The Other McCain

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Democrats ‘Increasingly Worried About a Number of Issues Plaguing’ Kamala

Posted on | October 10, 2024 | Comments Off on Democrats ‘Increasingly Worried About a Number of Issues Plaguing’ Kamala

Remember what I told you in mid-September? “Kamala Is Underperforming” was the headline, at a time when the newly-minted Democratic presidential nominee was still riding her post-convention “bounce.” A careful comparison of Harris’s poll numbers to Joe Biden’s numbers in 2020 and Hillary Clinton’s numbers in 2016 showed that she was weaker against Trump than either Joe or Hillary.

Ace of Spades highlights the troubling trends that have Democrats hitting the panic button, with the quote in my headline from a story in The Hill which quotes one Democratic strategist thus:

Democratic strategist Anthony Coley, who served in the Biden administration, acknowledged the trepidation, pointing to the stagnant poll numbers in the weeks following the Democratic National Convention, when Democrats were making comparisons between Harris’s campaign and former President Obama’s run in 2008.
“Now that the sugar high is gone, people have realized what Kamala Harris has said from the start, which is that she is the underdog,” Coley said. “This is going to be a fight. … These numbers are just so stubborn.”

What he means by those “stubborn” numbers is that Kamala got to a certain level in the polls, and can’t get past it. She’s reached her ceiling, and it’s not high enough to give Democrats confidence that she can win. Trump’s numbers are solid — his voters aren’t going anywhere, and the number of “undecided” voters is very small. And then you start looking at polls for the battleground states and . . . Uh, oh. Internal polling by Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s campaign shows Harris losing by three points to Trump there, and Democrats are also starting to worry about Michigan. If both of those Midwest “blue wall” states are shaky for Harris, we could be looking at 300+ Electoral College votes for Trump. And the signs of trouble multiply from there.

It’s a simple arithmetic problem: How does she get to 270 Electoral College voters if, for example, Trump wins Pennsylvania. Do the math and you realize that, if Trump wins Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina, that’s the whole ballgame — Wisconsin and Michigan become irrelevant. As matters stand now, Georgia looks pretty solid for Trump, Harris has no better than a 50-50 chance in Pennsylvania, and whatever’s going on in North Carolina, it’s a state that Trump won twice, so that flipping it to Harris would appear to be a rather desperate hope.

What, therefore, are we to make of this headline from NBC News? “Harris and Democratic allies descend on Arizona in all-hands push before early voting.” The obvious inference is that Team Harris is worried enough about some other state (or combination of states) that they find it necessary to expend resources trying to get 11 Electoral College votes from Arizona, a state where practically every poll shows Trump leading. If you are a Democrat worried about Kamala’s chances, this ought to be a flashing red light, the trigger that turns your headache into a full-blown migraine. Look, if CNN’s aggregation of public polls has Harris +1 in Pennsylvania, that almost certainly means Trump is winning Pennsylvania, and perhaps by as much as 4 or 5 points.

Do I trust those polls? Not really, but there is a general consensus that, as a candidate, Kamala is not all that and a stack of pancakes. A former Democratic Party fundraiser puts his finger on the fundamental problem — the Democrats are ignoring the demos:

Consider the long-time friendship between Kamala Harris and billionaire donor Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs. The New York Times described the women as being so close that they’ve gone on vacation together and consider each other family. Powell Jobs sat in Harris’ exclusive friends and family suite at the DNC last month. She was also instrumental in getting Biden to step down to clear the way for Harris; one of her top aides circulated a polling memo to other key influential donors that allegedly showed Biden’s inability to win.
It was another example of a megadonor overcoming the will of the people — and making things worse for voters. Now that the Kool-Aid from the DNC is wearing off, people are waking up to the realities of an untested candidate. Harris is barely beating Biden in key swing state polls, dodges questions from the press, and continually gaffes answers on significant policy issues. She can barely answer basic questions about her plans for regular people in friendly encounters with people like Oprah.
This is what happens when a candidate is anointed by donors and not selected by voters.

Exactly. Harris was never as popular as Biden. She flopped in the 2020 primaries, exiting the race in 2019 before a single vote was cast. If Biden had announced in 2019 that he would not seek a second term, that would have allowed Democrats to choose their candidate in an open primary, and how likely is it that Harris would have won such a primary against, e.g., Gavin Newsome, Josh Shapiro, Wes Moore, et al.? What happened instead was that Biden decided to run again, despite his increasingly obvious cognitive impairment and then, after his debate meltdown in June, was forced off the ticket, with Harris anointed as the nominee.

Kamala didn’t win the nomination, it was handed to her, gift-wrapped on a silver platter, and many voters who might not be eager to see another Trump presidency are neverthless reluctant to vote for this ill-qualified woman who reminds us that “DEI” stands for Didn’t Earn It. With 26 days until November 5, the Democrats have nobody but themselves to blame for this unforced error. The party’s billionaire donors got what they paid for, but voters won’t endorse this corrupt bargain.



 

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Category: Donald Trump, Election, Kamala Harris, Polls

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