.jpg)
Welcome to Friday’s edition of Washington Secrets. As usual, we review Donald Trump’s week with grades from two top political strategists. Plus, how optimistic was Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign manager about the midterm elections?
Donald Trump pulled the plug on weekend rallies in Iowa and Kansas after a whirlwind tour of red-state America, only to uncancel them on Friday morning.
Was it a sign that things are going badly or that private polling suggests the races are safer than Democrats would suggest? We’ll never know.
Trump’s week began with a rally in Michigan. Nicki Minaj tagged along, amid all sorts of mischief about whether she might be the next White House press secretary.
In the end, the president’s comments about her “ass” were overshadowed by what he said about Democratic Senate candidate Abdul el Sayed. He called the former Detroit health official a “jihadist” who was “on the side of the terrorists,” invoking the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the passengers who fought back aboard United Flight 93 to describe the effort to defeat el Sayed.
Trump headed to Mississippi on Monday. Barack Obama’s joke from last weekend that Trump has the White House “looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory” clearly stung. Before departing, the president talked to reporters and spent three of the six minutes talking about it, saying of Obama, “just shows why you were a lousy president.”
The campaign’s closing message centers on fraud, and Trump announced that anyone reporting voter fraud in past elections or this year’s midterms would get $1 million “upon the arrest and conviction” of those responsible.
He kept up his punishing schedule with two events in Texas on Tuesday. He told supporters in Corpus Christi they would “defeat Dumbocrat, communist James Talarico.” That evening in Lubbock, he called Talarico a “freak.” The latest polls show Talarico with a lead, and Trump did not get back to the White House until after 1 a.m.
Wednesday was Ohio, where he rallied for Sen. Jon Husted (once again praising his physical attributes) and gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
He used the occasion to support Ramaswamy’s controversial ad featuring the estranged mother of Democrat Amy Acton, in which she called her daughter a liar. The spot left out that her mother lost custody decades ago after Acton’s stepfather was indicted for raping Acton, and Ramaswamy withdrew it by the end of the week.
On Thursday, Trump made his second trip to South Carolina in eight days. The bigger news, however, was the rallies he canceled, in favor of phoning in to tele-rallies. Insiders said it meant he could simply campaign in more states.
Was it because he was sick of traveling? That was the question asked by Reuters reporter Jacob Bogage.
“You’re sick to ask that question,” the president replied before launching a very personal attack, adding: “Look at this guy, he’s way out of shape… Put yourself in shape, you look like hell.”
Trump explained that he did not need to travel to Kansas because Republican Sen. Roger Marshall was “doing very well.”
Back at the White House, he and first lady Melania Trump — fresh from securing a local ceasefire in Ukraine — hosted the South Lawn Halloween event for military, law-enforcement and foster families, with two evening tele-rallies on his schedule.
The big news on Friday morning was a U-turn on the weekend rallies. Secrets was told that Trump would fly to Kansas and Iowa on Sunday after all. Which then had reporters wondering why he had said, less than 24 hours earlier, that Marshall was doing so well in Kansas that he did not need the extra help.
So what did our two strategists make of it all?
You are reading Washington Secrets, a guide to power and politics in D.C. and beyond. It is written by Rob Crilly, who you can reach at secrets@washingtonexaminer.com with your comments, story tips, and suggestions.
John Zogby: Grade C
There was some good news for the president this week. On Thursday, it was reported that the GDP rose at an annualized rate of 3.4%, surpassing an expected 3.2%. This was fueled by robust consumer spending. However, it appears that the pace fizzled toward the end of the third quarter.
At the same time, inflation increased to 3.6%. Consumers, AKA voters on Nov. 3, may not be in a mood to appreciate macroeconomics. They are likely to have more visits to the grocery store and the gas station between now and then, and will likely feel the extra pinch.
John Zogby Strategies conducted a private poll in Ohio last Wednesday and Thursday. It wasn’t planned this way, but we caught voters just as the release and story of the gubernatorial ad for Vivek Ramaswamy were breaking. This was the ad that featured Democrat Amy Acton’s estranged mother calling her a liar and mentally ill.
Our numbers reflected the public revulsion. On Wednesday alone, we showed Acton was leading the GOP candidate by 2-3 points. By Thursday, as the story became more widely known and discussed, her lead jumped by 10 to 12 points, averaging out at 50% to 42%. (We found that former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown received a similar bump in his race to win a seat against appointed Sen. John Husted).
The ad clearly hurt Ramaswamy and may have damaged the GOP brand at a pivotal moment. Trump and Ohio’s very own Vice President JD Vance, embraced the ad and encouraged it to keep running. Most GOP candidates and officials criticized or condemned it.
At the moment, Ramaswamy finds himself under the GOP bus, pretty much all by himself. Many races remain very close.
In similar situations like 1998 and 2012, battlegrounds broke over the weekend before the election. There is record-setting early voting, and it appears to be dominated by young people and people of color. GOP voters vote on Election Day. Will it be enough to offset what appears to be Democratic demographics?
John Zogby (@ZogbyStrategies) is the founder of the Zogby Survey and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His latest book is Beyond the Horse Race: How to Read Polls and Why We Should. His podcast with son, managing partner, and pollster Jeremy Zogby, can be heard here.
Jed Babbin: Grade B
This should have been a quiet week for the president and his team, but several things interfered.
The first is that the president is campaigning hard for the Republican ticket. He has been on the road off and on for about four weeks. His campaigning may not have much effect — or it could have a major effect either way — on the midterm elections. No one is sure at this point, but one way or the other Trump will not rest until the votes are in.
The other interference came from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which ruled that detained illegal immigrants who were never formally admitted into the U.S. are not constitutionally entitled to bond hearings while awaiting deportation. This case will certainly go to the Supreme Court for a final decision. The odds are that Trump will win again there, but one never really knows. For example, Trump should have won the case involving birthright citizenship, but he didn’t.
Another case of disquiet comes from the fact that Flavio Bolsonaro, the leader of conservatives in Brazil, fled the country with White House help. Bolsonaro feared arrest after the unexpected win for Lula da Silva. Whatever the final outcome, Bolsonaro owes Trump a great deal.
Meanwhile, the Democrats’ effort to rig the Alaska ballot seems to have confused the electorate while Trump’s efforts to clarify things aren’t working. But his strong efforts against Abdul el Sayed may turn the result positive. On the other hand, Kansas — where the Republicans have controlled the Senate vote for almost a century — seems up for grabs, and the Texas Senate race is way too close to call. Stay tuned. Tuesday will be a shocker one way or another.
Jed Babbin (@jedbabbin) is a Washington Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of President George H.W. Bush.
Marshall welcomes Trump visit
News that the Kansas rally was suddenly back on seemed to take members of the local party by surprise. When Secrets called sources in the state on Friday morning, they were still trying to get confirmation that Trump was coming on Sunday.
But we soon learned that the rally would be held in Salina, a city not far from the geographic center of the nation.
Marshall messaged that Trump’s appearance would be crucial in persuading a key bloc of supporters to get out and vote.
“I think it’s all Good! He just wants to win so bad! Our numbers are improving every day. He truly loves the people of Kansas. There are 175k Kansans who only vote when Trump is on ticket! He wants to get them all out to vote!”
The official explanation for the uncanceling is that it was merely a rescheduling, allowing the president to hold tele-rallies on Saturday, and moving the Kansas rally back a day. Hmm.
Quote of the day
Jim Messina, Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, was a guest on NPR’s Morning Edition today. Host Steve Inskeep asked whether optimism about the midterm elections was accompanied by nerves, like an old Saturday Night Live sketch that featured smiling Democrats with shaking hands. Of course, that was the answer.
“We’re Democrats, we can screw up free beer on a Friday night.”
Lunchtime reading
Sir Patrick Stewart, sonorous actor whose career stretched from Shakespeare to Star Trek: “For the American newspapers he was an ‘unknown British Shakespearean actor’, while even the series’s creator, Gene Roddenberry, was unconvinced about ‘the bald English guy.'”
How an obscure website became a force in America’s election information machine: If you want to reach a massive audience and influence voters, you build a website that is optimized to attract chatbots.
Continue reading...
[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
