#judicial weaponization

I'm not sure who is going to win this, but I’d rather be #Trump right now than #HarrisWalz because he’s peaking at the right time, and the issues people rank highest (economy, border) favor him. He’s surging and it feels like she’s cratering.

But the Democrats have made so many mistakes this election season. James Carville can rant and rave all he wants, but that’s just a fact. The key mistakes include:

-Not reaching out to #Elon Musk, and instead unfairly villainizing a guy with $240B and making it clear that this election will be existential for him personally;

-Charging Trump criminally with a series of novel legal theories that pushed the envelope of the law. If you’re going to go after the king, you better not miss or he gets stronger and, in this case, they turned him into a martyr and the well-worn Hollywood archetype of the underdog fighting the system and elites. People don’t like it when people don’t play fair and criminally charging your political opponent over 94 (or whatever) half-baked accusations (at best) was not playing fair;

-Not admitting Biden’s severe cognitive issues earlier so there could be a competitive primary on the Democratic side rather than foisting an untested and clearly unserious VP on voters. They would have been better off choosing a nominee who could run against the Biden-Harris administration’s worst policies and promise a new course (probably a governor). Harris has had the unenviably impossible task of promising a new future when she’s part of the current administration. Minimally when the Hur report came out, they should have bailed on Biden. She can’t plausibly separate herself from Biden enough no matter how hard she tries.

-Choosing Walz as VP because Josh Shapiro wasn’t acceptable to the pro Gaza wing.

-Not ensuring Trump had adequate and effective secret service protection. The near misses of the 2 assassins (especially the first one) turned him into the aforementioned archetype all the more. And it was just wrong.

-Not reaching out to black and Hispanic male voters until the last minute, at which point it seems pandering and desperate. Having no plan to reach out to men, period, until the last minute and instead emphasizing the gender gap (ie turning Kamala into Hillary 2.0, pantsuit and all, talking about “reimagining masculinity,” the girls’ sports issue etc);

-Not giving even the slightest nod to parental rights. They’re underestimating the power of that issue.

-Not reaching out to RFK Jr and bringing him back into the fold (all they had to do was care about children’s health) and instead trying to destroy him through undemocratic lawfare and insults;

-Putting Harris on the media circuit after the debate. She’s clearly not up to it. As pathetic as it is, they would have been better off keeping her in bubble wrap.

All that being said, it’s amazing they’re still in it. And really the biggest challenge for them - all of the above aside - is the core fact that people believe they were better off four years ago. That’s “event memory” so to speak. No matter what you tell people in ads about their own lives, they know what they pay for groceries.