Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes: “With slightly fewer than 100 days left until the presidential election, how much success the Never Trump campaign is having is unknowable. Yes, the president’s support is eroding, but—given the White House’s failure to contain the coronavirus and Trump’s own erratic behavior—the reason for that is as overdetermined as a variable could be.”
“One can measure impact in other areas, however. To the extent that the Lincoln Project is aiming to personally troll the president, the ads seem to be working: The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s recent firing of his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, was provoked in part by a breathy Lincoln Project ad hinting that Parscale was accumulating personal wealth at the expense of the campaign. In a Twitter exchange with one of us, Conway argued explicitly that the organization’s goal was to “manipulate” the president, presumably to disorient him and throw his campaign into chaos. In an interview with the other, Rick Wilson made similar comments, suggesting that some of the ads are designed to keep the president personally off balance and thereby induce mistakes.”