It Ain't Just Vibes
Harris shifts the race's most reliable metric: Trumpian shit-losing
Aug. 12: Trump loses control of his lack of impulse control … Harris climbs in polls … Greatest Depression over maybe … Ukraine invades Russia …
If The Fucking News helps you feel better about the news, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.
There’s a lot out there in the news today about the Donald Trump campaign running around with its combover on fire.
The New York Times dropped a big-ass report1 Saturday on the big ass dropping. Nothing essential, just juicy details about how Trump and his campaign got their ankles broke by Pres. Joe Biden giving the ball to Vice President Kamala Harris.
Juicy details like frustration that the same media shiny-object-chasing that created Trump now renders him old news.
Juicy details like lashing out at donors. Which, more please.
Why all the sturm und drang? So many reasons. Donations. Rally crowd size. Media coverage. Everyone forgetting about his ear. Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) saying things that people can hear.
But mostly it’s the polls they claim not to believe. And there’s a lot of wisdom to ignoring the polls! Individual polls can be shit.
That’s why running averages strike more fear. Like 538, averaging Harris at 45.7% to Trump’s 43.4%.
Or RealClearPolitics, which isn’t realclear about its space bar. They’ve got Harris with only a 0.5% lead in their average, but it’s the blue trend line since Biden stepped aside that Team(ish) Trump won’t like:
When you’re up in all the polls, and then not in any poll, something is likely happening. And when you’re seeing simultaneous big shifts in battleground states…
Michigan: Harris 50%, Trump 46%
Pennsylvania: Harris 50%, Trump 46%
Wisconsin: Harris 50%, Trump 46%
Plus, on Thursday, the Cook Political Report moved Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada from “Lean Republican” to “Toss-Up.”
All of which has Trump’s staff throwing him under the bus, blaming him for his inability to act strategically. Which is literally the beating heart of why his base loves him — he validates not having to think before flapping your face hole. That’s the platform!
Axios reports Trump’s staff are “pleading” with him to come up with a new stump speech. And “praying” he’ll stop improvising. (Funny, it’s the same as their guns strategy: Thoughts and prayers!)
All of the campaign grousing may or may not be true, but the bigger point is that they’re grousing it with Axios. Which could be a way of trying to communicate it to Trump and/or could mean they smell defeat and don’t want it to stay in their clothes but definitely means Trump isn’t leading his team in a way that instills discipline.
Hilariously, their blabbing reflects the same lack of discipline they bemoan in the boss. The fish blabs from the head down!
Now, before anyone breaks out the organic, free-range champagne, a reminder that there’s still three months left. Harris will screw up because everyone screws up. The media will get bored of she’s-winning stories and start doing she’s-losing stories. We’re going to find out more about Walz (my money’s on torture dungeon for furries).
And the Trump campaign isn’t taking all this lying down. Even if the boss is literally reclining in his golf cart.
On Friday, the campaign made its biggest ad buy of this campaign, AdImpact reports:
Georgia: $23.8 million
North Carolina: $4.4 million
Michigan: $3.1 million
Wisconsin: $2 million
Arizona: $2 million
Nevada: $1.4 million
Pennsylvania: $867,000 (is a certain someone giving up on Pennsylvania?)
The good news is, this, too, has the stank of Trumpian lack of discipline. Twenty-four million for Georgia? Smells like Trump still seething about Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) not stealing his state in 2020, and desperate to avoid losing there again.
The bad news is that ads may not matter because votes may not matter.
On her Substack, A.B. Stoddard has a good roundup of places where Trumpian, anti-math, integrity-lacking election officials and/or new rules are in place that could either shut down efforts to verify vote tallies and/or simply enable officials to make their own declarations about the final numbers.
As Stoddard writes, early efforts at this were quashed in 2022, but Trumpists may simply have learned2 from the experience.
However, just as Project 2025 became widely known in a very short period of time, the same can be done for vote-counting integrity. There are people working to combat this anti-democratic corruption.
Helping them helps. But so does producing vote margins too stark to question.
Politics isn’t a one-day event. You can be involved every day. Your work before Election Day can accomplish a lot more than a single vote on Election Day.
Yes, you can donate to campaigns. And for me to mention that, you know it’s important because every fiber of my being wants you supporting TFN!
But also, you can help at lots of points on the money-time continuum. I don’t say this often enough, but you can look up your local candidates, or check out their sites, all of which should have resources for pitching in.
I also don’t post specific links for you to help enough.
So here’s this handy list of ways you can get involved from Jason Sattler, aka LOLGOP. You should check out his Substack regardless for good shit like this, but because I know some of you lazy Newsfuckers like your shit delivered to you personally, here ya go, courtesy of Sattler:
Call rural voters in Pennsylvania for Harris/Walz
Virtual phone bank for Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
Send money to targeted state leg races in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin
Texting and virtual phone banking for Harris/Walz
There’s also a weekly Women Wednesday’s for Harris call, with info about organizing and what you can do, that you can check out here. (h/t)
It’s the Stupid Economy
When Wall Street and the economy are doing well, incumbent presidents (or their younger vice presidents) tend to win. So, not incidentally, do the other 330 million people in the country.
So Democrats and other humans were concerned last week when the stock market imploded. To wit:
Donald Trump, of course, instantly proclaimed the arrival of the Greatest Depression and the doom of Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign because she personally shot the economy in the face and not just a tiny ear graze.
But by the end of the week, Harris had personally laid hands on the economy and by the power of Christ resurrected it with her magical healing laugh.
So we’re all good, right? Not so fast, pardner.
CNBC reports that more economic data are3 coming. “I wouldn’t be shocked if we get another week of turbulence,” one Wall Street person told CNBC.
But it’s what she said right before that’s the real issue here. “Emotions are high and market swings tend to cluster together,” she said. Exfuck me? Emotions are high?
In what functioning field is that a thing? “How’s the surgery gonna go, doc?” “I dunno, man; lost my mojo.” “Did the plumber fix the leak?” “He tried but he was all up in his feels.”
So tomorrow we get July’s producer price index and Home Depot’s quarterly earnings, then the consumer price index Wednesday, and then retail sales plus Walmart’s earnings on Thursday. Each of them an opportunity for Wall Street bros to freak out and whipsaw our economy and the presidential race.
Which, not fair to Harris, you might say. And, true. But on the other hand, Republicans aren’t the only party responsible for putting Wall Street in the driver’s seat of our economy and untethering Wall Street from Main Street. So stock markets severed from fundamentals are the price we pay. As is campaign volatility.
Just remember that last week’s Greatest Depression only lasted a week. So hang on and keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times.
Three Quickies
Didja notice that Ukraine invaded Russia? Fair’s fair. The AP calls it the largest attack on Russian soil since World War II, not counting Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin assaulting their short-lived democracy. Of course, if things get really bad for Putin, he can always ask Pres. Joe Biden for military aid.
Didja miss TFN’s original reporting this weekend? I unearthed a 2016 op-ed by pre-Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) that got a lot of attention for calling Donald Trump “unfit” for office, but none for Vance saying he avoided “significant” combat. It’s not the only instance I found of him suggesting he maybe saw a teeny bit of combat. Yes, that’s what I did with my weekend. And, yes, even Substack God Heather Cox Richardson RTed it…!
Johnson County, KS, Sheriff Calvin Hayden just got the boot from Republican voters for trying to jackboot Johnson County. Since Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election for reals, Hayden has dedicated his life to investigating the shadowy, non-existent forces that stole the election. In last week’s primary, they struck again, and stole his election on behalf of Doug Bedford, his former undersheriff.
TCB
Feeling better these days? Well, just as your loyal TFN tries to raise your spirits when things look bleak, I’m a’fixing to remind folks that the current high will not last; not to yuck anyone’s yum, but to brace folks for the inevitable downturn so no one mistakes it for the End Times.
Keep calm and newsfuck on. That’s the mission. You can support it by becoming a paid subscriber or making a one-time donation.
I thought for sure that TFN’s exclusive on Vance would prompt some new support, but I’m seeing emotion more than original reporting driving subscriptions and donations. So maybe helping bolster people’s spirits is more important than surfacing new info. I dunno. If you do, please let me know, and I’ll give it some thought.
In the meantime, please share TFN on Substack and elsewhere. You can also find me/TFN on Threads, Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, Spoutible, and still for some reason Twitter. I see you, Newsfuckers!
Go get ‘em, kids.
It could happen!
You’re welcome, grammar nerds.
Dang it. I was really hoping it would be a playroom for furries.
Biden (D-CitiBank, er Delaware) was a long time member of the finance cabal of congress critters. Working for corporate America as I have for decades, I’ve been a party to the insidious ways they try to get their worker bees to oppose policies designed to protect said drones. And they definitely go “both ways” - throwing money and influence toward the Rs or the Ds, whichever will benefit the bottom line at the time.
Love this Substack, but your first five paragraphs got repeated. You might want to fix that before more retired editors like me tell you about it :)