There has been a lot of reporting about the size of crowds at campaign rallies. I have never been too impressed by crowd sizes as an indicator of popularity because however large they may be, they represent just a tiny fraction of the votes one needs to win. They measure more the depth of intensity of the most ardent supporters of a candidate, not the breadth of support. For example, in the case of creepy Donald Trump, there seem to be many of the same people who go to rally after rally, sometimes traveling great distances. It is like a cult following. Such people can swell multiple rally crowd numbers but still have only one vote.

But rally crowds do help campaigns in several important ways. The people who are enthusiastic enough to spend a big chunk of a day going to a campaign event and lining up to get in are those who are very likely to vote and, more importantly, more willing to work on the campaign in some way. You can be sure that there are campaign staffers at these events who are signing up people as donors and volunteers. While getting money helps since so much is needed for expensive TV advertising, American elections are awash with so much dark money that by the time elections come around, the airwaves are saturated with so many ads that they are unlikely to sway voters. Their purpose is largely to remind those who are already committed as to why they should stick with the candidate. The main benefit of getting new people to contribute even a small amount is not the money but because once you have given money to some cause, you are more invested in that candidate and want that person to win, like betting on a horse or a sports team.

It is signing up volunteers that is more important. They play a crucial role back in their neighborhoods, especially close to election day, doing door-to-door canvassing, putting up yard signs, distributing banners, encouraging people to vote early, and getting out the vote on election day. Rallies are usually the best way to find and recruit such people.

Creepy Donald Trump desperately wants to feel that he is loved and admired. That is why he is always boasting about himself and is such a sucker for sycophants, praising anyone who sucks up to him, however obviously phony that adoration may seem to the rest of us. After all, weird JD Vance was just a few years ago one of his harshest critics and yet creepy Trump picked him as his running mate because weird Vance, seeing no future in the current GOP by being anti-Trump, shameless did a 180-degree turn and started fulsomely praising him.

The two measures that creepy Trump really obsesses about, because he thinks they show how much people love him, are crowd sizes and poll numbers. He constantly talks about how large his rallies are, usually inflating the numbers, and gets really upset when it is suggested that other people are getting larger crowds. It is utterly childish but that is who he is.

He has even made the bonkers claim that the images of the large crowd that attended a Harris-Walz rally on an airport tarmac were AI generated and that in reality there was no one there.

“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!” Trump writes. “She was turned in by a maintenance worker at the airport when he noticed the fake crowd picture, but there was nobody there, later confirmed by the reflection of the mirror like finish on the Vice Presidential Plane. She’s a CHEATER. She had NOBODY waiting, and the ‘crowd’ looked like 10,000 people! Same thing is happening with her fake ‘crowds’ at her speeches. 

But even some conservatives are conceding that the images of large crowds at Harris-Walz rallies are real.

Kamala’s crowd at the airport was in fact real. You can claim they’re paid actors or that they were just there for a concert but they are definitely not AI. pic.twitter.com/vGeMGZHbbj

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) August 11, 2024

Former Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy, who famously traveled all the way to Mar-a-Lago to grovel before creepy Trump after criticizing him for instigating the January 6th attacks, is also asking him to stop questioning the size of the Harris crowds, probably realizing how ridiculous it makes creepy Trump look to anyone outside the MAGAsphere.

Then we have opinion polls, creepy Trump’s other obsession. Since his numbers have been dropping recently, creepy Trump has started saying that those polls are fake too and that ‘real’ polls (whatever the hell they are) show him leading.

Predictably, just as news outlets were beginning to publish their “AI crowd” fact checks, Trump allowed a new wave of denial to take over.

“I’m doing really well in the Presidential Race, leading in almost all of the REAL polls,” Trump posted Sunday night, assuring supporters and possibly himself that his 2024 run “is thus far my best Campaign,” with the “most enthusiasm and spirit, etc.”

Trump, eight years older and just weeks removed from an actual near-death experience, is no longer capable of vigorously campaigning like he did in 2016; even his boasting appears mailed in. The former president appears content to live in an alternate reality where he’s winning, by a lot, and can let Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, his historically unpopular running mate, do the hard work of leaving the house.

Republican pollster Frank Luntz is worried.

“Quite frankly, people like [Harris] more than they like him,” GOP pollster Frank Luntz conceded Sunday on CNN. Trump, sitting at home instead of campaigning, is seeing that and losing his mind, Luntz said: “His head is exploding and that’s part of the problem.”

It is a puzzle why creepy Trump isn’t holding more rallies. His schedule is very light. After holding one rally in Montana last Friday, his next one is in Pennsylvania this coming Saturday. An entire week between rallies seems like a surprisingly long gap at this stage of the campaign. The only event he seems to have scheduled in the interim is the interview with Elon Musk.

Maybe he just does not have the energy to do more. After all, he is 78 years old. Now that the older Joe Biden is out of the race, he is being compared with the much younger and much more vigorous Harris and he does not come off well.