One Republican operative who has worked with the ex-president’s campaign in the past said it’s clear that Trump is “decompensating” in response to the late Harris surge.
“He’s realizing that he could lose the election, go to prison, and maybe die there,” they said.
From his lips…
If she wins today it’s likely to be because of women. Women who are pissed about Trump and enthusiastic about Kamala Harris. It was always a mistake to underestimate that.
This campaign has not been much about the “first woman president” because, I guess, we all decided after Hillary that it wasn’t a good idea to celebrate that lest we upset some people.
But if Kamala wins, it’s a Big Fucking Deal and I am here for it:
Maybe by the end of this day I will want to delete this post and crawl into my bed. (It’s happened before…) But for now, I’m going to enjoy the prospect. After last time I didn’t think the Democrats would have the cojones to nominate another woman in my lifetime. But by an accident of history we got one and she turns out to be an excellent politician who has run a truly impressive campaign under difficult circumstances. I am here for it.
Nate Cohn at the NYTimes wrote a piece making the case for blow outs on either side as well as a repeat of 2020 or 2022 (which is really interesting.) I have excerpted just the Harris blow out scenario (but here is a gift link to read the other possible scenarios.) I have no idea if this will happen (I hope so) — I’ll be happy if the Democrats manage to win in a photo finish.
If Kamala Harris wins big, we should have seen it coming all along.
Democrats have won election after election since Mr. Trump’s upset victory in 2016. They beat him in 2020, and it’s arguably gone even better for them since Jan. 6. They’ve excelled in special elections and overperformed in the midterms (given the tendency for a midterm backlash against the party holding the presidency). They even fared well in this year’s Washington State’s top-two primary — a sort of election year groundhog day for political junkies.
Yes, the electorate is wary of the status quo, but the usual rules haven’t applied since Jan. 6 and the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. If people go into the voting booth thinking of abortion, Jan. 6 and threats to democracy — as they have over the last few years — Ms. Harris could win decisively. In the final Times/Siena national poll, she had a 13-percentage-point lead on abortion and a seven-point lead on democracy.
Could Mr. Trump be repudiated with a decisive loss? It’s hardly out of the question. For one, there’s a chance that pollsters have overcompensated for failing to reach his supporters in recent elections.
For another, Mr. Trump’s strength rests on shaky ground. He needs to get disaffected, young, Black and Hispanic voters to turn out and vote for a very different candidate than they would have in the past. If these disaffected voters return to Ms. Harris or simply don’t show up, the race could look different very quickly.
And finally, the race turned toward democracy down the stretch. This is partly because the election itself naturally raises questions about whether Mr. Trump and his allies will accept the results. Mr. Trump has drawn attention to the issue with remarks about using the military against an “enemy within.” His former chief of staff John Kelly also recently said Mr. Trump fit the definition of a fascist.
It wouldn’t take much for the election to feel like a blowout for Ms. Harris. If she outperformed her poll numbers by a mere two points, she would win well over 300 votes in the Electoral College. Given where Democrats were a few months ago, even a modest victory would feel like a landslide.
There’s no reason she couldn’t outperform by even more. After all, the polls show her doing quite well among white and older voters — which, for Democrats, would usually count as the big challenge. On Saturday night, the final Selzer/Des Moines Register poll offered perhaps the most striking illustration yet of that potential strength: Ms. Harris led by three points in solidly red state Iowa. It may not pan out, but she can fall well short of “blue Iowa” and it would still count as a decisive rebuke of MAGA.
If you added the usual Democratic margins among young, Black and Hispanic voters to strength among older white voters, suddenly there are the makings of a rout. The final Times/Siena battleground polls showed her making late gains among exactly these groups.
2020 and 2022 repeats would be a squeaker in the first case and a really weird realignment in the second which would be entirely unpredictable. I don’t know what to make of that. The final possibility of a Trump blowoiut isn’t worth thinking about. If that happens we will have gone past the point of no return.
“When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand.
So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost… All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.
We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” ― H.L. Mencken
I hate to say it, but he’s right.
What in the world are we dealing with here? Trump is winning the popular vote largely because he cut severely into Big Blue state margins. We’re not polarized anymore, folks.
They won.
If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,
‘Twould not be you, Niagara—nor you, ye limitless prairies—nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite—nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon’s white cones—nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes—nor Mississippi’s stream:
—This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name—the still small voice vibrating—America’s choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen—the act itself the main, the quadriennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous’d—sea-board and inland—Texas to Maine—the Prairie States—Vermont, Virginia, California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West—the paradox and conflict,
The countless snow-flakes falling—(a swordless conflict,
Yet more than all Rome’s wars of old, or modern Napoleon’s:) the peaceful choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity—welcoming the darker odds, the dross:
—Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify—while the heart pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell’d Washington’s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails.
If you are doing god’s work getting out the vote today like my morning man Tom Sullivan is, thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you’re standing in line right now to vote for Harris Walz, your country is grateful. But if you are like many of us, you’ve already voted are living in places where it isn’t close and you’re just on the edge of your seat waiting to see if America is going to come through one more time.
I know what I’ll be doing today — doomscrolling. It’s my jam on a good day. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Mark Liebovich had some advice:
My friend Amanda Ripley wrote in The Washington Post last week about a study in which women waiting to learn the results of breast biopsies were found to have similar levels of stress hormones in their saliva as women who had already learned that they had cancer. “In experiments, people who believe they have a 50–50 chance of getting a painful electric shock become significantly more agitated than people who think they have a 100 percent chance,” Ripley wrote. “Anticipating possible pain feels worse than anticipating certain pain.”
In other words, don’t wallow in the potential for, or inevitability of, a worst-case scenario. Instead, seek out distractions. Maybe edibles too.
Shop for enlightenment beforehand, which you can apply during the white-knuckle hours. To that end, I spent a few days last week reaching out to some of my favorite campaign gurus. I wasn’t seeking intel about the election itself. Rather, my goal was to assemble a last-minute tool kit of coping mechanisms and best mental-health practices.
As much as possible, we should try to make ourselves sensible consumers of the treacherous and triggering torrent of information we will soon be drowning in. Note the metaphor here, as it segues into the important piece of guidance: Be careful where you swim. Avoid needless waves and currents. This includes the majority of information you get on TV before a critical mass of returns are processed, not to mention most of the inane opinions and guesswork and “partial data” you’re getting from the various walls of broadcast noise (disguised as maps) before 9 or 10 o’clock.
“It’s extremely important to consume news on your own terms,” CNN’s Paul Begala, the longtime Democratic consultant, told me. As Election Day approaches, Begala tries to turn off every news notification on his phone that could increase his level of tension. “You cannot let anyone weaponize your amygdala against you,” Begala said, referring to the brain area that helps regulate emotions such as fear. Text bulletins, algorithms, and (God knows) social media are engineered to prey on our amygdala. But resist. You do not need this information right now, let alone predictions or useless speculation. It’s just empty-calorie pregaming. Trust me, you will learn who won and who lost. The news will find you.
Yes it will. I’ll be here all day, posting random thoughts, probably not very coherently. Good luck America.
Sarah Palin has company:
Democrats need to keep putting points on the board all the way to the close of polls on Election Day. Really. Wherever you are. I’m back from a pre-dawn lit drop at 90 doors. Made it back after lit-dropping and reporting on voter traffic at multiple precincts to add this.
Voter traffic in my town this morning is slow after record-breaking early voting in North Carolina, I won’t lie. For voters of every stripe. Don’t misread that.
But early voting was so intense here in 2008 that by Election Day there was virtually no one left to vote at my precinct who intended to. Between 3 p.m. and polls closing at 7:30 p.m., six voters showed up. It was like walking into an episode of The Twilight Zone. A news helicopter came and hovered over US 25 with a camera aimed out the door at our polling place, looking for voters in line. But it was just me and tumbleweeds outside in the street. In the end, Barack Obama won North Carolina by 14,000 votes, 3,000 less than the margin delivered out of our county. That was close. Not Florida 2000 close. Not Roy Cooper 2016 close. But too close.
We can do more. We will do more in 2024.
Not far off from MAD Magazine’s “Scenes we’d like to see.”
Don’t just sit there reading this. Get out and do something. Even if this is the best the Party of Trump has got.
This guy has a nice explanation of “herding.”
Kat Abughazaleh provides a primer on what BS allegations will come out of MAGAstan tonight.
Looking at the fundamentals, we shouldn’t even be in this race. This is a brutal political environment. Three-quarters of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. Two-thirds are unhappy about the economy. The incumbent President ran for reelection despite huge misgivings about his age and then had a debate so disastrous that he had to drop out only a few months before the election.
Nate Cohn summed up the challenges in the New York Times:
For the first time in decades, Republicans have pulled even or ahead in nationwide party identification. Polls also find Republicans with an edge on most key issues — with democracy and abortion standing as significant exceptions.
The Democrats’ challenge appears to be part of a broader trend of political struggles for ruling parties across the developed world. Voters appear eager for change when they get the chance. The ruling parties in Britain, Germany, Italy, Australia and most recently Japan all faced electoral setbacks or lost power. Mr. Trump himself lost four years ago. France and Canada might well join the list.
Trump should be running away with it. If Joe Biden was still on the ballot, Trump would likely be headed for an electoral landslide. The race is this close because of Kamala Harris.
I will just say right here that I think that’s overstated. There are plenty of people who would have voted for a fetid pile of garbage over Donald Trump and I think this race would be close even if Biden had stayed in the race. This was always about fascism and anti-fascism. And yes, Biden might well have lost but I don’t think it ever would have been a landslide, not with Trump on the ballot.
However, I just think Harris has made it much less close because of her special sauce of joy and forward thinking and especially her message to the women of America that Biden just couldn’t credibly make.
Pfeiffer gives her her due here:
A Candidate Who Delivered in Big Moments
Kamala Harris woke up one morning and ate breakfast as Vice President, and by lunchtime, she was the de facto Democratic nominee. She was thrust into the presidential race. Even though she knew there was a chance Biden would step aside, she could do nothing to prepare for that possibility. She couldn’t have a strategy meeting. Her team couldn’t write a memo or make a list of people to call. She couldn’t seek advice from people in her life. If she had and it leaked before Biden made his decision, her campaign might have ended before it began.
Normally, the nominee spends time campaigning in the early states, doing countless town halls, debates, and interviews. They hone their message, develop their policy platform, and answer tough questions about their record beforehand. The primaries are a chance for them to introduce themselves to the electorate.
Because of Harris’s failed 2020 campaign and some early stumbles as Vice President, questions arose about her political skills.
With the utmost pressure and scrutiny, Harris stepped into the breach and delivered. While she hasn’t been perfect, Kamala Harris has been pretty damn close. At every big moment — the debate, the convention, and her Fox interview, she delivered. She made the impossible look easy.
Kamala Harris pulled off a difficult maneuver and it hasn’t been discussed enough. She made politics fun and exciting again. She brought people who had checked out since 2020 back into the process. Democratic enthusiasm in this election is as high as it was in 2008 when Barack Obama was first running.
Under the leadership of Jen O’Malley Dillon, the Harris campaign did the unimaginable. One day they were working to elect Joe Biden, the next day they had a new candidate with a new message and new strategy. They had to pivot on a dime while incorporating new staff and advisers to the Vice President. In a month, the campaign vetted and rolled out a VP, reorganized the Biden campaign, planned a convention, developed a policy platform, and prepared Harris for a high-stakes debate. And, oh yeah, they raised a billion dollars.
I spent the weekend knocking doors for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in Nevada and Arizona. I haven’t seen Democrats this fired up in a very long time.
That’s because of Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and their campaign team
I watched long sections of Trump’s rallies and Harris’s rallies that have been televised so far today. There is simply no comparison. Harris’s rallies are far, far more energetic, not to mention, far bigger. He is tired, he is sour, he is down. She is upbeat, smiling and the crowds are loving it. Crowds don’t mean everything but I think in this case they do mean something. The momentum is clearly with Harris.
It was always going to be a close eleciton because of the polarization and the unique grotesqueness of Donald Trump. But watching this unfold over the last couple of week especially, I think Harris’s energy and positivity has breathed new life into the anti-Trump constituency and I think it’s going to give her a decisive win.
As I’ve said before, I think she’ll win 51-47. And I’m guessing that she’s going to take the Blue wall and at least two of the other battlegrounds. I don’t believe this is going to be the squeaker everyone expects.
If I’m wrong, I won’t be too surprised. It wouldn’t be the first time. But as a close observer of American politics for some years now, this is what I’m seeing as we go into the big day tomorrow. Fingers crossed that I’m not just smoking the hopium.
Stuart Stevens tweeted this about the Trump campaign. It’s so, so true:
Watching the Harris campaign vs. Trump, it’s striking how much of a higher level the Harris campaign is operating. It’s NFL vs. Division 2 college, at best.
Why? Part of it, of course, comes from Trump, who has made a mess of every organization he has ever controlled. But there’s another factor: Democrats have developed a much deeper bench of skilled political operatives.
In 1999, the Bush campaign assembled the best Republican political talent in Austin. In the 2000 campaign, the Bush campaign performed at a significantly higher level than the Gore campaign, which was sort of a mess, moving HQ from DC to Nashville, etc. Cut to 2016.
Most top level operatives did not want anything to do with the Trump campaign. It assembled a collection of second and third-stringers, weirdos, all the sort of people who had been trying to work at the presidential level, but nobody would let them in. Yes, Trump won, but it’s hard to say that his campaign performed at a higher level. Run that race 100 times, Clinton won 90, and it wasn’t like the Clinton campaign put together an awe-inspiring operation.
To recap, Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, campaign chairman, deputy campaign manager, national security advisor, foreign policy advisor, long-time political consultant, and personal attorney all went to prison.
That’s to be expected since the Trump campaign is organized like a large criminal enterprise. That has continued to this day. Yes, Chris LaCivita and Suzy Wiles are competent professionals, but look around, and there is still the same collection of second-stringers and freaks involved in the campaign.
Does that matter? Of course. What happened at MSG on Sunday highlighted what a shambolic, incompetent operation Trump has assembled. This should not be a surprise. Since 2016, Trump has run the Republican party. His management style is to hire people who could never have a like role based on merit so that they are loyal to him. (Witness the embarrassing spectacle of Alina Habba dancing out to the podium at Trump rallies.)
It’s how you run a mob, not a meritocracy. How long will it be until Republicans can catch up, assuming they can? I have no idea and honestly, I could care less.
That tracks with how he ran the government too.