“If the average voter believes that price fixing is a good idea, then he is ignorant and wrong –about the price agreements (The average voter may be wise and informed about countless other issues, from the inedibility of Marmite to the non-sandwich status of the hot dog.) A bad idea does not become good simply because a large number of people support it.”

But although price controls sound good, they don’t work. He writes: “When these ideas fail – and they must – their proponents blame neither themselves nor their ideas. They blame the greedy, the evildoers with great wealth, the millionaires and billionaires, the kulaks, the Jews, the financiers, the globalists, the big corporations, Wall Street and, of course, the price gougers, to name just a few scapegoats.”

There are no signs of Trump’s campaign getting more serious on the other side of the aisle, either. As unpredictable and fickle as Trump can be, his campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles are experienced political operatives who try to give Trump good advice.

But guess who is coming back as Trump loses ground in the polls? Corey Lewandowski, who ran much of Trump’s 2016 campaign, joins the team as an adviser and brings with him his 2016 strategy book, “Let Trump Be Trump.” In Friday’s edition Boiling frogs (🔒) Nick calls Lewandowski “an enabler of Trump’s id, a ‘warm blanket’ that reassures the boss that his instincts are right and his highly paid advisers are wrong.”

Lewandowski’s return isn’t the only thing that makes Nick think back to 2016: He notes strange parallels, like when Joe Biden was pushed aside to make way for Hillary Clinton and this year Harris, and that both nominees nominated “suburban dad-style running mates – named Tim!” None of this makes him optimistic.

“Trump’s poll numbers are down, Corey is back on the team, and Democrats are trying to hold on to the White House without the incumbent president at the top of the ballot. Suddenly, there’s something very familiar about this campaign. And not in a good way.”

This is where we are 80 days before Election Day. Thanks for joining us on this crazy journey and have a great weekend.

While Kamala Harris’s campaign was largely doing better than most people might have expected before President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed her, her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, was already dealing with unwanted attention over his military service and a past association with an anti-Semitic Minneapolis imam. These are the kinds of things that typically come to light in the vetting process presidential candidates go through before nominating a vice presidential candidate. Yet Harris had a much shorter time frame. David Drucker spoke to some members of Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign team, who told him how the process typically works. Back then, it lasted about five months and started with a long list of names and short profiles. By May 2012, the list had shrunk to five names and the full vetting began. “The vetter was pretty damn thorough,” one Republican strategist told Drucker about the process to nominate Paul Ryan.

Kevin usually adds a section to his weekly newsletter called “Words About Words,” but this week he devoted his major essay to discussing an important word: strange. The Harris campaign has used the term to describe the Trump campaign, and it seems to have struck a nerve. Kevin thinks he knows why: It’s a holdover from the era of “pickup artist” blogs, which became popular about 15 years ago and were designed to teach men how to act like “alpha males.” He writes that many men on the New Right are or were immersed in that culture, and it shows. “One of the things you might have noticed if you read those blogs a decade and a half ago was the unquestioned consensus that the worst thing a woman could call a suitor was strangeor a variation like spinnerfollowed by creepy and other near-synonyms. Strange was not just a criticism or a prelude to rejection – it was emasculating.”

The Send politics The team is examining the Trump campaign’s ground campaign and … isn’t finding as much as one might expect so close to the election. We reported back in April that Trump wanted his campaign and the Republican National Committee to focus on “election integrity.” That ground campaign was to be left to the Super PACs, thanks to a Federal Election Commission ruling in March that allowed direct coordination with the campaigns on doorstep campaigning efforts. Now, “there is little evidence of a Trump/RNC ground campaign, intense or not.” A ground campaign may not have seemed necessary when Trump was comfortably ahead of President Joe Biden, but that changed overnight when Kamala Harris took power. Given the need for a shift in strategy and the tight time, the campaign needs to answer questions. As one GOP operative told us, “Are they organized and what are their goals? … Is their goal voter turnout or ballot integrity? And how do you vet the outside groups?”

And here is the best of the rest:

• Intel recently announced that it lost $1.6 billion last quarter and plans to lay off about 15,000 employees. Did you know that the company was also the largest recipient of subsidies from the CHIPS Act, which is intended to boost semiconductor chip manufacturing in the United States? In CapitolismScott examines the systemic flaws that contributed to Intel’s problems and writes: “The real question It’s not about what happens next with Intel, it’s about how we got here in the first place – and how the CHIPS Act virtually guaranteed it.”
• A Democratic convention in Chicago where an unpopular war threatens to split the party? The 1968 convention was overshadowed by protests and revealed the party’s dysfunctionality. Many Republicans hope that history repeats itself next week. Chris Stirewalt writes in his latest newsletter (🔒) that it should be different this time: Anti-Israel sentiment is not as widespread as opposition to the Vietnam War in 1968, Kamala Harris is slightly more popular than Hubert Humphrey, and security around the convention is a little tighter these days.
• One constant in politics is that young voters prefer Democrats – a stereotype backed up by decades of polling. So why are so many young men attracted to Donald Trump? Scott Howard writes that the trend
  “a reflection of society’s growing indifference towards them.”
• Have abortions increased since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade? Are more babies being born? Can both statements be true at the same time? John examines various studies that show both results and tries to get to the bottom of this.
• On the Pods: What should a Never Trumper do in this election? Vote for Harris, write someone in, stay home? On The Dispatch PodcastJamie welcomes Daily Beast Columnist Matt Lewis will go through the options. AppraiseSarah and David French speak with former White House Counsel Bob Bauer about Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on President Biden’s cognitive decline and what it was like helping Biden with his debate prep. To The RemnantJonah and Stirewalt compare the election to a domestic dispute between the mom and dad parties, suggest that Tim Walz do some interviews, and preview the Democratic convention.