I write this not as a partisan. Actually I have no use for either ticket, or for that matter, any of the players that constitute said tickets. I suppose that makes me a quadruple hater in that I can’t stand either ticket or any of the players on them. But because I have retained my sense of humor, I simply laugh at the truly awful arguments the candidates make for their respective “positions”.
However I am a student of the game. And so I have studied the various (rather pathetic) machinations of the candidates as they scramble for the few remaining voters that remain to be convinced. So here is my analysis.
Each candidate has weaknesses that would ordinarily be fatal to a candidacy. But we are not talking about A-list candidates, which is partly why no one has scored a knockout punch. More importantly, neither candidate has a coherent, much less plausible theory of the race. As a result, each one continues to struggle gamely toward the finish line hoping against hope to somehow garner the 270 Electoral College votes needed for victory.
So what exactly is the Trump theory of the race? It is that Biden is bad. That, mingled with all Trump’s grievances, is what the race is all about from the Trumpian perspective. Not to mention that Biden committed the ultimate sin of beating him in 2020, turning Trump into what he fears the most: being publicly (and correctly) tagged as a loser.
And so, naturally enough, he continues to deny that he lost in 2020. He might even believe it.
So let’s turn to Harris. What exactly is the Harris theory of the race? It is that Trump is bad. Combine that with the insight (which is to say none) of a San Francisco progressive in a one party state and you have the Harris campaign.
This should not be taken as a criticism of the campaign managers. Trump for instance, has real professionals advising him. He just ignores them. I mean how hard can it be to focus on the issues the voters care about in survey after survey? Immigration, the state of the economy, crime. Last I checked, Haitian immigrants eating pets was not at the top of the list. Neither was crowd size at rallies.
Well let’s take a look at the Harris campaign. She too has pretty smart advisors. Her problem is that she listened to them, probably out of necessity. And so she is running a repeat of the Biden basement campaign. The underlying idea is that if she can keep away from a turned-on microphone or camera where she has to say something substantive, she may be able to hold on until election day, counting on Trump to deliver a generic Democratic victory.
And therein lies the rub. Harris is utterly incapable of saying anything even remotely sensible unless it is already on a teleprompter in a controlled environment. Even when she is being questioned by friendlies in one of her infrequent interviews every answer quickly turns into a meaningless word salad. And the public is beginning to notice. (Not that Trump is coherent, but he is speaking to a different audience.)
So where does that leave us? According to the conventional wisdom, 7 battleground states will determine the winner. In the west we have Arizona and Nevada; In the South are Georgia and North Carolina, and in the “Blue Wall” Midwest we have Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Election analysts and pollsters are busy trying to guess which states will wind up in which column after all the votes are counted. But maybe they are asking the wrong question. The right question to ask may not be about individual states. The right question may be: to what extent are the votes in those battleground states likely to be correlated? To the extent that the battleground states have voters whose preferences are highly correlated, the ultimate winner may win anywhere from 5 to 7 of the contested states. That would make the contest much less of a nail biter come election day.
So what would be the factor that would account for the potential correlation of the voters, especially from different sections of the country? The underlying issue is whose judgement do the voters trust, or better yet, whose judgement do they distrust the least?
Kamala Harris faces several difficulties here. First, she is the sitting Vice President. The last time a sitting Vice-President won the White House was in 1988 when George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis. Before Bush, the last sitting VP to be elected President was Martin Van Buren back in 1836. Also take note: Bush served as VP under Ronald Reagan, who was very popular. Unlike Joe Biden.
The second difficulty Harris faces is that in order to win she has to hold together a fractious coalition whose members face each other with daggers drawn. Democratic elites are becoming progressively less enamored with Israel’s conduct of its war against Iran and its acolytes. This is especially dangerous for Harris because it will make it extremely difficult for her to carry both Pennsylvania and Michigan, which are Blue Wall states, and vital to her chances. (Dearborn Michigan has the largest Muslim population in the U.S., and that population, normally Democratic, has vociferously attacked the Biden Administration over its handing of the Israeli — Gaza war.)
The third difficulty Harris faces is that the votes of the Blue Wall states may be highly correlated—and correlated with other battleground states. Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are 75% – 80% white. They are slightly older than the nation as a whole. Most importantly, whites without college degrees cast about ⅗ of the votes in Wisconsin and about half in Michigan and Pennsylvania. And whites without a college degree are a core constituency of the modern Trumpified GOP. Especially men without a college degree.
Finally, Harris has to make the argument that she represents change. And to do that she must create a sense of trust with the voters. This, she has conspicuously failed to do. In fact, it may be the fatal flaw of the Basement Campaign strategy. How do you develop a bond of trust with the voters when you are hiding from them? In the end the voters are liable to decide to go with “the devil you know”. They know Trump; they don’t know Harris. So when the late deciders begin to break, which should be about now, my guess is that they will go with Trump. And send him to the White House. Again.
Just for the record. I am not rooting for either one of them. I have already voted for Nikki Haley.
JFB
