Trump Can’t Deal With Harris’s Success

Recently, George Conway described Donald Trump's accusations that crowds shown at campaign events for Kamala Harris were photo shopped or produced by AI as being akin to Adolph Hitler in the Fuhrer bunker in the last days of his regime where he ordered around military units that no longer existed.  However accurate the description may or may not be, what is clear is that Trump is not dealing well with Harris' rise in the polls or the high enthusiasm surrounding her campaign events which are far larger than his own.   Rather than having a disciplined issue and policy based message, Trump is increasingly being his normal vile self and in the process spotlighting his own failings and lack of mental stability.  Add in the fiasco that JD Vance is proving to be as Trump's vice presidential pick, and things are not good or happy in Trump's reality free world.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at Trump's lashing out and how Kamala Harris needs to maintain her momentum while allowing Trump to potentially self-destruct.  Here are excerpts:

Kamala Harris has had as good a three-week stretch as any presidential candidate in modern American history.

When Joe Biden dropped out on July 21, less than a month after his catastrophic debate performance against Donald Trump, the Democratic Party was on course to be defeated in a landslide. Today, Vice President Harris is slightly ahead of Trump in national polls, and in three important swing states—Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan—new surveys by The New York Times and Siena College show her leading by four points, 50–46, among likely voters.

Since May, when Biden was the nominee, Harris has gained seven points in Pennsylvania, five points in Wisconsin, and four points in Michigan. The Democratic National Convention, which should give her an additional boost, begins next week. By the time it ends, fewer than 75 days will be left until the November 5 election.

The data are pretty clear. Harris has electrified the Democratic Party; a Wall Street Journal survey found that 93 percent of Democrats now support her. Among Democrats, voter satisfaction with their choice of candidate has increased a staggering 27 percent in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan since May. So-called double-haters—voters who are dissatisfied with both major-party choices—have for now broken for Harris. In addition, positive views of Harris have increased 11 percent in less than a month.

Many Americans who would otherwise vote for the Democratic ticket couldn’t bring themselves to do so as long as Biden was the nominee; his decline was simply too alarming. His debate against Trump cemented those concerns, making it clear to me within minutes that he couldn’t win the election. . . . . Biden’s decision to drop out of the race released enormous pent-up energy and enthusiasm among Democrats. They immediately unified around Harris. Long-standing divisions within the party were cast aside. The Democrats were back in the game.

Biden’s impairments also masked the extent of Trump’s flaws as a candidate. The former president exhibits “epic scars & vulnerabilities,” in the words of David Axelrod, chief strategist for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns. Trump has been disliked by a majority of Americans from almost the moment he ran in 2016, and their misgivings have only deepened as Trump’s behavior has grown more unhinged, narcissistic, and lawless.

Biden’s abrupt departure deeply unsettled Trump. His entire campaign was built to defeat Biden. Trump . . . . concluded that the race was won. And it was, until Biden stepped aside and Harris stepped up.

Trump, enraged and rattled, is reverting to his feral ways. We see it in his preposterous claim that Harris’s crowds, which are both noticeably larger and far more enthusiastic than his own, are AI-generated; in his resentful attacks against the popular Republican governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, and his wife, because Kemp didn’t aid Trump in his effort to overthrow the election; and in his attack on Harris’s racial identity.

At precisely the moment when Trump needs to elevate his performance, to the degree that such a thing is even possible, he’s gone back to his most natural state: erratic, crazed, transgressive, self-indulgent, and enraged. One by-product of this is that Trump has provided no coherent or focused line of attack on Harris. . . . . he prospect of not just being beaten, but being beaten by a woman of color, has sent Trump into a frenzy in a way almost nothing else could.

That the Democratic Party was rejuvenated by Biden’s withdrawal is hardly surprising. But very few people anticipated how skilled Harris has been as a presidential candidate. . . .It’s not simply that she’s made few missteps so far, which is itself impressive. It’s that she’s hit all the right notes, projected self-assurance, and framed the race in just the way she wants: In contrast with Trump, she is future-oriented, a change agent, at ease and joyful.

Harris and Walz seem to be having great fun on the campaign trail. The contrast with Trump and J. D. Vance, who are dystopian, perennially aggrieved, and weird, to use the adjective of the day, couldn’t be greater.

Harris, right now at least, isn’t simply the nominee of the Democratic Party. She seems to have created a movement, the closest parallel to which is Obama’s 2008 campaign.

Something else, and something quite important, has changed. The whole landscape of the campaign has been transformed. The rise of Harris instantly cast Trump in a new light. He formerly seemed more ominous and threatening, which, whatever its political drawbacks, signaled strength; now he seems not just old but low-energy, stale, even pathetic. He has become the political version of Fat Elvis.

Malignant narcissists go to great lengths to hide their fears and display a false or idealized self. Criticism targets the persona. Mockery, by contrast, can tap very deep fears of being exposed as flawed or weak. When the mask is the target, people with Trump’s psychological profile know how to fight back. Mockery, though, can cause them to unravel.

I would be the last person on Earth to question the devotion of Trump supporters. But at the moment, it really is beginning to look like The Trump Show is reaching the end of its run.

This might be wishful thinking on my part, and too much is at stake to indulge in complacency. But what will likely define the rest of the race is Trump, a tempest in his mind, raging, raging, and raging again. Trump will go down in American history as many things, almost all of them poisonous. And the label he most fears is the one he now worries will ever be affixed to him: loser.