

I woke up one morning last week and it was crystal clear. She could lose.

Easily.

She's struggling to put together the Biden coalition. Hispanics are dicey. Black men are dicey. White men even more so. The group where she's doing better than Biden is college-educated voters. The elites, who still get their news from the mainstream media, not TikTok or Twitter.

Last week, I suggested, only half in jest, that a pro-Harris super PAC should buy time to broadcast the lowlights from Trump's latest rally speeches so people could see for themselves how far off the deep end he has gone. This week, the Harris campaign itself showed a clip of him at a rally, ranting and raving.

As the campaign has gone on, Trump has gone crazier and crazier. He has threatened to use the U.S. military against his enemies, the enemies from within. He sees an interview he doesn't like and calls for the network to lose its license. He talks like a fascist. He wants to be the dictator for the day. He wants revenge against his opponents, threatens to put them in jail. He refuses to say he will peacefully abide by the election results. He claims that in 2020, he peacefully gave up power. Jan. 6 didn't happen, and no one died. Lies. He promises mass deportations of immigrants who are here legally. And he dances instead of answering questions.

He is not just weird. He is downright scary.

And too old to be president.

As people age, they do not change. They just become more so.

Trump has always been a thin-skinned egomaniac and a major league bully, enamored of authoritarians, with the personality of an oligarch and a victim. Now he is more so. He has always said inappropriate things, and now it is so common that the mainstream media hardly bothers to report it. And those who get their news on social media, as a majority of Americans do, get pitched by the algorithms they favor and tune in to alternate realities. We don't operate from a common sense of reality, which makes it even easier to remain polarized.

And what's Harris to do? Joyful is nice when you're 10 points up. Joyful was not enough. The race is tight. The polls, even the good ones, can easily be wrong. Everything is within the margin of error.

Harris and Walz and the entire team of surrogates need to up their game. They need to take a harder line, be more aggressive. This is not a joyful election. Everyone loves Trump, according to him, or else he hates them and expresses that hate.

Kamala Harris talks tougher on immigration than any Democrat in recent history, and yet she still speaks a different language than Trump. Out of control nativism, the politics of villainization and hate, is what he spews. The man who favors anti-Muslim bans is winning the votes of Arab Americans in Michigan. The man who damns Central and South American immigrants as rapists and murderers is winning the votes of first-generation immigrants who found a path to citizenship.

Are they so afraid of a woman president?

President Barack Obama challenged Black men to get on board. How can they vote against a Black woman? And how many more are planning to do so, and not telling the pollsters? Hillary lost because she was Hillary, and because of James Comey, but also because she was a woman.

Trump has been calling Harris names and questioning her intelligence and toughness since this began. He is a one-man misinformation campaign. Voters don't really know her that well. If she is the issue -- and not Trump -- she could lose. Sadly, this is going to get uglier. It has to.

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