Plus... A Killer New Stevie Nicks Song
The people who see a blue wave forming, mostly keep it to themselves. It’s embarrassing when you predict something like that and get it wrong. The professional prognosticators— and the “reporters” who parrot what they say— are all absolutely all-in on a close, close election, although I expect some will start changing their predictions in about 3 weeks. Dan Froomkin called it yesterday and, at least in my opinion, he hit the nail on the head, laughing at the media for getting it all wrong. “What if Kamala Harris,” he proposed, “after a spectacular entry into the race, a stunningly unified convention, and a devastating debate, is basically running away with it, leaving Trump in the dust, while the national media— still mortified by its failure in 2016 to see the extent of Trump’s support— stubbornly sticks to the safer narrative that it’s a horserace going down to the wire?”
The pollsters are all full of shit, terrified of underestimating Trump support again, maybe overestimating it this time, like they did in 2022. “Trump, by any normal standard,” he wrote, “has lost it, mentally and emotionally. His speech— at rallies, and most noticeably at the debate— consists of rambling, apocalyptic, nonsensical, hate-filled rhetoric and lies. He’s saying crazier and crazier things in order to get attention— which the media is giving him— but it’s hard to see that any of it is winning over more voters. Harris has effectively undermined the image of Trump as some sort of inevitable strongman, and instead has cast him as a failed rich-kid with no plan beyond turning Americans against each other. Trump is left mostly with his base, which by most calculations is not nearly a majority of the voters.”
Trump’s only other ace in the hole is the national media, which sanewashes his and JD Vance’s diatribes, normalizes his extremist platform, buries concerns about his diminished mental capacity, dings Harris at seemingly every opportunity, covers up the Biden/Harris administration’s extraordinary economic record— and benefits financially from high readership as long as it seems like a close race.
Maybe— just maybe— historian Heather Cox Richardson is correct when she writes in her newsletter that “We appear to be in a moment when the reality-based community is challenging the ability of the MAGA Republicans to create their own reality.”
How could everyone else be so wrong? Well, it’s not like the pollsters and the pundits have a track record of getting it right. Quite the opposite.
Look most recently at 2016, when the pollsters basically called it for Hillary Clinton; and 2022, when the “red wave” that pollsters had predicted with such confidence never materialized.
Historian Rick Perlstein, writing the in American Prospect, explains that for pollsters, getting it wrong “is practically the historical norm.”
As Perlstein points out:
As for the pundits? Chris Lehmann, writing in The Nation, concludes that “At virtually every turn, this election cycle has proved pundit wisdom stupendously and gloriously wrong.”
Consider, for instance, all the occasions when journalists predicted that Trump was becoming more disciplined— and, after being shot at, more humble. They were wildly wrong.
And then recall how they were sure Harris would pick either Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro or Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly to be her running mate, because picking someone as liberal as Tim Walz would sink her campaign.
Lehmann writes:
So if the chattering class believes one thing, you just might be better off assuming the opposite.
Froomkin also quoted SFGate columnist Drew Magary, who noted that “You don’t have to work terribly hard to sum up this race as it stands: Harris is destroying Trump, because Trump is a deranged old shitbag. See how easy that was? But that’s too easy if you’re The Times, an institution that has never met a story it couldn’t water down. Rather than give it to you straight, the paper of record has opted, as ever, to give you its patented strain of prestige clickbait.”
Trump remains highly toxic outside of his base. A combination of his ongoing legal troubles, unpopularity with independent voters and the general exhaustion from his presence in politics is pushing the election more decisively toward Kamala. The overturning of Roe v. Wade, Republican extremism in general and the party's embrace of conspiracy theories and anti-democratic rhetoric is mobilizing a large anti-Trump vote.
Meanwhile, even if she’s milquetoast on issues, Kamala is galvanizing a strong coalition of women and minority voters, particularly in key battleground states. If these groups turn out in large numbers— and it looks like they will— the balance in her favor will continue to expand, especially as Trump and Vance keep up the crazy rhetoric, around issues like immigration and race. Their ongoing embrace of conspiracy theories and authoritarian figures is driving centrist voters away from them, especially those concerned with preserving democracy. And, of course, the abortion fallout continues to energize voters, especially women and young people, who are overwhelmingly pro-choice.
The new battleground polling from Morning Consult shows a tie in Georgia and Kamala winning the other 6 states.
Nevada- Kamala +7
Pennsylvania- Kamala +5
Arizona- Kamala +3
Michigan- Kamala +3
Wisconsin- Kamala +3
North Carolina- Kamala +2
Now, listen to this new pro-Choice blockbuster Stevie Nicks just released yesterday: