Trump Wants To Scare His Supporters So They Vote & Donate— & So Do The Democrats… As Does The Media

No One Wants You To Think The Election Is In The Bag

Nate Silver— reputably a talented sports statistician— is one of the most widely quoted political prognosticators in the land. He no long is affiliated with 538 but works for Polymarket, a betting service whose profits increase around the electoral excitement and drama he regularly gins up. This morning ABC News started the day with a warning about the Senate races tightening up— a battle to the death in Montana and Ohio with “coin flips” in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and sudden focus on potential seat flips in Texas and Florida (and barely a mention of the potentially most important Senate battleground this cycle: Nebraska).

As for the “coin flips”…

• Arizona- the last 5 polls show Ruben Gallego (D) ahead by 13, 10, 6, 7 and 7

• Michigan- the last 5 polls show Elissa Slotkin (D) ahead by 5, 4, 6, 5 and 6

• Nevada- the last 5 polls show Jacky Rosen (D) ahead by 16, 7, 8, 2 and 14

• Pennsylvania- the last 5 polls show Bob Casey (D) ahead by 3, 6, 1, 3 and 10

• Wisconsin- the last 5 polls show Tammy Baldwin (D) ahead by 5, 5, 2, 8 and 7

They don’t look like coin flips to me except, maybe Pennsylvania but all these states’ polling have something in common: the Republican candidates never being ahead. And this despite some ominous news from the Wall Street Journal this morning that slightly more people identify as Republicans than as Democrats according to polling from NBC, Gallup and Pew. Reporter Aaron Zitner only deals with those numbers in terms of the presidential race, explaining that Kamala is ahead of Trump because she’s doing so well with independents and with Republicans who detest Trump. But he doesn’t explain, for the most part, why Democrats are ahead in the generic battle for Congress nor in almost all of the battleground Senate races, although he did allude to the fact that voters oppose Republican candidates viewed as MAGA and overtly aligned with Trump. Jeffrey Jones, senior editor of Gallup polling, said of the GOP party identification advantage makes something else even worse— that “Republicans are trusted more to handle the economy and immigration, which voters see as the nation’s most challenging problems.”

A day earlier, The Journal noted that Kamala is struggling to connect with working class voters, a problem in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and especially Michigan. Ken Thomas and Catherine Lucey noted that while Señor T “assiduously courted union members and noncollege-educated white voters with a message focused on high costs, manufacturing and the threat of China to the U.S. economy, senior Democrats, including Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, want a sharper economic appeal from Harris and have conveyed those concerns to her campaign, according to people familiar with the conversations. They also would like the vice president to spend more time campaigning in the state. Michigan Democrats have urged the campaign to make more overt appeals to auto workers and blue-collar workers by emphasizing the administration’s work to grow the industry and build new plants. Others want Harris to make a more populist pitch, a message that was central to appearances around the state last weekend by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain.”

Bernie was emphasizing “higher minimum wages, an expansion of Social Security and higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations,” not Kamala’s biggest priorities. She seems to be too focused on the priorities of the Wall Street and Silicon Valley elites who are funding her campaign— and working class voters are noticing. She never talks about billionaire greed and it would be hard to imagine her sayinbgf things that endear Bernie to working class voters— like “We have got to understand that the billionaire class today not only has enormous political power, and that includes both political parties. So one of the things that we have got to do is create a political movement in this country, led by the trade unions, which tells the billionaire class that we are tired of their greed.” That could have something to do with Kamala’s failure to match Biden’s 2020 support from organized labor. The Teamsters nor the Fire Fighters endorsed Biden but both are staying neutral this cycle.

Maybe the campaign thinks disaffected Republicans will make up for the working class. It’s a bad bet for the Democratic Party, even if she manages to win by a point or two in November. These Republicans endorsing Kamala are all conservatives— with views antithetical to Democratic Party values— who just happen to hate Trump (and MAGA). Liz Cheney’s reelection loss— following her expulsion from the Wyoming GOP, was the biggest defeat for a Republican incumbent in a primary ever.

The only Republican to do almost as bad— Bob Inglis (R-SC), who lost his reelection bit in a primary challenge from Trey Gowdy 70.7% to 29.3%— is another NeverTrump Republican who has endorsed Kamala. Inglis isn't going to deliver South Carolina to Kamala any more than Cheney is going to deliver Wyoming.

On Tuesday, Bill Press wrote that “Cheney made it clear she was not abandoning the Republican Party. She was casting her vote for Harris as a long-time Republican conservative, she told the crowd, adding: ‘I was a Republican even before Donald Trump started spray-tanning.’ But as a conservative, and as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, Cheney explained, she could not vote for a candidate who posed such a danger to our democracy. Therefore, she declared, ‘I am proudly casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.’ What’s most striking about the [former Congressman Adam] Kinzinger and Cheney denunciations of Donald Trump and endorsements of Kamala Harris is that they’re hardly alone among Republicans. Indeed, some of the most damning criticism of Trump has come not from Democrats but from members of his own party. And not just any Republicans, but party leaders and many who worked in Trump’s administration. Party leaders who say they will not vote for Trump include Cheney’s father, former Vice President [and almost universally despised villain] Dick Cheney: ‘In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our Republic than Donald Trump.’ Former Vice President Mike Pence: ‘I believe anyone who asks someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be president of the United States again.’ And former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ): ‘I think Republicans believe in the rule of law in particular, and it’s difficult to support a candidate who, having lost an election, tries to use the powers of the presidency to overturn that election.’”

Yeah, and others who worked in the Trump administration. But do these people— even as an aggregated— command the votes to make a difference? At least when Stalin asked “How many divisions does the Pope have?” at the Tehran Conference in 1943, Pope Pius XII could later tell Winston Churchill, “Tell my son Joseph he will meet my divisions in heaven.” Unless the Democrats are planning for a political realignment that pits a fascist MAGA party against a corporate-conservative Democratic Party [with progressives wondering where they fit in], there’s nothing Dick and Liz Cheney Republicans have to offer the Democrats.