Election Day nears as the already-voted look on

The way campaigns are conducted hasn’t quite caught up with the way votes are cast these days.

Enormous amounts of money are being spent to reach fewer and fewer votes, which is a problem if you’re worried about the outrageous cost of campaigns, but not surprising if you consider that most of our medical costs are spent on the last few months of life.

The climactic campaign events, like Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden Sunday and Kamala Harris’ upcoming speech at the Ellipse in Washington Tuesday, are still being scheduled within close sight of Election Day. That leaves tens of millions of voters who have already cast their ballots looking on in a sort of political half-life. In an election where so many minds have been made up well in advance, this might not seem the biggest problem, but it’s a worrying sign for the future.

For some Americans, early voting is just beginning, while others cast their ballots weeks ago. Early voting periods vary by the county in some states and by the community in others. On Sunday night, Elon Musk was still exhorting Trump’s supporters to vote early, implying that this would create a groundswell that Democrats couldn’t steal on Election Night.

Most stories about these closing days of the campaign still cast this as a battle for persuadable, undecided voters, a premise that the organizers of the Trump rally seem almost consciously to have set out to refute.

For all the feigned surprise from commentators the next day, it was no accident that a nearly unknown “comedian” threw out a lot of racist clickbait at the rally Sunday. That allowed time for an especially raw version of the anti-immigrant message to spread all over the internet, well in advance of Trump’s speech. Then an immigrant, Elon Musk, introduced another immigrant, Melania Trump, who introduced her by then well-laundered husband.

Nothing Trump said caused nearly as much a stir as the comedian calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” and that sure seems intentional. U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, who’s in a single-digit race with Democratic Rep. Debbie Murcarsel-Powell in Florida, rushed to condemn the comment as “not funny” and “not true,” and the Trump campaign released a statement from senior advisor Danielle Alvarez saying it didn’t reflect the views of the campaign or Trump himself.

But the entire program, not just that one remark, seemed to be concerned far less with appealing to Puerto Ricans than to people who don’t like Puerto Ricans. And it made great cover for anything Trump said. Except among those following the race closely, Trump’s reference to “our little secret” when he was recognizing House Speaker Mike Johnson drew far less attention. But it could loom in importance as Election Day nears.

“And I think with our little secret, we’re going to do really well with the House, right? Our little secret is having a big impact. He and I have a secret. We’ll tell you what it is when the race is over,” Trump said.

That comment has been interpreted as a hint that Trump and Johnson have a plan for the House, where Republicans hold a thin majority, to step in and settle a closely contested presidential election in Trump’s favor. There may be such an agreement between Trump and Johnson, but that doesn’t explain how this “little secret” could already be having a big impact on House races, where the Republican majority is seen as being in jeopardy.

This is written in advance of Harris’ Ellipse speech Tuesday, but it’s safe to say she’ll try to make as sharp a contrast with Trump’s closer as possible while maybe trying just a little harder to win over those still truly undecided. It doesn’t sound like there will be musical entertainment at this event, but it’s a sure bet Bad Bunny will be there if there is.

The truth about this race is that it’s about turning out those who’ve already decided. It’s about who shows up, and the irony is that a week out from Election Day, a lot of them already have.