Hurricanes are the new Haitians

Plus, the state of the presidential race and more in "Election Notebook"

It’s hard to believe there are less than three weeks to go until Election Day. Here are some miscellaneous thoughts on a few recent topics in the presidential contest, while I work on the third and final post in my series, Three Years that Broke American Politics.

1. Hurricanes are the new Haitians

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the absurdity of the media continuing to cover what they knew was a made-up story by the Trump campaign on Haitians allegedly eating neighborhood pets in Ohio … and how the story might nevertheless be helping the GOP campaign more than hurting it:

On the surface, this doesn’t make a lot of sense. Most normal politicians would see their poll numbers spiral downward after spouting such nonsense. But in today’s upside down political world, it actually sort of works for the Trump campaign. There are reasons they want to keep talking about it, despite knowing that it’s a made up story.

But now, here we are yet again, dealing with the same situation in regards to the hurricanes that recently battered Florida and several other states in the southeast. From Politico:

Donald Trump is making the storms a flashpoint in the presidential race. The former president has seized on the devastation left by Helene to launch a barrage of misinformation — including promoting false claims that FEMA spent disaster relief money on migrants that add to his already inflammatory rhetoric about immigration.

In addition to falsely tying the issue to immigration, Trump suggested that FEMA wasn’t on the ground providing assistance, the Biden administration wouldn’t take calls from Republican governors, and people who lost their homes would only get $750 in assistance. None of this was true and has been debunked by numerous members of his own party from those states.

Still, this didn’t stop the misinformation from lighting up social media. Even Elon Musk got in on the action.

Nor did it stop the rumors from getting crazier or more dangerous. When some Republicans accused Democrats of actually controlling the weather (supposedly to stop Republicans from voting in the election, or to seize local resources), another GOP Congressman had to release this statement to his North Carolina constituents:

Hurricane Helene was NOT geoengineered by the government to seize and access lithium deposits.

It’s pretty sad when a GOP Congressman has to reassure his constituents that Democrats did not geoengineer a hurricane to hurt Republicans. I mean, come on.

Not to mention that meteorologists are now getting death threats because some people believe they’re helping the government cover-up a manipulation of the weather!

And then there’s this, reported by a local news station in Tennessee:

There were some tense moments on Saturday when volunteers say they witnessed an armed group of people on side-by-sides confronting and threatening FEMA workers.

It’s the same playbook, same sequence of events, as with the Haitian story in Ohio:

• Tell a wild lie.

• Get the media to report on the story, or at least the absurdity of it.

• Spread the lie on social media and get some of your base believing it.

• The threats of violence go up.

• The media reports on the threats, and on how many voters believe the lie or how many times it’s been debunked.

• Meanwhile, your candidate’s name is in the news every day because of this made-up story, which means you’re also keeping your opponent out of the news. The fact that it’s a lie and is absurd merely keeps it in the news longer.

Ugh. Well, this is our politics these days.

2. The state of the presidential race

It’s not all that easy to analyze the presidential contest because unless the polls are way off, or unless there is a big shift coming, the race is as close as any race has been for decades. At the moment, it’s literally a tie!

The New York Times think so.

The Washington Post thinks so.

David Plouffe (who managed Obama’s 2008 win and is now advising Harris) thinks so.

And Nate Silver thinks so. His model regularly runs 40,000 simulations of the election. Two days ago, Harris won 50.3% of the time. In today’s simulation, Trump won 50.2% of the contests.

Bill Kristol also spent some time talking to political insiders, trying to figure out what their polls and instincts were telling them. The answer? Not much:

The private story is the public story. Things really are as they seem. The race is insanely close. It’s on a knife’s edge. … The insiders are on the same roller coaster as the rest of us, doing their best and hoping that it results in the right outcome.

If you want to know what’s going to happen, you probably need to figure out who is going to turn out to vote. That’s most likely what will decide the election. A few thousand voters in a few states who aren’t even sure yet that they’re going to show up on Election Day.

No one has any idea how this is all going to end.

3. Kamala Harris goes on Fox News

For some time after she kicked off her presidential campaign, Kamala Harris was badgered about her lack of sit-down interviews. Apparently, she’s now making up for lost time.

Harris’ recent media blitz has included television appearances on 60 Minutes, Univision, The View, and Stephen Colbert; radio shows with Howard Stern and Charlamagne Tha God; and several popular podcasts, including Call Her Daddy, All the Smoke, and The Shade Room.

And yesterday, of course, she did an interview with Fox News. It was seen by 7 million people, making it the most watched interview of this election season.

Opinions of Harris’ performance were all over the spectrum. As The Hill reported: “Everyone claims victory in Harris’s Fox interview.”

On the left, it was proof that Harris is strong, and capable of handling even combative interviewers. Eugene Robinson wrote: “She stood her ground, refuting the Trump campaign’s claim that she is weak and easily pushed around. She spoke fluently and cogently, putting to rest GOP claims that all she offers is word salad.”

On the right, it was dubbed a disaster for Harris. Sean Hannity said “the joy is gone in the Harris campaign tonight. And her obvious anger, that was on full display.”

Here is a roundup of analysis from various publications:

• Who Won Kamala Harris’s Fox News Interview With Bret Baier? (opinions from different perspectives, compiled by New York Magazine)

• Did Kamala Harris eke out a victory on Fox News? (a discussion in the Washington Post)

• Kamala Harris Arrived for a Fox Interview. She Got a Debate. (New York Times)

• Poynter, a nonprofit that focuses on journalistic ethics and fact-checking, ran a piece comparing Donald Trump’s Fox News town hall vs. Kamala Harris’ Fox News interview on the same day.

• CNN media analyst Brian Stelter also compared Bret Baier’s interview with Harris to an interview with Trump conducted by the same journalist a year ago.

• Also, fact checks of Harris’ interview and Trump’s town hall.

Or, if you missed it, Aaron Rupar put together a thread of clips from the Fox interview with Harris.

4. Interesting Reads

Still looking for still more content about politics? Here are a few links to explore:

• “Confessions of a Republican Exile,” in The Atlantic

David Brooks reflects on his journey from the Republican to (mostly) the Democratic parties. The things that disgust him about what the GOP has become, and the things about progressives that sometimes make him feel sick. Yup, something for everyone to agree or disagree with. He concludes:

I’m mostly happy here. My advice to other conservatives disaffected by MAGA is this: If you’re under 45, stay in the Republican Party and work to make it a healthy, multiracial working-class party. If you’re over 45, acknowledge that the GOP is not going to be saved in your lifetime and join me on the other side. I don’t deny that it takes some adjustment; I find it weird being in a political culture in which Sunday brunch holds higher status than church. But Blue World is where the better angels of our nature seem lately to have migrated, and where the best hope for the future of the country now lies.

• Or, if you like to nerd out on polling, check out Nate Cohn’s piece in the New York Times: “How One Polling Decision Is Leading to Two Distinct Stories of the Election.”

TLDR: Some pollsters are weighting the poll results based on how people voted in 2020, trying to avoid the errors that underestimated Trump’s performance in 2016 and 2020. And some aren’t because they believe the electorate is slightly different now. It makes for a small but important difference in polling results: either Harris is winning bigger in the national vote but struggling in the battlegrounds (closer to the 2020 results), or she is winning smaller nationally but doing better in the battlegrounds (closer to the 2022 midterm results).

• Finally, if you want another reason to whip up an evening cocktail to go along with your election stress, check out “What’s driving Jim Messina to drink,” in Politico

Trump’s team has been working to make it easier in 2024 to enable him, should he lose again, to accomplish what he failed to do four years ago — to subvert the democratic process in order to retake the White House. Democrats are also taking it more seriously.