The Guardian reports:

Local Republican leaders saw the rally [in the heart of Pennsylvania’s Rust belt] as an opportunity for Trump to take the initiative after evidently being thrown by suddenly facing Kamala Harris after months of leading Joe Biden in opinion polls. Harris has not only erased Trump’s lead in Pennsylvania, but recent polls put her three or more points ahead.

Frank Scavo, a businessman and ardent Trump supporter who was part of a coup that took hold of the [Luzerne] county Republican party earlier this year, was clear before the rally about what he wanted to hear from Trump.

“These rallies fire up the base to go out there and knock on doors. His base will walk on fire for him, but plenty of other Republicans don’t vote. Are they demoralised? Do they think their vote doesn’t count? Most of it is apathy. But if we don’t get people out there knocking on doors, Trump’s not going to win Luzerne county,” he said.

“But to do that, Trump’s got to focus on the message and not get distracted by personal attacks. Trump’s a good communicator. He’s got the issues, commonsense issues, most of them economic, not social. He should leave the attacks on Kamala to others, at least until the debate.”

That’s not how things worked out.

Trump repeatedly broke away from the prepared speech about economics to make rambling claims that Harris was both a fascist and a communist, to attack her laugh as that of “a crazy person” and a “lunatic”, and to claim he was more beautiful than the vice-president. He also spent time debating aloud with himself how to pronounce the name of the CNN anchor Dana Bash.

By the time he stopped speaking 100 minutes later, a large number of the arena’s 8,000 seats had emptied. [Continue reading…]