Wednesday, August 14, 2024

Size Matters, Death Spiral Edition

 "If I'm being generous, that looks like 10 rows of 10 seats across on each side," reported a tech correspondent Chris O'Brien. "So about a total of 200 people potentially?"

Former President Donald Trump's running mate addressed the nation from the campaign rally in Byron Center. Footage from C-Span showed a tight shot of Vance standing in front of two trucks, one red and one blue.

Photographs shared by commenter Alex Cole and Washington Post reporter Meryl Kornfield showed empty folding chairs in the back row. Kornfield noted more people were hanging out in the shade.

"The photo of a virtually empty Vance rally going around doesn’t accurately depict the crowd size now," she wrote at 1:30 p.m.

I don't really care about the crowd size.  But, why are they outside?  The last venue Vance spoke at with sparse attendance I can recall, as also outside.  Sure, people are gonna retreat to the shade in August.  I'm sure they'd even do it in Maine.  So why are they outside? 

Now Trump, quite reasonably, doesn't want to be outside anymore.  But where is he today?

Trump's event is scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. ET at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium, a 2,400-seat auditorium, one-third the size of the facility he used when he last made an appearance in the town of Ashville in 2016.

Because his crowds are smaller?  Probably.  But also because small venues are cheaper.  Outdoor venues cheaper, still.  And Asheville demanded payment up front: 

But Trump has been home a lot more than he's been out. His next "event" is another press conference (because the press was so compliant and such toadies at the last one), at Bedminster.  Doesn't cost Trump a thing, and he gets to charge for the drinks.

Trump is running out of campaign funds.  Not because he's spending it all, but because he's banking so much of it.  He's begun to realize he's gonna have to fight those criminal charges (Trump v US was bad, but it wasn't the "Get Out of Jail Free" card Trump imagined it was), because he's not gonna be the next POTUS who can dismiss those charges with a toady AG.  He's also not going to get the donations in November and December and January, etc., that will pay for his lawyers and the time wasters he keeps making them file (like the third attempt to force Merchan to recuse, this time because he donated to Harris' primary campaign, and now she's the nominee four years later).  That's burning a lot of money for no good purpose at all, but Trump literally doesn't know what else to do.  His two choices now are:  a) shit; b) go blind.  And Tom Fitton is not helping any.

So he continues to spend money on lawyers like a drunk sailor on shore leave even as shore leave is about to be canceled and his funds are running low (never forget he is on the hook for over half a billion dollars in judgments.  Those may be reduced, but I don't really expect them to be literally decimated.  They will, however, decimate Trump when payment comes due.)  Then again, he also think he's still running against Biden, and probably imagines (still) Biden is going to take the stage in Chicago and demand all those votes return to him.  Just to bail out Trump, because Biden's that kind of guy.

Yeah, sure.

This is what a death spiral looks like.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)