KINSELLA: Expect Democrats to keep hammering away at Donald Trump button
Kamala Harris and her party know if the campaign turns to real issues – like cost of living – they're in trouble
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BIDDEFORD, MAINE – George Weismeyer is America.
He lives on the ground floor of a three-story walk-up on Gove St., down by Saco Bay, in a working class neighborhood. He used to be an Independent, which is a recognized and registered political affiliation down here.
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Last year, half of American voters said they were independent – neither Democrat nor Republican.
Asked which way he’ll be voting in November’s historic vote, Weismeyer smiles and says Democrat. Why, he’s asked.
“I used to be an Independent,” says George. “But when he started up on that born in Kenya stuff, that was it for me. Democrat.”
Weismeyer is referring to the Birther Hoax, which happened in 2008. In that year, Barack Obama was running for president, and some conspiracy theorists started to suggest Obama was ineligible for high office. Because he’d been born in Kenya.
He wasn’t – he was born in Hawaii – but the Birther Hoax got legs in 2012, when a private citizen named Donald J. Trump started to tweet that it was true. An “extremely credible source” had told him, Trump claimed at the time.
History will record that Obama won anyway, and that was that. But the Birther Hoax – which ushered in the Donald Trump era, and ushered George Weismeyer towards the Democrats – was the official start of Crazy Time in U.S. politics.
In that way, George Weismeyer is America. His political orbit was changed by the black hole in space that is Donald Trump. Everyone in America has had their politics changed by Trump – either pulled toward him by some dark gravity or pushed away.
Over on Cleave St., there’s more of this. Two Canadians volunteering for the Democrats on a sunny and hot Sunday are looking for Tammy Wilder. They find her husband instead.
She’s a Democrat, and so is he, he says.
Kamala Harris was anointed the Democratic Party presidential candidate just days before, so Tammy Wilder’s husband is asked about the issues Harris should be talking about. He stops cleaning the stove top and squints.
“There’s a lot of issues, actually,” he says. “But that sonofabitch? No way.”
And that’s how it goes, this Sunday morning in Biddeford, Maine. People are either really for Donald Trump, or really against him. No in-between. No independence.
In that way, this year’s election is truly a referendum on Donald Trump. Harris has delighted and excited Democrats. But, to them, her policies don’t matter as much as one thing: can she beat Trump, yes or no?
The polls presently say she can. She’s ahead in the swing states, by a bit. But will it, can it, last?
Picture a map of America. The two coasts are blue, and belong to the Democrats. The centre is red, and belongs to the Republicans. The fight for the White House – and the Senate, and the House of Representatives – is all about the swing states, which go back and forth.
Harris is ahead in most of them, tied with Trump in Nevada, close in Georgia, and trailing by a bit in Florida. Her biggest asset is that she isn’t Joe Biden. And, of course, that her opponent is Donald Trump.
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Trump has had a bad week.
The U.S. Army has taken the unprecedented step of condemning him in a statement, for trying to turn Arlington National Cemetery into a prop for one of his commercials. He’s retweeted a post containing a disgusting sexual slur about Harris and Hillary Clinton. He’s been condemned by more than 200 staffers who worked for him, Ronald Reagan or the two Bush presidents. And he can’t figure out a strategy to arrest his slide in the polls.
At a rally in old Kennebunkport later that evening, 100 happy Democrats crammed into a hall on a road that will take you back to Canada. A microphone is passed around, and the Democrats are asked what they felt when watching the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
“Hope,” they say, over and over. Hope that Vice President Harris and Governor Tim Walz can defeat Trump. Hope that he can be stopped from implementing his whackadoodle Project 2025 plan.
No one really mentions any issues. They get handed hot-off-the-presses Harris and Walz lawn signs as they head out the door.
That’s how it is, in this extraordinary 2024 presidential race. The only issue is Donald Trump. Democrats know if the campaign turns to real issues – the cost of living, mainly – they’re in trouble. So they will keep hammering away at the Donald Trump button. They’ll do that for the next two months.
Will it work? Who knows. But it did for George Weismeyer, and George Weismeyer is as good a barometer of America that you are going to get, on this beautiful and sunny Sunday morning in Biddeford, Maine.
(Kinsella has worked on the campaigns of Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris)
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