There is one big reason why this election feels so different: Donald Trump is lost [View all]

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There is one big reason why this election feels so different: Donald Trump is lost
Donald Trump has lost his natural-born ability to shock

By Lucian K. Truscott IV
Columnist
Published August 13, 2024 9:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) If 2020 was the face mask election, this one is turning out to be the Bounty election — you know…the “quicker picker upper” paper towels we need to clean up Trump’s unhinged meltdowns.

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What is different about this election is how we’re seeing it through two sets of eyes – our own, and those of the man who after thinking he was cruising to an easy win in November against a frail and fading Joe Biden, now sees himself losing, and he really, really can’t stand it.

The meme that Trump is “melting down” doesn’t quite get how profound his discomfort and disbelief are at this moment. The switchover from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris happened so abruptly and went so smoothly, it’s almost as if there never was a Biden campaign. Just three weeks in, Kamala Harris looks like she has been the presumptive nominee ever since the primaries began early this year with Biden at the top of the ticket. If you blinked over the past week, you’d open your eyes to find her someplace else with a crowd at a rally even bigger than the last one. She went from Wisconsin to Georgia to Pennsylvania to Michigan to Arizona to Nevada and back to Michigan again – and that schedule omitted appearances in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia that had to be canceled due to the Biblical-style rains of Hurricane Debby.

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The difference this time around is that the Democrats have been on offense since the afternoon Joe Biden suspended his campaign three weeks ago. That Biden dropped out was not a surprise to many, but it was to Trump, who quickly called foul and even briefly claimed that the switch of candidates before the Democratic Convention was somehow “unconstitutional,” as if the Constitution of the United States has anything to say about the rules of American political campaigning. The Harris campaign used the element of surprise to maximum effect by being prepared to hit the campaign trail running without any apparent preparation prior to the Biden announcement. ................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2024/08/13/there-is-one-big-reason-why-this-feels-so-different-donald-is-lost/