This is an adapted excerpt from the Aug. 29 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
November’s election is quickly approaching and, while the head-to-head polls between Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump still show a very close race, there’s at least one metric where the Democrats appear to now be ahead: enthusiasm.
According to a new Gallup poll, 78% of Democrats say they are more enthusiastic than usual to vote in this year’s election. Only 64% of Republicans say the same.
There are a lot of reasons for this enthusiasm gap, but I think one of the biggest factors is pretty simple: the 78-year-old Trump is running a very low-energy campaign. The candidate himself effectively disappeared off the campaign trail for much of this month, opting to send his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, to campaign on his behalf instead and … it’s not going great.
On Thursday, Vance was greeted with boos as he took the stage at a firefighters union event in Boston. “Sounds like we got some fans and some haters. That’s OK,” he told the crowd. That came just days after another awkward encounter — this time involving Vance weirding out a doughnut store employee in Georgia — made headlines.
Perhaps Trump felt the need to bail out his running mate because he actually held two swing-state events on Thursday — a packed schedule for a 78-year-old. Although, the former president was an hour late to his scheduled event in Michigan.
Trump has been doing the bulk of his campaigning from safe spaces, like a softball interview with Dr. Phil, in which he said if Jesus counted the votes in California, he would win the state, and, of course, social media.
Now, if you don’t seek this stuff out — and why would you — it can be easy to miss just how much time Trump spends on his social media site. He’s often posting and re-posting dozens of times a day, and much of it is his usual unhinged rants about deep-state conspiracies against him.
But he also found the time to share QAnon content and a really ugly, misogynistic meme about Harris. The former president also shared an ad he cut for “digital trading cards,” likely an attempt to grift more cash from his most ardent followers.
Given how scattered and unhinged this latest Trump campaign has been, perhaps it should come as little surprise that some folks are openly asking if he might drag the whole Republican Party down with him.
On Wednesday, NewsNation’s Leland Vittert asked Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, rather bluntly, if Trump was becoming a drag on the GOP. Cruz told the anchor he didn’t believe the former president was jeopardizing Republicans on the state level but stressed, “It’s incumbent on the Trump campaign to focus on the issues, on how people’s lives are worse off under Kamala Harris than they were under Donald Trump.”
Well, if Republicans are relying on Trump to stay on message to save their fortunes in November … it might be time to look for a new strategy.
Join Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow and many others on Saturday, Sept. 7, in Brooklyn, New York, for “MSNBC Live: Democracy 2024,” a first-of-its-kind live event. You’ll get to see your favorite hosts in person and hear thought-provoking conversations about what matters most in the final weeks of an unprecedented election cycle. Buy tickets here.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
