Momentum, money, and organization has the VP surging.
It is officially autumn. As of this writing, the presidential election is now 45 days away. Vice President Kamala Harris, thrown into this thing on July 21, has only been on the trail for a mere two months, yet she has galvanized the Democratic base, solidified President Joe Biden’s 2020 numbers (in some cases exceeded them), raised a record amount of cash, headed a flawless DNC convention, and wiped the floor with her dullard opponent, Donald J. Trump, in a “debate” that was viewed on TV by nearly 70 million people (and over 90 million total when considering online viewership). During this run, Harris’s poll numbers have flipped where Biden was in July, and after the debate trouncing has nearly doubled in this week’s bevy of polls – her best numbers yet – as nearly every single one has her up four to six points nationally and extending modest leads in the battleground states. I believe if the election were held today, she would win.
Be that as it may, we have those 45 days to go.
On the other side, Trump and his laughably inept and hate-addled VP pick, J.D. Vance, has decided to take the worst moment of the debate – the wildly insane claim that Haitian migrants are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio – and made it their rallying cry. For the past two weeks, instead of downplaying it, they are making this demonstrably false and dangerous claim the centerpiece of their interviews and rallies, further proving their spectacular cluelessness on reaching moderate independents and soft Republican voters needed for them to win this race.
Furthermore, the Trump Campaign, which has half the funds and an alarming fraction of the battleground state field offices as the Democrats, are spending most of their cash on lawyers to fight what is looking, as each day passes, like another loss, which they hope to spin into a “rigged” election narrative. For instance, reports out of Georgia frame Republicans having put in place a way to block the electoral votes in their state legislature, which is horrifying if you are a fan of democracy, but in reality, is a minor annoyance because at this rate Harris doesn’t even need the state to blow past the 270 electoral votes required to become the 47th president of these United States.
This is because the polls this week have not only surged Harris into her most convincing lead yet, but the all-important cross-tabs best underline her momentum. Nearly 70% of women of all races and creeds support the VP, and she is closing the gap among men in the crucial states that make up the Blue Wall – Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Voter registration – in part thanks to a post-debate endorsement from the most famous human on the planet, Taylor Swift – has reached record highs. Poll after pool, Gen Z, Gen X, and even most Boomers routinely back Harris. Voters over 65 are soft, but most experts think this is minor fallout from Biden’s ousting from the race, which will come home to Harris by November.
Now, most pundits still living in 2016 (and I get the scars, I do) point to Hillary Clinton’s commanding lead in September of that year before she coughed up the election to the very same Trump. However, forgetting the horrors of January 6 and the devastating Dobbs decision by Trump’s handpicked Supreme Court justices that stole women’s national reproductive rights (which has goosed Democratic candidate vote totals to a whopping 6% over-performance since 2022), Harris has one huge advantage over Clinton: people like her.
Since entering the race in July, where Harris was 14 points under water in approval ratings, she has catapulted to one-point positive. She is now the most popular presidential candidate since Barack Obama in 2008. It’s not even close! Most politicians since then have sat in the 30% to 40% range. Trump has never been above the mid-forties and mostly hangs in the high thirties, where Biden was before getting the boot, and, coincidently, where Hillary Clinton was in 2016. People did not like Hillary Clinton, for many and varied reasons, but that is not a problem currently for Kamala Harris. This is why most of the undecided voters, which did not factor into the 2016 polling, flowed to Trump in the final days of the election. Harris’s positive approval ratings are a hidden advantage.
But the race is still close enough to shift. Right before the debate, Harris’s sugar-high summer numbers began to wane. Voters on the fence, who would not vote for Biden due to his age and abhor Trump, want to hear more for Harris. Her stellar debate performance clearly convinced a number of these potential voters, but she has work to do. Considering the money at her disposal and field office advantage, though, she still has room to move. Trump, however, has routinely remained stagnant, whether he gets convicted of crimes or nearly shot, his numbers never seem to shift. His ceiling is 47% – it is what he got in 2016 when he won and 2020 when he lost. The paucity of viable independent candidates this time has also calcified the race, wherein during the 2016 election they were getting two to three points in key states.
Finally, the economic indicators, which speak to the number one issue for undecided voters, have been mostly positive for months now. Currently, the stock market is at record highs, gas prices are at a three-year low, the GDP is humming, and wages are out-distancing prices for goods and services, and with the interest rates being cut this week by the Fed, housing and automobile prices will soon dip lower. Harris has positioned herself outside the Biden Administration as a forward-thinking candidate that will “turn the page” with notions of a “Opportunity Economy” for the middle class, but the mood of the country, and if consumer confidence is any indication, is leaning toward good, and that is perhaps the final element in this surge.
All of this is terrific news for those of us who support democracy and denounce fascism, but there is still the manner of Trump’s mere existence in this race. It speaks volumes about the damage we have endured these past nine years and is quite frankly a national embarrassment. After January 6 alone, Trump should have been tried and convicted of treason, and yet he has a 50-50 shot for presidency (again).
Beyond the dream of electing the nation’s first woman, Kamala Harris remains the final bulwark to turning this nation over to a crazy man who will be older than Joe Biden is today before the end of what could only be a disgusting parade of demented maleficence. The numbers are finally starting to reflect America rejecting hate, violence, and childish stupidity… and that is good.
Early voting starts today. Keep it up until November 5.
