Trump's election wobble

Plus: another storm, and Lebanon is a third party to its own war.

The late Pete Rose was banned from the Hall of Fame because he bet on games he played in or coached. Funny how Elon Musk posted on his own social media site that betting markets are “more accurate than polls, as actual money is on the line.” By some accounts, Donald Trump is slightly ahead on the betting line, such as the aggregator site electionbettingodds.com. In the last day, Trump went from being slightly down to up 50.7 percent to Vice President Kamala Harris’ 48.6 percent. The swing was 0.7 percent to Trump.

Photo by Jonathan Petersson on Unsplash

The electoral map shows 281-257 on the betting line, with Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina seeing definite swings. Now betting is not voting. There’s nothing that stops Elon Musk from stuffing the odds ballot box to puff up Trump’s numbers. Worst that can happen is he loses his money, right? Personally, I think anyone who donates to a political candidate’s campaign, then bets for that candidate, should have their bet counted as a contribution in some way (if not wholly). But that’s a topic for another day.

No, I don’t agree with Mr. Musk that the betting markets are more accurate than the polls. But the polls are not much different, which is not great news for Harris. In Pennsylvania, Trump is up 0.2 percent, in North Carolina, it’s 0.6, in Georgia, 1.5, and Arizona 1.4 percent. Harris leads in Wisconsin by 0.8, Michigan, by 0.5, and Nevada by 1.1 percent, according to realclearpolling.com.

But Michigan hasn’t had poll data since the end of September. Pennsylvania’s latest four polls have Trump up between 2 and three points, with one showing a tie. The latest Quinnipiac poll in Georgia has Trump up by a full 5 points.

It’s clear to me (and many others) that Trump is having a bit of a wobble, if not a bump. This, to me, is natural. Elections have rhythms, and little swings of support reflected in the polls move according to their own momentum. This election is so close that it’s hard to claim that Harris peaked too early, or did she peak just right? Peaking too late is worse than peaking too early.

What’s also clear, despite efforts of the Harris campaign to get her in front of interviewers, is that the perception among the public is she’s a bad interview giver. It’s also the perception that she’s running completely on vibes and not being Donald Trump. The perception is that her policy proposals are thin, and not necessarily what she would do. She claims to have all kinds of “new” ideas but said on The View when asked if she’d have handled anything in the last four years different from President Joe Biden, “not a thing comes to mind.”

The public isn’t impressed with Kamala Harris. How do I know? If the public were impressed, she’d be ahead double digits in most of the polls. Her primary message in the campaign is that she’s not Donald Trump. Don’t get me wrong, that’s worth a whole lot of votes, because Trump is the a more deeply unpopular president than, say, Richard Nixon would have been if he ran for a third term if he had survived his impeachment (now there’s some alt-history!).

I’ve said this before several times, but Donald Trump, if you somehow overcome his personal disqualifications (and obviously, many people have done that), has events in his corner. Harris has organization in hers. Trump has eschewed organization in favor of going after the last frontier of low-propensity voters: mental patients, and people who should be mental patients.

The lies and counter-lies in this final phase of the election are getting more stupid and strident. Did Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis really refuse a call from Harris? He said he was unaware she tried to call. The Harris-friendly media reported the refused call as fact. Harris didn’t deny the media reports, and called refusing a call “utterly irresponsible,” and aimed a barb at DeSantis: “it is selfish and it is about political gamesmanship instead of doing the job that you took an oath to do.”

DeSantis has spoken with President Biden, is working with FEMA, and hosting daily press conferences about the coming hurricane Milton. He responded: “She has no role in this…She’s the first one who is trying to politicize the storm. And she’s doing that just because of her campaign.”

Elon Musk amplified claims that FEMA and the FAA were running interference at attempts of civilians to bring aid to North Carolinians suffering from Helene-caused flooding. Having personally experienced the dangerous air traffic after flooding in central Georgia in 1994, I am not in agreement once again with Mr. Musk. I begged the FAA to restrict the airspace over Albany, Georgia. At least Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg invited Musk to call him, and Musk did. Now, local authorities have the ability to create temporary flight restrictions (TFRs) when needed, or to approve civilian flights arranged in advance.

I do not believe all the stories flying around social media that FEMA is preventing aid. It takes time to arrange large-scale relief operations, and the role of quick-responding civilians is not lost on those whose job it is to help the people of North Carolina.

But those stories help Trump, and the whole flap with DeSantis, who is doing a reasonably good job in a state that gets more than its share of big storms, hurts Harris.

The Biden administration’s flip-flops on Israel and its war with Hamas and Hezbollah are also not good for Harris. After calling for a 21-day ceasefire, the State Department has now said the administration supports Israel’s ground war in southern Lebanon. State spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters: “Just to be very candid, it is a different world you’re looking at today than it was several weeks ago.”

These events chip away at Harris’s shine, and the drumbeat of lies on both sides empowers Trump supporters. It’s a natural thing, this little wobble or swing. But as we know, Trump has a limit. The question isn’t if Trump will get more votes than Harris—that’s a settled question, no—it’s if he can win Pennsylvania and the other states required to achieve electoral victory. If the betting markets are right, there’s definitely a wobble here, and Trump is the beneficiary, with just a few weeks before Election Day.

HURRICANE MILTON IS BAD AND GETTING BIG. If you live in southwest Florida, or along the gulf coast south of Tampa, you might want to get out of town. I don’t need to go over the news here that we have a category 5 storm on our hands, and if it weakens at all, that energy will spin out into a bigger wind field, meaning bigger storm surges. I wish Gov. DeSantis would make the 166 mile stretch of I-75 from I-4 to I-10 a counterflow north-only highway. If you aren’t going north on that stretch, you’re going the wrong way. I know there’s arguments about staging aid and power line trucks. But there are other places those trucks can wait until after the storm.

Also, if you’re looking to get out, you’ve got a ways to travel. A lot of southern Georgia just got their power back on after Helene, and same with north central Florida. People who flee the storm need to come up as far as central Georgia (many churches I know have opened their campuses for people to stay), or west to Pensacola. There’s not much time left to get out. Riding out a cat 5 storm is foolishly risky, but many will choose to do it.

And one more thing. If you think that the government, or the Illuminati, or George Soros, or the Jews, created this hurricane, or made it bad, or are steering it with heretofore unknown technology, or that the Doppler radar can somehow move the storm’s track, I’m sorry for you. I’m sorry that you probably refuse to believe that human-caused CO2 gasses are behind climate change, but you believe the government can at a whim whip up a hurricane. There’s a Jewish joke in there somewhere, but I don’t have time to tell it. In any case, whoever decided to make a catastrophic storm with magic and then name it “Milton” has a sense of humor.

LEBANON IS A BYSTANDER IN ITS OWN WAR. I’m sorry for Lebanon. Such a beautiful country, and such a wonderful people, the Lebanese. The Lebanese are not really at war with anyone. Yet their land has been occupied by an evil terror organization funded and directed by an evil regime in Tehran. The Lebanese have suffered war since 1980, and not really at their own hands. They had a civil war that destroyed their ability to self-govern, and now they are governed by others (the IRGC and Hezbollah).

Israel said that they were prepared to do to Beirut what they did to Gaza City if it came to war. Now, Operation Northern Arrow has begun another land invasion into southern Lebanon to clear out Hezbollah’s fighting tunnels and rocket stores. Coupled with crippling strikes by the Israeli Air Force, this is the worst case scenario for Lebanon. Terrorists embed in civilian neighborhoods and store their rockets under homes and high-rises. Israel then turns those home and high-rises to rubble. The Lebanese stand by and watch the destruction.

I pray that one day, when Hezbollah is gone, and the Lebanese are able to control their own nation, there will be peace with Israel again. And Lebanon will be the jewel of the Levant once again. The cedars, and people, of Lebanon are special to God, and I can only hope for a better future.

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