One of the articles of faith about the 2020 election among the MAGA crowd is that Joe Biden couldn’t possibly have won the election because he “campaigned from his basement” and never spoke before the big crowds as Donald Trump did. Biden didn’t campaign from his basement, of course, but he did run a very non-traditional campaign because the whole country was under a modified lockdown due to the COVID 19 pandemic. Large indoor gatherings that did take place, such as the one Trump held in Tulsa during the summer were super-spreader events that ended up with many people getting sick and some dying. That fall, Donald Trump himself showed up at a presidential debate knowingly infected and he soon ended up in the hospital and came close to dying himself.
Unlike Trump, Biden followed the advice of the scientists and they found ways to campaign without exposing themselves and the public unnecessarily. Despite all that, Trump and the right wing media insisted that Biden must have cheated because he didn’t barnstorm all over the country.
So what are we to make of the fact that in this campaign Trump can barely rouse himself to leave his cushy surroundings at Mar-a-lago and is more likely to be found on the golf course than giving a speech or holding a rally. Sure, does that but at a much slower pace than he did in his first two campaigns. He’s doing some non-traditional media, appearing on podcasts and giving interviews over the phone or at Mar-a-lago and he’s appeared at some right wing media confabs and made a foray to a plant in Pennsylvania last week. But the events are few and far between compared to the past.
He even skipped the traditional labor day blitz that every presidential candidate does as the kick-off to the fall campaign. Even if they have nothing positive to say about unions, Republican candidates always take advantage of the fact that people have a day off and are waking up to the fact that the campaign has begun. They usually fly around to various venues and hold rallies or show up at the state fair, as Kamala Harris and Tim Walz did on Monday.
Trump did nothing. He didn’t hold even one public event and while UPI reported that he was to hold a video call with current and retired members of the United Auto Workers I can find no record of it happening. His only campaign event this whole week isn’t scheduled until Saturday in Wisconsin.
As mentioned, he is doing media but even that is far less energetic that what we’re used to seeing from him. Last night he did an obscure X interview show and seemed desultory and depressed. If it was anyone else I would have thought he’d popped a Xanax before he went on. And the rallies he is doing are boring rehashes of the same old tunes.
One could almost say that Trump is campaigning from his basement. The question is, why? He knows what it takes to campaign for president. It’s been his life’s work for the past decade.
I might guess that he’s still very spooked by the assassination attempt and is resistant to going before the public. I can’t say that I would blame him. It was a very close call and it would freak anyone out. (He would never admit that, of course.) Or maybe it’s just that his heart isn’t really in it now that he thinks the Supreme Court has given him a get-out-of-jail-free card with its immunity ruling.
It’s also possible that his age has caught up with him and he just doesn’t have the “strength and the stamina” to campaign properly anymore. It certainly appeared that way in the interview on X last night and the Moms for Liberty appearance a few days back. He has never looked so frail — and some of the things he is saying are simply delusional. For instance, at the Moms for Liberty gathering he made insane claims that schools are performing transgender surgery on kids:
Before Biden withdrew there was a lot of loose talk coming from the campaign that Democratic states like New Jersey and New Mexico were in play. That was always hype but they were extremely confident that they had the election in the bag. Today, not so much.
The Boston Globe reported that a top volunteer in New Hampshire had informed the staff that the campaign had determined that the state is no longer a battleground state. (That volunteer has been fired.)
And AdImpact, which tracks political advertising released some startling numbers on Monday:
You will notice that the Trump campaign is only competing in Pennsylvania and Georgia. All the other swing states are apparently being left to their own devices. This is surprising to say the least. They do have less money to play with than the Democrats but you’d think they’d at least try to hedge their bets. But the consensus is that they have decided that if they can hold all their 2020 states they will put all their money on picking up those two states which will bring them to exactly 270. If they lose either one (or N. Carolina) that’s the ballgame.
Just as likely they’re really just planning on a post election legal challenge in any or all of those states, claiming that the Democrats stole the election. You can certainly bet they’ll do it in Pennsylvania and Georgia where they are already plotting with local officials. Trump himself has said repeatedly that “our primary focus is not to get out the vote, it is to make sure they don’t cheat.”
If they can find a way to throw the election to the House, as they wanted to do in 2020, they will win and I kind of suspect that Trump would actually prefer to do it that way. It’s the ultimate power play, to make the Democrats lose through a post-election ploy that’s engineered by Trump and his cronies. In his twisted mind, I think that would even validate his Big Lie.
All of this probably explains why Trump isn’t really bothering to campaign much. He’ll spend some time in Pennsylvania and Georgia and make some perfunctory stops in some of the other swing states just to keep it close enough to contest. He’ll keep doing right wing media, the purpose of which is as much to keep his followers charged up about the alleged stealing as anything else. But unless he wins those two big states, which he might, he’s really preparing for the post election Big Lie Part II. He’s old and tired and at this point I think he’d rather whine than win.