Former President Donald Trump seemed to be on a glide path to win Georgia — and the presidential election along with it — after he wrapped up the Republican National Convention last month. With the GOP in Georgia more united than in recent memory and Democrats spiraling over what to do about the soon-to-withdraw, President Joe Biden, an AJC poll released just after the convention showed Trump leading Vice President Kamala Harris in a potential matchup here by 5 percentage points.
But a series of self-inflicted, quick-fire catastrophes have taken Trump from sure-thing to what-the-heck in a matter of days in Georgia, just as the newly minted Harris campaign is getting off the ground. If you were writing a book on how to lose an election, Trump’s last 10 days would be your guide.
First, choose a running mate like U.S. Sen. JD Vance, whose many past cable appearances are easy to access, but too numerous to fully inspect. Count on the fact that some of the opinions expressed will deeply offend an important segment of the general electorate, including suburban women.
Next, insult a room full of Black journalists days after your convention, as Trump did at the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago last week, just after you promised to bring unity to the country. Finally, go to a battleground state like Georgia and attack the popular governor, as well as the governor’s wife, even though both are in your own party. Now sit back and enjoy the next four years of vacation, because you probably just lost the election.
It’s not to say that Trump cannot still win Georgia in November. But his choices over the last few weeks have made it exponentially harder in a race that was his to lose. With startling efficiency, he has essentially told the three groups he needs to reach in Georgia — women, Black voters, and Kemp-aligned Republicans — that he’s the exact same person they didn’t vote for in 2020. Why would they change course in 2024?
First the women. Although JD Vance’s previous criticisms of Trump were well known before he was chosen as the vice presidential nominee, his recently resurfaced criticism of the “childless cat ladies miserable with their own life choices” who are supposedly running the country was new to most of us.
The line played fine on Fox News when Vance said it. But in the light of day, it makes a person want to remind Vance that many of the moms he’s supposed to appeal to only avoided “cat lady” status because of access to in vitro fertilization, which some conservatives have recently said needs to be reexamined (Vance has since said he supports fertility treatments, but he voted against a Democratic bill that would guarantee access to IVF).
Some women without children might also tell Vance that trying to build a career in fields like politics or finance, where he has worked successfully, makes starting a family incredibly difficult for women in their 20s and 30s. Finally, some women, childless or not, might just tell him to mind his own damn business. How’s that for a VP rollout?
A few days after Vance’s cat-lady comments caused a stir, Trump went to the convention of the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago. His campaign must have thought sitting down with the prestigious group could be an opportunity to make inroads with Black voters. And they were right. But when ABC’s Rachel Scott asked him to respond to a series of his own inflammatory statements about Black voters, the former president ripped her as “rude” and “fake news.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner, first question. You don’t even say, ‘Hello, how are you?’”
When Scott followed up with a question about Republicans calling Harris a “DEI hire,” Trump questioned whether Harris, whose father is Black, should be considered Black at all.
“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black. And now she wants to be known as Black,” he said. “So, I don’t know. Is she Indian, or is she Black?”
Are you offended yet? The Black journalists in the room certainly were.
When it comes to a state like Georgia, Republicans don’t need to win the majority of Black voters or women to win. But they must turn out their own Republican voters. And that’s why Trump’s latest misstep was his biggest.
You could almost see it coming during his rally Saturday as he wandered off script on the stage at Georgia State University, in the exact spot where Harris had spoken days before, and he wrongly claimed the 2020 election in Georgia had been rigged against him. Kemp, Trump said, wouldn’t help him out after the election, when a “simple phone call” could have overturned the election results.
More recently, first lady Marty Kemp said she didn’t vote for Trump in this year’s GOP primary because Trump “hasn’t earned my vote.” She wrote her husband’s name in for president instead.
“I don’t want her endorsement. I don’t want his endorsement. I just want them to do their job for Georgia,” Trump said. After calling the first lady “the wife,” Atlanta “a killing field,” and Brian Kemp “a bad guy, a disloyal guy and a very average governor,” Trump concluded, “In my opinion, they want us to lose.”
Insulting women, Black journalists and the popular Republican governor of the state he needs to win, all in the course of a week. If you didn’t know better, you would think it was Trump who wants to lose the election in November. He’s doing everything he needs to do to make that happen.
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