Happy Election Day

If you’re anything like me, you arose from your slumber today with a deep sense of foreboding. OK: maybe that’s a bit over-dramatic. I actually don’t think I’m “worried” in the sense that most people are probably worried, because I’ve made a deliberate effort to emotionally detach from any investment in the election outcome. So it’s more of a generalized bleakness that captures my attitude. Despair and exasperation at how poor the coverage of this election has been, and dismay that so many people who I had once thought were also critically detached surveyors of the American political scene have converted into dedicated partisans for the Republican Party.

Some might want to disassociate the Republican Party as such from Donald Trump for the purposes of self-branding, because it makes them feel better to think they’re fighting “the establishment” (now a painfully meaningless term) by voting to restore Republican executive power. But rarely in American history has there been a politician who so unilaterally dominates one political party as Trump now dominates the GOP. In fact, Trump’s control of the GOP could well be without historical precedent, having obtained the party’s presidential nomination on three consecutive occasions. The man can pick and choose Republican congressional primary winners with a single Truth Social post — including ousting incumbents, as he did earlier this year with Bob Good in Virginia. Vast swathes of right-wing and right-adjacent media are financially dependent on vigorously supporting him. Perhaps the closest parallel is Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Democrats, although the Democratic Party was far less ideologically homogenous in the 1930s than the Republican Party in the 2020s.

Meanwhile the Democrats are running on fumes, hanging by a thread, pleading with Bush Republicans to please back them because Trump is so mean, blah blah racism January 6. They’re still whinging about every off-color Trump remark, like they’ve been stuck in arrested development for eight years.

Kamala Harris spoke for a brisk and largely contentless 18 minutes last night in her final speech of the campaign; Trump droned on for 1 hour and 52 minutes. Earlier in the day I attended Trump’s rally in Reading, PA. Behind me a Spanish-speaking lady cheered with gusto as one of Trump’s introducers, Marco Rubio, addressed Latinos in Spanish.

One of the final Trump Rallies (at least for now) in Reading, PA — November 4, 2024

Also making a special appearance at the rally was Mike Pompeo, whom Trump curiously decided to put front and center on the final day of campaigning. Trump called out to Pompeo by name, and had him stand up for a round of applause. Later, Pompeo spoke at Trump’s rally in Pittsburgh, reminiscing fondly about how he was Trump’s most loyal confidant in the first Administration, and expressing conspicuously direct knowledge about what policies would be undertaken in a second. Is Pompeo now part of the heroic Deep State Avengers squad that we’re told by the likes of RFK Jr. are getting ready to dismantle the Deep State? Wow. Incredible.

I’ve been as gobsmacked as anyone about the Kamala campaign parading around with Liz Cheney in the final weeks, and valiantly defending her honor against Trump’s kabuki-theater taunts. I even asked Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro about this Cheney-heavy messaging strategy, to which he replied: “I think that’s a question for the campaign as to their rationale.” When I clarified that I was asking for his own reaction to the Kamala campaign’s strategy, he said: “I’m not going to second guess to a campaign with 72 hours to go. They’ve made the decisions that they’ve made.” Not exactly the most rousing endorsement from a person who is one of Kamala’s most prominent national surrogates, and was nearly selected as Vice President.

But someone’s going to have to explain to me the functional policy difference between Kamala parading around with Liz Cheney, and Trump parading around with Mike Pompeo, Marco Rubio, and Tom Cotton, all of whom were present at the rally I attended yesterday as featured Trump endorsers. It couldn’t be more obvious that the supposed Trump-Cheney feud is bereft of actual policy content, but nobody other than me seems interested in pointing this out. I’m not a martyr or anything, but I have to admit it is rather maddening.

Also, the pompous proclamations that restoring Republican executive power will safeguard “free speech” in the United States is comically belied by Republicans waging what has to be one of the fiercest attacks on political speech in modern history: that is, speech critical of Israel. Not that the Democrats haven’t also encroached upon speech, usually in slightly subtler and arguably more pernicious ways, but let’s not be deluded about the “binary choice” on offer here — if you’re determined to be a “binary thinker” on such matters. Trump is explicitly pledging to use coercive state power to more aggressively crack down on “anti-Semitic” political speech.

I published an article yesterday for Newsweek on “undecided voters” in Pennsylvania, after having spoken to a fair number of them. Yes, they exist, but their profile is substantially different than often assumed: by and large these voters are not “undecided” between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, but undecided whether to vote at all, because they are (rationally) disengaged from the election process and fed up with the constant onslaught of billionaire-funded partisan propaganda.

My tentative theory is that these voters tend to lean Trump, when pressed, and could possibly be “turned out” by a competent Republican vote-mobilizing operation, which it’s very unclear exists, despite the enormous amounts of money poured into the Trump/GOP apparatus.

From the article:

“My thing is, if I vote, does it change anything?” said Sergio Martinez, an Amazon warehouse worker in Bethlehem, PA. “Does it make a difference? ‘Cause they gonna do what they want to do no matter what.” If prodded, Martinez comes across as an eminently persuadable voter for Trump; he said Harris “seems like she’s always lying,” and reported positive recollections of the economy during Trump’s first term. But even with a negative attitude toward Harris and a somewhat favorable attitude toward Trump, he was doubtful that voting was worth his time.

Martinez is representative of a large and untapped pool of potential GOP voters who say they’d prefer Trump, but lack sufficient motivation to go out and actually vote for him.

“I don't believe in the system at all,” said Jesse, a 25-year old hotel worker from Phoenixville, PA. “If I didn’t understand that the process of voting is kind of useless and I was plugged in, I would choose Trump, probably,” he said. “The media atmosphere is primarily liberal and it’s really annoying.”

Jesse, who declined to provide his last name, may well be the prototypical “low propensity” voter that a competent Republican machine would be working overtime to turn out right now: young, male, fed up with monocultural liberal mores, and seeking an alternative. But instead, Jesse says he is unlikely to vote this week.

“I didn't have any problems when Trump was in—I thought he was fine before, but I don’t really know who's doing what this year. I just don’t keep up with it,” Farah Washington, of Norristown, PA, told me as she was shopping with her nine-year-old son at Walmart. “If I had to pick one, I would go back with Trump.” As for Kamala Harris, Washington said, “She just seems funny to me”—especially how Harris acquired the position she’s now in. But Washington says she probably won’t end up voting. She is yet another would-be Trump voter who has evidently slipped through the cracks.

I also guest-hosted “System Update” for Glenn Greenwald again last night, seizing the reins of the Special Election Eve Edition of the program. Guests were Briahna Joy Gray and Zaid Jilani. You can watch here.

And here’s a compilation of interviews I did with a random cross-section of Pennsylvania voters.

See you on the other side…

---