The race is on

And it's getting weird

It has been less than two weeks since Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, and even less time since Kamala Harris entered the race. In that time, the Democratic Party quickly unified around the new nominee and momentum seems to have shifted.

Energy among the Democrats, which was at Bidenesque levels after the debate, has soared. One example is a Harris rally of YUGE proportions held in Atlanta earlier this week. The high-energy event would have been unimaginable if Joe Biden remained at the helm.

Photo by chris robert on Unsplash

Harris is also taking on Donald Trump more directly and frequently than President Biden. At the event, she responded to Trump’s insults by challenging him to a debate and telling him, “If you’ve got something to say, say it to my face.”

Team Harris has also launched a new strategy of denigrating the MAGA Republicans as “weird.” The label seems to have been first applied to JD Vance, a man who has advocated such ideas as giving minor children votes in elections that would be exercised by their parents. Vance’s hostility to childless adults, such as his rants against “cat ladies,” does seem, well, weird. And I’m not even going to discuss the apparently false sofa rumors. Honestly, I just don’t want to research that.

Although a lot of normal Americans support Donald Trump, “weird” really is a good descriptor for a large segment of MAGA, beginning with their leader. Donald Trump’s weirdness has been long noted and roundly mocked. His list of weird behaviors may only be exceeded by the list of his lies and includes an obsession with sharks and Hannibal Lecter as well as his propensity to hug and kiss the American flag. Have you ever seen anyone else do that?

And Trump’s weirdness filters down to his base. If you’re on social media, you’ve seen the adoring posts and memes, often with religious overtones and imagery. There is also the cultlike behavior of flying Trump flags from homes, cars, and boats and wearing their leader’s image on star-spangled clothing. I can imagine the reaction if Democrats had gone half as crazy for Barack Obama.

The Democrats have their own weirdness, such as when it comes to the politics of transgenderism, but so far, Harris and the Democratic leadership seem to be embracing normalcy. On Tuesday, the Harris campaign reassessed some of the policy positions that the former senator held in the past. CNN reported that Harris is moving to the center as she reverses such positions as her previous support for a ban on fracking and single-payer healthcare. She has also reaffirmed her support for Israel.

So far, the Trump campaign does not seem to know how to handle Harris. On a recorded phone call to donors reported in the Washington Post, Vance said, “All of us were hit with a little bit of a political sucker punch” when Harris replaced Biden.

Still, Vance argued, “I don’t think the political calculus changes at all. We were running against Joe Biden’s open border, Kamala Harris’s open border. Kamala Harris supported the green new scam. Kamala Harris, frankly, covered Joe Biden even though it was obvious he was mentally incompetent for a very long time.”

But as Harris has energized Democrats, Trump has made missteps. At a speech in West Palm Beach, Trump was recorded telling an assembled group of Christians, “In four years, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore.”

Trump also seemed to say, “I’m not Christian,” before saying again, “In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed.” I don’t think that Trump meant to tell voters that he wasn’t Christian, but it may have been a Freudian slip.

To be clear, there is no reason in a democracy that Republicans won’t have to vote again. There seem to be only two explanations: Trump is either not planning on having meaningful elections after 2028 or he doesn’t care if Christians vote for Republicans after this year. There is no way to constitutionally “fix” the country so that voting is not required.

Following his pattern of doubling down on dumbness, The Former Guy was offered a softball chance to explain or walk back those comments in a Fox News interview with Laura Ingraham. In his rambling answer, Trump reiterated that he told “the Christians,” that “You have to vote on November 5, after that you don’t have to worry about voting anymore, I don’t care, because we are going to fix it, the country will be fixed, and we won’t even need your vote anymore because frankly, we will have such love, if you don’t want to vote anymore, that’s okay.”

Sinister or delusional? You be the judge.

In another flub, Trump admitted again that Republicans killed the recent attempt at immigration reform for political reasons rather than because it was a bad bill. Again speaking to Laura Ingraham, when asked about why he ordered Republicans to kill the bill, Trump answered, “Well, they allow 5,000 people a week, but a lot of people took it as 5,000 people a day. They said 5,000 people a week, and you read it and it says 5,000 people a day. Number one, that, but it also made it much better for the opposing side.”

The 5,000 number has become the subject of much misinformation. The number was lower than the average border crossings at the time, but Senator James Lankford, one of the bill’s Republican authors, explained that the number did not represent what MAGA pundits said it did.

Quoted in Politifact from a speech on the Senate floor, Lankford said, “It’s not that the first 5,000 [migrants encountered at the border] are released, that’s ridiculous. The first 5,000 we detain, we screen and then we deport. If we get above 5,000, we just detain and deport.”

So when Trump and Vance talk about the “open” border, insofar as the border remains open (it’s really not because there are a high number of arrests and detentions), it is open because Donald Trump killed immigration reform because it would have benefitted the Democrats.

In another sign that Democratic attacks are hitting home, Paul Dans, the director of Heritage’s Project 2025, has stepped down.

Project 2025 became the focus of Democratic criticism (and no small amount of fearmongering) and even Trump criticized and tried to disavow the effort. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump campaign had pressured Heritage to lower Project 2025’s profile.

Trump campaign senior advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a joint statement, “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign—it will not end well for you,” but I’ll wager that the project would be quickly resurrected after a Trump victory. Indeed, Heritage’s Kevin Roberts says that work on Project 2025 will continue.

After I had completed this article, the news of Trump’s interview with the National Association of Black Journalists broke. This was a Biden-level disaster in which Trump claimed that Kamala Harris only recently started identifying as a black woman. Actually, “Biden-level” is an understatement because I don’t recall Biden’s team ever pulling the plug in the middle of an interview.

Trump’s meltdown was so offensive that I have to wonder if he wants to chase away minority voters, but it’s more likely that from within his bubble he doesn’t realize how outrageous - weird - what he’s saying is. After this performance, Republicans should really consider trying to force him off the ballot or following the Mystic Society of No-Homers strategy and starting over from scratch.

The Harris campaign has had missteps as well. Notably, Harris has tried to rewrite history by denying her role as Joe Biden’s border czar. While she can play a semantic game and claim that she was never officially dubbed “border czar,” President Biden did delegate authority to attack the border crisis to her in 2021.

If I was the Harris campaign, I would address this claim in two ways. First, I would point out that illegal immigration has declined sharply from its peak. Second, I would point out that Republicans kill every immigration reform bill with a chance of passage and play the clips of Donald Trump taking responsibility for killing the most recent attempt at border reform over and over and over.

If momentum in the race has shifted, is this reflected in polling? The answer is sort of.

As I always caution, don’t put too much stock in individual polls. The two main polling average sites, Real Clear Polling and FiveThirtyEight, both show Harris trailing Trump nationally by two and three points respectively. Trump’s edge has increased slightly in both averages due to a surge that may well represent a post-convention bump.

In the swing states, the race seems to be tightening. Even though I said not to focus on individual polls, there aren’t too many new state-level polls that have been released since Harris kicked off her campaign, so here’s the rundown based on very limited new information:

Arizona - Trump led handily before the big switch. The only poll since then, from Bloomberg/Morning Consult, shows Harris ahead by four points when third parties are considered and two points in a two-way race.

Georgia - Another Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll shows a dead heat at 45 percent each when third parties are considered and 47 percent in a two-way race. A Socal Research poll after Biden dropped out showed Trump up by four.

Michigan - In a state where Trump seemed to be in trouble even when Biden was still in the race, Morning Consult shows Harris with a double-digit lead. This lead is so large and represents such a significant swing that it makes me skeptical. It may well be an outlier.

Nevada - Here Bloomberg/Morning Consult shows a statistical tie with Harris leading by two in a two-way race after Trump led polling against Biden.

North Carolina - Morning Consult shows Trump with a small lead within the margin of error.

Pennsylvania - There have been a number of recent polls here with a range that swings from Harris ahead by four to Trump ahead by four.

Wisconsin - The most recent polling after the switch yields a split decision. Bloomberg/Morning Consult shows Harris ahead by two in a two-way race and Trump ahead by one in the multiparty poll.

The gist of the polling is that Trump’s edge in the swing states has eroded since Joe Biden left the race. It’s also interesting to note that Harris often benefits from having third parties included in the polling, contrary to the conventional wisdom that candidates like RFKJR and Jill Stein help Trump.

The current state of the race is a nail-biter. Donald Trump is clinging to his lead, but the race has tightened to a tossup. PredictIt, the political betting site, shows a near tie with Trump down one cent to 52 cents and Harris up a penny at 50 cents. True to form, the battleground states are mostly within the margin of error.

If you remember the 2020 Democratic primary, Kamala Harris was an early favorite. That year, her campaign flamed out quickly and she became one of the first candidates to drop out. In fact, her campaign didn’t make it to 2020, ending in December 2019.

Republicans should not take comfort in this fact. The primary in 2020 was very different from the current general election campaign. Harris looks very different to voters when she’s one of a dozen or so Democrats vying for the nomination as opposed to being the presumptive nominee and only viable alternative to Donald Trump.

As I said earlier, momentum currently favors Harris, but no one should declare victory yet. If 2024 has taught us anything, it is to expect the unexpected. Anything can happen and it probably will.

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