I don’t know what Donald Trump’s internal polling is showing, but insiders on his campaign, including those willing to spill dirt to anti-Trump outlet The Bulwark, are saying they think they will win. Yet, they also noticed with some alarm that, on Sunday, their candidate acted like he believes he will lose. This was especially the case at his first campaign stop in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where Trump seemed to be despondent and in full-blown blame game, as he excoriated pollsters and said he wouldn’t mind if an assassin’s bullet killed a member of the assembled press instead of him.
He toned it down a lot for later appearances in North Carolina and Georgia, so much so that his performances lacked energy. He really seems to be limping to the finish line, while the Harris-Walz campaign appears vibrant and confident. There’s more to this than just my perceptions. If there’s any late movement in the polls and especially in the betting markets, it’s headed Harris’s way. All the important states are still polling within the margin of error, but Harris is in a slightly better position in the critical blue wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. If she holds those and wins the Omaha, Nebraska congressional district, she doesn’t need to win anywhere else. Everyone, on both sides, seems to think she’s got a real shot at North Carolina, too, which is why Trump is spending time there every day in the home stretch. Harris seems most concerned about Michigan and Pennsylvania.
What has me most concerned is that it looks like the Republicans have really succeeded in mobilizing their base in Republican counties, as reflected in the early vote in many states. The rural areas of Georgia and Nevada in particular have me spooked, even though neither state is a must-have for Harris. Offsetting this are indications of late deciders moving to Harris, which seems right to me both because of the general tenor of the campaign since Trump’s appearance at Madison Square Garden and because I think she’s succeeded in being more of a change candidate than Trump.
I’m not putting any stock in Ann Selzer’s final poll out of Iowa that shows Harris winning that state. Could she be right? I suppose so. She has a pretty strong record for being accurate even when she’s an outlier. But for now I’m treating it as an outlier. If there’s anything in her internals that I have some hope is correct it’s that women over 65 are voting heavily against Trump. This could be more pronounced in Iowa than in other places because Iowa has adopted one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the country, and without heavy investment in messaging from the Trump campaign to counteract this, maybe it’s really having a huge effect. If so, I’d expect something similar, but smaller to show up in the upper Midwest battleground states, including Pennsylvania, where Trump has invested in getting his message out.
I do think Harris has an advantage on the ground. Here in Pennsylvania, the ground game is outstanding, and there’s no question it’s adding numbers to her column. I have first hand reports on this because CabinGirl spent Saturday and Sunday knocking doors for the campaign, and they’re already done with their first go-round and hitting doors for the second time. They are squeezing every last drop of juice out of the fruit and leaving nothing on the field, while the Trump field operation is mostly invisible, at least here in the eastern part of the state.
I’ll also say, as a former county organizer for ACORN in neighboring Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, that their walk lists are incredible. They have plenty of independents and some Republicans on their lists, and yet the door-knockers are encountering almost no solid Trumpers. And, believe me, there are plenty of those in these parts even if they’re badly outnumbered. This shows me the Harris campaign knows who to approach in a way that wasn’t even possible when I was compiling walk lists in 2004.
These things give me optimism.
Now is not the time to let up. I would tell you if I was confident in a Harris win. I am not. I am more hopeful that I was in early October, but this really could come down to an impossibly small number of votes in a single state, so don’t just sit there reading this. Find a way to help push Harris over the line.
5
5
5
5
She’s going to win the vote. The GOP cannot get what they want democratically so they have taken the only option left to them. Fascism. Going forward we have to win every time and they only have to win once.
We are not willing to admit this. Nor are willing to admit that our brand sucks and most Americans don’t like us, hate how we want to win, and only support us when the GOP does something truly insane. So unless we change in ways most of us are not going to like we are simply stepping on the gas pedal to a GOP final win. And we will have earned everything that we get hit with.
While I’m confident about tonight I’m fully aware our activists have cost us the long war. It makes me sad. Though I fully admit we own it and have no right to complain.
Ah yes, the “only liberals have any agency” argument.
It’s time for people on the left to stop pulling punches. That’s what got us here, and it needs to stop.
I’m all for throwing hay makers. However being a bunch of smarter, snarkier, more educated and moral than thou woo woos isn’t working. We come off as week and insufferable morons because we are.
People don’t vote for us because we are unlikable on a basic human level. Even though our policies are liked. But we insist that not only we should win despite being likable but that people should praise us and we should for being insufferable. It’s not working.
We should be brutal and fight dirty. We also need to knock off the condescending nonsense. But we love being condescending so oh well. Don’t complain with you get clobbered because you stuck out your glass jaw with a smirk and a smart ass remark.
You’re right, Democrats deserve to lose because fascists vote for the fascist party en masse.
We should be less insufferable, by joining the fascist party, who the people truly love.
This exact type of snark starting with “only liberals have agency” is the exact sort of self righteous offended BS which is why people are correct to vote against us. Your doing it right now! You don’t want to win you want to be right and want to have your better than thou vindicated. Which is why most people will sit and smile and root for you to be crushed into the ground and be correct to do so because you’re the exact sort of unlikable know it all that non assholes hate. And why you can only win when the alternative is so horrifying it shocks people into action.
And it’s why when we all end up in the train cars people will look at you and realize you own it just as much as the fascists.
People hate the bully. But everyone roots for the bully when they beat the living hell out of the smarmy jerk nobody likes. You’re the smarmy jerk! That’s why you keep loosing when you should be winning. And until you stop being the smarmy jerk you’re going to be stuck in that situation. And after a point, it’s your own fault you got your teeth kicked in and your friends as well.
But keep on doing it!
“Correct to vote against us”.
You ain’t us, fascist enabler.
We just got crushed. I voted for Harris but it’s clear the dog isn’t eating the dog food. That means we need to do an autopsy on our party. That autopsy is going to mean making a lot of changes we aren’t going to like. Minorities are more personally conservative than we’d like. The people we drove out of the party for pushing popularism over social issues and the Maher’s and Chait’s of the world warning us about “woke” were also right.
And it’s people like you, who refuse to admit this, who led us right into this disaster. So congratulations! It’s your baby you own this!
Analysis is definitely needed right now, and it’s fair to express some strong emotions, but we don’t need a circular firing squad.
I’m so tired of hearing about how someone else’s insanity is my fault.
Someone else being crazy doesn’t meant you don’t have to deal with it. Refusing to leads to Trump.
We got crushed. I am gutted. It is true that inflation and an unpopular president were major headwinds and we would have lost with any candidate. But the uniform swings against us in blue states is absolute doom for the makeup of the Democratic machine.
The party needs a reset. It’s clear the coalition of highly educated suburbanites and minorities is not viable any longer. If you talk to brown immigrants (I am one) they will tell you they don’t much care for wokeism, they care about legal immigration (and mostly despise illegal immigration) and severely detest crime in their neighborhoods. All of these were positions Kamala tried to reverse of course but the brand damage was already done and it will take years to undo. Stop taking advice from college professors and start talking to everyday people.
We will be back, and I still believe in the long term promise of this nation.