Towards the end of last week the vibe shift the Democrats’ election campaign so desperately yearned for in the US appeared to be working. The energy gained from jettisoning Joe Biden is now evident in polls. In the national polling average Kamala Harris now leads Donald Trump by a small margin – whether Robert F Kennedy is included or not.
And yet for all the attention the dramatic change in the ticket has amassed, the percentage points Harris has gained are still marginal. Building a political cult has been fruitful for Trump. The alternative reality MAGA diehards live in is almost impenetrable. They are operating within the silo of American carnage, not American reality. This is the real outcome of a “post-truth” environment, compounded by Fox News, MAGA-friendly conspiracy-culture podcasters, and unhinged social media communities and their rabbit-holes. This layer of propaganda now blankets dozens of millions of American voters who refuse to see Trump for the charlatan he is, overlook that, or merely endorse and enjoy it.
But something has changed. The capacity for MAGA messaging to pull in new, independent, first-time or undecided voters appears to be faltering. This is ultimately a seven-state election; Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona. Between early March and late May over $72 million was spent in election media advertising. Around 70 per cent of that was spent in those seven states. Almost a third was spent in Pennsylvania alone. Over that period the Trump campaign ploughed half of all its advertising spend into Pennsylvania.
May is a long time ago. Over the course of just over a month – from late June to early August – a boxset of political drama unfolded; the disastrous debate where Biden’s incoherence shocked a nation; an assassination attempt against Trump, which has largely been forgotten, mostly because at the ensuing Republican National Convention he failed to capitalise on a narrative he and his team was building that this was a “different” Trump, and reverted to type, rambling like the madman he is; the reveal of JD Vance becoming Trump’s vice-president candidate pick, marking a sensational political rise; Biden’s dramatic (but ultimately inevitable) withdrawal from the race; Harris stepping out of the shadows; the surprising (and smart) choice of Tim Walz – not Josh Shapiro – as her running mate.
And now there’s the new vibe. The relief and enthusiasm that Biden is history has built huge energy around Harris as a candidate among Democrat voters. This is all happening while the atrocities being committed by Israel in Gaza barely make a dent in the insular American consciousness. Consuming mainstream media in the US illuminates how much of a bubble one lives in here in Ireland, where Israeli war crimes, Palestinian suffering, and the protests about it regularly make the news.
When Harris and Walz show up on the nightly television news they do so smiling, positive, talking about unity and good vibes. JD Vance was chosen for the Trump ticket on the assumption that Biden would be the candidate, and Vance now looks more a liability than an asset.
Meanwhile MAGA messaging appears to have constructed its own cul de sac. Hysterical and wild, there are only so many times you can shout “fire” in a crowded room before it becomes ineffectual. A potential victory depends on how many people live in that cul de sac in those seven states.
If Obama’s 2008 campaign was underscored by the word “hope”, Walz’s word is “joy”. Effective messaging to trigger fundraising and volunteers signing up to a political cause or campaign ultimately has to have a mobilising energy.
Even within fascistic movements it’s the prospect of “something better” that can mobilise (with manufactured “enemies” foregrounded as the obstacle to that “better”) even when this is a lie sold as convincing propaganda. In 2016 the Trump campaign – as abhorrent as it was – actually did this. Their message – Make America Great Again – became a movement which became a cult. In 2016, 2020, and in the early stages of the 2024 campaign the Democrats’ message effectively boiled down to: stop Trump. Since Biden has dropped out Harris’s campaign talks less about Trump and more about their own mission, policy and optimistic message.
Trump’s extremism and messaging previously has had a bristling – if toxic – energy, but a sense of jadedness is creeping in. This messaging operates at full tilt, which is very noisy, but that also means it lacks a new gear to shift into. There is no new story to tell beyond the hysteria. That hysteria might ultimately work. Dozens of millions of people are signed up to it. But three more months of it may not widen the base.
This election will boil down to many things. Many swing states are still on a knife edge. But in August the energy is with Harris. Her team’s fundraising is sensational. She’s winning the meme wars. Predictive markets such as Polymarket, which previously had Trump as a sure victor, now see Harris and Trump tied. People might be coy with pollsters, but they don’t lie with their own betting money. Will all of this dissipate or even matter in the end? How Trump reacts (and anything is possible, including directly inciting mass political violence) when backed into a corner, no longer owning the narrative, and flailing in the attention stakes will now begin to play out. Harris and Walz wear a smile, but these are dangerous times.