Republicans are running a skeleton campaign
I’m sure many in the media will say this must mean that Joe Biden is in trouble. Isn’t everything? But it just ain’t so. This is not good news for Trump I don’t care what anyone says:
Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign called itself a “juggernaut” in May of that year, on par with a planet-destroying Death Star that was “firing on all cylinders.”
Trump’s 2024 campaign has traded Star Wars metaphors for talk of a “leaner” and “more efficient” operation, with less real estate, fewer employees and greater dependence on outside groups.
“We’re focused on quality over quantity. I mean, how novel a concept,” top strategist Chris LaCivita told the crowd of top donors May 4 at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., according to attendees.
The shift comes as President Biden’s campaign and its allies, buoyed by incumbency, have been moving in the opposite direction, building a more expansive operation sooner than in 2020. Strategists for both major parties expect Democrats to raise and spend more than Republicans over the coming months, a dynamic that has been magnified by the significant legal costs Trump’s fundraising apparatus has absorbed to defend him in state and federal courts.
Trump trying to bribe the oil industry for a billion dollars is more evidence of this “quality over quantity” strategy, amirite?
Trump won spending less money than Clinton in 2016 so the conventional wisdom is that he has some magical abilities that make him beyond any of the usual campaign necessities and requirements. But that was then and this is now. Trump is a known quantity today, the media is treating him critically, he’s been sued for half a billion dollars for fraud, is indicted on very serious charges and is not running against a woman that many voters loathed with a singular passion usually reserved for serial killers. It is a different day and I’m not sure that Trump failing to put together a real campaign is the put-away shot too many people think it is.