Blue Wave, Anyone? Have Americans Finally Snapped Out Of It?

Will Kamala And Tim Have Strong Enough Coattails?

"Kamala" by Nancy Ohanian

The 2020 lesser of two evils election wasn’t that close. Biden— an extraordinarily bad nominee— beat the greater evil by a lot… 81,283,501 (51.3%) to 74,223,975 (46.8%). Or, to be more accurate, Trump lost by a lot. Perhaps if the Democrats had fielded a better candidate, Trump and his party would have been crushed. It wasn’t a bad year for congressional Republicans. Biden had no coattails at all. In fact, House Democrats— while managing to hold onto a narrow majority— registered a net loss of 13 seats, setting up a loss of the majority 2-years hence. Despite Biden’s win, Republicans flipped 4 seats in California, 2 in New York, 2 in Florida, 2 in Iowa and 1 each in New Jersey, Michigan, Utah, South Carolina, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. The Democrats experienced a 3.1% swing away from the party while the GOP experienced a positive 2.4% swing.

The Democrats were saved by Trump in the Senate, where they gained both Georgia seats because of Trump chaos. [And he’s doing it again.] There was a similar result in Arizona, where MAGA undercut Martha McSally allowing a narrow victory by Mark Kelly. The only two “normal” races were in Alabama, where psychotic MAGAt Tommy Tuberville beat Democrat Doug Jones and in Colorado where John Hickenlooper ousted confused Republican Cory Gardner. The Democrats were lucky. 39.8 million voters (49.3%) opted for GOP Senate candidates and just 38.0 million (47.0%) cast ballots for Democrats.

Trump was a disaster for the Republicans in 2020. The only thing that was going to make him a plausible candidate for 2024 was Biden’s age (and mediocrity— but mostly his age, or at least how he appeared to be buffeted by age). With Biden out of the picture and. Garden variety Democrat replacing him… well Trump’s polling lead over Biden disappeared almost immediately. He’s now running a deficit in national and most battleground state averages.

The GOP and its media machine has put everything it’s got into tearing down Kamala and Walz and they may be able to narrow the gap, maybe even erase it… but I don’t think so. There’s not enough time and swing voters are sick of Trump and realize he’s not a reliable source. The fever seems to have broken. The Financial Times headline yesterday was long overdue but there it was: Kamala Harris is more trusted than Donald Trump on the US economy “The survey, conducted for the Financial Times and the University of Michigan Ross School of Business,” wrote Lauren Fedor and Eva Xiao, “is the first monthly poll to show the Democratic presidential candidate leading Trump on the economy since it began tracking voter sentiment on the issue nearly a year ago. Although 41 per cent of Americans still trust the former president more on economic issues— unchanged from the two previous monthly polls— the survey found 42 per cent of voters believe Harris would be better at handling the economy. That is a 7 percentage point increase compared to Biden’s numbers last month. ‘The fact that voters were more positive on Harris than on Biden . . . says as much about how badly Biden was doing as it does about how well Harris is doing,’ said Erik Gordon, a professor at the university.” BINGO!

Even Biden acknowledged reverse coattails went into the calculus that led to his decision to not run for reelection. Yesterday, Dan Pfeiffer wrote on his blog that “One argument against Biden stepping aside was the concern that replacing him could lead to a dangerously divisive process. Some even likened it to the chaotic 1968 Democratic Convention. However, this comparison overlooked the true sources of division within the party. The more likely scenario was the party rallying together to defeat Trump, much like it did in 2020 when Biden unexpectedly secured the nomination. However, it wasn’t just party elites and elected officials who coalesced around Harris. The voters did, too. The simplest explanation for Trump’s polling lead over the last year is that Trump had consolidated his 2020 voters and Biden hadn’t. In the New York Times/Sienna polling, Trump typically got the support of 95% of people who said they voted for him in 2020, and Biden was only getting around 87%. This gap came from Biden’s low approval ratings, concerns about his age, and the fact that even before the debate, 40-50% of Democratic voters said they preferred a different nominee. Well, Kamala Harris solved that problem.”

Now Democrats up and down the ballot— including many who were distancing themselves from Biden— are embracing Kamala. She’s not really much different from Biden substantively but substance isn’t what elections are won and lost on. Shit candidates like Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Rudy Salas (D-CA), Adam Gray (D-CA), Derek Tran (D-CA), Janelle Bynum (D-OR), John Manion (D-NY), Laura Gillen, (D-NY), John Avlon (D-NY), Missy Smasal (D-VA), Curtis Hertel (D-MI), Kristen Rivet (D-MI), Lanon Baccam (D-IA), Peter Barca (D-WI), Janelle Stelson (D-PA), Shomani Figures (D-Crypto) and  Monica Tranel (D-MT) see a new lease on life by wrapping themselves in the Kamala-Walz aura. Same goes for some of the especially bad endangered incumbents like Don Davis (D-NC), Yadira Caraveo (D-CO), Susie Lee (D-NV), Angie Craig(D-MN) and Greg Landsman (D-OH). I’m not sure what kind of posture the worst of the vulnerable incumbents— Jared Golden (Blue Dog-ME), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Blue Dog-WA) and Mary Peltola (Blue Dog-AK)— are twisting themselves into. If the Democrats fail to take back the House, it won’t be because of Biden or Kamala; it will be because the DCCC has come up with the worst menagerie of candidates in living memory.

Reid Epstein and Nicholas Nehamas reported that the vibe of the campaign is that Kamala and Tim have momentum and are winning (if everyone will just keep sending money) and that trump and the other weirdo are figures of derision. “Biden for years cast Trump as something of a cancer on the country who had worked to undermine elections, roll back fundamental rights and pit Americans against one another. Harris and especially Walz have a new approach: mocking him.”

Epstein and Nehamas also noted that Kamala and Walz are avoiding tough questions— preferring to campaign on vibes than on divisive policy, especially on policy that could alienate big donors (or voters). That can’t last forever. “The last Democratic presidential campaign that produced party-wide, unencumbered enthusiasm was Barack Obama’s in 2008. His 2012 re-election was a slog, followed by Hillary Clinton’s often perfunctory 2016 bid and Biden’s consensus-minded and Covid-interrupted 2020 run. The 2024 Biden experience was on track to be another eat-your-vegetables campaign for Democratic voters. But once he dropped out and Harris took charge, 16 years of waiting for new inspiration came rushing out, seemingly all at once. Gone were Biden’s low-energy, small-room stops where he mumbled off script. Last week, the Harris-Walz rollout included a drum line in Philadelphia, a hipster folk band in Wisconsin and the largest Democratic campaign rally since the Obama days in Detroit. Singing and dancing was widespread in the hours before Harris and Walz took the stage. In Philadelphia, online influencers had their own entrance to the arena. Musicians, actors and athletes offered to help. Nobody used to spend any time wondering if a shadowy silhouette in a Taylor Swift post on Instagram was a low-key Biden endorsement— but the internet lit up last week when one looked like Harris.” Joy, joy, joy… and not necessarily a prediction:

Yesterday Jeff Greenfield presented an optimistic vision that Trump’s crucial super-power has been neutralized. Kamala, not him, is now seen as the candidate of change. “[T]he sudden elevation of Kamala Harris, along with the identity and character of her opponent, has— for now at least— made her the candidate who embodies change, no matter how little her policies differ from the current president. That this happened by accident rather than design does not make it any less potent as a political asset. And worst of all for Donald Trump, it deprives him of one his greatest powers. Trump rode to the presidency in 2016 on a promise to smash the status quo. Now he faces credible charges that he represents the past— and there’s a telegenic, younger contender eager to make that case… Trump represented nothing but change. He lacked every quality usually associated with the presidency: Ignorant of history, a life solely devoted to personal aggrandizement, famous as a figure on the gossip pages and as a reality TV star. But in a time when large numbers of citizens felt aggrieved by the failures of government to protect their lives and fortunes, the very aspects of Trump that seemed like bugs were more like features. No experience in government? Look what the experts did! A rhetoric of insult and vulgarity? About time someone spoke in plain English! Clearly, whatever else Trump was, a vote for him would be a vote for a president as different as imaginable. There’s something appealing and empowering about that.”

It’s that realization that accounts for Trump’s presidency in the first place— a bizarre version of the slogan “Yes we can!” made famous by another noted “change” candidate. In 2016, Trump voters said yes we can put a candidate with no experience and no traditional qualifications into the Oval Office; yes we can ignore the warnings of the mainstream press; yes we can vote for change more radical than any in our history.

In 2024, however, Trump’s claim of change is much harder to come by. For one thing, voters are being asked for a restoration; Trump’s already been in the White House before. For another, Trump seems incapable of putting aside his 2020 defeat; he persists in relitigating his false election theft claims, even to the point of assailing the hugely popular Republican governor of Georgia. Whatever else that is, it is not change.

Now look at what happened on the other side. For a year or more, Democrats have been facing the dim prospect of keeping a historically old, historically unpopular incumbent in the White House. Resignation and hopelessness were Joe Biden’s real running mates. Then with that debate performance, it became clear to the most significant forces in the party that Biden simply could not win in November. Amid a rising pressure campaign and worsening polls, the president yielded and stepped down from his reelection bid.

It was as if the Democratic Party had rediscovered a power that it had never used, maybe never even been aware of; far from being a “coup,” it was the execution of the essential task of a political party: The use of formal and informal power to protect itself from political disaster.

Within a matter of two weeks, voters now faced a reality that had previously seemed impossible: “You don’t want to vote for Biden or Trump? Now you don’t have to! You want change? Here she is!” The flood of money, volunteers and crowds toward Harris testifies to the power of that sentiment.

Harris and her fledgling campaign also seem well aware of the changed dynamic of the race as well as how powerful it can be to signal forward progress: “We’re not going back” has quickly become a mantra for Harris on the trail, with the audience chanting it in response. It’s a way to talk not just about the attack on abortion rights but so much else about the Trump era and the failures of the past.