Democrats 2024: Hanging On by A Thread
The race for President has radically changed in the last week. Biden has dropped out, VP Harris has all but secured the nomination and Trump just came off a successful convention, picked an unknown Senator from Ohio who is becoming more problematic by the day and everyone is scrambling to make sense of the new paradigm. It is easy to think that
Incumbent Unpopularity
Not since Obama has anyone galvanized so much support and excitement for the Democratic party, however the recent popularity of VP Kamala Harris is masked by a media narrative that is hardly supported by the numbers. Before Biden dropped out, the administration was facing approval ratings as low at 34% and the campaign was struggling in swing states. In a New York Times poll released on Friday the 27th, Kamala Harris was up to 50% nationally but was still struggling in swing states like Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Virginia, and Georgia. Given the current polling, the Harris campaign is still burdened by the difficulties facing the Biden/Harris campaign. A state like Virginia, shouldn’t even be in play, neither should Wisconsin or Michigan and yet, they are in play and without nearly all of them, her path to the White House is impossible. Indeed, Trump only needs to seize a few to make it nearly impossible for her to reach 270.
Harris might be a breath of fresh air but the reality is that she was sidelined by the White House for most of her time in office and she only really figured out the job in the last six months or so. She has 100 days to introduce herself to the American people, change the narrative and paint a picture that is both a continuation of the Biden policies to unite the base while defining her own vision for the country. That is a hard task of itself and the time to do so is fleeting. This is with the reality that Harris has never run a national campaign, she has only been in two national campaigns and her last presidential campaign in 2020 faltered early on and she didn’t even last to own states’ primary that was moved up for her specifically.
Then there is the right-wing media machine that will spend the next 100 days tearing her apart. They have already started with criticizing how she laughs and claiming she slept her way to the top. Sadly, it will only get worse. I’m already hearing the talking points from various quarters and the Harris campaign will soon lose control of the news narrative and all of these ideas pouring out of the right-wing media machine will begin to filter out. The Harris campaign will likely get mired in chasing after those narratives.
Unfortunately, I’ve said this on video, it is unlikely that Harris will win given the present circumstances. Biden was pushed out of the race by donors and party leaders too close to the election and has left Harris with an impossible task of overcoming his unpopularity, defining a vision and becoming a national political figure and doing all of this before early voting starts in September and with earnest in October. It is simply not possible.
Trump Politics
Much about Trump and his campaign have changed since the convention and the assassination attempt. Going into the events of the last two weeks, Trump was riding high and he still has reason to do so. He was running against an unpopular incumbent with a difficult economy and even now, he is running against a member of the administration with those liabilities and is facing favorable polling. It is interesting that Trump enjoyed no polling bump from either the convention or his assassination attempt. In fact, the one thing the Biden/Harris situation has done is driving the shooting from the headlines. Most people probably don’t know there were congressional hearings where both Democrats and Republicans grilled the Secret Service and the director resigned.
All of that being said, Trump is still an outsized force in American politics. Before Biden dropped out, the messaging on Project 2025 was beginning to shift poll numbers. Trump is inexplicably linked to the 900 page document prepared by the Heritage Foundation, that outlines a conservative fever-dream of a country without abortion rights, gay marriage, and other social advances made since 1964 (yes, they are going back that far). Even interracial marriage is back on the table for review by the Christian Nationalist forces that have allied themselves with the Trump campaign. And this belies a larger point, this political attitude isn’t going anyway regardless of who wins in November.
Trump isn’t going away and even when he does or simply dies (of natural causes in God’s good time) Trumpism is now the ideology of the Republican party. JD Vance and others proves that anyone who wants to continue to be relevant in GOP politics will have to bend the knee to the Trump train. MAGA is here to stay.
Most importantly, they have embedded themselves into the very election system themselves. In 2020, there were several people prosecuted for being fake electors designed to steal a win from Biden (who is stealing elections now?) Trump still has a case pending in Georgia for pressuring the Secretary of State for Georgia to “finding 11,789 votes” so he could win Georgia because he had won the state in his mind. In the last four years, many red states have codified legislature and gubernatorial overrides on electors for President setting up a situation where a democrat could win in a red state and the popular will of the people is simply overridden. Is it constitutional? Yes! Is it right? No. Is it MAGA? Absolutely.
Democrats still fall into the problem of letting Trump frame everything through his power of media. That power in the hands of Vance, Johnson, DeSantis or others will be just as deadly but without the gaffs that discredited Trump. These politics with effective politics could easily win the White House and still might. The Democrats don’t yet have a great answer for all of this. Abortion was the big specter over this election but now everything is up in the air. Will America vote for a woman, much less a woman of color? And if they don’t, do people realize the regressive society that we will be forced to make our lives? What’s worse is what is the long-term plan? Near as I can tell, Democrats don’t have one. It is a lack of imagination on the Left that is most frustrating and a problem not suffered by Trump and co.
Social media, MSM and Politics
Like most elections since 2008, what influence the media and social media will have remains to be seen. We also don’t know what foreign influence through those channels might be. A successful campaign is going to have to plan for these challenges, no more complaining. However, given the present dynamics, there is no way the Harris campaign can manage to fight that problem at this juncture. I don’t think the Biden campaign was concerning itself with it and Trump doesn’t care as long as it helps him and let’s face it: he’s been the biggest beneficiary of foreign influence on elections thanks to the Russian FSB and Cambridge Analytica.
Media narratives can make or break someone. Right now the media narrative is very pro-Kamala but narratives change quickly. JD Vance and his antics with diet mountain dew and couches are certainly not working in favor of the Trump campaign but there is plenty of time and opportunity for things to shift around. It seems like everything is all locked up and settled but the reality is that we are talking about eight days in an election that has about 100 to go (depending on when you read this). How social media and the mainstream media respond to things will have an outsized on this election. This election is no longer about policy, its about vibes and public opinion, both are incredibly fickle.
