An explanation is warranted
Brian Beutler wisely suggest that Vice President Kamala Harris needs to remind voters why, if she’s ahead in the polls, she and Gov. Tim Walz are still underdogs.
“We’re not going back” suggests inevitability. So does “When we fight, we win.”
Beutler writes:
In this regard, as confident underdogs, the Harris campaign offers its supporters both hope and encouragement to put in work. It’s a simple strategy, and I think it’s a good one.
But I also think Harris herself might benefit from being a bit more explicit about why she and Tim Walz, despite leading steadily in national polls, consider themselves underdogs. They have a good case to make. It cuts right to the heart of critical weaknesses and corruption in our political system. And the messaging might work even better if more of her supporters understood why she’s running into the wind.
It’s the Electoral College. Political geeks know this. Greg Sargent knows this. It’s just a poor assumption that the general public busy with jobs and kids and shopping and church and soccer practice knows it. Team Harris-Walz wants supporters energized but not lulled into complacency by a popular vote polling lead. Tell them why they shoudn’t be.
The problem is: In the Trump era, that’s not good enough for Democrats. Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2.1 percent, representing nearly three million ballots, and still won the election. Joe Biden won the popular vote by 4.5 percent, representing over seven million ballots. It was good enough for him to become president, but he only won the tipping point state of Wisconsin by 0.6 percent, representing just a bit over 20,000 votes. It suggests that if Biden had won the national popular vote by just under four points—say, by five or six million votes, instead of seven—he, like Clinton, would’ve lost.
So as Han Solo once said, don’t get cocky. A 2.3 percent polling lead does not a Harris presidency make.
As of this writing, the tipping-point state is likely to be Pennsylvania. That’s the upper-midwest “blue wall” state where Harris’s lead is smallest—a mere 1.2 percent. Her lead there, though slim, mercifully suggests the Electoral College’s pro-GOP bias has shrunk since 2020—that a three point national popular vote margin will be good enough. It also suggests that a tiny change in the dynamics of the election could throw the whole thing to Trump, against the will of a popular majority.
But wait, there’s more.
Harris doesn’t just have to pad her popular vote margin to overcome Electoral College bias. She also has to overcome the margin of Republican cheating and insurrection.
Our Electoral College is indefensible, but its current bias isn’t part of some conspiracy against her. Trump supporters just happened to be better distributed geographically to win 270 electoral votes while losing head-to-head nationwide.
The corruption scandal is that Trump and the GOP want to exploit these arbitrary, antidemocratic aspects of our system to make it even harder for Democrats to win.
Put Tim Walz onto it
Okay, Nebraska’s split vote. The Blue Wall states. The 12th Amendment that could “throw the whole election to the 50 state delegations in the U.S. House of Representatives.” There are a host of Republican lawsuits in swing states aimed suppressing the votes of people Trump will lock up if handed the presidency again. It all matters. But it’s complicated.
Harris is busy selling herself to some voters and still introducing herself to others. Explaining why all that means she and Walz are still underdogs is a job for the guy with the 1979 International Harvester Scout. He can break it down and make the complicated simple.
There’s a difference between the two major parties so fundamental that former Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney suggests the Republican Party is now too far gone to save.
But it’s not so weakened that it cannot cheat its way into the Oval Office, Beutler warns. That’s what the Harris campaign must better explain. That’s why it can be leading in the polls and still be the underdog.
This is just the most basic difference between the two parties juxtaposed before us. One that’s happy to ratfuck its way to power without popular support, another that would never dare. It’s why Harris can call herself an underdog. And if more people understood her meaning, Trump’s chicanery would be more likely backfire.
And don’t forget to vote on the first day.