First, a correction. When Trump was speaking at the Believers Summit, he said “I’m a Christian”, not “I’m not [a] Christian”. To quote Dr. Evil, “Yeah… right…”
Second, he’s still trying to backtrack away from Project 2025. The more research that is done on what’s been published, the less and less beneficial it looks. He has his own Agenda47, which is similar and has quite a bit of overlap but has more policies.
Third, Biden’s sticking around through the rest of his term. There were calls from Speaker Mike Johnson and others that he should resign. “If he’s not fit to run for president, he’s not fit to be president.” By now, you know his decision to end his campaign was along the lines of “I know I can do this, but someone else can do it better”, which became Kamala Harris.
It was pointed out by Farron Cousins that if Biden had resigned and Harris was sworn in as president, that would make her the 47th president. As a result, all the money spent by Trump over the years marketing himself as the 47th president would have been wasted. I think all the merchandise would also serve as a reminder that he failed to keep yet another promise since he’s always presented it as a given rather than a possibility. That makes it about the same as a promise.
Biden not resigning is also good because it allows Harris to focus on the campaign and she’s doing quite well at it. She has her own strengths, but she’s also aided by Trump’s campaign being built around only taking on Biden and they’re having to scramble to find new messaging about her.
They also can’t use drumbeat anymore of Biden being the head of “the Biden crime family”, a family, as the GOP tells it, has crimed more crime than anyone’s ever crimed in the history of crime.
Pivoting to attack Harris is not going good so far. They’ve tried she laughs or cackles too much. Trump’s relying on his standard tactic of calling her names, recycling (I think) “crooked” that he used for Hillary and Biden and adding “lyin’” to her name. They might be having a little bit of success with some of her policies and stances in the past.
In contrast, Harris’ team is doing better. They’re more responsive in their responses and more on target. Whereas Trump will spend hours ranting over something, often staying up past midnight to do it, what’s coming from her side hits home better in simpler and more effective ways. One political cartoonist took “Lyin’ Kamala” and flipped it around to “Lion Kamala”.
Case in point about being more on target is calling Republicans “weird”. Trump loves to call people a “loser”, which is meant to discredit them. What we’ve seen over the years is more and more evidence that that’s projection by him, stemming from a fear of being a loser himself. This time, it’s the Republicans that are providing the evidence that “weird” is accurate and better than just calling them “extremists”. Take another look at pictures of Trump hugging and kissing the US flag or mimicking struggling to lift something or doing that thing with his hands that looks like playing the accordion or the monkey banging two cymbals together. Then ask yourself the question, “Doesn’t that look weird?”
The Harris campaign raised $310M in the first two weeks of its existence compared to $135M for Trump for all of July. Almost all of the donors gave less than $200 each, and of that group, around 90% are first-time donors that hadn’t given Biden or Trump anything. That’s a good sign.
One of the biggest things dragging down the Trump campaign is who he picked to be his VP running mate. That person was supposed to be good luck for Trump’s ship. Instead, they’re really starting to look like an albatross.
Hoo boy. Where to begin?
I guess we’ll start with the decision. Trump was all set to pick someone else, a governor with a lot of political experience and money behind him, and strengths that would bolster the Trump campaign where they needed it. But in a shining example of how Trump only hires the best people, he instead decided to listen to Don Jr. and Eric, and they convinced him to pick JD Vance.
Because of him listening to his sons with about zero political experience instead of people that have actual political experience, Trump has a VP pick with just two years of political experience and doesn’t add anything of substance. It’s a net gain of zero that won’t help. It’s maintaining the status quo to make his MAGA supporters happy.
It’s actually a net loss of several points. We’re at -1 already because of Don Jr. and Eric. It could be at -2 because of how many times Vance has changed his name, but going by your initials and your mother changing husbands a few times are valid reasons. It’s not like George Santos, who appeared to be changing his name due to alleged lawbreaking.
The actual -2 is Vance’s political beliefs. Just like Lindsey Graham, Vance has completely changed his beliefs and stances from being resolutely anti-Trump to resolutely pro-Trump with no explanation of why or no believable explanation. He hasn’t said, “Yes, that is what I believed at the time, but here’s what I learned since then that showed me I was wrong about Trump and now I can honestly support him.” This is leading people to say that Vance doesn’t have any actual convictions or beliefs and will change to what he thinks will help him at any given moment.
For -3, we have the fact that Vance’s wife is of Indian descent (India, not Native American). He’s Scots-Irish. Their three kids are a blending of the two. Trump has just started going after Kamala Harris, saying that she used to be Indian until she “turned Black” a few years ago. Vance will be asked about that, especially in light of his own family, and very likely will waffle about as he tries to avoid making his boss mad.
Next up at -4 is Vance’s past and present statements about children. In very broad terms, he is saying that only children that are your own flesh and blood have the most meaning and therefore, you have the most meaning. If you adopt children or you get step-children through marriage, that doesn’t count as much. If you don’t have any children, regardless of the reason why, you don’t have a stake in the future so you don’t mean as much as people with kids do.
He has also said that your children should have a vote, but since they can’t legally vote, you as the parent will have control over their votes. This gives you extra votes simply because you had kids and makes your kids’ political opinions and beliefs worthless. You could override them by voting for someone different than they want. Under this system, having kids artificially inflates your voting capability over those without kids.
According to Vance, this country is run by “childless cat ladies”, which includes men, who are miserable and in turn, are making the country miserable. It’s more conspiracies, blame-casting and demonizing that we’ve seen before.
Vance isn’t backing off of any of that and is instead doubling down on it. His stances on children are being ripped apart and the more he stands by them, the worse it will be for him. But now that he’s Trump’s VP pick, he can’t back down because that would be showing weakness. Trump doesn’t show weakness, so Vance can’t, either.
Hey, I just thought of something. Three somethings, actually.
- In a two parent household where a woman and a man have a child, does the mother get control of the child’s vote until the child is old enough to vote for themselves, or does the father? If it has to be one or the other, shouldn’t it be the mother because her worth is being determined by whether or not she bears a child?
Or do the parents work together to control the child’s vote? What if they somehow disagree on who to vote for on behalf of the child?
Or does the mother get an extra vote via the child and the father also gets an extra vote via that same child, which then merges back into a single vote when the child is old enough to vote?
- The 2x vote bonus would be problematic in the event of one parent’s death or divorce. Well, no, scratch divorce because Republicans are working to get rid of no-fault divorces, which would be step towards no divorces of any kind. So let’s say one parent dies. If the survivor remarries, does their new spouse get a bonus vote from their new step-child? Probably not since flesh and blood children are more important, according to Vance.
- What happens if both parents die? Who then votes for the child that isn’t old enough yet? According to Vance, parents adopting kids aren’t as worthy as the flesh and blood parents were. What if the child stays in foster care though at least one election cycle? Do they just not get to vote?
Former Representative Tim Ryan, who is from Ohio like Vance is, said something on Saturday, July 27th that could be a death blow to what Vance has been saying: “Jesus did not have children”. While on Earth in human form, Jesus did not father any children. Going by what Vance says, Jesus is a lesser person than anyone else who bore or fathered a child.
That’s going to be tough for anyone who says they are a Republican or a Christian to counter. But as we’ve all seen, cognitive dissonance is strong in a lot of the Republican party, so they’ll find some way of explaining away what Vance says so that they can reconcile his statements as being correct while at the same time being firm in their beliefs about Jesus.
Time is running out to ditch Vance, but Trump won’t do it because that would be admitting he made a mistake, which would be showing weakness. And if there’s one thing about Trump, he never shows weakness, he never does anything wrong, and many of the things he does are perfect, like making phone calls.
He knows he made a mistake. He’ll just never say so or do anything about it, even if it means it sinks his campaign.
