USA Politics

Obviously I also think that the VP debate won't meaningfully affect anything. Trump supporters will be happy with Vance; the anti-Trump voters won't suddenly change their stance on Vance.

While I get that optics-wise Vance appeared to have done well, I think he floundered quite a bit when talking about anything of substance. He dodged multiple questions, contradicted himself in the timespan of 2 minutes and brazenly lied a bunch of times. Walz' Tiananmen Square answer was weirdly weak, but I think getting the month wrong by two months for something that happened 35 years ago isn't this huge gotcha, especially when the majority of things that were fact checked were claims by Vance, some of which were lies that he's told repeatedly. I also don't think the "Harris was VP for 4 years, why didn't she do stuff?" is a good line of attack, because you can easily flip it over. Trump was president for 4 years, yet didn't deliver on his promises. Not sure how wise it is for the GOP to pursue this line, but it wouldn't be the first time that they'd chase something, only for it to blow up in their faces.

I also think we shouldn't underestimate Walz' capabilities. His record as governor is quite impressive, while the same cannot be said about Vance's record as senator. Obviously not a 1:1 comparison and we can argue how much of an impact the VP has at the end of the day, but talking purely about optics Walz can point to things he got done, things that are popular with the general public, and promise the electorate "we can do this for all of America".
 
I wasn't expecting it to be unsealed this early, but DC Judge Chutkan just released Special Counsel Jack Smith's filing on Trump's election subversion from 2020/2021. Partnered with the Harris campaign hammering away at Vance's non-answer on if Trump lost the 2020 election, timing's not great for the Trump campaign.

Not sure if it's October Surprise territory, because we knew it was coming eventually.
 
I think it's an October surprise in the sense that the general public probably wasn't thinking about it and this is a reminder to voters about it with weeks to go in the election. Frankly, considering what happened with the Comey letter, if this was dropping two weeks later I would say that this gives the election to Harris. I tend to think that it remains true that a lot of swing/undecided voters are reluctant to vote for someone who engages in criminal behavior and a reminder of that is still pretty damning. With a month to go and a lot of other big news events going on, I'm not sure. But if abortion/January 6th are on the minds of voters on election day I genuinely don't think Trump can win. But that's the frustrating thing about this cycle, it seems really likely that it will come down to which way the wind is blowing that day.

To that end, most of the debate coverage I'm seeing is about Vance's J6 response. It seems like that has done enough damage to negate both his positive moments in the debate and Walz's deficiencies. The combination of a J6 based news cycle and Vance opening up a fresh wound on it could be more impactful than we think.
 
I think the difference between the Comey letter and the Smith filing is this:

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When Comey dropped his bombshell - and ultimately bullshit - her emails letter, all the news organizations covered it extensively. Smith is getting coverage on MSNBC, CNN, and from the nation's major newspapers - but right wing media is simply ignoring it. While most Fox viewers (and certainly almost all OANN and Newsmax viewers) are in the tank for Trump, even a few thousand deciding "wow this guy is a crook" could make the difference.

I don't think the news-reality gap fully explains why Trump maintains his support, but I am sure that it elevates his support into the competitive.
 
The timeline isn't the same as the Comey letter, you're correct. CNN's already buried it a bit on their homepage and sort of lumped it into "both campaigns having their struggles right now (with pinning the port strike/Helene recovery/Israel-Iran conflict on Harris)." CNN's change of ownership's led to them trying to appeal to right-wing viewers more, so, it's no surprise to see it drop a bit.

I think at this point the election's more about getting each side off of the couch rather than convincing the other side to come over to yours as I believe the number of undecided voters out there is definitely more diminished than in 2016 when both candidates were unlikeable. Voter enthusiasm in polls has consistently maintained that Harris as the advantage there. Headlines like these have been depressing enthusiasm from the Republican side.
 
In an interesting (and not unprecedented by a president/candidate's spouse) twist, Melania Trump's come out fully in favor of abortion rights. Trump's been cutting down his number of 'non-partisan' events and just trying to appeal to the bubble his base lives in, so he probably won't be asked of it, but that's an interesting contrast in an election where there's more attention than ever on the subject.
 
Flaming Blimp Crash said:
In an interesting (and not unprecedented by a president/candidate's spouse) twist, Melania Trump's come out fully in favor of abortion rights. Trump's been cutting down his number of 'non-partisan' events and just trying to appeal to the bubble his base lives in, so he probably won't be asked of it, but that's an interesting contrast in an election where there's more attention than ever on the subject.
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That is 100% the face of Janus at work. They want pro-choice voters to have something to cling to, to muddy the waters of his intentions. It is a coordinated campaign stunt.
 
I don't know how that's even a serious question. Of course Harris would be the lesser evil. All it takes is to listen to a minute of Trump's rhetoric and what he wished to accomplish to solidify this assessment. And that's before we delve into his shady connections to various dictators around the world.
 
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