Yesterday, President Trump held five rallies in five different states, barnstorming through Michigan, Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. On Saturday, he did four rallies in Pennsylvania alone, including one that drew 57,000 people to the small town of Butler about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh.
All Trump rallies are celebratory affairs, but these seemed even more so. Trump himself was in a jaunty mood, doing a little dance to “Y.M.C.A.” on a freezing stage in Michigan, laughing along with the crowd at Biden memes, and generally hamming it up for his supporters, who came out in droves.
For weeks now, the mainstream media have been telling us how Trump’s flurry of eleventh-hour campaigning is a sign of desperation, but as usual they miss the mark. What these rallies really show is that win or lose, Trump isn’t going away after this election. He’s the most popular Republican in the country by far—and will remain so, no matter what happens on Tuesday.
If Twitter blue checks weren’t so busy denouncing Trump rallies as COVID-19 superspreader events or “the stuff of Nazi rallies,” as one Vox blogger put it, they might notice how these events are more than just campaign rallies; they’re manifestations of a fundamental shift that’s taken place in American political life.
