Thursday, August 15, 2024

I'm sure there's a "You Can't Go Home Again" joke in there somewhere

I'm not going to talk about crowd sizes as an indicator of support or campaign momentum. Commentators and analysts have spent too much time on that already, but Donald Trump's recent North Carolina speech does nicely dovetail with a couple of at work ongoing threads.

As we observed earlier, the Trump campaign has been making some truly bizarre decisions given where we are in the election. From my post a couple of days ago:

Is there any precedent for a non-incumbent candidate, slightly behind in the polls and badly outfunded, deciding to scale back campaigning to a trickle? Trump's "explanation" was two transparent lies with a nonsensical statement in the middle. Assuming "letting their convention go through" means minimal campaign appearances, what strategic reason could he have in mind?
Yesterday's hastily called rally might have been an attempt to quell the controversy, but it may have ended up raising more questions.

Laura Hackett writing for Blue Ridge Public Radio:

The City of Asheville confirmed receipt of a $82,247.60 payment from the Trump campaign, ahead of the former president’s Wednesday campaign event in Asheville.

The deposit will cover a two-day rental of the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium, a city-owned building that’s part of the Harrah’s Cherokee Center complex in downtown Asheville. The auditorium is the smaller of the complex’s two venues, with a maximum seating capacity of 2,431, according to the venue website.

...

The Trump campaign first contacted the venue on August 8, Miller said. The contract was drawn up the next day. Because of the “last minute” nature of the request, the venue required organizers to provide payment in full prior to the event, per the Harrah’s Cherokee Center’s booking policy.

Trump campaign officials did not respond immediately to multiple requests for comment.

...

In other cities, including El Paso, Texas, Conway, South Carolina and several places in Montana, the Trump campaign has outstanding invoices. The City of El Paso has one of the largest outstanding invoices, alleging that the Trump campaign owes them more than $500,000 in public safety, maintenance and transit costs associated with a 2019 campaign visit, KTSM reported.


The issue here isn't crowd size itself. We'll never know how many people showed up since the event apparently sold out. The question this rally raises is why choose such a small venue, particularly in a reddish swing state where supporters should be easy to find? There is already plenty of speculation online – – I'm not going to add to it – – but it is definitely odd behavior and it is consistent with the curious scaled-back approach we've been talking about.




 

On a related note, why have most of JD Vance's speaking appearances been so small and badly organized? Vance is a historically unpopular vice presidential nominee, but he's not that unpopular. There is a significant slice of this country that is very much in agreement with his positions and which actually likes the man. Events like we have been seeing suggest there's something seriously wrong with this campaign.



Per year.



The North Carolina rally also fits in with our ongoing thread about how the establishment press in general and the New York Times in particular have been framing the Trump campaign. Even such sober and nonpartisan journalists as Kai Ryssdal have been rolling their eyes at these headlines.



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