White House Race- October 12, 2024

24 Days Until Election Day

The good news is that in just a few weeks, I will no longer have to write posts about the Presidential election. Once the voting happens, this feature will be closed for the cycle, although I of course reserve the right to offer commentary later on for whatever I see fit. This is also with the realization that it is very possible we will not know yet whom the next President of the United States will be on Saturday, November 9th.

This election is extremely tight. Perhaps too tight compared to what many were expecting. The final weeks and the immediate aftermath could be very ugly for the country. One way or another, a group of political tribalists are going to be very surprised and very confused and very angry and very sad, all at the same time. While I think a certain election result is perhaps more likely than another, I have reached the point where I am not going to be surprised if Donald Trump wins. This has seemingly not been a good week for Kamala Harris and her party, at least as far as the polls are concerned. It is also true that people can overreact when it comes to polling. I have spent too many days of my life in the past fretting about the fate of the conservative Republicans I was backing for President (whom at least eventually won in 2000 and 2004), that is hard to find myself in the position of having to worry about a liberal Democrat's chance of victory. After all these years, it continues to be surreal to me. I just very much want to see Donald Trump lose again and to see him off the political stage as soon as possible. This does not make me a Democrat. They are still capable of getting me quite agitated at times also. As bad as this sounds, at least I know that whomever loses this election, some unsavory people will suffer emotionally and have to a lot of soul searching about how it came to that.

Frankly, after the Democrat convention in August it looked like Harris was going to beat Trump. After the Presidential debate in September, it looked even more like Harris was going to beat Trump. She very well might, but a landslide does not seem to be impending. I think one has to be in denial to say that the past couple of weeks have not been ones of either missed opportunities or backwards progress on behalf of the Harris-Walz ticket. Donald Trump is not really going anything to make himself more popular, it is just the other side continues to scare a lot of people, who are willing to overlook everything they dislike about Donald Trump because they thought the economy was better when he was President than it is now or that he will simply be better for their own economic self-interest.

In 1992, James Carville coined the phrase, "It's the economy, stupid" and that was used as a rationale for why a serial adulterer and tremendously slick politician like Bill Clinton was able to beat a war hero and all around solid person like George H.W. Bush. Four years later, the economy was seen as better and that was considered all that was needed to have a person like Clinton be seen as favorable to Bob Dole, and what a person like him used to represent to America. The economy was everything to so many voters. It was more than foreign policy or national security matters and certainly more than character and integrity in the President of the United States.

This is a big part of the reason why Donald Trump took the office that Bill Clinton once disgraced, and disgraced it in even worse ways. Now, it still looks like he may have a chance to do it again. Everyone who thinks Trump's character is a disqualification (like myself) is already committed to not voting for him. Democrats though do not seem to have a good enough rationale for their economic policies or concerns Americans have about what has happened at the southern border over the last four years. Kamala Harris went on a big media blitz this week, though mostly limited to friendly venues (similar to Trump's approach) and on "The View", she said she could not think of anything in regards to how she would be different policy wise than Joe Biden. This got a ton of attention. I agree, she and her party will not be that different, but there should have at least been a much better canned response. About ten minutes later in this "interview", she did say that unlike Biden, she would put a Republican in her Cabinet. This definitive promise made me happy and I thought it was smart politics, perhaps not realizing the damage her first answer had already done. While I am under no illusion that a Republican in her Cabinet will be nothing more than window dressing (say Adam Kinzinger at Veterans' Affairs), at least it is a symbol of bipartisanship. Every recent President has had at least one member of the other party in his Cabinet, until Joe Biden, who promised to bring Americans together, and for whatever reason did not name one Republican, (even a former one) to anything substantive in the entire Administration. (Obviously, nobody who supports Trump in 2024 should be in a Democrat's' Cabinet, but of course there are many Republicans and former Republicans who do not.)

 

If I had the inclination, I could once again rant about all the horrible things that came out about Trump this week from the ridiculously outrageous and dangerous things he continues to say on the campaign trail to the revelations that as President, he did not put "America First", but instead sent scare Covid testing equipment to Vladmir Putin at the Kremlin. According to the same Bob Woodward book, Trump has continued to keep in touch with Putin after leaving office. I could also touch on some of the ridiculous and surreal aspects of Trump's October 7th commemoration event early last week. I could perhaps also complain once again about the missed opportunities Democrats had because of the Vice Presidential debate where Tim Walz did not even come close enough to effective prosecuting a case against Trump and JD Vance. Again, I do not think Vice Presidential debates itself are that crucial, but any opportunity to make swing voters consider the dangerous implications of reelecting Trump should have been better used. Beyond that though. Democrats must win Pennsylvania in order to win the election, and I still think that picking Walz instead of Governor Josh Shapiro was a huge gamble, with hubris and fear of a fringe backlash playing too big a part.

Much of the attention this week though was on Hurricane Milton and the damage it did to Florida, which while severe, was thankfully not as catastrophic as it could have been. Trump backers continue to lie about matters related to the hurricane and the federal government response in a shameful way. Democrats should not be surprised though. If the roles were reversed, they might very well be taking the same low road.

Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Those seven states are what it comes down to. National polls show a very close race between Trump and Harris, but all things considered, Harris probably has to win the popular vote by four points on Election Day in order to guarantee an Electoral College victory. Recent polls in every one of those seven states have shown a dead heat, with the exception perhaps of a couple out of Arizona and Nevada showing a a Trump lead. Frankly, I do not see any way that Trump can win Nevada without also winning Arizona. I also think Harris has to win all three of the "Rust Belt" states, giving her some margin of error in the "Sun Belt" states, but still evident of a very close contests.

Like what I said about Hurricane Milton, the polls for Harris this week have looked severe, but not as catastrophic as they could be. A lot of people online have a lot of opinions, and some on "Election Twitter" will make cases for why the polls for Harris might be better than they appear. While it is true that polls underestimated support for Trump in both 2016 and 2020, the 2022 midterms wound up being better for Democrats than some polls looked. Even in this cycle, Trump lost more primary votes in many states than the polls anticipated. So, perhaps the pollsters have learned how to poll Trump better and what we are seeing is a more true sign of his political "ceiling." Still, this is a very precarious position for an incumbent party, in which an outgoing President is still polling as low as is, to be in.

The gender gap has been part of our political divide for over a generation now, but it seems wider than ever. Trump is expected to win men by a wide margin and Harris is expected to win women by a wide margin. This goes far beyond the genders of the candidates though. I am pretty sure that if the Democrat nominee were a man and the Republican nominee were a woman, with the same policy positions on both sides as now, there would still be a huge instance of women favoring the Democrat and men favoring the Republican. There are lots of ways to analyze just why this divide is as large as it is. Democrats are banking so much on the issue of abortion or as they put it "reproductive choice" as being the deciding factor that will get so many women on their side in this election. Does this issue have as much salience though among blue collar men, who used to be strongly Democrat, but now are worried about the economy, the price of goods, and fear of illegal immigration? Probably not. Democrats are walking a tightrope.

Democrats are also becoming increasingly concerned about minority men, such as African-Americans and Hispanics, not voting for the party at the margins they used to. There are a lot of reasons to consider why this might also be, but I think it boils down to the gender divide. Men just are not liking what Democrats are selling, just as formerly Republican women, have moved away from that party.

A lot of people think former President Barack Obama will be a strong surrogate for Kamala Harris, especially as it relates to black men. Do young black men really care about what white-haired Barack Obama, who lives a jet-setting lifestyle since leaving the White House, thinks though? A couple of days ago, Obama gave a speech for Harris, and somewhere at this event, also was on camera addressing a small group of folks, and he seemed to be in a bit of a bad mood complaining that black men were not supporting Harris the way they had supported him. He basically accused "the brothers" into "not being into" the idea of a woman President. Calling a whole lot of voters sexist was sure to have a blacklash, even among voices on the left who feel that it is wrong to signal out black voters, who are supporting the Democrats at very high levels. Trying to inject race into this campaign in such a way or the assumption that one being black means they have to vote for a Democrat (similar to the ridiculous way that Trump tries to shame Jewish-Americans who do not support him.. which is the vast majority of them) is a very risky strategy. I am also reminded that while Obama is correct to point out how much Trump lies and frustrated that people overlook that, he is also the same politician, who said many times, "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor", even when he knew at the time that was a lie.

I was pretty mystified Obama talked like this and am reminded that as successful as he was for winning votes for himself, when he was President, other Democrats lost a whole hell of a lot of races from coast to coast. Frankly, the whole vibe reminded me of how Bill Cosby used to lecture young black men to pick their pants up and speak better English. While there might have been some truth to what Cosby was saying, the fact of the matter is that young black dudes did not want to hear an old millionaire like Cosby speak down to them like that. Then, as people turned on Cosby, we wound up learning a lot of things about him that he did not want us to learn.

The nominee of the Democrats may still be a slight favorite to win this race, but the last two weeks have shown a reversal of momentum. They better hope the other side is peaking too soon or that their superior ground game and money advantage will make all the difference. We are getting close to the end though and Democrats have to be clear eyed about their political problems in 2024.