White House Race- October 26, 2024

 10 Days Until Election Day

The countdown continues yet Election Day has already been underway throughout the country. More and more people are early voting and having their votes locked in. Political junkies and partisans pour over the data as it exists in who is early voting in the states that have registration by party. Four years ago, Donald Trump discouraged people from early voting, telling them to wait until Election Day. However, his supporters are likely voting early in heavy numbers and MAGA acolytes seem absolutely giddy about their electoral prospects. This will of course mean that the Election Day turnout itself will be down.

Early voting numbers, polls, online political betting market, computer probability models, etc. etc. All of these things are being looked at as people want to know who really has the edge in the final days of this campaign. Frankly, I do not think we have any idea and will not know until the votes come in. It is hard to deny though that the polls look better for Trump than they did in either 2016 or 2020, when they wound up underestimating his support. The polls also looked good for Republicans in the 2022 midterms, when they wound up underperforming. Have pollsters adjusted to more accurately capture the Trump vote? Have they compensated too much leading his numbers to be artificially high?  As I talked about two years ago, there are a lot of Republican affiliated, newer, polling groups that are showing good numbers for their candidate. Are they creating a false impression? They definitely seem to be designed to get people clicking on links and talking about them on social media. Trump backers love to mention the polls they like and rush to their phones or keyboards to say "Boom" or "landslide coming." They seem way overconfident to me, but at the same time, Democrats, who probably should be very concerned, especially after what they went through in 2016, might be in denial also. The truth is probably somewhere in between. The seven swing states appear to be tied, especially the three in the Rust Belt, that will really hold the key. As some have noted, if the polling is off, even a little, the same candidate, will probably win just about all the swing states at the end, and that could bring about a result that will resemble a very solid Electoral College victory. In a way, we should probably hope for that I suppose. I also think it is important to keep in mind that Democrats might have a significant advantage in the "ground game" while Republicans are relying on outside groups or people like Elon Musk to get their voters to the polls. I am unfortunately reminded that during a very close election in 2012, Mitt Romney's campaign was supposed to have a very sophisticated turnout operation, and that wound up plagued by problems on Election Day.

Next week, either on Saturday or Sunday, I will formally predict the Election Result state by state. There is still a lot to consider before then. I just know that it has not been a great October for Democrats. They had a pretty great August and September, and compared to the status of the campaign before that, should be grateful, but they should have been able to close the deal in October, especially after the one Donald Trump/Kamala Harris debate and that has not happened. People must just have a very short attention span or poor memory to have kept Trump in the game after that debate performance. No wonder he has refused to do another. The Vice Presidential debate, while typically not all that important in a campaign, turned into a missed opportunity for Democrats. 

Kamala Harris has strengths as a candidate. For one thing, she is not 81 year Joe Biden, with an approval rating in the low 40s. She is also pretty good at her rallies. However, she has a lot of political weaknesses as well, For one thing, she is the second in command to 81 year old Joe Biden with an approval rating in the low 40s. That is the main reason this race is close. Democrats, including the candidate herself,  still are unable (or more likely unwilling) to acknowledge that Biden's economic policies are just not popular. Biden should never have run for reelection and when he did, he stayed in the race too long. Harris was suddenly thrust into a position as the automatic nominee in a way that had both benefits and perils. The early week saw her way too reluctant to speak in any sort of unscripted way or interact with the media. That has changed, and the results have been middling. Perhaps, she is just not good at that aspect of politics, which means that if elected, she might have a tough time ever being popular, or she needed more practice early on. This week, she did a CNN Town Hall with undecided voters in Pennsylvania. Moderator Anderson Cooper was pretty professional and fair in trying to hold her accountable, and of course has been attacked by the left for daring to do his job,

During this event, Harris was not abysmal, but still struggled to do the things that should be easy. She had a hard time admitting any sort of "weakness" which is always the question one is asked in any sort of job interview that an applicant must know how to navigate in a savvy way. When asked about high grocery prices, she almost immediately started talking about her housing plan. It really had no relevance to the question. She just seems programmed to give her talking points no matter what.and it comes across in not a great way. We can all scoff at the concept of the "undecided voter" or the person who says they "need to know more about the candidate's plans" when political people certainly have a grasp on what those plans are, but that is how those people think. I believe just about all undecided voters are looking for a reason, any reason, to vote against Trump, but they want to feel comfortable with Harris first, and she has been falling short on that. As demonstrated by her refusal to admit mistakes either personally on behalf of the Biden Administration, she is just another politician who refuses to give an inch because it would mean the other tribe "owns"them, at least temporarily in a small way.

Can Harris win? Absolutely. As of today, I think it is very slightly more likely than not, but it should certainly not be this close. The closing message will be, since there is probably no other route that they are good at, in attacking Trump. The campaign started off being one about "vibes" and "joy" but now is back to being one of fear. Abortion and a "threat to democracy" are going to be a huge part of that. That is what Democrats ran on in 2022 and I remember thinking they were overdoing it, but it did actually work for them in the end. With Trump actually on the ballot though, it might be a different story. Is there really anything that can be said about him that "swing voters" do not already know? Does it really matter to anyone at this point that he might have groped a model at a Jeffrey Epstein part  many years ago? This is just a very precarious situation and we will not know the answer until after the election.

 

There is much blowback within and at newspapers such as the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times which had Kamala Harris endorsements written and ready to publish, only to have those scuttled, for whatever reason, by the newspaper owners. That is of course the prerogative of the person who writes the checks, but it seems very unseemly. Are they that worried about Trump taking punitive action against them if he wins? Apparently so.  While newspaper endorsements of candidates might matter in little noticed local elections, I cannot imagine there is one person in America who was going to vote for Harris, but now will not, because the WaPo or LA Times did not formally endorse her,

The word "fascist" played a big part this week. I do not know how much it should matter, but it definitely should. Harris is now openly agreeing that Trump is a fascist. To MAGA, this is an outrage, a call for violence against Trump, and all sorts of unforgivable things. They seem to ignore the fact that Trump has been and continues to call his political opponents fascists and communists, and all sorts of things like that for years now. It is the ultimate in ridiculous double standards.

Former Trump White House Chief of Staff, General John Kelly, does not go in front of television cameras, but we now have audio of him admitting Trump qualifies as a fascist and confirmation he did and said all sorts of incredibly horrible things when he was President, related to the military, and the powers he wished he had. The big thing was that he said he wanted generals "like Hitler had." His backers deny all of this and somehow twist the story to say that Trump himself if being called Hitler. That is untrue and I also doubt that very many of them truly believe he did not say these things. They either do not care or want to gloss over it. I for one have never been able to and never will.

 

I will also say though that claims such as those recently made by Hillary Clinton that Trump's upcoming Madison Square Garden is somehow an intentional call to mimic the famous 1939 rally held at the old MSG by the American Nazi Party is way off and serves no helpful purpose. Trump may well be a fascist but that is not why he is holding a rally there. He simply is a New Yorker who wants to do such a thing for vanity and is way too overconfident about winning that he will waste time in New York instead of an actual swing state. This appearance of Hillary Clinton on CNN was not good for her or her party.

 

Does Trump know the definition of "fascist?"  He is probably not smart enough or curious enough intellectually to really know what it all means. However, he openly admires dictators and seems quite willing to admit that he believes he comes before the Constitution and all loyalty should be pledged to him above all else. Trump has always been about himself and nothing but himself. Whether he would open gulags is not the question. The question should be how we could possibly elect anyone who might even consider if they have the right to do it.

Many Americans may be distracted this week by the high profile World Series between the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Major League Baseball is definitely happy about such a match-up. Last night saw the Dodgers win on a walk-off extra innings Grand Slam, a Fall Classic first, but very much a reminder of the famous Kirk Gibson walk off home run in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series. Not long after the Dodgers won that Series, the Vice President of the United States won a Presidential election and I am actually old enough to remember it all. (For the record, I am inclined to root for the Yankees this year, just because of Cubs great Anthony Rizzo being on the team.)

Baseball will end though in the days ahead and the time of reckoning will be here. What Americans decide will say much about ourselves. You cannot say we will not be warned. To be certain, Trump's "closing message" is also very dark, focused heavily on attacking immigrants. This week, he seemed proud of himself for using the comparison of "garbage can" to describe America. Could any other candidate ever get away with saying such a thing? The people who applaud him would have lost their minds if a Democrat had ever used that term to describe the United States of America.

Yes, we need to do a better job in securing our border against illegal immigration and combating crime, regardless of the source, but America, this land of immigrants, is not a "garbage can." It always has been and should always remain the "Shining City on a Hill" and a beacon of freedom for all who yearn to come here. 

A Reagan conservative such as myself is confounded that after all these years, someone like Trump is still a risk to harm this country. I will do my best to remain confident that Americans will do the right thing in a few days and the threat will fade.  Anybody who speaks about this country being a "garbage can" belongs on the political ash heap of history and that was on my mind when I cast my vote today.