So, here are some things that really struck me about how this has played out.
1. Trump's campaign has been nearly nonexistent. Since the Republican convention, he put nearly zero effort into this thing. He pretty much decided to mainly hang out at his golf courses. Closed campaign offices did nothing to help down ballot Republicans and seemed to become less and less energetic as things progressed. Shrinking numbers at his rallies and a plague of walkouts may have caused him to do less of them.
2. He bizarrely repeated that he did not need voters and their votes. He stipulated that this would be the last election where people would even need to bother to vote.
3. Where did the money his campaign brought in go? It seems not to have gone toward any voter outreach, any meaningful advertising, and he certainly did not send any of it to other Republicans to help their campaigns. The RNC became part of Trump Org and as such did nothing for anybody but him and it seems his family.
4. I guess his October surprise is the dock workers strike. So, the intent seems to be to try and cause prices for some goods to rise and to hopefully create shortages in the weeks leading up to election day.
5. Republicans are not really backing him. Sure, the usual few come out for him, but it seems that most of the party is trying to sit this out. Not to mention all of the Republicans that have come out to endorse Harris. In spite of this, and what it portends, he only continued and continues to play to his base. He seems not to care how many voters he loses and makes no attempt to attract any.
All of this adds up to one of the worst run presidential campaigns by a major candidate in my memory. He seems to be trying to lose. The question is why? It seems to me he wants to lose the election for the specific purpose that he then can claim fraud and attempt to throw this country into a full-scale riot. I think he has decided that his strongest position is that of victim.
Most of his efforts during this election cycle seem to have been about finding new junk to sell to his "fans" like bibles, sneakers, watches, and really pathetic digital trading cards. However, these were also ways to take in foreign money, as these were not being sold to fund his campaign, but to line his pockets. In these cases he made it possible to purchase these trinkets with crypto currency to hide who was buying them. So, if for example, an official from another country wanted to slip him funds, they could buy 10 Trump gold watches at $100,000 each, and there is a fast million from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China, whomever wanted to get money to them.
I am not making a prediction here, but I would be stunned if he won. He should by all accounts get crushed in a landslide. I understand that the general thought here is that margins in swing states tend to be close, but indicators seem to point to things swinging in a big way toward Harris/Walz.
