A pundit who’s prolific here on Substack (let’s call him
) calls people who go to Trump rallies “clapping lemmings” who “surrendered their agency, intellect and integrity to the tangerine hustler turned fascist leader long ago.”Meanwhile, Brett Baier’s question to Kamala Harris about whether Trump voters are “stupid” made it to the level of SNL parody, but gave the real-life Harris a chance to give the correct answer:
Oh, God. I would never say that about the American people. And, in fact, if you listen to Donald Trump, if you watch any of his rallies, he’s the one who tends to demean and belittle and diminish the American people. He is the one who talks about an enemy within, an enemy within – talking about the American people, suggesting he would turn the American military on the American people.
Let’s consider the issue of stupidity. Napoleon Bonaparte said, “In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.” (It’s even a fridge magnet). True enough. But while stupidity has been at the root of much successful comedy, I’m not sure it explains our politics.
Speaking of comedy, the first time I saw Steve Martin was a stand-up routine he did on a summer replacement show for the Smothers Brothers (Happy Halloween!) that started about how the public has a short memory but then took a turn when he figured out that his audience might be stupid.
“The public has a short memory. That's why all these big stars do these crazy, terrible things and two years later they're back in the biz, you know. 'Cause the public has a short memory. Let me give you a little test, okay? This is my thesis -- the public has a short memory and, like-- How many people remember, a couple of years ago, when the Earth blew up? How many people? See? So few people remember. And you would think that something like that, people would remember. But NOOO! You don't remember that? The Earth blew up and was completely destroyed? And we escaped to this planet on the giant Space Ark? Where have you people been? And the government decided not to tell the stupider people 'cause they thought that it might affect-- [dawning realization, looks around] Ohhhh! Okay! Uh, let's move on!”
Donald Trump’s audiences aren’t all “lemmings,” or stupid. They might just want to have fun, and they think Donald Trump is a riot. (Poor choice of words, that). They go to rallies to hear the hits, buy the T-shirts, laugh at the punchlines.
If politics has, for most people, descended to the level of a WWE smackdown, we can’t expect too much impassioned belief in the system or in those seeking political power. Trump’s audiences are coming for the laughs, but Kamala Harris is striking a deeper chord. Watching her rallies you get the feeling the smackdown days may be winding down.
So let’s not ask stupid questions about stupid people.
The question I’m asking—having settled the issue of who’s ahead in this election—
is whether young people will defy history, and translate the surge in voter registration into actual votes. They’re waking up to the possibility—not perceived since Barack Obama—that politics doesn’t have to be stupid.
I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating:
The U.S. has one of the lowest rates of youth voter turnout in the world. Before the 2022 election, 40% of Gen Z voters told Harvard’s Institute of Politics that they intended to vote. The actual turnout was 23%.
But voters over 65 are always the largest share. Seventy-six percent of them came out to vote in 2020.
They’re the ones electing officials who won’t vote for gun safety, health care, voting rights, the environment, gender equality and racial justice, and all the other issues that younger voters care about.
A reader of this newsletter has assembled some more facts like these, and some helpful suggestions about what you can to make a big difference on November 5 at yourVOTEyourFUTURE.org.
Taking constructive action is much more productive than worrying about the polls. I’d rather focus on picking up a Senate seat or two, to give President Harris a functioning majority.
As David Corn writes in “I’m Fed Up With the Obsession Over Polls,”
Polls, to be hyperbolic about it, have ruined American politics. Okay, a lot has ruined American politics. But polls have certainly made American politics less enjoyable. Many of those who follow politics—and not enough citizens do—have become slaves of polling, overly obsessed with these surveys and palpitating over the slightest changes.
Polls don’t matter. Or maybe they do. It depends on your definition of “matters.” By all measurements, this is a close race. What else do you need to know? The candidates are within a few points of each other in the national polls and the swing state polls. But the difference is usually within the reported margin of error. That means the poll that has just caused you heartburn may not have any value in terms of telling us what will happen on Election Day.
Subscribe to David Corn’s Our Land here.
And maybe go back to my “meditation for nervous poll-watchers” in which I cited Dan Pfeiffer and Larry Sabato on why they’re in agreement with David and are fed up with polls too.
Like David, I’ve been getting calls from anxious relatives and friends, some who actually read this newsletter, who still are freaked out about the polls (see Pfeiffer and Sabato above) and don’t believe their own eyes and ears when they see a presidential candidate self-destruct on a daily basis.
(I’m not sure I’ll be able to ask for an Arnold Palmer ever again.)
But you should believe what you see. Donald Trump is a terrible candidate, and his base isn’t big enough to win him this election.
If your response is, “but Hillary Clinton,” ask yourself if any of the 2016 voters who stayed home or voted for a third party because they “knew” she was going to win anyway, are going to make that mistake again.
And watch more clips of Trump like the ones Kamala Harris is showing at her rallies.
I’m wondering what Donald Trump’s rally this Sunday at Madison Square Garden will be like—but I think we can assume it’s not going to be pretty. As Sidney Blumenthal writes of what he predicts will be Donald Trump’s “most unsettling spectacle,”
For the apotheosis of his entire “poisoning of the blood” campaign, Donald Trump has planned a spectacular extravaganza in Madison Square Garden on 27 October, a week before the election…
Trump’s rally, through the rhyme of history, will be a rebuke to the greatest campaign speech delivered by Franklin D Roosevelt, which, though given 88 years ago in the Garden on 31 October 1936, rings remarkably contemporary, a speech for “the restoration of American democracy” and its “preservation”…
Three years after FDR spoke at the Garden, another rally was held there, on 20 February 1939, under the sponsorship of the German American Bund, raising the slogan of “America First”, to advance the great replacement theory that Jews and other “inferior races” were displacing white Aryans. The Nazis claimed the mantle of true Americanism and Christian nationalism. Swastikas framed a gigantic portrait of George Washington as the backdrop to the stage. From the balcony hung a banner: “Stop Jewish Domination of Christian America.” “Wake up!” shouted the Führer of the Bund, Fritz Kuhn, “you, Aryan, Nordic and Christians, to demand that our government be returned to the people who founded it!”
Will Trump be able to fill the Garden? What will the response be from New Yorkers, and the police? Will we hear the January 6 anthem?
Could get pretty stupid.