If the Trump campaign wants a rally playlist, it should skip morbid tunes like “Phantom of the Opera” and “November Rain” and go straight to the classic dance track from 1994, the Real McCoy’s “Run Away.”
It’s the one song brainwormed on the minds of most Republicans on the November ballot. First came the convention no-shows, then the scrubbed websites, and now the empty seats. Even Texas Governor Greg Abbott bailed on Trump’s San Antonio rally last week. If Abbott bails on you, then you know you’re fixin’ to catch a beating.
None of this is new, of course. But the running away has been intensifying, just as Trump has been putting frequent flyer miles on that luxury jet that he took from Qatar. The exodus began in the closing weeks of summer, when dozens of Republicans in competitive races found reasons to skip the GOP’s own midterm convention in Dallas, among them Sens Susan Collins, Mike Rounds and Dan Sullivan.
Politico counted 45 confirmed no-shows among more than 70 Republican candidates and lawmakers it surveyed. Trump’s explanation was that there wasn’t room for everyone. He’s so full of it.
And since that convention with “no vacancies,” the runaways haven’t stopped. In fact, they’re running away faster and faster.
Rep. Mike Lawler, whose seat in New York’s Hudson Valley is as purple as they come, bailed on Trump’s Syracuse rally, citing a full schedule and the long drive. I live close to NYC, and I wish Lawler’s ads would run away — they are driving me crazy.
In Syracuse, only 4 out of 16local Republican candidates and party leaders attended Trump’s rally at the Oncenter. When the local party’s own officials would rather be anywhere else, the guest of honor has a problem.
That would be like on your wedding day only having your step-parents and a few awkward distant cousins show up, while the rest of your actual family declined because they had to go on a fall hayride.
Now the crowds are following the candidates out the door — literally. One example: the Mitchell Center in Mobile, Alabama, a district that is as red as a little red Corvette. The arena holds about 10,000, and there were entire rows empty behind Trump.
The Daily Beast/PunchUp estimated about 8,000 people showed up, compared with roughly 30,000 when Trump came to Mobile in 2015. In San Antonio, media analyses, including reports highlighting C-SPAN footage and local coverage, noted that the crowd did not come close to packing the 11,000-seat Freeman Coliseum arena, despite optimistic projections from local organizers who anticipated a full house.
On Saturday in Clarksville, Tennessee, reporters documented whole empty sections.
Then came Monday night in Youngstown, Ohio. Local station WFMJ found that tarps covered about a quarter of the arena’s seats, and the crowd never filled more than about two-thirds of what was left.
NBC summed up the larger trend: Trump is speaking in smaller venues, often staring at empty seats and watching people file out before he finishes.
Trump, of course, is melting downat the meltdown. He lashed out at the New York Times for reporting the Mobile emptiness, and insisted he has never had an empty seat and never will. He then flooded Truth Social over the weekend with posts and videos calling his rallies “legendary.”
Oh, glory days Donald, glory days, and as his hero Bruce Springsteen might add, “Well, time slips away and leaves you with nothing, mister, but boring stories of glory days.”
What’s happening here is, hopefully, a sign of things to come, i.e. voters taking their cues from others and running away too. Former Trump voters in Youngstown told the Washington Postthey see a growing disconnect between their own struggles with grocery, housing and gas prices and his promoting data centers and military action in Iran.
Meanwhile, the GOP is not only running from Trump, but it’s also running from its do-nothingness. Or, as the Beatles might sing, “He’s a real nowhere man. Sitting in his nowhere land. Making all his nowhere plans for nobody.” Quick question for you: Name me one thing that Congress did this year?
Nothing. According to the Wall Street Journal, under Speaker Mike Johnson, the House passed the fewest enacted laws since the Civil War. When Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie introduced a bill to impeach the horrid Pete Hegseth in September, Johnson gavelled the House closed so the vote wouldn’t happen. Then members were sent home early to campaign on, well, nothing.
The running away started in late summer too. Candidates quietly deleted “Stand With Trump” slogans and rewrote their bios. California Rep. Young Kim stripped the slogan from her messaging, and Texas candidate Carlos De La Cruz downgraded himself from “Trump conservative” to the far vaguer “strong conservative.”
Even Ken Paxton, the crooked, slimy Senate candidate, has blamed Trump’s policies and failed convention for his poll numbers, and still Trump went to San Antonio to campaign with him. And Paxton tried to make upfor it by praising Trump instead of talking about anything he’s accomplished — nothing, again, of course.
With a little over two weeks until election day, with their majority slipping through their fingers, toes, arms and legs, the GOP is screaming, “get me the hell out of here!” Republicans, and more and more of their voters are running like Indiana Jones from that boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark, only now the boulder is bringing fewer people to its own rallies.
Real McCoy had one word of advice for the GOP, and Republicans took it to heart. The problem is that running away only works if nobody notices you’re running. On November 3, the voters will be waiting at the finish line.
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