Trudging Toward November 5th
In their recently televised debate viewed by an estimated 67 million Americans, Vice President Harris handily manipulated former President Trump, causing him to appear largely incoherent. He had little to say other than to repeat his latest conspiracy theories. It was such an embarrassing performance that the next day long-time Republican strategist Karl Rove characterized it in a Wall Street Journal article as “catastrophic” and concluded by saying :
“Mr. Trump was crushed by a woman he previously dismissed as ‘dumb as a rock’ which raises the question: What does that make him?”
Immediately following the debate Taylor Swift went on-line to proclaim that she would be voting for Harris and encouraged her 273 million Instagram followers to register and vote. This prompted over 405,000 visits to vote.gov in the succeeding 24 hours. During that same period the Harris-Walz campaign received additional campaign contributions aggregating a whopping $47 million.
But, as we have come to learn, it’s not in Donald Trump’s DNA to admit defeat. Accordingly, immediately following the debate, he took the unusual step of personally going to the “spin room” to proclaim victory. His opinion, however, was only shared by his surrogates and the political pundits on Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. Even Brit Hume, a long-time Fox News anchor, characterized Trump as having had “a bad night.” Trump’s claims of victory were also undermined by his own facial expressions while Harris asserted that he had been “fired” by 81 million voters and had been labeled by numerous military leader as a “disgrace.”
Elated by the verbal whipping she had just inflicted upon Trump, Vice President Harris immediately called for another debate. Her proposal, however, was quickly rejected by Trump who proclaimed that, as the victor, he had no need for a rematch. His motivation wasn’t just his realization that his usual debate tactic of overwhelming his opponent with false statements would not work against Harris. Rather, it was also because he understands that Harris needs opportunities, best provided by widely-viewed televised debates, to introduce herself to the American voters.
The election has now officially begun with early voting already underway in three states. Although polling data continues to show the race to be a toss-up, there is a clear trend in that data revealing the Harris-Walz campaign to be gaining momentum. Still, Trump still enjoys the edge provided by the electoral college which allows him to lose the popular vote by a substantial margin and nevertheless prevail if he only wins two or three of the seven battleground states. Because his voter appeal is largely limited to MAGA zealots and wealthy individuals drawn by his promises of further tax cuts, his principal strategy will necessarily be to limit Harris’ voter appeal. To this end, he will be trying to depict the her not only as a “radical Marxist” but also as someone unqualified to serve as president. In addition, he will be trying to associate her with his asserted failures of the Biden administration.
Trump’s principal charge against Harris is that she has served as the Biden Administration’s “border czar” and is therefore responsible for millions of illegal aliens having entered this country. Although her role in curbing illegal immigration was far more modest than depicted by Trump, that label has largely been accepted by the voters. The real problem with this line of attack is that Trump bears responsibility for having requested that his Congressional allies kill the most promising and far-reaching immigration reform legislation devised in the past 20 years, legislation which Harris vowed to sign into law if elected. It’s not just that Trump caused his supporters in Congress to reject the bill, his reason for calling for this action (to keep the issue alive for the election) showed that he has no real interest in solving the very problem which he has denominated as being the nation’s most pressing.
Trump’s response was that Harris would never have the votes in the Congress to pass that legislation. This remark was perhaps even more ill-conceived than his original request. If there had been insufficient votes in the Congress to pass the proposed border reform bill, there was no reason for Trump to expose his nefarious motive by requesting that it be killed. Conversely, his statement that even if Harris were to be elected the Congress wouldn’t pass the bill implies that he would continue to call for the bill’s defeat. This raises the troubling question of why would Congressional Republicans continue to follow the marching orders of a man who would have twice led their party to electoral defeat. Equally perplexing is what would be Trump’s motive in continuing to prevent the passage of the bill which would go a long way to addressing the nation’s immigration problems. The obvious answer is that Trump would rather spite his victorious opponent than allow the passage of badly-needed legislation.
Another of Trump’s favorite lines of attack is that the Biden administration has allowed our nation to be overrun by crime which he attributes to an influx of illegal immigrants as well as Democratic “soft on crime” policies. This line of attack is somewhat more promising. That’s because crime rates are mixed. According to FBI data, violent crimes (homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault), which are generally the subject of Trump’s accusations, have not only fallen over the past 30 years, but are near a 50 year low. On the other hand, non-violent crimes such as drug related crimes, trespassing, burglary and auto thefts, are far more prevalent. The problem is that data on non-violent crimes is difficult to pin down. That’s because many of them are not reported and are generally not deemed to be of significant concern.
Still, there is a public perception that crime has been on the increase. This belief is more prevalent among Republicans than Democratic and Independent voters perhaps because it is frequently the focus of Republican rhetoric. It may also be explained by the fact that violent crime rates are higher in red states where guns, a prominent feature in most violent crimes, are more plentiful and tend to be subject of fewer regulations. As such, this is an issue that works for Republicans, but is more effective in motivating Republican-leaning voters than in winning the support of non-Republican voters. In addition, as a former district attorney and state attorney general, Harris has a strong record of prosecuting crime which largely undermines the allegation that she’s “soft on crime.”
The state of the economy is another favorite topic of the Trump Campaign. That’s largely because Republican politicians have long been considered better stewards of our nation’s economy. I exploded this myth in an earlier article. The simple fact is that the nation’s economy has consistently performed better under Democratic administrations and the economic collapses experienced at the end of the administrations of the two most recent Republican presidents (Donald Trump and George W. Bush) provide a recent reminder of this fact. The result is that even though this remains a favorite talking point of Republican politicians, recent polls show that the voters view Harris as being at least equal to Trump on managing the economy. The fact that Trump bankrupted six of his major business ventures and has abandoned at least a handful of his other business ventures underlies this change in how voters appraise the candidates’ respective skills in managing the nation’s economy.
Harris can also expect to be attacked as a weak leader. The United States has never had a member of “the weaker sex” as its president which naturally lends itself to the belief that a woman would not be as strong a leader as a man. Of course, there have been dozens of women who have successfully served as heads of state including Margaret Thatcher who served as the U.K’s Prime Minister for 11 years and Sheikh Hassina who served as Bangladesh’s Prime Minister for 20 years. For a more complete list of women heads of state click here.
Vice President Harris confronted this issue immediately after President Biden discontinued his presidential campaign by pointing out that she has successfully prosecuted murderers, drug dealers and sexual predators and knows well how to handle aggressive men. She demonstrated this skill in the candidates’ debate handily overcoming Trump on every topic that was raised. In addition, she contended that a strong leader helps the nation’s citizens rise up and not one who seeks to put them down.
In discussing the Ukraine conflict, Trump, seeking to project his well-honed image of a strongman, argued that Putin would have never invaded Ukraine if he had been our president and that he would bring about a fast resolution to the Ukraine conflict if reelected. Harris quickly countered by claiming that you (Trump) would sell out Ukraine much to the displeasure of our European allies who are thankful that you are no longer our president. She concluded by saying that if you were to allow Putin to succeed in taking over Ukraine “he would eat you for lunch.” Thus, if anyone thought that she would be cowered by other world leaders, her debate performance certainly seems to have scotched that notion.
There are signs that the Trump campaign is in disarray. At the debate Trump dwelled for some time on a story about illegal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio eating their neighbors pets. As it turned out this story grew out of a Trump’s supporter’s report of her missing cat (“Miss Sassy”). Having racist tendencies and living in a neighborhood heavily populated by Haitian immigrants, she concluded that Miss Sassy had been abducted by one of her neighbors. J.D. Vance, dismayed that the news media was largely ignoring the threats posed by the influx of illegal immigrants, decided to use this incident as a means of injecting new life into the issue. To that end he posted a story on his social media accounts that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were devouring their neighbors pets.
Unfortunately, this story does not end there. In the meantime, Miss Sassy was located in her owner’s basement where she had been hiding and Vance admitted to having made up the story. More importantly, Springfield’s public officials pointed out that the Haitians living there are not in this country illegally and that were invited to settle in Springfield as a means of reviving the town’s economy. Even Springfield’s mayor and Ohio’s governor publicly announced that there was no truth to Vance’s story.
Trump, however, doubled down on the story, following the teachings of Roy Cohn—never admit that you are wrong and never let the truth stand in the way of telling a good story. The result has been that Springfield has been reduced to total chaos. The town has been invaded by gun-toting white nationalists and there have been threats against Haitians living there. In addition, bomb threats are being reported; schools have had to be closed; the Haitian residents have been placed in fear for their lives; and the governor has deployed the state’s national guard.
Another sign that the Trump campaign may be losing its focus is that Trump over the past month has embarked on two new commercial ventures. The first was an offering of a new series of digital trading cards and the second involves sales of interests in cryptocurrency accounts. It’s hard to conceive of why a presidential candidate, especially one hoping that his election might cause two criminal proceedings against him to be set aside, would suspend his campaign activities to focus on not one, but two, commercial ventures.
It would appear that he recognizes that his campaign is on the ropes and he’s trying to cash in on his public personae before he goes down to a second presidential defeat. These ventures also appear to be back-ups just in case his financial interest in his Truth Social media company evaporates. The “lock-up” restrictions on his 57% holdings in that company have now expired enabling him to begin to sell. However, the price of his stock (now valued at approximately $1.5 billion) has already fallen nearly 80% from its all-time high and if it falls much further he will again be contractually blocked from selling. Sadly, he may not be able to prevent that from happening because if he begins to sell the company’s stock price will collapse and if he doesn’t, the stock price may continue to fall as it tends to mirror his diminishing chances of being reelected.
Meanwhile the Harris-Walz campaign is gaining momentum. The polls are gradually moving in its favor and the campaign has picked up a number of important endorsements, including the endorsement of Dick and Liz Cheney and several senior former members of Trump’s administration such as John Bolton, Anthony Scaramucci, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Stephanie Grisham and Olivia Troye. In addition, 111 former Republican officials have denounced Trump as being unfit to hold public office. Also undermining his campaign is recent release of “From Russia with Lev”, a documentary film detailing how the Trump Administration sought to undermine the 2020 candidacy of Joe Biden, which was the subject of Trump’s first impeachment proceeding. Trump’s reelection campaign is likely to be further undermined when Federal District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan begins to hold hearings on Trump’s actions underlying his efforts to overturn the result of the 2020 election. Those hearings could begin as early as the third week in October.
It will be incumbent on the Harris-Walz Campaign to continue to build its momentum. That’s because a desperate Trump will employ every device at his disposal not only to disparage Harris, but also to undermine the entire electoral process. This is prompting the Harris-Walz Campaign to try to generate as wide a margin of victory as possible in the battleground states so as to discourage and/or undermine anticipated accusations that the elections in those states were materially tainted by fraud.
In all probability, Trump will resort to efforts to prevent, rather than dissuade, voters from voting for Harris. Such efforts will consist of making it more difficult to register voters, stripping Democratic leaning voters from the rolls of registered voters, restricting the use of voting by mail and trying to intimidate Democratic-leaning voters from going to the polls. Such voter suppression tactics are likely to only have a minimal impact. That’s because voter suppression tactics are significantly more effective in those battleground states which Republicans control which does not include the key states of Michigan and Pennsylvania. While Republicans do control the legislatures in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada, their ability to engage in voter suppression tactics in those states is limited by the fact that each has a Democratic governor. Only the battleground state of Georgia has both a Republican governor and a Republican controlled legislature. Even in those battleground states where voter suppression measures are already in place, the Harris-Walz campaign may be able to overcome them by employing its few thousand paid campaign workers and its over 170,000 volunteers who will be making phone calls and knocking on doors to get voters registered and to the polls.
Another concern of the Harris-Walz Campaign will be maintaining control of the U.S. Senate. This is absolutely critical if a Harris-Walz administration is going to have any success of enacting the very progressive agenda that Vice President Harris outlined in the debate and is describing in greater detail at her rallies. Democrats currently hold only 47 seats in the Senate which they continue to control only because all four “independent” senators tend to vote with them. That narrow advantage is almost sure to evaporate at the end of the current term. Of the 33 senate seats that are currently up for re-election only 10 are held by Republicans and 20 are held by Democrats. The remaining three are held by Independents. This means that the Democrats’ odds of retaining control of the Senate are meagre, but perhaps no worse than they were in 2020 when Donald Trump unwittingly helped the Democrats to win both of the State of Georgia’s Senate seats.
Joe Manchin, a former Democrat, turned Independent, from bright-red West Virginia, will not be running for re-election and his seat will undoubtedly be won by a Republican. Kyrsten Sinema, also a former Democrat, turned Independent, will also not be running for re-election, but there is a good chance that her successor will be Ruben Gallego, a Democrat, who is running against Kari Lake, a former newscaster and Trump acolyte who has previously run and lost in races for Arizona’s governor and senator.
Two Democratic Senate seats particularly at risk are those held by Jon Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio. While both of these men have held their seats for multiple terms, they represent red states and are being heavily targeted by the Republicans. Other Democratic Senate seats at potential risk are the Maryland seat being vacated by Ben Cardin, the Michigan seat being vacated by Debbie Stabenow, and the Nevada now held by Jacky Rosen. Also at risk of losing their Senate seats are Republicans Ted Cruz of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida. While both have served multiple terms in the Senate, are well-financed and represent distinctly Republican leaning states, they both suffer from the fact that they have each taken a number of politically questionable actions.
Because of the importance of retaining control of the Senate, the Harris-Walz Campaign will have to devote significant time and resources to help Democratic senatorial candidates in those states which could have an impact on which party will control the Senate.