Welcome to Thunderdome. Without fail, in every cycle, some media commentator will pen a ludicrous piece about why Republicans should want to lose. They follow a similar, all-too-familiar script: if the Democrat wins the presidency, they will be restrained by the power of the Congress and the Courts from advancing a truly radical agenda; historically, their victory will lead to a sizable midterm backlash setting up for a better election the next time around; and the sooner the GOP rids itself of the baggage at the top of the ticket, the sooner it can elevate younger rising stars who haven’t been thoroughly villainized yet by the national media.

This argument is bunk — and the author is usually not stupid enough to actually believe it themselves. But it’s a useful argument to make in an attempt to undermine partisans and confuse fringe voters, and generally create the kind of chaotic debate that can get the Republicans squabbling among themselves. So that’s why an argument this stupid shows up time and again.

This time around we have a perfectly crafted version of this twaddle from Politico’s Jonathan Martin, in a piece titled “If Republicans Want to Win, They Need Trump to Lose — Big.” He vomits up this via his Acela corridor sources:

For most Republicans who’ve not converted to the Church of MAGA, this scenario is barely even provocative. In fact, asking around with Republicans last week, the most fervent private debate I came across in the party was how best to accelerate Trump’s exit to the 19th Hole.

One high-level Republican, conceding it may only be “wishful thinking,” even floated the idea of a Harris victory followed by Biden pardons of both his son, Hunter, and Trump. That would take the issue of both cases off Harris’s plate and, more to the point, drain the energy behind Trump’s persecution complex so that Republicans can get on with the business of winning elections.

So sure, you could work to win this, you could put all your eggs in one basket, you could blow all your money on a stupid little election, but what if, instead, you decided to lose? Wouldn’t that work out better for you in the long term? And if for some reason it doesn’t go this way, well, that’s a problem for future you, and you don’t even know that person!

The degree of idiocy required by the reader of these columns is monumental. No one wins by losing in partisan politics, and it’s insane to suggest otherwise. Victories can by Pyrrhic, but they’re still victories. And the suggestion that Republicans should ditch the leader of their party, the most beloved figure by their voters and a man currently effectively tied in the presidential race for, you know, reasons, is totally absurd.

As James Carville said to the audience at the Aspen Ideas Festival, which is full of people who seem smart but can be swayed but utter idiocy:

One of the things that I’ve found out — there are actually people who don’t mind losing elections because it makes them feel better and superior. There ain’t nothing short of winning. That’s what you’re about. If you don’t win, you don’t have shit. You’re just running around with talking points.

Yet even that basic truth won’t stop the media from trying, and ex-Republicans from sharing their wishful daydreams of a restored establishment that rids itself of the populist menace, whether Tea Party or Trump. And you can bet they’ll run it back again next time around. Get in loser, we’re going losing.

Harris leads in averages, odds favor Trump

Nate Silver explains why.

As you can see from the forecast chart, Harris’s odds have declined slightly over the past two weeks, as she’s gone from roughly a 55/45 favorite to a 45/55 underdog. It’s not a huge change. Probability calculations can be highly sensitive just to either side of the 50/50 mark. If the New York Knicks make a buzzer-beater just before halftime to go from trailing the Boston Celtics 61-60 to leading them 62-61, they might tick over from “underdog” to “favorite” in a win probability model. But it isn’t as though the game has been fundamentally transformed. Still, the decline in Harris’s forecast reflects three factors:

1) Harris is slightly underperforming the model’s benchmark for a convention bounce. Harris is, in fact, polling a bit better now than before the DNC — but only a bit better, with a 3.5-point lead in our national polling average as of Sunday versus 2.3 points before the convention. The model’s baseline expectation was a bounce of more like two points. By the model’s logic, she’s gone from a lead of 2.3 points to a convention-bounce adjusted lead of 1.5 points. That’s not a game-changing difference, but it’s enough to show up in the bottom line.

2) Kennedy dropping out of the race. We initially expected this to hurt Harris by 0.5 points or less, given that RFK Jr. drew more Trump voters than Harris voters but only slightly more. However, it’s plausible that the impact is larger with RFK having not just dropped out but endorsed Trump. 

Given the timing of Kennedy’s announcement, this factor is all but impossible to disentangle from the convention bounce or lack thereof. Our model run on Friday August 23 — the day just after Harris’s acceptance speech and the day that Kennedy dropped out, but before we switched over to the RFK-less version of the model — showed Harris ahead by 4.7 points in our national average. That suggested she was on her way to a typical convention bump of two or 2.5 points — or possibly more, given that the impact of the convention probably hadn’t yet been fully realized in the polling.

Now, our polling averages are designed to be very aggressive after big events like conventions, and maybe 4.7 points was an overestimate since it was drawn from relatively few polls. Occam’s Razor, though, is that Harris — who gave an effective speech — was on her way to a typical but not extraordinary convention bounce, and then Kennedy’s dropout/endorsement ate into those gains. I somewhat regret the framing of my story from August 24, which warned that the model could be running a “little hot” on Harris because the impact of RFK hadn’t really been factored in yet, but had a headline that emphasized how there hadn’t been much change yet. If I had to do it over again, I’d instead headline the story with something that underscored the need for a wait-and-see approach.

3) Comparatively poor polling for Harris in Pennsylvania, which is disproportionately important given Pennsylvania’s likelihood of being the pivotal state. As a result, the Electoral College forecast has swung more than the popular vote forecast.

GOTV via Turning Point? Not a great plan.

It turns out that trusting an entity that mostly lives on media and memes and has never proven it can do something as challenging as GOTV successfully to do that thing in a challenging election year is… not a great plan?

Turning Point Action aims to play a key role in Republican get-out-the-vote efforts in the wake of Trump directing the Republican National Committee to delegate ground game activities to GOP-aligned outside groups. The group tells Dispatch Politics it is focusing on low-propensity voters who did not pull the lever in either 2016, 2020, or both elections, but who are registered Republicans or lean conservative on the issues. 

Turning Point Action claims it has identified roughly 300,000 such voters in Arizona and the same number in Wisconsin, both crucial battleground states. Based at Turning Point USA headquarters in Phoenix and a field office the group says it opened in the suburban Milwaukee community of Waukesha, Wisconsin, Turning Point Action tells us its field staff is knocking on doors, sending text messages and making phone calls. The group is still hiring workers, even recruiting from outside each targeted state, offering to lodge employees in local hotels…

Turning Point USA, a political group active on college campuses nationwide and focused on increasing support for Trump and other Republicans among younger voters, had via founder Charlie Kirk been a fierce critic of the RNC’s voter turnout operation. So this cycle, Turning Point USA charged its 501(c)(4) sister organization, Turning Point Action, with spearheading a field program of its own. Thus far, the group has prioritized voter turnout in Arizona and Wisconsin. Its chief strategist and day-to-day manager of the operation is Turning Point Action chief operating officer Tyler Bowyer, a former RNC committeeman from Arizona.

However, multiple Republican sources Dispatch Politics interviewed in the course of reporting this story questioned claims Turning Point Action is making about the extent of its efforts in those two states. Trump leads Vice President Kamala Harris by 0.5 percentage points in Arizona, per the polling averages; the Democratic nominee leads the former president by 1.4 points in Wisconsin. Both razor-thin margins suggest the ground game matters.

Dispatch Politics spoke with more than half-dozen Republicans operatives based either in Arizona and Wisconsin who are involved in GOP voter turnout or who track the party’s canvassing efforts. Some of these Republican insiders, requesting anonymity to speak candidly, said they were only mildly aware of Turning Point Action’s work, if at all. Others were broadly up to speed on the group’s presence in Arizona and Wisconsin, but were unaware of specifics like staffing levels, the number of field offices, and what sort of GOTV activities the group is engaged in.

“Standard metrics like number of staff, offices, doors knocked and voters targeted is not something being shared or promoted as far as I can tell,” a Republican operative monitoring Wisconsin said. Added a second knowledgeable GOP operative who is involved in turning out Republican voters in multiple states: “Big press releases, big tweets, lots of smoke, very little work. That’s my assessment” of Turning Point Action.

As an example, this operative pointed to a Turning Point Action digital fundraising appeal signed by Kirk that claimed the group was “deploying full-time BALLOT CHASERS in ARIZONA, WISCONSIN, NEVADA and MORE” (emphasis added). But by the group’s own admission, its activities are limited to the Grand Canyon and Badger states. Additionally, the fundraising appeal offered to “MATCH EVERY DOLLAR you give before our August 31 deadline.” Promises to “match” grassroots contributions is considered a dubious strategy for encouraging such giving. 

Further, it’s unclear if Turning Point Action is sharing the voter data it gathers from knocking on doors, telephoning, and texting with the other Republican-aligned ground game groups. Most upload their data on a near daily basis to Data Trust, the party’s hub for sharing voter turnout information. Doing so facilitates coordination among outside groups, campaigns, and the Republican Party, while preventing confusion and duplication of efforts. 

The knowledgeable GOP operative who criticized Turning Point Action said definitively that the group is not using Data Trust. When Dispatch Politics asked Kolvet if that was in fact the case, he equivocated before saying he needed to investigate the matter further. No clarification was provided as of Wednesday morning at publication time, despite multiple follow-up requests for the information.

Which scion helps: Kennedy or Cheney?

It doesn’t appear to be much of a contest: people just don’t care what Liz Cheney thinks, and if they did, we’d know via the Politico spin.

“As a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this, and because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris,” she said to applause and a standing ovation from the audience.

The former Wyoming representative, who had not previously said how she planned to vote in November, said that voters in swing states, like North Carolina, who dislike Trump need to do more than just not vote for him — but actively cast their ballots for Harris.

“Because we are here in North Carolina, I think it is crucially important for people to recognize not only is what I’ve said about the danger that Trump poses something that should prevent people from voting for him, but I don’t believe that we have the luxury of writing in candidates’ names, particularly in swing states,” she said.

Her announcement comes after more than 200 staffers for four Republican presidential nominees — former President George H.W. Bush, former president George W. Bush, former Arizona senator John McCain and Utah senator Mitt Romney — last week endorsed Harris for president.

Keep in mind: many of these were interns. As for RFK:

In an electorate of more than 161 million eligible voters, even the reduced percentages supporting Kennedy still amount to 7 million to 8 million ballots, which could make a difference in November, given the thin margins. In a RealClearPolitics polling average that included Kennedy, Jill Stein and Cornel West released August 23, Trump trailed Harris in the national popular vote by two points, with Harris leading 46.4 percent to 44.4 percent. In a hypothetical one-on-one contest, however, Harris’s lead shrank to 1.5 points — 48.4 percent to 46.9 percent.

Swing states are even closer, showing dead heats between the two major candidates and effectively negating the expected post-Democratic National Convention bounce that was expected to favor Harris. Even a slight shift in one direction among Kennedy’s supporters could be decisive in winning those states’ crucial electoral votes.

As of the time of his withdrawal, most Kennedy supporters appeared to favor Trump by a significant margin, likely because left-leaning RFK, Jr., types realized that Harris had a better chance than Biden to win in November and shifted their support already. A YouGov poll released three days before Kennedy’s withdrawal found that registered Republicans backing him outnumbered his Democratic supporters by three to one. Polling data released by Outward Intelligence the day before he dropped out found that Kennedy voters would break for Trump nationally by 59 percent versus 41 percent for Harris in the event of Kennedy’s withdrawal. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report found that Trump would take 46 percent of Kennedy’s supporters, with only 26 percent going to Harris.

A Trump campaign internal poll posted on X showed Kennedy’s voters preferring Trump over Harris by double-digit margins in all swing states except Michigan, where the breakdown is only slightly in Trump’s favor. According to senior Trump advisor Chris LaCivita, “in every single state RFK, Jr.’s vote breaks for President Trump.” Trump’s pollster Tony Fabrizio called the results “good news for President Trump and his campaign — plain and simple.” The figures included a 66-16 split in Trump’s favor in Nevada, 58-22 in North Carolina, 55-25 in Wisconsin and 53-28 in Arizona. Pennsylvania and Georgia register smaller but still significant Trump leads among RFK, Jr., voters, by thirteen and fourteen points, respectively, while in Michigan the margin is a narrow 45-43 percent preference for Trump. In most cases, Trump’s predicted leads among third-party stalwarts dwarf the margins by which Biden won in the relevant states in 2020 and could easily exceed any advantage enjoyed Harris, whose polling numbers are lower than Biden’s were at the same time four years ago. RealClearPolitics estimates that, with Kennedy’s withdrawal, Trump will take the lead in all swing states except Michigan and Wisconsin, where Harris could still eke out a minor advantage.

One more thing

At long last, thanks be to the Gods, it’s the beginning of football season tonight. And that brought up a singular take, a take so hot that merely to gaze upon it will melt your face and burn the wall behind you in the shape of your head in charred ash as if you have been the sudden unexpected victim of a thermonuclear blast. I give you, for your sins, the Nation and an article from Dave Zirin: “The Dark Side of the Democratic Party’s Embrace of Football: the hypermasculinity and violence of football connects to Kamala Harris’s bellicose convention speech. It could repel young voters.”

As if written by a witless single cell organism, the article conjectures that “The platforming of football as a patriotic totem cannot be separated from the sport’s embrace of hypermasculinity and violence. These two pernicious parts of the game connected smoothly with the themes in Harris’s red-meat convention speech: nationalism and a shift to the right alongside a bellicose declaration of war-readiness — having the most ‘lethal fighting force.’ This message was set to chants of ‘USA,’ warming the heart of even Meghan McCain.”

Yes, I must admit, even my wife loves patriotic displays. But consider the idiocy of this claim that the DNC was “platforming football”: football, on its own, accounted for ninety-seven out of the top 100 viewed television broadcasts in 2023 — the only exceptions being the State of the Union, the Oscars and the Thanksgiving Day parade, which is literally just an opening act for football. The fact that Democrats, even ones dumb enough to sign up willingly for a job at the Nation, think putting a couple of football players on stage at the DNC is a vile offense that could turn off the youths is a reminder that American culture matters, and they remain very much at odds with it and all its works. Instead, all they hear is this.