Suddenly, criticizing the Trump/Vance ticket feels like punching down
As I write this, the Harris/Walz team is still shining like a new dime, to borrow a simile from Tom Waits. It’s late August, 2024, and they’ve only been a thing for a few weeks. In that time, Vice-President Harris has really come on strong — in a far more appealing and nimble way than expected — and Governor Walz has been so down to earth and warm that, despite not having heard of him a month ago, I feel like I’ve known him for years.
Together, they are, purely in terms of image and attitude, the perfect counterpoint to the Trump/Vance ticket. Vance seems aloof, awkward, and so in love with his own ideology that he literally has trouble talking about anything else . Every statement needs to feed his larger message. And since that message seems to be, basically, “No eating in the living room", he isn’t connecting with anyone other than the people who are already on his wavelength.
Meanwhile, the star, Trump, is leaning into his own caricature. At this point, his schtick is showing signs of wear. What for years has been inflammatory has become routine and formulaic: find a theme for the week, make outrageous statements, wear out a joke, rinse, lather, repeat. Trump has gone from being a wild card to being completely predictable: you can set your watch by the timing of his next new crazy statement.
There was a time when Trump’s rhetoric left me, by turns, frightened, enraged, and defensive. Now it has become humdrum and workaday.
I wish I could say that I am certain he will not be our next president — I am by no means sure of that. And I am definitely not saying that I am not afraid of the consequences of Trump 2.0. I am positive that he would take the country to a very dark place and the only check on his power would be how many bad things he could get done in any given day before he ran out of steam. Trump and Harris are neck and neck currently. It is essentially a coin flip.
But what I no longer fear or dread is the rhetoric, which has been like a jackal prowling through America’s public discourse for the last decade or so. Suddenly Trump seems less like a demagogue and more like a comedian who is a couple of years past the peak of his popularity.
I have to chalk this change in my attitude — but also in Trump’s whole carriage and demeanor — to the fact that Kamala has not put a foot down wrong in the past month. When she needed to be perfect, at least in her media portrayal, she was perfect. And people have rallied to her, and it seems to have flummoxed Trump. He increasingly comes across as transparently desperate for attention and affection and it just punctures the whole balloon.
As I was writing this, a story broke about Trump trying to, apparently, break the rules at Arlington National Cemetery. For another candidate this would be the end of the road, but of course Trump will do or say something even nuttier next week and the week after. But for now it is a self-inflicted wound: he now has to defend himself when he needs to be on the attack.
I almost feel sorry for him. But not quite.
