Does Trump Have Go Away Heat? (Post Election Update: No. He Does Not.)
Or Did Harris Turn Face Enough? The Election Smackdown Is Tomorrow.
(Post-Election Update: Donald Trump is the comeback champion and the cool heel voters want to see.)
Donald Trump’s approach to politics has often been compared to professional wrestling. That’s fair. And a comparison that became clear during his debate with Vice President Harris. In pro wrestling, the goal is to “draw money” by keeping fans engaged, typically through building up one’s opponent to maintain suspense over the outcome. You want them to show up and see the showdown. Like politics, it’s about turnout. If you disparage your opponent too much, the stakes diminish. If you run down your opponent, you have two problems. First, no one who believes you is going out of their way to see you beat a nobody, a jobber; the win isn’t worth much. The second is there are consequences to losing.
The story is told that when the legendary wrestler Chris Jericho was just starting out, he worked with the veteran wrestler Bulldog Bob Brown. Brown was an old performer and Jericho ran him down in front of the audience as old and broken down and no good anymore. Afterward, Brown took Jericho aside and told him he was doing it all wrong. He said if Jericho beat him, then he just beat up an old man, but if he beat Jericho - which was the planned outcome of the match - then Jericho looks bad because he got beat by an old man. That’s where Trump found himself after the debate with Harris. If she is so bad and incompetent, how did she beat you? Don’t run down your opponent. You might have to answer for it later.
First, let’s get this out of the way: Donald Trump is a Heel, but the Democrats think they are Faces, and that’s where it goes wrong…for both of them.
In wrestling terminology, a "Face" (short for babyface) is the hero or rather the character who is supposed to garner cheers and admiration from the audience, eliciting a positive reaction, often called a "pop." On the other hand, a "Heel" is the villain, designed to generate "heat," a term used to describe negative reactions such as boos, angry jeers, just simply hatred from the crowd. These characters are critical in crafting a compelling story within the wrestling ring. In some cases, there are "Tweeners," who occupy a middle ground, neither fully good nor fully bad, and they often receive a mixed reaction from the audience.
In recent generations, some of the most compelling and lucrative wrestlers have not been traditional heroes or villains but have fallen into a more complex category, such as the anti-hero or the cool Heel. Figures like “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, redefined the wrestling landscape by becoming beloved anti-heroes. These characters could reject traditional moral codes and often break the rules but do so in a way that resonates with the audience, winning their approval. Nowadays, the top wrestler, Roman Reigns, in his recent incarnation as a dominant "cool Heel," gained both admiration and scorn from different sections of the audience, making them larger-than-life figures who captivate attention. It got to the point that Roman Reigns, as the villain, was selling the most merchandise and generating the best ratings in a generation. You wanted to see him smash his opponents with in-your-face arrogance. And Roman Reigns is funny too. He is a bad guy, but he is cool.
Donald Trump’s political style has long been based on a model of relentless attack. Like a heel. Throughout his presidential campaigns and time in office, he employed a strategy of aggressively criticizing his opponents, often to the point of almost random personal insults and catchy nicknames. Trump framed his rivals as weak, incompetent, corrupt, or irrelevant, effectively positioning himself as the only strong, capable leader. This approach worked to his advantage in certain settings, particularly during the 2016 Republican primaries and the general election, where he managed to differentiate himself from a crowded field and energize his base by casting his opponents as establishment figures out of touch with ordinary Americans. And he was funny. He was a cool Heel Republican candidate for voters who felt the GOP establishment, the wanna-be faces like “J.E.B.” Bush, were the real villains. And I mean, come on, the name J.E.B. is an acronym for John Ellis Bush, so saying J.E.B. Bush is basically saying John Ellis Bush Bush. That’s too many Bushes for the country. The fact I could see Trump saying something like that was part of his appeal to disaffected GOP voters in 2016.
Yes, the political world often mirrors forms of entertainment, from the theatrics of presidential debates to the careful curation of public personas and the over-the-top arguments on cable “news.” However, Vice President Kamala Harris's public image has been too curated. The Democrats tried to manufacture Kamalamania over the Summer after Joe Biden dropped out and turned Kamala Harris into a Face. However, just like in wrestling, genuine audience connection cannot be willed from the top down; it must be cultivated organically. Harris’s struggle to connect with the public, compounded by her limited media engagements, has complicated her image and sparked questions about her role as a political figure. They should have put her in front of more media after she won the debate in order to show her as a winner. Avoiding the press makes her look like a coward-heel. But no one wants her to go away; the saving grace is that most Americans don't react negatively to her like that. They don’t hate her.
Her opponent, however, he might have that problem. How many Americans want Trump to go just away? Fade out. Vanish. Poof, begone.
One of the most difficult positions to be in as a public figure, whether in wrestling or politics, is what's known as go-away heat. This is the type of heat no one wants to have. Rather than inspiring love, respect, or even entertaining hatred that makes you must-see, the person instead becomes someone the audience simply wants to disappear. Go-away heat is characterized by indifference or exasperation rather than passionate engagement, and it signals that the performer or public figure has overstayed their welcome, causing the audience to tune out rather than get invested in the story. I think, in many ways, Donald Trump is experiencing go-away heat. Much like a wrestling star who has worn out their welcome with the crowd, Trump's once-dominant ability to galvanize attention is now generating exhaustion and frustration among many Americans. Election defeat denial irks Georgians. His polarizing style, once a source of fascination, now leaves a large segment of the population weary, contributing to a growing sentiment that they are simply tired of him, his controversies, and the endless cycle of drama surrounding him. They aren’t booing because they love to hate him; they are booing because they want him off their TVs and social media. As for election day, Trump has inverted much of the Obama map.
Let’s look at 2008, 2016, and 2020
By these maps, GA, NC, AZ, MI, PA, and WI are in play.
And Trump over-performs by 4 points as a rule on election day, which bodes ill for Democrats. New York Times Polls below
While many on Team Blue are happy with the new polls if Trump outperforms by 4 points, he wins all these states, and even if you think the polls are accurate, the Electoral College would look like this:
But I detect a shift among voters. One is that Trump has weakened the GOP stand on pro-life concerns despite folks who are pro-choice not seeing the platform change for what it is, a defeat for the conservative pro-life Catholics and Evangelical Protestants in the GOP coalition. And even though Trump's moderation may help him in Nevada, many may respond by voting third party, especially if the American Solidary Party is on the ballot in their state. Surprisingly, the Democrats have not done something to boost the ASP as an alternative to the GOP in swing states. The point is that Trump’s impact on the GOP is wearing thin, and some do not want to reward a less stridently anti-abortion GOP. Many are ready to close the Trump chapter.
But again the Number One reason for this shift is that Trump’s political narrative has become stagnant. In wrestling, stars must evolve to stay relevant. Even the most hated villains refresh their personas to keep fans invested. Trump, however, has continued with the same tactics: insults, grievances, and re-litigating past battles. It is suffocating. And this is his third time running almost the same campaign as 2016, and as a result, his political narrative feels old and worn out. My working theory is that undecided voters - are there any left? - will break for Harris as Trump is well known and people have made up their minds about him already. If you are still doubting at the late date, I don’t think you are voting for Trump. Americans want something different; in fact, you have to go back to 1976 to find a presidential race without anyone named Bush, Clinton, Biden, or Trump on either ticket. Seriously, think about it. And with Trump it is even more in your face. It’s the same thing day after day, night after night. And Americans are kind of done with it. He attracts bad candidates to the GOP, like the candidate for North Carolina governor who is trailing the Democratic candidate by double digits. Only Trump would have a comedian make an amazingly bad joke about immigrants and Puerto Ricans. Americans are over it. And they have a way to make it stop: voting for Kamala Harris. And they may be enough to lose the election. But it may not. I think that if North Carolina and Georgia go for the same candidate, we will have our winner early, but if they split, it may come down to the 17 electoral votes of Arizona and Nevada at the end of the night.
Or maybe
So does Trump have to Go Away Heat, or is his performance just engaging enough to beat Harris? Or did the Democrats turn her Face enough?
Albert, the beltway is constraining your vision a bit. No one working in or living in the DC bubble has ever quite figured Trump out. Here in the heartland, we are not the refined sophisticated dwellers in the Capital District, we are the coalminers, the cattle farmers and ranchers, the oil roughnecks, the loggers of the outlying and until now and hopefully ending subservient sacrifices whose struggles are caricatured in Hollywood, whose lives are cheaply spent, not in arenas for the amusement of the Capital District elites, but in distant lands for the profit of the Congressional-Military-Foreign Affairs-Industrial Complex. For far too long the Capital District has provided us two non-choices who profess their love for us, while we're just country enough to sense the 'rotten milk' they're serving up. Trump for all his faults genuinely loves us and we know it. He seems to be playing a role to those in the Capital District because everyone with any power is playing a role there. But we sense, that despite the image the District media wants us to see, that Trump's image is not crafted, it emerges from him as Michelangelo's marble statues emerged as if they had always been there, inside the marble waiting to emerge. Trump, though born wealthy in the financial hub of the Capital District, is really one of us, he loves us not for our money or our blood or our entertainment value -- but us as people. I guess I've got just enough education to be a bit put off by him, but my friends and neighbors hold a love, respect, and admiration for him that is deep. We are tired of being gaslighted and lied to, swindled and bribed. We in the heartland are a lot tougher and more forgiving than the effete elites -- Trump is a lot like us, his invitation to Megyn Kelly and her ringing endorsement of him in Pittsburgh is the proof of that. She was one of his sharpest critics, now she stands beside him. I think, if the election is even only marginally honest, the elites will be shocked. And if it isn't at least marginally honest (who in their right mind votes against voter ID?), then the elites win and the heartland loses. I won't have to do much convincing of my rural and small town friends that the Republic and the Constitution is dead, we will all know we've been living "Weekend at 'Connies'" with a corpse and I do not want to see what happens when 80-90 Million Americans in the heartland say enough.