President Panic and the Grievance Ceiling

Has Donald Trump become President Panic and hit a grievance ceiling?

The confidence the world saw at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee after Trump survived a terrifying assassination attempt is suddenly gone. The rallying cry of “Fight, fight, fight!” has been replaced with “whine, whine, whine,” a transformation encapsulated in feverish social media posts Trump is sending from his baroque bunker in Mar-a-Lago.

Clearly caught off guard by Biden’s exit, the former president is struggling to find a way to frame Kamala Harris’ sudden surge in momentum. After Harris picked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate and held a series of massive rallies, Trump released what ranked as one of his most bizarre social media posts. (OK, it’s not on the RFK Jr. level of “After falconing with my pals, I picked a dead bear cub off the highway to skin it and eat it but instead decided to secretly dump it in Central Park and stage a fake crime scene by pretending the bear was killed by a cyclist,” but then, what is? Hold RFK’s animal cruelty beer, Gov. Kristi Noem!)

In any case, Trump just posted a panicky theory that Biden is going to fight Harris to reclaim the nomination. “What are the chances that Crooked Joe Biden, the WORST President in the history of the U.S., whose Presidency was Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him by Kamabla, Barrack HUSSEIN Obama, Crazy Nancy Pelosi, Shifty Adam Schiff, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, and others on the Lunatic Left, CRASHES the Democrat National Convention and tries to take back the Nomination, beginning with challenging me to another DEBATE,” he wrote. “He feels that he made a historically tragic mistake by handing over the U.S. Presidency, a COUP, to the people in the World he most hates, and he wants it back, NOW!!!”

Hard to decode any of this, but let’s try. Does Trump know anything about the inner workings of the Biden circle? No. Was Biden’s presidency “unconstitutionally stolen”? No. Biden is still president, and he decided — under great pressure to be sure — not to run again. Both Johnson and Truman did the same thing, so it can happen. It was not a “COUP,” as Trump later called it, though the irony was not lost on anyone that Trump is the one accused of trying to unconstitutionally steal an election and stage a coup on Jan. 6, 2021.

The post also descends into his usual litany of name-calling, from “crooked” for Biden and “shifty” for Schiff to “crazy” for Nancy Pelosi. He notably changed “Kamala” to “Kamabla” — and has done so a few times — which no one understands.

There does not seem to be a coherent Trump strategy yet to combat Harris or Walz, except for trying to find the juvenile name that sticks, à la Sleepy Joe. “Laughing Kamala” — is that a thing? Nope. Is laughter now a liability in America? No. Crazy Kamala? It’s a classic one — but doesn’t it already belong to Pelosi?

When the name-calling fails, there is always the fallback on race, a strategy Trump used against Barack Obama with the birther theory. At the National Association of Black Journalists convention last week, Trump alleged that Harris had recently “turned Black,” dismissing her biracial identity. This made no sense, especially since his running mate, JD Vance, has biracial children. But Trump has doubled down on it anyway, bundling it with calling Harris a “DEI hire,” even though her record in politics is much longer than either his own or Vance’s.

This week, Republican pollster Frank Luntz said that Harris is now the front-runner and blamed the turn of fortunes on Trump’s empty personal attacks. “He’s losing it with speeches that have the same sort of ad hominem attacks to a public that has had enough and wants to look for something different, something new,” he told Vinnews.

In any election, a candidate has a floor of support — the base that will never leave them which, in Trump’s case, is the MAGA crowd that makes up about 43%-48% of the voting population — and a ceiling, the place they need to grow to win over swing states like Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania, or Nevada. A new survey conducted by Marquette Law School shows Harris leading Trump among likely voters by 50% to 42%, when third-party candidates are included, and by 47% to 41% with registered voters.

The goal is to recruit new voters, independents, suburban women, unions, the Black, Latino, Jewish, or Arab-American voters. It appears as if there may be a kind of “grievance ceiling” or an “anger ceiling” in US politics, and Trump might have just hit it.

Trump’s strategy of unhinged personal insults, race-baiting, grievance-fueled conspiracy theories, and self-pity might have made his floor the same as his ceiling, which is fatal for a campaign. How does he put new things on the menu to attract new customers if he keeps cooking with the same old sauce?

One of the things Harris and Walz have done remarkably well is find a tone that makes the Trump personal attacks seem old, out of touch, and ineffective. Walz in particular has owned the happy warrior role, dismissing the entire Trump campaign as “weird,” a deft response that allows Democrats to take Trump seriously without admitting that he’s actually serious about anything.

They smile, they laugh, and they appear unaffected by the personal attacks. But they are hitting back too, rejecting Michelle Obama's maxim: “When they go low, we go high.” Walz and surrogates like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro love fighting on the low ground and have taken to spicing up their speeches with the truffle sauce of four-letter profanity that lends the out-of-touch elitist Democrat image a folksy touch. “Hey, we can swear too,” they seem to say. Shapiro’s maxim of GSD or “Get Shit Done” is now a crowd chant. Democrats are fighting MAGA mud with their own mud, and they are enjoying it, which used to be Trump’s secret weapon.

Luntz’s point is that Trump needs to stop panicking and start talking about substance, policy, and record. Harris and Walz are vulnerable on lots of issues: the faltering economy, the porous border, and the bloody Middle East. But Trump can’t seem to focus on substantial issues long enough to make this stuff stick. That explains why he has become President Panic.

There are still over 90 days left in this volatile, wild campaign, so if there is one lesson, it’s that the past is not prologue. The election is still very much up for grabs. Harris and Walz have started strong, but it ain’t about the start. It’s about the finish. In politics, as in baseball, being the closer is a hard job that few can pull off. Is Harris a closer? Will she wilt under the barrage of Trump attacks — he will find a more coherent strategy — as so many others have? Will divisions inside her party over say the policy on Israel, Hamas, and Gaza undermine the Democrats’ momentum in key states like Michigan? And what about the economy and the stock market meltdown? That is the hard test ahead.

Harris and Walz are still popping corks at their sudden change of fortune, but elections can make a candidate’s bubbly go flat before the second sip. For now, however, they are watching President Panic hit the grievance ceiling, and they are drinking it up.