Say It To My Face

Kamala Harris Breaks Trump's Spell

The nation lay in a restless trance under Donald Trump’s spell for almost a decade.

Like a gravid necromancer reading from an ancient grimoire bound in human skin, he summoned dark and terrible eldritch forces from the vast and terrible deep. Trump held the people in thrall with one fundamental illusion: strength. The spell made friend and foe alike believe he was invulnerable and that no attack would ever stick, that no truth was ever bigger than his lies, that his base was immutable, hypnotized by his star power, his manic cult leader affect, and his appeal to their basest angels.

It convinced the media that his fell movement of low brutality and grunting populism was unstoppable and that they must be treated as if they were true America. It was simply assumed that Trump in 2024 was the same man as he was in 2016, and that’s a terrible bet.

You could see the spell breaking last night in Atlanta. A roaring, hyped crowd of 11,000 people in Georgia, a state that was off the swing state map but was firmly put back on it this week, was a sight to behold.

I want to break down the current state of play for you on a few axes.

Kamala, The Happy Warrior, Looks The Part

First, 11,000 people in an arena with less than 48 hours notice is a big deal. Despite the clever camera and advance-guy tricks, Donald Trump’s rallies tend to be a few hundred people in most cases, a few thousand at best. I promise you, Vice President Harris could replicate that event tonight at any of a dozen venues in cities across America. The event was perfectly lit, staged, and set.

Great music, great energy, and great laughs in one moment are something Democrats forgot existed.

This is a million-dollar picture. Photo: AP

As for the future President, her hair, makeup, and suit were perfection. (Before anyone squawks about sexism, these things matter in a campaign.) The picture was exactly what it should have been: strong, kinetic, confident, fired-up, happy, and ready to take on Trump.

Next, the speech was tight — 20 minutes is a great length in today’s social media culture — full of good grace notes, hope, energy, and optimism. It also had a singular, glove-to-the-face-choose-your-seconds smack.

One more note: the only flags seen in the Harris event were American flags, not the idolatrous and shameful abuses of the flag at the hands of MAGA weirdos. The sooner we see the last Chinese sweatshop-made flag besmirched by Trump’s goon visage, the better.

The contrast between the competent, happy Harris campaign and Donald Trump’s political gulag in Palm Beach could not be more apparent.

Kamala Did What He Hates Most

Nothing enrages Trump like defiance, particularly from women. By now, you’ve all seen this clip, but I think it’s important you watch it carefully. This wasn’t a throwaway but a clear, sharp attack on Donald Trump’s most delicate valence: his ego.

She knows what and who she’s running against.

As an anthropologist of Trump’s many moods, the challenge to his manhood of “say it to my face” has been, I can assure you, chewing on his brain like a rat gnawing at an electrical cable. His team is telling him that he can’t afford a debate embarrassment. He knows he can’t afford a debate embarrassment.

I think deep down in his lizard-brain he also knows that the debate-stage intimidation tactics he tried against Hillary Clinton—interrupting, lurking over her shoulder, and other capers—won’t work.

But now, he knows he’s being drawn into a debate, and it’s making him furious.

Freefall: Trump and His Campaign Are In Trouble.

The vaunted Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles campaign of Donald Trump is in freefall.

They’re running out of airspeed, altitude, and ideas and are not far from the campaign’s SSCBD moment. Trump’s campaign sprang more leaks in the last week than it did in the last year.

Their candidate isn’t helping.

Today’s disastrous, flaming dumpster fire event at the National Association of Black Journalists was so bad the Trump team pulled him off the stage.

When he claimed on the stage that Kamala Harris was Indian and became black, the audience was stunned. This event was the most disastrous moment of 2024 since Joe Biden’s debate appearance, and it will rank in the all-time top 10 worst presidential events in decades.

Aaron Rupar made a fantastic supercut:

They have no idea how to respond to Kamala Harris. None at all. This is a moment beyond all normal campaign logic. Trump’s answers on the stage showed he’d internalized one element of the campaign’s desperate attempt at recovery but botched it because he’s a racist crank.

He can’t take his eyes off her race and gender. For him, no one wants a black woman in power because that’s what he truly, deeply believes. He has less and less control over his affect, expressions, and speech.

One other note on Trump’s campaign infighting and blamestorming: they’re all livid about J.D. Vance as the single worst VP pick in modern history — and rightly so — but no one has a solution. Trump, I am told, is embarrassed and wants Vance to step away, but the campaign sees the disaster that would portend and is slow-rolling Trump and trying to distract him with shiny objects. Vice Presidents, as I’ve written before, rarely change the game. Vance is changing the game, and not in a good way.

She’s out raising millions of dollars. Trump is hawking a new line of Bitcoin-themed Trump sneakers.

Kamala Harris is uniting her party like I’ve never seen before. Donald Trump’s ostensible allies are starting to alter their campaign messages to, as the say, put a little daylight between themselves and Trump.

The best campaign in the world — and Trump’s campaign is a long way from that — can’t save a candidate in such an obvious, prompt, and deadly collapse.

The Polls Close Up

In discussions over the last year, I’ve battered my head against journalists of all stripes who pointed to Biden’s frankly grim approval ratings. We won’t be having those conversations any longer. Harris made up Biden’s deficit and either passed or tied Trump nationally and in swing states.

States coming into play include Georgia, North Carolina, and even…I find writing these words as unreal as you might in reading them…Florida is drifting toward, if you squint hard, its most competitive position since 2008. Ohio…home of famously anti-cat-lady VP candidate James DeSantis Vance (R-Mattress Firm)…has polling closing in on a tie.

I felt for a long time that this election would require us to pick the electoral college lock with a clever, fight-the-margins strategy in the swing states, resulting in another bloody and messy legal fight, this time against a better-funded, staffed, and organized Trump campaign machine.

But that’s changing now.

Every day that passes shows Trump with fewer and fewer electoral college critical path options. A few weeks ago, Trump’s team bragged that their Electoral College calculus gave them over 25 paths to victory. Some back-of-the-envelope math tells me they’re down to 7 or 8, if the current tightening in the polls is any indication.

She’s blown away Trump’s real leads in swing states, tying the ballgame before spending almost any of her considerable war chest.

It’s still a tight race everywhere, and no one should take the first week of polling and uplift for granted, but the opportunity is dawning on people that the evil wizard can be defeated. The necromancer who summoned so much evil into our lives is in the slow, painful process of being devoured by his own demons.

The fear of his dark, terrible magic is replaced by a grim determination to destroy him politically, end his ugly influence, and break the cult. The fight’s a long way from over, but the high priest of the MAGA cult is on the run.

The spell is broken.