Item one: The famous "closing argument" should be multipronged. But the f-word must be prominent in the mix.
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What the hell is this "debate" about whether Kamala Harris should call Donald Trump a fascist? It’s too … what? Too aggressive? Too in your face? It risks backlash?
Sorry, but that’s the advice of the people who’ve been advising Democrats to lose elections for years. The bottom line is this, and it’s really simple. In the last 10 days of a campaign, you’re either playing offense or defense. And if you’re playing defense, you’re going to lose.
The fascism charge is offense. Period. End of debate. Now, within that debate, there are more subtle conversations to be entertained. Should it be the main line of attack, or should it be a side attack? Should she bank everything on it? Fine, let’s discuss those things. But the big question ought to be settled. She should call Trump a fascist. She should do it because it’s playing offense, and she should do it because it’s true.
Trump is playing offense. It’s all lies as usual, but for some people, his just standing up there and saying things confuses and convinces them. At his rally Thursday night, Trump claimed he was "leading by a lot" in the polls. He ticked off a number of states where he claimed to be leading by "a lot." He’s leading in none of them. He may be +2 in the occasional poll in Arizona, but that’s still margin-of-error territory. Most reputable polls have Arizona dead even. The only recent one where Trump is +3 is from a conservative pollster. And +3 is still within the margin of error.
But he says this stuff, and some people buy it. He also went on some riff about how Harris is weak and Xi Jinping can’t wait to steamroll her. This is obvious sexist garbage, to which her immediate response, if she deigns to give one, ought to be, "Well, Donald Trump and I went face to face. Who kicked whose ass across the stage and back? I hope Xi was watching that!" But still: Some people will see that Trump riff and just believe it.
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It’s so important, in these closing days, to exude confidence, to look like a winner, to be on offense. A close election like this one might come down to this question of what’s on swing voters’ minds in these final days. Trump wants them thinking Harris is an incompetent failure. She wants them thinking he’s too dangerous and risky. Ergo—fascism and democracy.
Trump himself flung this door wide open when he said in an interview that he’d use the military to go after his political opponents. That’s what prompted John Kelly to speak to The New York Times. It may prove to be a key moment in this campaign if others follow, particularly James Mattis.
Harris has worked all that into her stump speech. Thursday night in Atlanta, she invoked Kelly’s remarks, and she quoted him quoting Trump to the effect that Hitler "did some good things." I’d love to see her play with that a little. "Let’s see … what good things did Hitler do? He loved his dog. He didn’t smoke or drink …" Get some laughs at Trump’s expense.
I love the fact that she’s speaking next week from the same spot on the Ellipse where Trump gave his January 6 address. Her speech really needs to be blunt and direct. And here’s a crucial point: She needs to say something new in that speech. She needs to make news—to level some charge at Trump that she hasn’t leveled. That’s playing offense, and it will put him on defense.
Another advantage to all this is that it could goad Trump. Karl Rove was on Fox this week criticizing Trump for going off script. Harris can force more of this. If she needles him about Hitler, for example, she can goad him into talking about Hitler. Who knows what he’d say? He might actually list a few of those good things Hitler did. That’d be news.
She still needs to talk about the economy. And she is. That’s actually still her main message, and it should remain so. In talking-head land, they too often assume that if Harris starts talking about X, that means she’s stopped talking about Y. It’s ridiculous. If you look at the ads the Harris campaign is running the most in the swing states, they’re practically all economy-based.
And the ones that aren’t about the economy are about the other issue that needs to be central in the home stretch: abortion. Some say she’s wasting her time in Houston tonight because she has no chance of winning Texas. But that isn’t the point. The point is to highlight the cruelty of Texas’s anti-abortion law. And to share a stage with a Houston native named Beyoncé. And with Willie Nelson too!
So she’s sticking to the core messages. But fascism and democracy—and Adolf Hitler, specifically, because more people know who Hitler was than know what fascism is, and because she might get Trump to talk about Hitler—absolutely have to be part of the closing mix. Play offense. Look strong. Step on his neck. It’s time.
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Every day this week, we're counting down the lowlights of Trump’s time in politics. Some were just embarrassing. Many were horrific. All of them should disqualify him from another four years in the White House.
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If Kamala Harris wins, the polls, and the way the media reports them, are lining up to be one of the big scandals of this election cycle. As Greg Sargent and I reported this week, the field has been flooded by right-leaning pollsters, and, funny thing, their polls tend to be more favorable to Donald Trump. Not a lot more favorable. But enough to nudge the averages.
Are they doing this intentionally? That’s impossible to prove. But just read the opening anecdote in our piece, in which one of these pollsters bragged on social media about the pro-Trump impact of one of their polls. And read the quotes from Cornell Belcher, Michael Steele, and Stuart Stevens, all of whom believe it to be the case (Steele actually says he knows it to be the case). They do it for four basic reasons: (1) to give MAGA World confidence; (2) to freak out Democrats and liberals, who are psychologically inclined toward freaking out anyway; (3) to coax the media into writing nonsense "Trump has momentum" stories based on tiny shifts that are obviously within the margin of error; (4) to create the impression that Trump is ahead so that in the event that Harris wins, it makes postelection attempts to steal the election more legitimate in some people’s eyes.
Most people, even many highly informed people, don’t understand how prevalent these right-leaning polls are. In many swing states, they are a strong plurality or even a majority of the recent polling. Greg and I counted, for example, all the polls of Pennsylvania conducted in October (as of Tuesday) listed in the FiveThirtyEight averages. There were 19 of them, and 11 were either by right-leaning polling firms or conducted for right-wing news outlets (the Telegraph and the Daily Mail, which have both been running mountains of garbage propaganda). Eleven out of 19! And Trump led in nine of them (the other two were even).
Moral: Don’t freak out about polls. Certainly not about one poll. Stevens, when I interviewed him earlier this week, gave a good piece of advice: Choose one poll that you decide you trust and pay attention to it over time. "I’ve always felt," he said, "that polls are like bathroom scales." That is, any single bathroom scale may not be precisely accurate, but it is, over time, accurate to itself, so if it says you weigh 180.6 one week and 179.6 the next, that 179.6 might not be precisely on the nose, but it’s almost certainly true that you lost one pound.
And sometimes, polls have dead giveaways that mean you can toss them. This week’s Wall Street Journal poll, for example, had Trump ahead 47–45, a reversal of its previous poll. Oh my God! A four-point shift! It’s curtains!!
Actually, a four-point shift is statistically meaningless. But more than that: This poll had Trump with a 52 percent personal approval rating. That’s absurd. He’s never had that, I don’t think, from the day he rode down that escalator. Ridiculous. Toss the poll. There’s something wrong with it.
Trump may win. Obviously. It’s a close race. But these polls and the breathless way they’re sometimes reported are not holy writ, by any stretch of the imagination. So keep calm and go do something constructive to defeat the fascist.
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From revived classics to the latest must-read, take a peek into The New Republic’s bookstore and pick up the next book you can’t put down.
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Last week’s quiz: Fright night. The past and present of Halloween.
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1. As we know, Halloween is short for All Hallows’ Eve. But what is a "hallow," anyway, as a noun?
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A. A saint
B. A spirit
C. A demon
D. A sprite
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2. In what neighboring countries did children begin the custom of wearing costumes or disguises for Halloween in the late nineteenth century?
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A. Spain and Portugal
B. Australia and New Zealand
C. Netherlands and Belgium
D. Ireland and Scotland
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Answer: D, Ireland and Scotland. They called it "guising."
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3. In what decade did trick-or-treating become a widespread practice in the United States?
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A. 1920s
B. 1930s
C. 1940s
D. 1950s
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Answer: B, 1930s. According to the theory bruited here, Halloween first became a night for mischief and hooliganism in the 1920s, leading to the establishment of more organized community-based trick-or-treating in the next decade.
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4. The 1962 (and 1973, and 2021) hit "Monster Mash" by Bobby "Boris" Pickett gets radio play every Halloween. In the lyric, what was the name of the dance that Dracula wanted the party goers to perform, in addition to the Monster Mash?
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A. The Vampire Vamp
B. The Bat-tusi
C. The Mortal Aortal Stomp
D. The Transylvania Twist
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Answer: D, the Transylvania Twist. Also: I learned not too long ago that one of my favorite all-time rock and roll trivia questions is dead. The question is, Who played piano on this song? And the answer is, or was, Leon Russell, who was a pretty big and interesting star in the 1970s but was a hardworking session man in L.A. in the 1960s. I loved the fact that the dude who boogied his way through the Concert for Bangladesh (please don’t tell me you don’t know what that was) played that tinkly piano on "Monster Mash." But then I read recently that Pickett said Russell was supposed to
be on the song, but he showed up late to the session and only played on the B-side.
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5. What does Teen Vogue say is the most popular teenage girls’ costume this year?
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A. Barbie
B. Taylor Swift
C. Chappell Roan
D. Cruella De Vil
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Answer: A, Barbie. A bit of a surprise there, no?
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6. "In a twist no one saw coming," writes the online retailer CandyStore.com in its 2024 survey of Halloween candy sales, what candy "dethroned Reese’s Cups as the top Halloween candy for the first time ever"?
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A. Snickers
B. Twix
C. M&M’s
D. Kit Kat
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Answer: C. M&M’s. Pretty obvious. Sent shockwaves through the confections game, apparently.
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This week’s quiz: "The Candy Man can …" I seem to have jumped the gun on Halloween, which isn’t until next week. But let’s just roll with it and have a quiz on candy.
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1. First things first. With regard to cocoa, which two small neighboring countries grow more than half the world’s crop?
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A. Guatemala and Honduras
B. Guyana and Suriname
C. Micronesia and Palau
D. Ghana and the Ivory Coast
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2. The Curtiss Candy Company’s Baby Ruth bar was named not after Babe Ruth, the Sultan of Swat, but the infant daughter of:
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A. Theodore Roosevelt
B. Grover Cleveland
C. Andrew Carnegie
D. Mark Twain
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3. List these candy bars in the order in which they were introduced: the Snickers bar, the Clark bar, the Payday bar, the Zero bar, the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.
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4. Which of the below was not an original flavor of Jolly Rancher hard candy, which debuted in 1949?
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A. Blue Raspberry
B. Watermelon
C. Apple
D. Fire Stix
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5. Which country consumes the most candy per year on a per capita basis?
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A. Sweden
B. Switzerland
C. Japan
D. South Africa
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6. Everyone loves gummi bears, but manufacturer Haribo’s attempt to market sugar-free gummi bears ended up being one of the epic fails in the history of the confection industry. Why?
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A. They stuck to people’s teeth.
B. They smelled a little like vomit.
C. They started fizzing on contact with saliva.
D. They caused diarrhea.
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The Clark bar had a place in my heart as a youngster because it was from Pittsburgh, just up the road from me. As you drove through the Fort Pitt tunnel and saw the city open up before you, you also saw the big Clark bar sign across the river. Then it was bought by one of the conglomerates, which over time stopped making it. Then it was bought by the Altoona-based Boyer company, maker of the Smoothie and the Mallo Cup (both excellent, by the way). So yes, Boyer still makes Clark bars. Answers next week. Feedback to fightingwords@tnr.com.
—Michael Tomasky, editor
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