Trump Fatigue goes up against the Feels Movement.
Two strange things are occurring at this juncture of the 2024 presidential race: the vice president of the current administration is running a change-agent outsider campaign, while the same ignorant, petulant, angry goof trying for his third shot at the prize is suddenly boring. Such is the vagaries of celebrity vibes. Who is this year’s flavor? There is no other way to frame this: this is officially a feels election now.
Harris is new. Trump is old. Harris gets 25,000 at her rallies and the guy who used to get that now attracts 1,400. The new candidate gets a 10-to-15-point bump approval on the same kickass economy that had President Joe Biden receiving a 20-point deficit. Trump, who’s economy was fair to middling, and most of it happening on the wind of the Barack Obama recovery from the 2008 banking crisis and the last part a complete meltdown due to the COVID pandemic, was somehow crushing Biden on that issue. By every measure, as written here for months, Biden’s economy is far superior to Trump’s, but Americans failed to cop to it. That is until Harris showed up.
I know Biden is old and had a terrible debate performance and appears to not have the stamina to take on this evil dipshit, but how did the administration suddenly get a fantastic economy?
Feels.
Now, despite my trenchant analysis here, I applaud the fickle nature of the voting public if it means Trump goes back to the golf course on November 6 and/or faces almost certain house arrest. I must admit that sending a racist/misogynist packing at the hands of a woman of color is yummy, but to be fair, this makes zero sense – beyond its Marshall McLuhan moment – the medium indeed is the message.
As discussed last week, Harris is our “joy” candidate. Her positivity is drowning out the rote angry rhetoric of Trump, and if this a cult of personality election, as 2016 surely was, then Trump has lost his mojo as “an outsider throwing stones” choice. Harris has stolen that mantle and is starting to edge into pop culture icon status. Which means, as the theory of cultural proximity insists, if someone goes up… someone must come down.
The reason I know this is that when it was Biden v Trump, the former president skated over his many faults. The entire story was Biden’s age. Now that there is a shiny new candidate across from him sucking up the limelight, people are reminded of how goddamn awful Trump is at campaigning and, of course, governing. Trump has never had an ideology; Hell, he was a liberal until 2010. He has no political platform; he bagged the usual Republican one and made everything about him. But now, no one really wants him – tepid ratings when he shows up on TV, lower turnout in his rallies, which show people leaving halfway through his tired rambles, and badly conducted and technically glitchy interviews with despised rich dinks like Elon Musk on his bilge-pumping X platform.
What we have here is good ol’ Trump fatigue. This happens to cult figures – they don’t fade away like old soldiers. One day you’re a thing. Next, you are not. So, the Republicans, who had ample opportunity since the horrors of January 6 to make sure this didn’t happen, are stuck with this sudden has-been as he drones on in stale speeches about “radical leftists” and worn-out eighties blather about “Commies” and rusty 2016 fear-mongering about the hordes of the Brown people coming for you, and how his opponent has a “low IQ.” All voters can see is corpulent geezer who is older today than Ronald Reagan, our oldest president when he left office after eight years in 1988.
Fatigue.
Back in 2016, when everyone beyond the New York/ New Jersey area fell for Trump’s bullshit about being a great businessman and all the other falderal that came with it, there was a sense that it didn’t matter that the candidate told everyone he saw thousands of Muslims cheering in the streets of Jersey City on 9/11when it didn’t happen. His kind of cranky, monosyllabic “winging it” was new to the political landscape. They kind of liked him and his moxie and “owning the libs,” challenging the press instead of pandering to it, but that was nine fucking years ago! Even the idea of vengeance for losing to Biden now that he has exited the race is a pointless dirge. It’s so bad, Trump peddles conspiracies that the president will take back the nomination.
So, here’s old Trump sinking badly in the polls, his rhetoric getting more racist and mean-spirited and unhinged by reality, once again, like the Muslims cheering in N.J., making up some shit about how there are no one actually at these massive Harris rallies… and each day it speeds his exodus from the public sphere.
The clearest stat of how Kamala Harris has upended this race in less than a month is that 70% of Americans have a fixed view of Donald Trump – positive or negative (mostly negative). However, six out of ten Americans want to know more about the vice president. A woman at the top of the ticket, who this time does not have the baggage of her husband having been president and the weight of being a public persona that has been dragged through the political mud for decades, appears strong, unflappable, and ready-for-primetime. Kamala Harris has grabbed that impenetrable celebrity veneer once enjoyed by Trump, but unlike Trump, comes with substance and a history of actually winning elections.
Really, what does that matter when you got a lock on feels and you’re rolling in accolades? I expect this to wane, like all pop culture movements, but the idea that somehow Trump will regain his hold on the zeitgeist is no longer a factor.
Nothing could stop this craziness for nine years – elections, scandal, impeachment, high crimes.
‘Twas boredom that killed the beast.
