Political Mo: The price of a winning streak?

Does the thrill of political momentum threaten to undermine the most important part of any campaign: the policies?

By any measure — polls, donor dollars, media attention — all the political momentum, or “mo,” in campaign 2024 has swung to Donald Trump. It started after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance — it was like a coming-out party for the erosions of old age — but hit speed records in the wake of the tragic assassination attempt. The former president’s now-iconic moment of badassery, when, blood trickling down his face, he pumped his fist and yelled, “Fight, fight, fight,” has animated Republicans. He says he even changed his convention speech to reflect the reality of political violence and polarization — and that will be one of the big things to watch for tonight. Many, like Sen. Marco Rubio, argued that Trump’s survival was proof of divine intervention (Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called it a “miracle” and claimed the flag aboveDonald Trump took the form of an angel right before the gunshot), infusing the campaign with a Christian nationalism and eschatology.

Tech oligarch Elon Musk just announced that he is donating $45 million a month to Trump, joining his billionaire tech bro Peter Thiel on the MAGA train that is surprisingly making lucrative stops in Silicon Valley, once a bastion of Democratic support. Adding to the Trump “mo” is the ascension of 39-year-old Marine veteran, financier, lawyer, and “Hillbilly Elegy” author JD Vance as the VP nominee. Vance’s biographically marbled speech at the RNC on Wednesday night highlighted his background in an Ohio devastated by globalization and the opioid crisis. It featured his mother, who has struggled with addiction, a personal story that tenderized the red meat served up earlier by Donald Trump Jr. and Peter Navarro. Navarro had just been released from a four-month sentence for defying a subpoena from the Jan. 6 congressional committee — and was cheered as a hero, which was as telling about the new RNC anti-institution, radical culture as anything that has happened so far.

Vance directly appealed to working-class voters in key swing states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. At times, it sounded like an old-school pro-union, pro-tariff Democrat speech from the 1990s, and it was a starkly different pitch than the massive corporate tax cuts Trump pitches, but it’s now on-brand for the neo-Republican coalition of angry working-class males and right-wing, anti-regulatory tech, energy, and mining elites.

MAGA now has an heir but more importantly a license to think generationally as opposed to just four-year election cycles. This is no longer about just an impulsive “dictator-for-a-day” vengeance win over the Biden administration and the “wokeys.” It’s about a fundamental hard-right-wing rewiring of American politics and international relations. The battle plan is the Heritage Foundation’s Platform 2025, and the foot soldiers are the once-fringe MAGA-ites like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump Jr., and Matt Gaetz, who will play significant roles in a Trump administration.

This is what the Trump “mo” looks like numerically: A new YouGov poll has Trump ahead in key swing states like Arizona (+7 points), Georgia, (+4), Michigan (+2), North Carolina (+4), Wisconsin (+5), and Pennsylvania (+3). In other words, Trump and his MAGA-ites are out-polling, out-rolling, and out-trolling Democrats on all levels.

Meanwhile, it’s chaos in Bidenlandia, where the president is collecting bad news like a wool sock gathers burrs in the forest. On Wednesday, he revealed he has COVID as he was desperately trying to reset his campaign and get over his stilted, confused, mistake-riddled performances. He’s now picking up viruses faster than endorsements, and the odds that he will not make it to the convention as the nominee are rising.

A new poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research revealed that most Democrats want Biden to step down, a sentiment buttressed by a stunning call from high-ranking Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff, who is running for the Senate in California. “I believe it is time for him to pass the torch,” Schiff said. Late Wednesday, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer reportedly joined the calls for Biden to leave, but he did so privately. Et tu, Chuck?

The thing about political momentum is that it’s often generated by factors that have nothing to do with the core reason elections exist: policy. Who has the best ideas to govern the country? That is the core question, not who looks best in an ad. This is an election to run a country, not an audition for a modeling agency, but it’s hard to tell the difference anymore. How much does an assassination attempt or a bad debate performance have to do with who is best to deal with a rogue Russia, an aggressive China, or a war in the Middle East? Who can tackle inflation, productivity issues, and climate change? Who will handle AI regulation or protect the rights of minorities? Who will handle the border crisis? Who will actually create jobs? Do tariffs help the economy, or drive up costs? Who will stand for a peaceful transition of power or an independent judiciary? Who should pick the seats on the Supreme Court?

On all these matters, there are real, consequential policy debates – on some, Republicans are stronger, and on others, Democrats are stronger. This is the battlefield on which Biden would like to fight because he believes Trump — with his 34 felonies and his readiness to throw Ukraine to Russia, Taiwan to China, and most judicial and governing checks and balances out the window — is vulnerable. But he can’t. The political momentum is against Biden, and when that happens, you lose the most important aspect of campaigning: setting the agenda.

Biden is totally reactive now, and even as he pitches policies to get on his front foot — on Wednesday he was courting Latinos with the promise that undocumented spouses of US citizens could avoid getting deported — they evaporate like a puddle in Death Valley. When he gets to a stage to talk about policy, he can barely articulate the words without stumbling, faltering, and losing his train of thought. For post-debate Biden, the mistakes are the message. That’s what happens when you lose the political mo.

Things can change, of course. Events happen, like the horrible shooting or the debate, and suddenly the big mo shifts, but it’s getting late and harder to see that happening. For now, the biggest story of the campaign is not policy, it’s momentum, and while that makes for dramatic storylines, it tells voters less about potential Gulf wars and more about fabricated golf scores. Political mo matters and is essential to winning, but it can be used to introduce policy ideas or to avoid them and focus only on attacks and slogans.

There is another consequence: Political mo speeds everything up and floods the zone with stories about snap polls and hot takes on winners and losers. But the whole point of campaigns is to debate the opposition, to pause from the pace of governing, and slow things down for a considered reset. Campaigns are meant for people to ask questions. Check facts. Read the details. Holds folks accountable. And make a considered decision.

That’s not political mo — it’s policy mo. Political mo and policy mo should be intimately linked, but with the dramatic events these past months — felony convictions, age-related floundering, shootings — the coverage is over-indexing on the politics and under-indexing on policy. When each candidate has such a radically different view of America, a little policy mo is badly needed. Sadly, it’s turning out that examining ideas closely and factually is a political loser.