Leland Vittert’s War Notes: What if Trump 2024 is Clinton 2016

NewsNation Chief Washington Anchor and On Balance host Leland Vittert was a foreign correspondent for four years in Jerusalem. He gives you an early look at tonight’s 7 p.m. ET show. Subscribe to War Notes here.  

State of play: 

• 12 days to the election 
• Decision Desk HQ average: Kamala Harris +0.9, as of around noon ET today. Click here to see the latest numbers.
  • Polymarket betting odds: 62.5 to 37.5 in favor of Trump.

Team Silly Takes Over

For Republicans ready to pop the champagne to celebrate former President Trump’s 2024 victory, they should remember how Hillary Clinton’s campaign felt two weeks before the election in 2016.

• The unbridled arrogance of those so sure they will win allows Team Silly to take over. 
• Captain of Team Silly is Tucker Carlson who warmed up the crowd for Trump last night in Arizona.

If Trump loses, this is why. Click here to watch Tucker Carlson compare Trump to a “daddy” who would come home and give a misbehaving little girl a “vigorous spanking.” 

• The crowd then chanted “Daddy Don” when Trump appeared. 
• It plays into everything Democrats say about Trump and Republicans, says The Daily Beast
  • Fact check: The Daily Beast isn’t wrong 
• The Tucker Carlson moment speaks to a number of problems
  • First: The wild applause to such disturbing rhetoric is just creepy 
  • What’s worse: 12 days out a front-runner can’t afford errors like this
    • Either nobody on Trump’s campaign vetted Carlson’s speech
      • Or more likely nobody would tell him no

Trump enters the last two weeks of the race as the undisputed front-runner with momentum.

Reality check: He isn’t nearly as far ahead as Clinton was at this time in 2016 — or Biden in 2020. 

Risky Bet

Democrats tell us the election of Trump would risk ending American democracy — yet their solution is to make the same warnings of impending doom that didn’t work for President Biden.

Twelve days out, Team Harris (and all Democrats) must now hope that what didn’t work for Biden will work for her.

• “Joy” wasn’t backed up with anything
  • No policy
  • No change in tone
  • No meaningful move to the center 
• Now Vice President Kamala Harris is back to dire warnings about Trump while doubling down on a progressive democratic agenda .

What changed? Harris’s post-convention rise ended with a confluence of three things that brought about a fourth.

1. Exposure — nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising
   1.  David Axelrod — former President Obama’s chief architect — delivers a devastating assessment of her town hall performance last night. Her bad performance isn’t anything new but now people are forced to tell the truth about it
   2. Harris’ answer to Anderson’s question about religion exposes Harris’s biggest problem.

• She said, “I do pray every day, sometimes twice a day.”
  • It reeks of inauthenticity.
    • She could say, “I am spiritual but not particularly religious – I feel a personal connection to God and my husband is Jewish … I relate more to the all-knowing and loving Christian God” … done! 
    • Just tell the truth. 

3. She put herself in a box with Anderson Cooper over-promising to build a border wall that she called “stupid” 50 times when Trump promised it. 

2. Trump’s transgender ad that replayed her 2019 celebration of free transgender surgery for inmates in California prisons,
3. Her answer on “The View” where she said she wouldn’t do anything different from Biden
4. Trump’s meaningful move away from crazy — his rallies these days sound pretty normal (save Tucker Carlson fantasizing about spanking).
   1. It’s 2016 Trump. He’s funny but still on message about issues people care about. 

To be fair: Democracy is all they have

• Harris is a terrible candidate for swing voters as illustrated by — Frank Luntz on CNBC
  • “She’s supposed to say within the first 24 hours: I’m going to introduce legislation that supports the wall … and improves legal immigration so more people can come here the right way. It’s such an easy compromise, and yet she doesn’t say it.”
• Chris Cillizza takes you through the data of her big gamble. 

Cognitive dissonance: The continued alarm bells over Trump and unwillingness to deviate from progressive orthodoxy remain perplexing to me.

• Look no further than the democratic abandonment of men 
• The DNC website lists every single possible intersectional group of people under “Who We Serve,” except men. 

Watch tonight: We’ll look at these two articles:

• “‘They’re Just Over It’: How Trump Has Converted Male Frustration Into a Movement,” headlines Alex Keeney in Politico.
• “Harris woos women but has lost men. It may cost her the election,” writes USA Today’s Nicole Russell. 

Tune into “On Balance with Leland Vittert” weeknights at 7/6C on NewsNation. Find your channel here. 

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily of NewsNation.