October Surprises

We are in the throes of silly season. Where do things stand? What should we make of yesterday's "October Surprises" against Trump, and why won't they work?

This is the season when campaign operatives are in full gear, just days away from what we used to call “Election Day.” All the planning and fundraising leading up to the final days focuses on execution. We’ve gone from good days and bad days to good hours and bad hours.

You’ve planned this for the entire campaign. Sam Dawson, a veteran GOP political operative from Florida, once told me that elections are management-by-objective, toward a one-day sale. Except these “one-day sales” now last 45 or more days.

Smart campaigns have all manner of plans to win those final “undecided” votes, mobilize turnout, and hone final media messages. Keeping the candidate focused and busy is a must - no one is freaking out more than them right now as they see their political lives and fortunes flash before their eyes. I used to put my candidates on bus tours with a few dozen volunteers to blitz small towns and their media in Republican-leaning communities to help build momentum and turnout—great visuals for media and very energizing for the candidate.

Let’s refresh ourselves on the five phases of a campaign. It starts with the “announcement” phase when the campaign launches. The organizational and introductory phases follow and last through the summer. After Labor Day, the “issue” phase kicks in, followed by the “comparison/contrast” phase, when attack ads and messages are at their zenith, usually in early to mid-October. Of course, these “phases” can overlap, especially when you have a ton of money and can afford it.

Finally, there’s the “turnout” phase with closing messages, with winning campaigns focused on positive (?) messages and desperate campaigns doubling down on attacks to keep persuadable voters from migrating to the Other Side.

We’ve entered the “turnout” phase now. Which presidential campaign do you think has the momentum? The ones trotting out factually-challenged accusations of 31-year-old “events,” or the one keeping a 76-year streak alive of Democrats calling the GOP presidential nominee the second coming of Adolph Hitler?

Oh, wait. They’re the same campaign—Kamala Harris’s. Donald Trump is closing his campaign with messages like this.

Trump is closing well with a somewhat risky interview with the nation’s most popular podcaster, former Mixed Martial Arts fighter and stand-up comedian Joe Rogan on Spotify (today, actually). Rogan’s audience is predominantly younger men. An event with former primary foe and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley will likely happen next week. Former Democratic US Rep. Tulsi Gabbard officially became a Republican at one of Trump’s rallies this week.

Rogan, by the way, is hardly a Republican loyalist. He endorsed Bernie Saunders for President in 2020 but said he preferred Trump over Biden later that year. Figure that one out. Rogan’s long-form interviews are fascinating, revealing, and unpredictable.

As for Harris, she actually took a day off from the trail (!) last week and continues to flail about with a failed CNN town hall where she refused to answer questions beyond word salads and pre-programmed talking points and non-answers, along with appearances with former GOP Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-WY). She’s outspending Trump on the boob tubes with negative ads, but I was able to find a positive one.

It’s not a bad advertisement, but it’s not believable. She’s already championed an end to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the most significant middle-class tax cut in American history. Her opposition to that legislation, much of which expires in 2025, will result in a substantial middle-class tax increase. And every time a politician says they only want to raise taxes on the “rich,” cover your wallet.

Campaigns, by now, know if they’ve got momentum or not. And it’s not hard to figure out who has and doesn’t. Polling is one way to tell, but not the only way. In this election, the polls are either very close or wildly contradictory and, increasingly, neither indicative nor helpful. It’s the trend lines you need to watch.

The Wall Street Journal’s latest national poll has Trump ahead by a couple of points, while one of my favorite polling outfits, TIPP, has Harris ahead by the same. More critical are the polls in the seven “swing” states; everything seems to be within the margin of error. Polling from 2016 and 2020 missed the mark by underestimating Trump’s vote in several states, with a Washington Post/ABC poll from Wisconsin days before the Biden v. Trump election being my favorite example.

That poll had Biden winning by 17 points less than a week after election day. Biden won by .6 points or about 11,000 votes. Polling consistently undercounts the Trump vote for many reasons. Many “low propensity” voters are often harder to reach (e.g., rural America). A ninety percent refusal rate no doubt contributes, with affluent white female urban liberals (AWFULs) racing to the phones, cats under their arms, when pollsters call. A few pollsters are trying to find a way to bridge those gaps, from messing with (weighing) their samples and vote projection models to reaching them in novel ways, including texting and online. Some public polls are malicious, and none should be taken at face value.

For example, Quinnipiac University’s latest poll has Harris up 4 points nationally, but it uses a D+6 sample, which is ludicrous. Other polling shows Republican party identification narrowly eclipsing Democrats.

The national polls generally mean little more than underscoring where momentum is leading. While it freaks out the constitutionally ignorant that Democrats may win the national popular vote - thanks entirely to large margins out of our two most populous states, California and New York - while losing the election, it’s the Electoral College that matters. The results from seven states - Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina (not really), and Georgia - will decide who clears the magic 270 electoral mark. Polling in those states is within the margin of error, but Trump is trending up with narrow leads, again depending on what polls you’re reading.

The better indicator may be the behavior of the candidates themselves, what their echo chambers (MSNBC) are saying, and where the circular firing squads are assembling. On that score, the “joy” seems to have moved over to the Trump campaign as Senate GOP candidates close the gap, if not take leads, in several competitive elections, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, and even Michigan. Others might be in play. They’re jump balls, and the trend lines are clear.

And then we have the “October surprises” that entertain us every election.

Sometimes they work. CNN dropped one on North Carolina GOP gubernatorial candidate and African American Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson early in October, detailing the conservative Christian’s dalliance on porn sites, including referring to himself as a “black Nazi” on one of them. His response was inadequate: “That is not Mark Robinson.” He now trails badly but may overperform the polling in a state that chronically underpolls conservatives.

But Harris’s October surprises fell like duds. Jeffrey Goldberg, the publisher of The Atlantic, a lefty and frequently sensational magazine, published a story claiming that former Trump White House Chief of Staff and retired Marine General John Kelley heard Trump say he wishes he had generals like Hitler. There was no corroboration, and the timing was odd (not really) since the statement, if made, was uttered more than five years ago.

It’s interesting timing to publish the story two weeks before an election. By the way, meet the owner of the magazine, one Lauren Jobs, widow of the late Steve Jobs of Apple fame, whose publication has called the child sex trafficking epidemic “false.” Guess who she’s photographed here. You guessed it, Gislaine Maxwell of Jeffrey Epstein infamy, and now in prison.

White House denizens came out of the woodwork, including Trump’s deputy national security advisor Gen. Keith Kellogg and others, to deny the statement and the sentiment. That includes the wife of a fallen soldier who defended Trump after Goldberg tried to use her to defame the former President.

Sadly, it wasn’t the first time the decorated Marine veteran and Gold Star father was caught in an uncorroborated accusation. He’s the origin of the infamous “suckers and losers” comment concerning WWII American graves in Europe that other Trump White House officials, including Trump critic and former National Security advisor John Bolton widely debunked. That was also authored by Goldberg in The Atlantic. Kelly was fired as one of Trump’s four chiefs of staff in 2019. Kelly is a good man and patriot, and I’m sorry to see him tarnished this way. Generals don’t make good chiefs of staff, as military and Pentagon “politics” aren’t the same as White House and congressional politics. One exception: Al Haig for helping facilitate the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974, after serving as Secretary of State. If I were Kelly, I’d delete Jeffrey Goldberg from my contact file. He’s poisonous.

It would also be an odd sentiment for a President who is not only popular in Israel but is the father of a Jewish daughter and grandchildren who should have won a Nobel Peace Prize for the Abraham Accords during his presidency.

Just a guess, but I don’t think Hitler would approve. As my friend Mark Strand expertly outlined, I also suspect that Americans have grown tired of every GOP presidential candidate since Dwight Eisenhower (!) and even Gov. Tom Dewey (1948) being called the second coming of Adolf Hitler.

The other “October Surprise,” blurted on the same day, had to do with a groping that allegedly occurred 31 years ago and involved Jeffrey Epstein, who isn’t around anymore to corroborate. Again, where was this eight years ago when such accusations were in vogue? It might help, too, if the accuser got her facts right. Again, intelligent Americans are inured against this, given the salacious “Hollywood Access” tape of 2016, that year’s “October Surprise.” That Trump has expressed openness to release the infamous Epstein “client list” adds further to the saga.

The least Harris could have done was coordinate and vet these drops a little better, but when you’re in panic mode, you throw everything against the wall without much thought.

Sometimes, “October Surprises” take odd twists. On October 14, 2020, the New York Post broke the story of the Hunter Biden laptop “scandal.” It resulted in a collaboration of censorship between national security professionals tied to the Biden campaign and social media outlets Facebook and Twitter (now called X and owned by Elon Musk). You remember the 51-spook letter claiming the laptop scandal “had all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.” One Anthony Blinken, America’s weak and disastrous Secretary of State, orchestrated that letter.

As often happens, the truth took its time to get its boots on while lies flew around the world. The New York Times, CBS, and others eventually authenticated the laptop, and we’re hearing nothing about Hunter’s tax trials in California. Joe Biden allowed his office (Vice President) to be used to enrich his family and likely himself.

One October surprise that has been widely ignored is the Kamala Harris plagiarism scandal, unveiled by Christopher Rufo and others. She and her coauthor lifted multiple paragraphs and thoughts from “Smart on Crime.” It wasn’t the only time. The Washington Free Beacon reported on an earlier incident of plagiarism in 2007 testimony before Congress. The regime media’s response: a collective yawn. Plagiarism is fraud.

Funny, plagiarism mattered when Joe Biden did it during his 1988 campaign.

Who knows what other shoes may drop during these final days before they start counting ballots (and God knows what else)? The Harris campaign is clearly in meltdown mode and probably has more mud to toss. After show trials, lawfare, and assassination attempts, nothing is going to stick at this stage. There’s not much more they tell us about Trump than we already know.

I can’t wait for this election to end but don’t expect normalcy to return anytime soon, if ever. This is not the presidential choice many of us wanted, but here we are. The post-election period may be wilder than the election. Choose wisely, but choose.

Next post: what do early voting statistics tell us, and what’s happening in the election integrity trenches?