In person, it could feel at times today like the bottom is falling out of Donald Trump’s campaign.
Here’s what happened: At a Pennsylvania rally, Trump said he “shouldn’t have left” the White House and mused about journalists catching strays — no, quite literally, stray bullets — days after suggesting former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, who he cast as a “radical war hawk,” should face down “nine barrels.” He said he wouldn’t “mind” if someone had to “shoot through the fake news” to get to him. Then, in North Carolina, Trump suggested that Pennsylvania Senate candidate David McCormick was in the crowd. He wasn’t. He wondered if his father was in hell. “Questionable,” he said.
If you’re Trump’s moredisciplined campaign managers, are you happy with that closing message as Harris’ team talks up winning late deciders? Not as happy as you are, one suspects, that he seemed to be losing his voice in Kinston, North Carolina. It’s hard to imagine, after all, that these are the beats of the message seasoned Republicans like Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivitawant Trump to be closing on. Trump’s vocal chords on the fritz on a day when he let loose grievance? Oh, no — a shame.
But on paper, it’s a less tidy story.Trump’s durability despite being at the end of a week of unadulterated indulgences on the trail was also on full display Sunday. The floor of his support is sui generis. What other politician could survive a week like that, and with the seven battleground states all within the margin of error?
Yes, Harris is running narrowly ahead in the battlegrounds of Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Georgia, according to the latest New York Times/Siena poll released today. She is, however, after all that, still tied with Trump in Michigan. Trump is winning Arizona. He has vaporized her lead in Pennsylvania.
“We have momentum. It is on our side,” Harris said in East Lansing, Michigan. “Can you feel it?”
Perhaps. But this is still as close of a race as could be, a reality born out by photo-finish polls.
And Trump won the day.
We ask ourselves every night: Who won the day? Now we’ll tell you — every day. Last night, it was Harris.
