Last week, I asked a senior Trump official if he would place a bet on the outcome of the election.
“I don’t bet,” was the reply.
I asked a major Democratic Party donor (much richer than Trump’s aide) the same question.
Your answer? ‘I will contribute whatever is necessary for Kamala to win. But a bet? A real bet? That’s a different story.’
We are now immersed in the ‘silly season’ of American politics, during which, as the election approaches, any serious politician or pundit is expected to have a definitive view on which way the vote will fall.
And yet, very few people I talk to – of any level of experience or position of privilege – are making such a direct decision.
With less than four weeks left, this is the closest presidential election in modern history. All the signs coincide: there is no advantage for anyone.
Last week, I asked a senior Trump official if he would place a bet on the outcome of the election. “I don’t bet,” was the reply.
With less than four weeks left, this is the closest presidential election in modern history. All the signs coincide: there is no advantage for anyone.
In a way, this is all part of the Great Political Humility brought on by the rise of Donald J. Trump.
If you listened to the pollsters in 2016, Trump was a sure loser.
In 2020, with Covid, and after four years of Trump chaos, the smart money reasonably wrote off Trump. But then he came within 44,000 votes of winning, close enough that he and many others could dispute the results.
Then, in a harsh rebuke, and despite predictions of an imminent “Red Wave,” many of Trump’s Republican appointees were eliminated in the 2022 midterm elections.
Except, months later, when Trump declared he would run in 2024, he once again rose in the presidential polls and, barely sacrificing his golf game, eliminated all of his Republican rivals with almost effortless ease.
What’s more, he somehow managed to avoid all the legal obstacles that threatened him along the way.
Democratic confidence soon became a great foreboding and culminated, after the Trump-Biden debate, in such certainty of defeat that the Party overthrew its old standard-bearer, the sitting president.
Kamala Harris’ appearance not only confused the race, it also confused Trump himself, whose main topic of conversation had been the weakness and fragility of Joe Biden.
The two-year race was suddenly shortened to just over 90 days, making Trump’s usual strategy of repeating insults until they became reality much less effective.
But then, even with Harris’s early, meteoric stardom, she has since returned to the stubborn average, a relative tie in the polls with Trump. And that’s how things have remained since late August, with neither Harris’s venerable convention, nor her strong debate performance, nor anything else moving the needle.
Steve Bannon, that key architect of Trump’s 2016 victory and insightful gadfly, once theorized to me that in close presidential elections – and, indeed, in most major elections this century around the world – little matters except the last two weeks of a campaign and the last impression. in the minds of undecided voters.
This is the so-called ‘October surprise’ or, at least, an unpredictable change in the autumn wind.
And here we are.
Team Trump believes that Trump, the consummate salesman, always knows how to close a deal.
In October 2016, he handed over his phone, and hence his reckless tweets, to his son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner. His sudden discipline and focus on the grievances of working men and women in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania helped him achieve victory in the electoral college.
Likewise, in 2020, he finally managed to bounce back in late October, with a stronger-than-expected debate performance, tightening the race. Another week of that ‘Trump message’ could in fact I have made it turn.
The problem with relying on Trump for that good outcome, however, is that the “final impression” for voters comes down to his volatile mood swings and off-script impulses.
Virtually all of Trump’s advisers have urged him to focus on the economy, arguably the most important issue in this year’s race.
But instead, this October, Trump has redoubled his personal resentment toward Harris and the anger he feels at having his winning campaign against Biden “stolen.”
Even when he focuses on key policy issues in his rambling speeches, he tends to dispense with the economy and instead focus on immigration, the issue he believes won him in 2016 and will bring his supporters home again in 2024. .
But a byproduct here is that immigration tends to be an emotional hot-button issue for Trump, leading to anger and often incoherence, which is not the ideal last impression.
Still, his team, while holding its breath, also acknowledges that, in many past cases, Trump’s “instincts” have worked in his favor.
If he wins, Pennsylvania will likely have been crucial. And if so, his winning color, as the Trump camp already theorizes, could well have been last weekend’s “Back to Butler” rally, the scene of the first assassination attempt against him in rural Pennsylvania.
Returning to Butler, remembering that extraordinary moment and focusing his considerable star power on this rural community, where a few thousand votes could give him the election, was his own idea of a reality show.
If Trump wins, Pennsylvania will likely have been crucial. And if so, its winning color, as the Trump camp already theorizes, could well have been last weekend’s “Return to Butler” rally.
However, it is confusing to Team Trump – which has long equated “winning” the news cycle with winning – that the Harris campaign has seemed to shy away from the headlines, particularly by going silent after the great enthusiasm of the Democratic convention and after of his certain debate victory in September.
Instead of dominating the news, Harris’s strategy appears to have been to remain measured, tempered and – in the few interviews she has given – careful to avoid big headlines.
Her highest-profile media hits of the past week (Howard Stern, 60 Minutes, The View, the ‘Call Her Daddy’ podcast) can be read in two very different ways: that she feels comfortable enough with her protagonist (the latest The Poll of the Times/Siena gives him a three-point lead, though still tied in the swing states, to risk further exposure, or he is panicking, having suddenly decided he must drastically change his media strategy.
In many ways, both campaigns continue to feel that the other side will be key to victory: Donald Trump and the deep dislike felt by so many Americans is the Democrats’ favorite hand; and Kamala Harris and the visceral disgust and deep suspicion of her in MAGA-land is the Trumpers’ ace.
In the usual dramatic arc of a presidential campaign, these personality politics are resolved in a final television debate. But this time, leaving everyone hanging, there will be no another face-to-face debate, no last look at this election.
This historic stalemate may continue. With no ‘October surprise’, and neither side willing to walk away, that could mean surprises in November, December and January.