Election Day is 63 days from today. Nine weeks, people!
And the path ahead is relatively clear: It’s going to be an absolute bloodbath.
This, from the Washington Post, speaks to that reality:
Donald Trump’s team is approaching the final nine weeks of the presidential campaign as a race to drag Kamala Harris down.
Americans’ views of the Republican nominee have barely budged over the past nine years, spanning three White House bids, two impeachments, an insurrection, four indictments and an assassination attempt. He remains deeply divisive, with enthusiastic support and intense opposition.
President Joe Biden was also broadly unpopular, but now Trump faces Harris, whose favorability rating is roughly even. An ABC News/Ipsos poll released on Sunday found that 46 percent of likely voters viewed Harris favorably versus 43 percent unfavorably, while Trump’s ratings were 33 percent to 58 percent.
With little chance of improving Trump’s standing, Trump’s advisers see the only option as damaging hers.
Donald Trump is totally known by the voting public. And broadly disliked. The chances of him getting significantly more popular between now and the election are roughly zero.
Which means the way that he wins is not to boost himself up but to drag Harris down, to make it a choice between two undesirable people — a hold-your-nose vote where he can triumph.
He’s done it before: This is the exact way that Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016. But, Clinton began far better known and far less liked than Harris does today. And Trump is even better known — and even more disliked — than he was eight years ago.
The attempt to drag Harris down has already begun in earnest. This, from the WaPo story, is eye opening:
Republicans have already started pummeling Harris with attack ads. The bulk of television spending by the campaigns and their allied super PACs between Aug. 23 and Aug. 29 — 57 percent — were attacks on Harris, according to data from the media-tracking company AdImpact. Twenty-one percent were pro-Harris ads that drew a contrast with Trump, and another 14 percent were purely positive about Harris, the data showed. Only 8 percent were anti-Trump attack ads.
Six in every ten ads run in the race in the last week of August were negative against Harris! Six in ten!
It’s only going to get uglier from here. My advice:
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The Morning: It's going to get ugly