How I’d read it has more to do with how Trump’s been having more obvious mental decline lately. A second debate would really show that
You need to think about who debates are for. Both you and I know both sides are going to claim a W. I mean, hell, look at the bag of idiots around this forum who were claiming that Joe Biden won his debate against Trump. Both sides are convinced at this point; thats not why you have them. You want a debate if you are behind because you need to somehow move the configuration of the conversation. And if Republicans are spending in ME-2? Bruh who gives a fuck about ME-2. Kamala is shaping up to lose PA. Its looking like she’ll lose NC and GA and AZ. If she loses PA and any one of those states, its over.
Kamala has one path to the white house at this point. She needs to repair her relationship with the uncommitted movement and drive turn-out among Democrats and Democratic likelies. Right now 2-3% of registered Democrats aren’t going to show up for her based on her (and Bidens) position on Gaza. She needs to stop pretending that there are any sane voters left on the Republican side and stop putting effort into them and focus on the people that can actually get her elected.
That is missing my point about their spending changes. Districts and states are hardly isolated from each other. The movments within one tends to correlate well with others. If there’s slipage for republicans in fairly red ME-2, it bodes well for other states
Republicans are more resource limited right now compared to dems. If think they need to allocate money away from those swing states into ME-2 (which running up the score in doesn’t particularly matter), what does that say about how they view the race?
Not to say they couldn’t be just allocating poorly and making poor choices, but in that case then this whole discussion is moot about reading into their decisions as to not to debate
So a couple things. First I think that the Trump campaign in particular and unique among campaigns doesn’t share when ti comes to funds. Most campaigns support other campaigns.
Second, the ME-2 spending I think your’re referencing is this: https://mainemorningstar.com/2024/09/23/billionaire-backed-midwest-super-pac-spending-millions-on-maines-cd2-race/, which is a specific outside pac spending on that race. But to be clear, this isn’t the RNC or the Trump campaign doing the spending, so it bears little relevance to your point. So I think you are wrong to read anything about the microscopic ME-2 race into literally anything else. Far far far more telling are the polls in big states like PA, GA, AZ, NC, etc… where Harris’s polling went from stagnant to declining.
Generally, the person losing an election is the one that wants a debate and the one winning wants to avoid exposure to any kinds of potential mishaps. Its a strategically good decision for Trump to sandbag and not give Harris an opportunity to get some more sound bytes (not like it really matters).
ME-02 was just a small example. The ME-02 I believe was on the presidential race (Maine like Nebraska splits their electoral votes). The link was about the congressional race. To be fair, I mostly just remember it because they ran an ad that accidentally stated with “Dear Virginia” in Maine. Trump has also been relying more on PACs for his campaign to be fair as he’s been outsourcing a lot more. Regardless, they’ve also done things like as another example pull money out of New Hampshire which they thought they, while probably not winning, could at least narrow margins on earlier with Biden in
You need to think about who debates are for. Both you and I know both sides are going to claim a W. I mean, hell, look at the bag of idiots around this forum who were claiming that Joe Biden won his debate against Trump. Both sides are convinced at this point; thats not why you have them. You want a debate if you are behind because you need to somehow move the configuration of the conversation. And if Republicans are spending in ME-2? Bruh who gives a fuck about ME-2. Kamala is shaping up to lose PA. Its looking like she’ll lose NC and GA and AZ. If she loses PA and any one of those states, its over.
Kamala has one path to the white house at this point. She needs to repair her relationship with the uncommitted movement and drive turn-out among Democrats and Democratic likelies. Right now 2-3% of registered Democrats aren’t going to show up for her based on her (and Bidens) position on Gaza. She needs to stop pretending that there are any sane voters left on the Republican side and stop putting effort into them and focus on the people that can actually get her elected.
That is missing my point about their spending changes. Districts and states are hardly isolated from each other. The movments within one tends to correlate well with others. If there’s slipage for republicans in fairly red ME-2, it bodes well for other states
Republicans are more resource limited right now compared to dems. If think they need to allocate money away from those swing states into ME-2 (which running up the score in doesn’t particularly matter), what does that say about how they view the race?
Not to say they couldn’t be just allocating poorly and making poor choices, but in that case then this whole discussion is moot about reading into their decisions as to not to debate
So a couple things. First I think that the Trump campaign in particular and unique among campaigns doesn’t share when ti comes to funds. Most campaigns support other campaigns.
Second, the ME-2 spending I think your’re referencing is this: https://mainemorningstar.com/2024/09/23/billionaire-backed-midwest-super-pac-spending-millions-on-maines-cd2-race/, which is a specific outside pac spending on that race. But to be clear, this isn’t the RNC or the Trump campaign doing the spending, so it bears little relevance to your point. So I think you are wrong to read anything about the microscopic ME-2 race into literally anything else. Far far far more telling are the polls in big states like PA, GA, AZ, NC, etc… where Harris’s polling went from stagnant to declining.
Generally, the person losing an election is the one that wants a debate and the one winning wants to avoid exposure to any kinds of potential mishaps. Its a strategically good decision for Trump to sandbag and not give Harris an opportunity to get some more sound bytes (not like it really matters).
ME-02 was just a small example. The ME-02 I believe was on the presidential race (Maine like Nebraska splits their electoral votes). The link was about the congressional race. To be fair, I mostly just remember it because they ran an ad that accidentally stated with “Dear Virginia” in Maine. Trump has also been relying more on PACs for his campaign to be fair as he’s been outsourcing a lot more. Regardless, they’ve also done things like as another example pull money out of New Hampshire which they thought they, while probably not winning, could at least narrow margins on earlier with Biden in
Normally, I’d agree with that about debating. However, even other republicans were earlier urging trump to debate again and he still declined