Welcome to Thunderdome. In the space of four weeks, the incumbent president was dethroned from his nomination and replaced by his running mate in a behind-the-scenes coup led by the most powerful person in the party (who still insists on the absurd claim it was an “open primary”). Within that time, the nation witnessed the first of not one but two assassination attempts targeting his opponent, the former president who has faced a thermonuclear level of lawfare in an attempt to seize everything he owns and put him behind bars. Convicted of thirty-four felony counts in a bizarre legal theory advanced by partisan opponents, he now faces sentencing post-election — as does the current president’s ne’er-do-well son, widely expected to receive a presidential pardon despite the White House’s promises to the contrary.

The choices of running mates have been widely viewed as major missed opportunities for both candidates. J.D. Vance contributed a bounce so small it may have been negative, reframing the culture war debate in “childless cat lady” terms that made Democrats salivate and Taylor Swift veer left. And the choice of Tim Walz over a stronger rising star like Josh Shapiro has Democrats worried about Pennsylvania, the most important state of the cycle. Walz’s story, so appealing on initial glance, crumbled into pieces in the month since he was chosen — from his lack of combat military service to his tenuous football connection to his lies about the use of IVF. His far-left DFL progressivism paired with a fear of interviews at both the top and bottom of the ticket has left the Kamala Harris campaign reliant on partisan rallies and surrogates in the media — leaving her far underwater with independent voters who remain unsure of what she’ll even do as president.

The second presidential debate, watched by 67 million people, could have been a point where Harris laid these concerns to rest. The Democratic-leaning press and commentators were ebullient after her performance, believing it would be a huge boost to the campaign. Instead, the polling averages had at most a one-point nudge (in Nate Silver’s average, she went from a 2.2 polling advantage on the day before the debate to 2.9 today). She leads in averages by enough to guarantee another popular vote win, but not by enough to leave any Democrat feeling comfortable about the Electoral College. And her problems with key Democratic groups — lagging Joe Biden among black men and Hispanics in particular — don’t seem to be going away no matter how many new accents she deploys. The “joy” just isn’t there for these voters.

The big news this week is the decision by the Teamsters, representing 1.3 million members, for the first time in almost a quarter-century not to endorse the Democratic candidate for president. Independent surveys showed their members solidly supporting Donald Trump over Harris, by 59.6 to 34 percent. The decision not to endorse is really a dodge — their members have a clear tilt toward Trump, and it’s calling into question her campaign’s decision to focus more on the “care economy” than manufacturing and industry, in part because that’s what their candidate is comfortable talking about.

It has been without question the most chaotic presidential election of the modern era, and it’s not over yet. But the battle lines are hardened, and they really haven’t shifted. Americans might be on edge, but they are remarkably consistent in their views, priorities and attitudes toward both sides. It’s a thin strip of no-man’s-land that will decide this election — and the people wandering in it right now are torn between two sides that don’t seem interested in speaking to them. They’re too busy trading shots online.

The Harris-Walz Plan: dodge the media

All the way til the election, Alex Thompson and Torey Van Oot report.

The Harris-Walz ticket is on pace to do fewer interviews and press conferences than any major party’s presidential pairing in modern US history.

Vice President Harris’s team is betting she and her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, can avoid many tough interviews and still win as they run down the clock to Election Day.

That strategy comes even as many voters say they want to learn more about Harris — and as her campaign has said she’s changed many of her past liberal positions to more centrist policies.

The previously press-friendly Walz has joined Harris in largely dodging the media while campaigning before friendly, enthusiastic crowds.

By the numbers: Harris has been a candidate for fifty-nine days and Walz for forty-four days because of President Biden’s sudden withdrawal as the Democratic nominee on July 21.

During those fifty-nine days, Republicans Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have participated in more than seventy interviews and press conferences with TV and print reporters while Harris and Walz have taken part in seven, according to an Axios analysis.

Vance alone has participated in more than seven times more interviews and press conferences than Harris and Walz combined during that time.

The breakdown since July 21:

Local TV interviews: Trump, 7; Vance, 15; Harris, 1; Walz, 3.
National print publications: Trump, 1; Vance, 8; Harris, 1; Walz, 0.
National TV interviews: Trump, 2; Vance, 24; Harris, 1; Walz, 1.
Press conferences: Trump, 3; Vance, 12; Harris, 0; Walz, 0. (Vance’s press conferences often cater to local reporters and his staffers limit follow-up questions, as the New York Times has noted.)

It’s actually even worse than this, because Axios didn’t include several interviews with commentators deemed partisan-leaning — including more than twenty-five Trump and Vance interviews with conservative commentators on Fox News, Newsmax, the New York Post and ideologically friendly podcasters. The only Walz interview not included was with Rachel Maddow. This skew is astounding in lack of openness by two people who may be on the cusp of occupying the most important political offices in the country.

Cat-eating conspiracy hides real problems

The Springfield memes are an outgrowth of local frustration, the WSJ reports.

Then tragedy struck at the start of school in 2023. A minivan driven by a Haitian immigrant crashed into a school bus, injuring twenty children and killing Aiden Clark, who was thrown from a window. The man didn’t have a driver’s license that was valid in the US.

Aiden was memorialized in an obituary as a kid who loved gardening with his father, snuggling with his mother and playing with his siblings, and overall was “one of the most awesome and exceptional eleven-year-olds in existence.” 

His death brought out conflict about immigration. City commission meetings once dominated by zoning petitions became extended public comment sessions on immigration. Suspicions grew about who might be benefiting from the migrant wave.

After one city commission meeting, an evangelical pastor named Carl Ruby, who ran an “immigrant integration” not-for-profit organization, sought out a local GOP leader who had criticized him online. Ruby said he shook the hand of Mark Sanders, who had become a leading critic in town of the influx of immigrants — and wouldn’t let go until he agreed to meet. 

They met and drank coffee at Panera for an hour and a half. Ruby offered to share tax documents for his organization that would dispel rumors he was getting rich from his nonprofit. He also said he didn’t own rental properties or benefit from a local employment agency that has employed Haitians, as had been rumored.

Sanders, who has likened Ruby to a “coyote” who makes money from helping people cross into the US illegally, agreed to take down some of his online posts but the two men haven’t spoken since. 

“I think he believed me, but I don’t think it fits his narrative,” Ruby said. He’s not interested in another get-together. “Logic and truth just don’t matter at this point to that group.” 

Sanders, a retired engineer, had started working as a school bus driver to comfort his daughter, who had been scared to get back on the bus after Aiden Clark’s death. He said he would be open to another meeting because he believes he can show ways that the Haitians have hurt the city. “I can show you the detriments,” he said. “Show me the benefits.”  …

A Vance spokesperson on Tuesday provided the Wall Street Journal with a police report in which a resident had claimed her pet might have been taken by Haitian neighbors. But when a reporter went to Anna Kilgore’s house Tuesday evening, she said her cat Miss Sassy, which went missing in late August, had actually returned a few days later — found safe in her own basement. 

Kilgore, wearing a Trump shirt and hat, said she apologized to her Haitian neighbors with the help of her daughter and a mobile-phone translation app.

Does Trump have any ground game?

Republicans are worried he doesn’t, according to the Washington Examiner’s Jim Antle.

Now that Harris is, unlike Biden, actively competing in all seven battleground states, the hand-wringing over Trump’s ground game has resumed.

“It’s unproven,” a cautiously optimistic Republican strategist told the Washington Examiner.

“The only group I’m aware of that is actually knocking on doors in Georgia for Trump is [Elon Musk’s] America PAC,” influential conservative commentator Erick Erickson, who lives in the state, wrote on X Wednesday. “I know at least a dozen people in different parts of the state who have had someone at their house. No other groups have made contact with those voters.”

This echoes what a person Semafor described as a “Republican operative who votes in a swing state” said in a story published earlier this month: “I’m as plugged in as they get — and yet I don’t even know who my friends and family back home can contact for a yard sign or to knock doors in their precinct.”

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the Musk super PAC ditched the canvassing firm it had hired to turn out Republicans and Trump voters in the swing states of Arizona and Nevada at this late date. 

NBC News reported on Republican disagreements over a strategy to try to turn out low-propensity voters who have skipped out on previous elections when the GOP underperformed but are supportive of Trump this year.

The outlet’s Allan Smith, Matt Dixon, Henry Gomez and Katherine Doyle write that “Trump’s campaign thinks its new get-out-the-vote strategy will serve as a silver bullet to capture key battleground states. But increasingly concerned Republicans fear the Trump team is firing blanks.”

One more thing

The fiftieth season of Saturday Night Live will almost certainly continue its downward spiral when it comes to the realm of political parody, where it has struggled abjectly since the 2008 cycle to come across as anything more than mad libs for, well, libs. The iconic parody performances of Phil Hartman, Darrell Hammond, Will Ferrell and Tina Fey are ancient history now. In an interview with Colin Jost, Michael Che and Lorne Michaels in the Hollywood Reporter, Michaels gives an indication as to why. Asked: “I’ve heard you say that Republicans are easier for the show than Democrats, in that Democrats tend to take it more personally. Is that still the case?” he replies:

Yes. And it’s not personal in the sense of an attack, it’s just, you did say that and you did do that, so were you thinking it would be rude for us to comment on it? That’s what we do, and we’re going to do it again.

One reason comedy has experienced such a resurrection in stand-up and podcast form even as its presence on television in sitcoms and sketch shows has diminished is this: Democrats just can’t take the mockery. They’ve become the humorless scolds they once rightly saw as embodying the Republican Party. How’s it feel to be the man? It’s no fun to be the man.