George Rebane
The Lip from the Hip has done it again. With his 18jul24 convention acceptance speech he took a cinched November win and threw it back into a campaign maelstrom welcomed only by Kamala Harris and the Dems (and Putin and Xi). My own immediate reaction to his convention performance was posted here, and since then literally every left and right commentator has agreed that Trump blew it.
Trump’s self-declared return to a barroom brawl mode of campaigning has put his road to the White House back in play, even with the likes of an unaccomplished opponent and grifter like Kamala as his opponent. WSJ’s Dan Henninger summarizes her chances in today’s paper (here).
With a flawed candidate like Trump already problematic when he was running against Bumblebrain, on 15 June I did a little work in extracting my own assessment of Trump’s probability of winning in November (described here). The result (0.45) was not promising. Given all that has happened since – assassination attempt, enthusiastic Republican convention, reversion to rambling stump speeches, … - I redid my probability assessment, hoping against hope for a better outcome. The resulting probability came in at slightly north of 0.48, not much of an improvement when considering the woulda/coulda/shouldas.
Given her documented far left ideology and promised public policy initiatives a Kamala Harris presidency would be cataclysmic for our republic. And Trump’s loose cannon tactics promise to make the interval to November a real nailbiter. Is there no one on his team of advisors with the courage and gravitas who can tell him to stuff a sock in it and give acting presidential a try?
Sandbox – 31jul24
[Have no idea why Trump has ‘buried’ the Project 2025 position paper generated by Heritage. Its purpose was to elicit public discussion of conservative oriented policies, most of which Trump et al continue to endorse. Such peremptory emotional eruptions by our former president continue to give me pause about his chances this November. (more here) gjr]
Posted at 09:18 AM in Comment Sandbox | Permalink | Comments (45)
Reblog (0) | |