Donald Trump should be winning this election by a very wide margin. Given the last four years of inflation, illegal immigration and an increasingly violent international scene, combined with the chaotic retreat from the presidential race by Joe Biden, it is astonishing that the election is close at all.
The culprit, of course, is Trump. The man has not learned a thing from his loss in 2020. He remains undisciplined and disorganized. Trump is running a campaign geared toward himself and the applause he gets at rallies. It’s all about shock and entertainment.
Both Trump and running mate JD Vance act less like national candidates and more like headline writers for the Weekly World News — and it could cost them the election.
The clearest example of muddling a winning issue is the absurd Springfield pet-eating controversy. Vance thought he had made a genius move stirring up a hornet’s nest over claims that Haitian migrants were eating neighborhood pets. Instead, he created a firestorm over the veracity of his claims and, of course, a wave of internet memes.
This was perfect for Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democrats. With the Biden-Harris administration underwater in its handling of illegal immigration, they could shift the debate to the truthfulness of Vance and his fellow travelers. After all, the last thing they want to do is be forced to account for the influx of drugs, crime and their attendant costs.
But where Vance really struck out was in failing to tie the surge in migrants to rising housing costs. With millions of Americans facing rising rents and mortgages, it’s easy and logical to connect the supply imbalance to over 8 million migrant arrivals.
In Canada, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has made housing inflation due to immigration one of his key campaign issues. He’s figured out that housing costs affect everybody, while crime and conflict directly affect a much smaller subset of the electorate.
How’s that working? Well, Poilievre and the Conservatives have a crushing 21-point polling lead over the Biden-like (and extremely unpopular) Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party.
Vance finally did bring housing costs and migration together in his debate with Tim Walz, but that was once in one event. There have been other brief glimpses of intelligence, such as when Trump challenged Harris to explain why she has not accomplished any of her promises in the past four years. But none of these flashes of coherence have lasted. The Trump-Vance campaign keeps going right back to its tabloid-style campaign.
Trump is a man of odd obsessions, most of them a little strange but not a big deal. However, his affinity for tariffs is far from harmless.
Granted, there is a lot of appeal in protectionism. Predatory tactics from China have given that nation an enormous advantage in important industries that could threaten national security. And the U.S. is less dependent on trade than any other developed nation, whose huge internal market puts it in a strong negotiating position.
But blanket tariffs are foolish economic policy and incompetent politics. Although tariffs poll decently as a standalone question, raising tariffs is unquestionably inflationary. And inflation is the top issue for most Americans, as it has been for more than two years.
According to YouGov, inflation is considered very important by 76 percent of voters; they disapprove of Biden’s handling by 21 points, with independents disapproving by 35 points. Inflation has been eating away at American wages, with real (after inflation) median household income rising just over 1 percent under Biden as opposed to over 8 percent under Trump.
In short, inflation should be Trump’s trump card in this race.
But the former president’s love of tariffs has given Harris an opening. She can paint Trump as a disaster on inflation going forward. And her campaign knows that inflation is a problem — it’s leaning hard into Trump’s tariffs, smartly taking some intellectual liberties by calling it a “national sales tax.”
Harris doesn’t have to win this issue (and given how bad Biden has been on inflation, she can’t). But she can mitigate the damage.
Inflation destroyed Jimmy Carter’s re-election and should have incinerated Biden and Harris’s chances. Instead, Trump has stupidly thrown Harris a lifeline.
Trump still has the big issues on his side. Americans tend to vote their economic circumstances, and the Biden administration simply does not compare to Trump.
The YouGov numbers tell the tale. When asked if the economy is getting better or worse, 46 percent responded “worse,” with just 23 percent in the “better” column. Independents were more negative, at 47 percent to 17 percent, with Hispanics at 49 percent to 21 percent.
Expectations are also on Trump’s side, with just 34 percent of Americans expecting the economy to improve under Harris (propped up by 69 percent of loyal Democrats) against a 42 percent plurality expecting things to get worse. Independents were more negative at just 25 percent in the “better” column versus 40 percent “worse.” Trump’s expectations were net-positive at 42 percent “better” and 36 percent “worse,” with independents narrowly positive at 36 percent to 33 percent.
Harris is not a great candidate, but she is adequate and knows how to read the polls. The vice president’s campaign is similarly not that impressive, but it is competent.
The same cannot be said for Trump. He seems to be embarked on an experiment to see how bad a campaign you can run and still win.
Trump’s MAGA base loves to heap blame on the media, so-called RINOs and the deep state. Everything is somebody else’s fault. But in this race, responsibility for losing would squarely rest on Trump’s shoulders. A loss would make MAGA world pig-biting mad, but their fury should be directed at Trump.
Keith Naughton is co-founder of Silent Majority Strategies, a public and regulatory affairs consulting firm, and a former Pennsylvania political campaign consultant.
