Election Day is less than one month away. Experts have described the 2024 election as one of the closest in modern American history. The future of American democracy and freedom are at stake and yet so much remains in flux and undecided.
Trump’s strategy, for one thing, is clear. He plans to amplify his feral attacks on Kamala Harris and the Democrats. Given his personality, Trump will not stop or in any way be slowed down by outcries from the news media, or even members of his own party, about his horrible and dangerous behavior. Trump is an aspiring dictator, a public admirer of Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, who wants total power and total domination over the country.
On Saturday, Trump held a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania to commemorate the failed assassination attempt on his life in July, where after getting hit in the ear by a bullet, he rose from the ground, bloodied, raised his fist and, in an iconic moment, chanted “fight, fight, fight!” Instead of turning down the political flames in this country during his return speech in Butler, Trump decided to add fuel to the fire. Trump told the throngs of his MAGA cultists that there are some dark forces, those “enemies within,” who tried to kill him. “Over the past eight years, those who want to stop us from achieving this future have slandered me, impeached me, indicted me, tried to throw me off the ballot, and who knows, maybe even tried to kill me … But I’ve never stopped fighting for you and I never will.”
JD Vance was more explicit in his lies, telling the MAGA faithful in Butler the following about the Democrats: “First, they’re trying to silence him (Trump). That didn’t work. They tried to bankrupt him. That didn’t work. They tried to jail him. With all the hatred they spewed at President Trump, it was only a matter of time before somebody tried to kill him.”
Trump knows his MAGA people and what they want. He is not raging out into the void; he is delivering hate sermons to the MAGA faithful, and they love him even more for it. Contrary to the so-called conventional wisdom that has been shown to be repeatedly wrong throughout the Age of Trump, his MAGA people and other followers remain devoted to him (and some even more so) even as his behavior becomes more extreme and dangerous.
Kamala Harris, on the other hand, is a joyful warrior. Since her ascent to leadership in the Democratic Party, Harris has been very effective in using her own high-dominance leadership style to undermine Trump’s alpha male persona and to force him into making tactical and strategic errors that could potentially cost him the election.
In these last weeks before Election Day, the Harris campaign plans a TV ad blitz, more rallies (which are usually far larger and more high energy than Trump’s political cult meetings) and will spend very large sums of money on voter outreach and mobilization in the key battleground states that will ultimately decide the outcome of the presidential election. President Barack Obama will also appear on the campaign trial to boost Harris.
Trump and his agents are also working very hard on how to steal the election and/or otherwise delegitimate the results if Kamala Harris defeats him.
In an attempt to make better sense of this unprecedented and truly historic election and what may happen next, I recently spoke to a range of experts.
I feel good about where the race stan
