Gutfeld Agrees With My Take

As a successful comic, Gutfeld has an instinctive insight into humor, but standup is also a peculiarly American institution, part of our popular culture. For the last several days I've been talking about Trump's relation to the popular culture superhero paradigm, in which a reactive superhero consistently improvises to escape the elaborate schemes of an intellectual, deliberative supervillain. We see this when Batman fights the Joker. but we see it even more clearly as we watch the Road Runner foil the elaborate machinations of Wile E Coyote.

Gutfeld made a very similar point in last night's monologue. At 3:28:

So the saga of Donald J Trump continues. Really, what did we talk about before him? . . . But have you noticed the reaction to the Trump conviction? It's more muted than my TV during Jesse's show. Of course, there are the usual nut cases where anything related to Trump is cause for incontinence. [Switches to clip of Joy Behar on The View talking about "leaking".] So Joy Behar wets herself in Costco. . . . But, aside from Joy and some has-been actors, where's all the noise? No one's dancing in the streets, weeping, or peeing with Joy.

The truth is, even some on the left admit this prosecution wasn't justice. Some recognized they were going too far even before the verdict. It's like if you're in a fight with your spouse and you make a casual comment about her meat loaf, and you go oh, [bleep], I'm in for it. And they're right, the verdict resulted in a bump in Trump's polling and a massive $200 million bump in donations. TWO HUNDRED . . . two hundred million, that's more than I make in a year. It even crashed Trump's donation site[.]

. . . So, how does Trump do it? How does he turn a conviction into an electoral windfall? How does he turn his adversary's energy into power? I call it the eternal cliffhanger theory. With Trump, when one act finishes, it sparks an equally thrilling next one. It's like the orange Harry Potter. And what [prompts?] the cliffhangers are those who are obsessed with taking him down. It's a perpetual motion machine. Their attacks can't help but set the stage for,"what will he do next?" And what he does next then creates another cause for attack. You think you've killed him? Nah, there is he in the next chapter to raging applause.

On one hand, we might almost see this as a case of life imitating art, we have the paradigm of the Road Runner cartoon, or Harry Potter, or Batman vs the Joker, or even Sherlock Holmes vs Professor Moriarty. We might trace the paradigm at least as far back as Til Eulenspiegel, something Gutfeld echoes by working medieval scatological references into his analysis of the character's current manifestation.

He sees the cliffhanger as Trump's device. Has Biden killed him yet? Nah. What will Biden try next? On one hand, this is a standard way to hold an audience's attention -- to find out what happens, stay tuned through the commercial break. On the other hand, Trump's peculiar innovation has been to use the cliffhanger to focus not on Wile E Coyote's latest catastrophe, but on Trump. The pattern isn't simply on the reactive superhero, although insofar as Trump is the Road Runner, he's a sort of anti-intellectual Occam's Razor, defeating the coyote's overly complex plans.

But Trump is also the more complex Dark Knight Rises version of the superhero, someone who's imperfect, not just David vs Goliath but more like David vs Saul. This is also turning out to have a remarkable appeal. Clinton polster Mark Penn poses the conundrum of how this works for Trump in this interview:

Q: Let's start with President Biden's approval rating, which remains unchanged at 44%. What does that mean that it didn't move month to month?

Penn: . . . Below 45%, it's hard for a president to get reelected. Below 40, I would say it's impossible. Below 45, it's certainly not impossible, but hard. . . . Importantly, when people look back, and I ask the job approval rating for President Trump, Trump gets a 55% job approval rating. So that 11-point gap is a critical part of what's motivating voters in these polls, and Biden has either got to bring his up or bring Trump's down.

Q: Why do you think Trump's is so high at 55%? . . . What's that about?

Penn: Well, you have to say nostalgia, in the sense that people are evaluating things in the past . . . at the time, Trump never got a 55% job approval. So he is getting in retrospect, and perhaps in comparison, a 55% job approval, higher than he got when he was actually doing the job, but nevertheless, that's the fact, that's how the voters see it.

So we have to extrapolate another factor, we can explain Trump only in part as a comic book superhero, the Road Runner, or Til Eulenspiegel, whose character doesn't change, and whose escapes are predictable. There's a change in the audience's view of Trump that we don't see in the simpler paradigms. This has to do with what I think is another important factor, the growing recognition that there was something wrong in 2020, and maybe not primarily the election.

People are rethinking 2020. The current testimony of Dr Fauci in front of the House reflects this. Just yesterday:

Dr. Anthony Fauci has said that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's vocal criticisms of him during a congressional hearing on the COVID-19 pandemic had increased the number of death threats against him.

. . . Monday's hearing quickly deteriorated into partisan attacks, with Fauci facing the most hostility from Greene, a Georgia Republican. She refused to address him as "doctor," called for him to be prosecuted "for crimes against humanity" and said he "belongs in prison."

The national mood is changing. Biden wants to lock Trump up -- but Trump has been saying lock them up all along, and people remember it.

Trump In Jail?

The possibility of prison for Trump when Judge Merchan sentences him on July 11 quickly arose on Friday:

'The View’ co-host Sunny Hostin, who seemed quite pleased with the developments, shared on the air that she had spoken with someone from Bragg’s office.

. . . “I spent this morning speaking to someone from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. They’re called street fighters. He believes that they will recommend a one-year term in prison. And that is because when you spend a year in prison in New York or under, you serve in Rikers Island,” Austin said.

According to Hostin, this recommendation serves not just as punishment but as a stern message to society that such conduct will not be tolerated again.

Victoria Taft at PJ Media answered, Of Course They'll Put Trump in Jail, and Trump himself made it plain that he's fully aware of the contingency:

“I’m okay with it,” Trump said when asked about the potential of house arrest or even jail during a “Fox & Friends Weekend” interview that aired on Sunday. “I saw one of my lawyers the other day on television saying, ‘Oh, no, you don’t want to do that to the president.’ I said, don’t, you know, beg for anything. It’s just the way it is.”

Acknowledging it “could happen,” Trump went on to say, “I don’t know that the public would stand for it, you know.” Trump also said, “I think it’d be tough for the public to take. You know, at a certain point, there’s a breaking point.”

There's no question we're in uncharted territory. My view for some time has been that Biden finds himself in desperate straits much earlier in the campaign cycle, a couple months before the nominating conventions and five months before the election, than any of his predecessors, who like McGovern and Dukakis were only occasonally down in the polls early, while others like Carter and Hillary seemed to be doing well right up to the election. But given what have often now been characterized as dire omens for his reelection prospects, Joe is clearly under pressure to turn things around, and jailing Trump is starting to look like a real option.

The best news of all is that Trump's attorneys are taking this seriously and are presumably pereparing their strategies, which given the nature of such things will be kept highly confidential. On the other hand, a legal defense is only part of Trump's task, which is an overall political campaign, and the odd thing up to now is how well he's been dealing with the circumstances he's been given. As I noted the other day, the pop culture hero is always in a reactive state, it's the thoughtful, devious villain who's always coming up with new obstacles for which the hero must improvise an escape -- and of course, this he does.

This is starting to make centrist Democrats nervous. Thus Dean Phillips, who briefly ran against Joe in this year's primaries, tweeted New York Gov Hochul:

Donald Trump is a serial liar, cheater, and philanderer, a six-time declarer of corporate bankruptcy, an instigator of insurrection, and a convicted felon who thrives on portraying himself as a victim.@GovKathyHochul should pardon him for the good of the country.

— Dean Phillips (@deanbphillips) June 1, 2024

Wait a moment. He's saying Trump is somewhere between Aaron Burr, Tokyo Rose, the Rosenbergs, Jefferson Davis, and Jeffrey Epstein, and he should be pardoned for the good of the country? Why shouldn't Trump be in the supermax with El Chapo, Ted Kaczynski, Ramzi Yousef, and Robert Hanssen? As well pardon all those others. I don't understand.

He's clearly sensing a whiff of impending catastrope.

He's not the only one.

Democratic ex-New York Gov. David Paterson says he would have wanted President Biden to consider pardoning Donald Trump in his hush-money conviction if the prez had the power.

Paterson, speaking Sunday on 77 WABC radio’s “The Cats Roundtable,” agreed with Trump’s gripes that the case was “rigged.

“There are a lot . . . of erroneous qualities to that trial,” Paterson said. “Some of the people who are involved: A person who worked at the White House somehow wound up in the Manhattan DA’s Office.

But the Governor of New York can pardon people for New York crimes, which is Phiiips's rationale. Another former New York governor, George Pataki, has the same worries later in the link:

Former New York Republican Gov. George Pataki joined Paterson in blasting the prosecution of Trump — and both governors warned it could boomerang on Biden and other Democrats.

. . . “They have opened a can of worms here that can go anywhere,” he said of Democrats pushing for Trump’s conviction.

Fragmentary evidence over the weekend suggests the verdict and the potential for a prison sentence are in fact having the opposite of the intended effect.

The stunning felony conviction of former President Donald Trump garnered headlines around the world and created sharp political arguments across the U.S. But did it affect the presidential race? The answer is yes. It seems to have actually helped Trump, the June I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

. . . In the head-to-head poll between President Joe Biden and Trump, it’s now a statistical toss-up, 41% to 41%. But that’s an improvement for Trump from May, when he trailed Biden by 2 percentage points in that month’s I&I/TIPP poll (42% Biden to 40% Trump). The June poll has a margin of error of +/- 2.5 percentage points.

The conviction and now the threat of prison time have created a fundraising windfall for Trump:

'This might be a little inside information, but as I was leaving my house about 37 seconds ago, I asked my wife, what are we up to now?' Eric Trump told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo on her show Sunday Morning Futures.

And [Lara] said, just in terms of small dollar, we're well over $70 million. This is $21 donations, $43 donations, right, small dollar donations.'

The former president's son continued: 'If you add the large dollar donations to it, you're over $200 million.'

But as Eric Trump suggested, there are lizard people getting on board. My former schoolmate and Clintonista Robert Reich sounds the alarm:

Elon Musk and the entrepreneur and investor David Sacks reportedly held a secret dinner party of billionaires and millionaires in Hollywood last month. Its purpose: to defeat Joe Biden and re-install Donald Trump in the White House.

The guest list included Peter Thiel, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Milken, Travis Kalanick, and Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s treasury secretary.

The Daily Mail link just above added this:

Israeli-American Miriam Adelson, the wife of the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, has reportedly pledged $100 million to the Trump campaign in the days since his criminal conviction, according to The Forward, a Jewish outlet.

. . . She is the latest of a number of billionaires that have pledged to help the former president regain his grasp on power.

Last week, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman similarly decided to make public his support of Trump.

The private equity behemoth said his decision to back the ex-president was in part motivated by the anti-semitism seen on college campuses in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war.

Given this level of support from extremely influential people, along with the likelihood of major consequences from the public if Trump is jailed, I suspect there will be some sort of intervention before this can take place. The basic problem is that Joe has never been fit for office, and as he gets more desperate, he poses a real threat of an unstable interregnum that will happen even before the election.

"Don't Underestimate Joe's Ability To . . . "

What almost nobody has mentioned about Joe's Friday Dr Evil grin is that it was made just incidentally following his announcement of a new Gaza cease-fire plan, which itself incidentally followed his comments on Trump's conviction.

Under the guise of announcing a proposed ceasefire agreement in the Israel-Gaza war, Biden took to a podium in the White House state dining room at 1:30 p.m. on Friday. He began his statement not with details of the peace plan but rather with a lecture about how the “rule of law” prevailed in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump. “Donald Trump was given every opportunity to defend himself,” Biden said of his 2024 Republican presidential rival. “And after careful deliberation, the jury reached a unanimous verdict. They found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts.”

. . . “It’s reckless, it’s dangerous, and it’s irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict.”

But that wasn't what Joe was actually there to announce. He actually had big news on Gaza:

US President Joe Biden has urged Hamas to accept a new Israeli proposal to end the conflict in Gaza, saying that "it's time for this war to end".

. . . Speaking at the White House on Friday, Mr Biden said that the first phase of the proposed plan would include a "full and complete ceasefire", the withdrawal of IDF forces from populated areas and the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners.

"This is truly a decisive moment," he said. "Hamas says it wants a ceasefire. This deal is an opportunity to prove whether they really mean it."

The ceasefire, he added, would allow more humanitarian aid to reach the beleaguered territory, with "600 trucks carrying aid into Gaza every single day".

The second phase would see all remaining living hostages returned, including male soldiers. The ceasefire would then become "the cessation of hostilities, permanently."

But as of yesterday, Netanyahu turned out not to be on board:

"Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed: The destruction of Hamas military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel," Netanyahu said.

"Israel will continue to insist these conditions are met before a permanent ceasefire is put in place. The notion that Israel will agree to a permanent ceasefire before these conditions are fulfilled is a non-starter," he added.

Remarking on the significance, Times of Israel observed that "His comments, in a rare statement published on the Sabbath and only in English, came after United States President Joe Biden announced Friday that Israel had proposed a three-phase deal for a ceasefire in Gaza in exchange for Hamas releasing hostages, told the terror group to accept it and urged the Israeli government to stand behind it."

Let's consider that Joe's top priorities since last October have been, first, to regain the lead over Trump in presidential polling, and second, to appease the anti-Zionist wing of Democrats and end US support for Israel without alienating Jewish Democrats, who are major donors and influencers. He apparently has hoped to accomplish the second goal by brokering a cease-fire in Gaza before the IDF can eliminate Hamas there entirely. But his obstacles to accomplishing both goals are Trump on one hand and Prime Minister Netanyahu on the other, and since October, he's gotten nowhere with either.

According to the BBC this morning,

Two far-right Israeli ministers have threatened to quit and collapse the governing coalition if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agrees to a Gaza ceasefire proposal unveiled by US President Joe Biden on Friday.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said they were opposed to striking any deal before Hamas was destroyed.

So far, the White House is continuing to put a happy face on developments:

However, the White House said on Sunday it expected Israel would agree to the plan.

"This was an Israeli proposal. We have every expectation that if Hamas agrees to the proposal - as was transmitted to them, an Israeli proposal - then Israel would say yes," White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told ABC News.

But Joe's track record on holding back the IDF in Gaza hasn't been good. Earlier last month,

President Joe Biden on Monday [May 6] urgently warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against launching an offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah as the divide between the two leaders continues to grow along with the mounting Palestinian death toll.

The call between Biden and Netanyahu came as Israel appeared to be moving closer to a major military operation to root out Hamas militants in Rafah — something that Biden and his top aides have repeatedly told Israeli officials will only lead to more death and worsen the despair in the war-ravaged territory.

This had no effect; the IDF is apparently in the mopping-up stage in Rafah as this is written:

The Israeli military is in central Rafah, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed in a statement Friday, despite international concern and anger over its military operation in Gaza’s southernmost city.

. . . Over the [May 25-26] weekend, Israel launched an airstrike on a displacement camp in the city, killing dozens and creating global outrage. The strike also took out two Hamas leaders, Israel said.

. . . “The word tragic doesn’t even begin to describe it,” US Vice President Kamala Harris said of the incident on Tuesday. But neither she or President Joe Biden have said the strike crossed a red line for US support.

The problem is that Joe has been feckless in accomplishing the goal the anti-Zionist wing of Democrats has set for him, while he's steadily losing the confidence of centrist Jews like Alan Dershowitz. In fact, the short form of what's going on is that Netanyahu is the one who's been effective, not only in the Israeli political environmemt, but in the US as well. As I've already said, Netanyahu spent much of his early career in the US, and to survive with US politicians like Obama and Biden against him, he's had to be a US politician as well.

But this brings us to Trump. Trump has alleged that Thursday's guilty verdict “is all done by Biden and his people” and “in total conjunction with white house and the DOJ.” Whether this is strictly true remains to be seen, but I think a reasonable interpretation of the "lawfare" strategy in this case would be that it aims to split moderate Republicans from a MAGA base by making Trump seem at minimum unscrupulous and out of control, but also a criminal.

So far, this has had the opposite effect, since it's buoyed Trump in the polls since his indictments last year, and it's now driven moderates like Senators McConnell and Collins to support Trump publicly. Even Mitt Romney remarked,

“Bragg should have settled the case against Trump, as would have been the normal procedure. But he made a political decision,” Romney said, according to Coppins. “Bragg may have won the battle, for now, but he also may have lost the political war. Democrats think they can put out the Trump fire with oxygen. It’s political malpractice.”

So Romney is implicitly agreeing with Trump's position that this was a political prosecution. In effect, with the "lawfare" strategy, Joe has rearranged the political landscape from 2016 and 2020, putting the moderate Republicans, never comfortable with Trump in either of those elections, into Trump's corner for 2024. Other evidence is still anecdotal, but one clear result is that chants that sound like "Let's go, Brandon!" but are actually anti-Biden, have returned to big athletic events.

This can't be the outcome Joe thought he'd have. Don't underestimate Joe's ability to . . .

Two Mike Dukakis Moments In One Day

No sooner did I post on Joe vs Donald as a comic book superhero conflict yesterday than Joe himself came out as the deliberate, conniving, and devious supervillain himself in the notorious clip that's been all over the weh this morning.

“Can you tell us, sir — Donald Trump refers himself as a political prisoner and blames you directly. What’s your response to that, sir?” a reporter asked Biden after the 81-year-old concluded his remarks on Friday in which he defended the conviction of Trump.

The reporter asked the question as Biden began to walk away after concluding his address. But after the question was posed, Biden stopped in his tracks, looked over to the reporters, and grinned, flashing his teeth.

“Do you think the conviction will have an impact on the campaign?” the reporter pressed as Biden continued to smile. He then slowly walked away without replying, seemingly with his mouth still open.

The Trump campaign promptly turned it into an ad:

Trump campaign already out with an ad on Biden’s Creepy Smirk

🔥🔥🔥

pic.twitter.com/pmjK94JokJ

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) May 31, 2024

But if that weren't enough, RedStaste had this headline: Joe Biden Has Awkward Mike Dukakis Moment During Trainwreck of a Meeting With the Kansas City Chiefs. He tried to put the team helmet on and failed:

The #Chiefs presented Joe Biden with his own helmet, which the players wanted him to try on.

Biden initially tried to put it on while wearing his sunglasses, but then took them off and successfully got the helmet on his head.pic.twitter.com/DQ8WNAYdwn

— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) May 31, 2024

He wants to appropriate the vibe of a winner, but he can't help losing. But I think the smirking visual in the wake of the New York hush money verdict is by far the more important. In August of 2021, I'd begun to get Joe's number when I referred to "Biden's view of himself as a skilled Machiavellian manipulator, operating in a behind-the-scenes dimension of Realpolitik beyond conventional expectations."

When the reporter asks what his reaction is to Trump's allegation that he's behind it, he essentially takes a bow and says, "Yup, that was me. Deal with it!" The problem is, of course, that he's just given Trump priceless campaign fodder. But it goes farther than that -- Trump knows he's got a winning formula, and he's going to keep working it:

Donald Trump discussed two witnesses in the criminal case against him Friday while complaining about his conviction, comments that could violate the judge's gag order against him.

. . . Trump mentioned Robert Costello, a witness who testified on Trump’s behalf, by name during his remarks at Trump Tower, and also went on at length about his former attorney Michael Cohen, a key witness whose name he did not use but was clearly the person he was referring to.

“This was a highly qualified lawyer. Now I’m not allowed to use his name because of the gag order, but you know he’s a sleazebag. Everybody knows that. Took me a while to find out,” Trump said, also pushing back on Cohen's description of himself as a "fixer."

What he's angling for, of course, is another angry outburst from Judge Merchan, including more threats to put him in jail for violating the gag order -- and this after Biden with his smug grin has just implicitly acknowledged he was behind the whole thing. All this will do is continue to unify more Republicans behind Trump's candidacy, including, as of yesterday, Senators McConnell and Collins, and continue to prompt record donations to his campaign.

Brer Rabbit always got enough lip for anybody and everybody. He even told God once what He'd done wrong on the third day of Creation. This time, though Brer Rabbit talked mighty humble. "Well, Brer Fox. No doubt about it. You got me and no point in my saying that I would improve my ways if you spared me."

"No point at all," Brer Fox agreed as he started gathering kindling for the fire.

"I guess I'm going to be barbecue this day." Brer Rabbit sighed. "But getting barbecued is a whole lot better than getting thrown in the briar patch." He sighed again. "No doubt about it. Getting barbecued is almost a blessing compared to being thrown in that briar patch on the other side of the road. If you got to go, go in a barbecue sauce. That's what I always say. How much lemon juice and brown sugar you put in yours?"

Gutfeld noted in his monologue last night that Trump had told Joe to "buckle up" -- but Gutfeld said there's only thing Joe buckles up for these days, and he ran a picture of a handicapped toilet.

If the US president is the butt of handicapped toilet jokes on late-night, I get the feeling something's changed. We're maybe even out of Dukakis-on-the-tank-territory and into Jimmy-Carter-and-the-killer-rabbit, but I don't think it's going to stop there.

The Emperor Palpatine

This is the part of the 1953 sci-fi movie where the scientists realize the high voltage lines & atom bombs only make the monster bigger

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) July 2, 2017

I saw the post just above on Instapundit this morning, thinking it was a reaction to yesterday's verdict, but I suddenly realized it's dated July 2, 2017. You can say things about Trump one time, and they turn out to be just as applicable to other situations. Greg Gutfeld made a similar reference to pop-culture paradigms in last night's monologue:

The good news is that as this trial descended into an absurdity of corruption, Trump's numbers have been going up, while Joe Biden's keep falling, like Joe Biden himself. Turns out Americans love it when one man fights against a corrupt system with his back up against the wall, just as much as they detest a dementia-ridden dirtbag who's spent half a century padding his life with your money. . . . It ain't over til the fat lady sings, and that fat lady is America.

In other words, Joe as dementia-ridden dirtbag morphs into Star Wars's Emperor Palpatine, who Wikipedia says "has become a widely recognized symbol of evil in popular culture." Well, here's an intriguing essay on the hero in popular culture:

[I]n Pop Culture heroes, especially American ones, never seem to want to be heroes, they are forced to confront some horrendous situation. The Popular Culture hero never steps out to be heroic, he doesn’t go around looking for trouble. . . . The hero in most of these scenarios is a reactive force, a passive weapon that flips into action only when activated. . . . The hero is improvising in this reactive state, he is an action hero. The Pop Culture hero is not a thinking man, he doesn’t plan, he doesn’t contemplate the situation, he doesn’t search for alternatives only a way out. The hero is always directly contrasted to the Pop Culture villain who is portrayed as the thoughtful one, an intellect – he plans, he contemplates, he devises. The hero is portrayed as youthful talent and potential, the villain as an intellectual plotter, a seasoned decadent with an angry, vengeful axe to grind. This Popular Culture scenario plays out in American life every single day in a myriad of ways, and it is now playing out in our current political season with Pop Culture references to heroism abounding.

This was in fact written in 2008, before anyone ever thought of Trump as anything but a wealthy playboy turned reality TV star. Trump is nearly as old as Biden, but Gutfeld is correct when he contrasts Trump, the improviser who campaigns from the courtroom, with Joe the dementia-ridden dirtbag. And nobody left or right has ever characterized Trump as a thinker -- in fact, he cultivates a certain anti-intellectual persona.

Trump as a pop-culture hero reminds me perhaps most of Christian Bale's very contemporary Batman in The Dark Knight Rises, which was released in 2012, also before anyone ever thought of Trump as a politician:

[Writer-Director Christopher] Nolan has stated that, due to the eight-year gap between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, "he's an older Bruce Wayne; he's not in a great state.". . . . Bale acknowledged that Batman is "not a healthy individual, this is somebody that is doing good, but he's right on the verge of doing bad". Bale clarifies that "He doesn't want to forget [his parents' deaths]. He wants to maintain that anger he felt at that injustice".

There's also a mythic pattern to the Batman character in the Dark Knight Rises's story line. Bruce Wayne becomes a recluse and abandons his role as Batman, while the police commissioner blames "the Batman" for a current crime spree. In fact, Wayne is trapped by Bane, the supervillain, and consigned to an underground prison. Bane then releases criminals from Gotham's jail, who take over the city, and has Gotham's elite exiled and killed in kangaroo courts. Months later, Bruce escapes from the underground prison, returns to Gotham as Batman, and restores order to the city.

There's something similar in Trump's current story arc. He's improbably elected president in 2016, beset by manufactured scandals and plots by the Deep State, defeated in 2020 in a stolen election, but it looks like he'll return in 2024 -- not necessarily as a good guy, maybe even as a good guy on the verge of doing bad.

There's resonance to this story. That's my takeaway from yesterday's verdict.

The Paradigm Is Shifting

Yesterday I posted on how uncomfortable I've become with the RealClearPolitics model of the election, whereby Trump leads Biden by a small aggregate anount in battleground states, and this situation hasn't changed in six months. Yet issues like inflation and illegal immigration haven't been fixed. while Biden's deteriorating physical and mental condition have become increasingly visible. On top of that, the enthusiasm levels of the Trump and Biden campaigns are increasingly in contrast.

I pointed to little-reported trends in states outside the conventional-wisdom battlegrounds like Minnesota, Oregon, and Virginia, and by coincidence, I noticed a new Roanoke College poll that says Trump is tied with Biden in Virginia.

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are tied (42%-42%) in a head-to-head matchup in Virginia, while Biden holds a two-point lead (40%-38%) when other candidates are included, according to the Roanoke College Poll. The Institute for Policy and Opinion Research (IPOR) at Roanoke College interviewed 711 likely voters in Virginia between May 12 and May 21, 2024. The survey has a weighted margin of error of 4.24%.

. . . This is the first time the Roanoke College Poll has shown the candidates tied, although the polls in February 2024 and November 2023 showed them within the margin of error.

Other Virginia polls have also been showing movement. RealClearPolitics itself lists only three polls since last December, including this most recent from Roanoke College. A Richmond Times-Dispatch poll from December 15-19 had Biden over Trump 49-43. A Virginia Commonwealth University poll from December 28 to January 13 had Biden over Trump 43-40.

That there are so few polls from an important state just outside the consensus battleground group is puzzling in itself, but if those polls are showing anything, they're showing that broader opinion is moving, while the polls from the battleground states aren't. As a contrarian, this suggests to me that there's a consensus methodology that's using data from a set group of "battleground" states that were battlegrounds only in 2016 and 2020 to impose a model on the 2024 election. This feeds my sense that Rush Limbaugh was right, that the polls are meant to shape the news, not report it.

There's a more complete discussion of the problems with the battleground theory at The American Spectator, The 2024 Battleground Grows and Tilts Toward Trump.

It is not just that the states that decided 2020’s outcome are increasingly leaning toward Trump — although they are. There are also strong indications that more states could play a potentially determinant role in 2024’s outcome and that these, too, are moving closer toward Trump.

. . . There are also strong indicators that five states not considered battleground states in 2020 could be today. Then, Biden won these by seemingly safe margins: Maine (9.1 percent), Minnesota (7.1 percent), New Hampshire (7.3 percent), New Mexico (10.8 percent), and Virginia (10.1 percent). However, recent polls show that Biden’s falling fortunes are having an impact here too.

. . . The six battleground states that Biden won in 2020 by less than 3 percent of the popular vote — and all of which he now trails — account for 77 electoral votes. Five second-tier battleground states of 2020 — which Biden won and, if Minnesota and New Hampshire are indicative, are now potentially in play this November — account for another 34 electoral votes.

What this means is that Biden is defending potentially 111 electoral votes, from which Trump only needs to win 35. In contrast, Biden has only one state, North Carolina (and he is trailing in polls there by far larger margins than the one he lost by in 2020) with 16 electoral votes, with which to potentially compensate for any electoral votes that Trump flips from him.

So this is suggesting there's something fundamentally wrong with the RealClearPolitics model: right now, RCP has poll aggregates showing Trump leading Biden by 0.9% in the popular vote, although this is meaningless, since the president is elected by the Electoral College. RCP has a separate Electoral College prediction based entirely on its aggregates in the consensus battlegound states, which has Trump leading by 219-215, a similar tossup assessment -- and this also hasn't moved in months. It then has a "no tossups" total 0f 312-226, which has likewise been static for months, but if there's an explanation of what the methodology here is, I haven't found it.

By the same token, the RCP list of seven "battlegrounds" hasn't changed for many months: Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsyhlvania, North Carolina, and Nevada. But the Americn Spectator piece makes an important point:

According to RCP polling averages, Biden now trails in each and by 3 percentage points (44.6 percent to 47.7 percent) in all combined. In North Carolina, the only battleground state Trump won in 2020, Biden’s deficit has increased from 1.3 percent four years ago to 4.8 percent today.

Wait a moment. Why is North Carolina even listed in the "battleground" group if Biden lost it in 2020 and seems almost certain to lose it in 2024? What was the logic of all those "battleground" choices? For instance, they aren't even listed in alphabetical order, it's just sort of a list without much of a reason for being there, and right now, Trump's likely to win all or most of them. So why are they "battlegrounds"? Why not start to add states like Virginia, New Hampshire, or Minnesota to the list and maybe even take states like Nevada or North Carolina off it? Wouldn't that more accurately depict the current state of the campaigns?

The current received line is that the election is a tossup, and Sean Trende is apparently in the middle of declaring that it's a tossup if the election is a tossup. This works to the Democrats' advantage by giving people like Dr Jill the credibility to say "those polls are going to turn, I’m confident of it.”

But if it were a tossup, the prominent anonymous Democrats wouldn't be freaking out.

Sean Trende: Are We Too Bearish On Trump?

Sean Trende, the Senior Elections Analyst for RealClearPolitics, is the keeper of the conventional wisdom on Trump's outlook for the election. The odd thing is that the Democrats, other than Biden himself, are the ones who've signed on to it. For instance, Clinton pollster Mark Penn takes the conventional line just this morning at RCP:

Trump is leading President Joe Biden in the Harvard-CAPS/Harris polls by about 5 points and in the FoxNews polls by 3 points as of May 24. It is closer in the Real Clear Politics average that shows a gap of only 1.1%, but swing state polls across the media show Trump routs in almost all of them.

What bothers me is that none of this has changed in six months. Public perceptions of the New York hush money trial have been, if anything, favorable toward Trump. Rallies and campaign events like those in New Jersey and the Bronx have been surprisingly well-attended. In contrast, Biden's public performance has been consistently embarrassing, and there are increasing calls for him to step aside. But the RealClearPolitics averages haven't moved in many months. I'm inclined to attribute this to Rush Limbaugh's theorem that the pollsters' aim is to demoralize Republicans and keep up Democrat hopes that Biden can still turn things around.

Now even Sean Trende is at least teasing a reassessment. At RCP yesterday, he ran a piece, Are We Too Bearish on Trump?

I think if you asked most analysts to publicly assess the presidential race, they would say it is some form of a tossup. Maybe some would give Trump a 52% chance of winning or some would give Biden a 51% chance, but most would be in the range of a 50-50 outcome.

I’m in that bucket as well, but I’m starting to rethink the wisdom of my position. In particular, I’m wondering if there isn’t some combination of “safety in numbers” and “unthinkability bias” at work. To state the first possibility more plainly, if everyone has this as a roughly 50-50 race, no one is out on a limb, and, well, they can’t fire all of us if we’re all wrong together!

More accurately, they can't fire the whole group for groupthink, but the whole group can be laid off if the company goes out of business. Trende goes through possible reasons to think the race isn't a tossup. For instance, referring to polling over Brexit, which was thought to be a tossup, but which passed 52%-48%,

. . . everyone agreed the polling suggested a tossup but thought things would eventually work out for the Remain side (mostly because they couldn’t fathom Britain voting to leave the EU). But that’s not how tossups work. If people really thought it was a tossup, about half should have been willing to predict Britain would leave. Likewise, if everyone is agreeing with a negative assessment of the playing field but then calling the race a tossup, is it really a tossup?

RealClearPolitics's own betting average this morning shows the odds of a Trump win are 51.5 vs Biden 36.3. This isn't a tossup. Trende goes on to note that Biden's State of the Union didn't change things, and neither has the New York hush money trial. He concludes,

Maybe the third opportunity, the debates, will really change things (my take: they might). But the real point is that things have to change for Biden to win. I don’t think anyone disputes that at this point. We have a word for races like that, and it isn’t “tossup.”

But then, astonishingly, but maybe predictably for RealClearPolitics, he announces, "Next week: The case for the race remaining a tossup." But this avoids the need to ask real questions like, "Why is Trump effectively ahead when the poll averages keep making it look like a tossup?" But this implicitly questions the poll averages, which are Sean Trende's livelihood, so he's going to treat the question of whether it's a tossup as a tossup itself.

This piece by Eric Levitz at Vox is much more insightful. He takes up the question of why blacks, Latins, and young people are leaving the Democrats:

2024 will witness a historically rapid shift in the demographics of the Republican and Democratic coalitions. Which is odd, considering that the two parties are running the same candidates as they did four years ago.

. . . I’ve been toying with a different theory of the president’s woes, one that makes better sense of his peculiar demographic weaknesses: Voters with low levels of trust in society and the political system are shifting rightward.

. . . Donald Trump redefined the GOP in the eyes of many, associating the party with a paranoid vision of American life and a populist contempt for the nation’s political system.

Levitz goes on to argue that issues like the COVID lockdowns and madatory vaccinations increased institutional distrust across the board, and the 2024 election is largely about institutional distrust -- and some part of that distrust is the claim that the 2020 election was "stolen".

[T]he possibility that part of Biden’s problem lies with low-trust voters is worth taking seriously — not least because, if true, it would imply that the president is actually in worse shape than polls suggest.

Distrustful voters participate in surveys, but they do so at much lower rates than high-trust voters do. Which makes sense: If you believe that you can’t be too careful with other people, you probably aren’t going to take a lengthy phone call from a stranger.

And of course, the amount of distrust in legacy media is steadily increasing, while polls and poll aggregates are the creatures of legacy media -- but even this leaves aside the entirely prudent reluctance of many people to disclose their political preference to a stranger who claims to be a pollster. Right, when the FBI inflitrates Catholic parishes looking for right-wing terrorists. Levitz concludes,

The president is reportedly averse to considering this possibility. To the contrary, according to Axios, Biden is convinced that the polls are underestimating his support. This is certainly conceivable, but there is little basis for assuming as much. And given the evidence that social and political trust might be influencing voters’ behavior, it would be reckless for Biden to run as though he’s ahead. More concretely, if the president is trailing badly — as a consequence of tepid support among distrustful voters who want change — he might be well-advised to embrace a much different messaging strategy than his current one.

Back when I worked in IT, the truism was nobody got fired for choosing IBM -- but that was in the 1980s. IBM is now just a niche supplier. Sean Trende reminds me of the IBMers of a past generation.