Trump Is Suddenly Running Scared

[Bundbuster]

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/08/trump-polls-kamala-harris-vance/679333/

From the beginning, the campaign was going his way. Not anymore.

Somehow, it was just two weeks ago that Donald Trump headed into the Republican National Convention looking like a juggernaut. That all feels like a long time ago. As his campaign enters its final three months, Trump looks like a man off balance. His polling lead has evaporated, his campaign strategy is obsolete, and he’s flaunting his most offensive tendencies. “I want to be nice,” Trump said Saturday at a rally in Minnesota. “They all say, I think he’s changed. I think he’s changed since two weeks ago. Something affected him. No, I haven’t changed—maybe I’ve gotten worse, actually.”

Having built much of his campaign around Biden’s senescence, Trump now faces Vice President Kamala Harris as the presumptive Democratic nominee instead. The former president has seemed unsure of how to most effectively hit Harris and get off the back foot. He’s begun laying the groundwork to beg off a second debate, scheduled for September 10, and Harris has been happy to taunt him for it. In her first 10 days as the party’s standard-bearer, Harris has improved nearly every indicator for Democrats. She leads some national polls and has erased or closed the gap with Trump in swing-state surveys.

Meanwhile, many Republicans spent the past week grumbling about Senator J. D. Vance, Trump’s running mate. Vance’s selection was a signal of Trump’s confidence: The Ohioan is a MAGA hard-liner, meant to consolidate excitement in the Republican base. Instead, he has become a drag on the ticket. Now infamous for insulting “childless cat ladies,” he is the least popular running mate in recent history. Some observers even wondered whether Trump would replace him on the ticket. Instead, Trump outdid him. Appearing at the National Association of Black Journalists conference on Wednesday, Trump insulted the organization, stumbled over explaining what a “Black job” is, and vowed to pardon January 6 rioters. But the wildest remark came when he questioned whether Harris is actually Black. (She is the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father.)

“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” Trump said. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, but when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian, or is she Black?” Trump’s claim is not, for the record, remotely true: Harris has always talked about both sides of her heritage. Faced with widespread condemnation and warnings from Republicans that he’d gone too far, Trump stuck to the line later on Wednesday and yesterday. Finding himself in a hole, Trump tossed aside his shovel and reached for a jackhammer.