97 days ago, on July 21, Joe Biden handed the baton to Kamala Harris.
She started the race as an underdog who was behind, taking over for a man whose debate performance took him from one narrow path (MI, PA, WI, NE2) with exactly 270 to zero paths.
After a very fast start, Harris pulled even or perhaps a little bit ahead, putting all seven battleground states in play. It appeared that if she stayed out of the barrel, with the help of a very supportive Dominant Media, vibes, and Donald Trump errors, that she could gallop on an uninterrupted path to victory.
Today, Harris is once again, as she has continued to say, the underdog. Her chances of winning are not as great as her campaign argues, but/and not as dismal as Mar-a-Lago believes or claims to believe.
But given the makeup of the undecideds; the early early vote data; momentum; public and private national and battleground polling; and the Electoral College in all of its simultaneous complexity and simplicity – given all that, it is now no longer the case that Wilmington can persuasively argue that Team Harris would rather have her hand than Trump’s.
Which is to say, Trump has the better hand here at the end.
This race is not a pure tossup, despite the Dominant Media mantra.
As Brat Summer has given way to McDonald’s Autumn, Harris’ pre-election chances of winning are roughly similar on paper to what Trump’s odds were in 2016.
And while Trump did of course win, it required Jim Comey and everything breaking right for him at the end.
How did we get here?
Here is a short history.
THE START
HARRIS
1. Wilmington saw a chance for a thematic fresh start.
2. Harris seized the mantle of change from both Trump and Biden.
3. Democrats resolved to flip the script on “too old to be president.”
TRUMP
1. Mar-a-Lago was amazed that one of America’s two major political parties, having, at the very at minute, avoided committing political suicide by running a candidate who 3/4th of voters said was too old, would then go on to commit political suicide by nominating the only alternative to the incumbent who would have to run with the burdens of the Biden-Harris record.
2. Team Trump realized that there was a virtual clip reel of Harris, in her own words, taking positions so far left that she made Elizabeth Warren look like John Breaux, rendering her a candidate at least twice as liberal as any Democrat Chris LaCivita had ever lost to.
3. Trump’s polling team confidently asserted that whatever advantages Democrats gained by subbing in Harris for Biden would dissipate and be overwhelmed by the areas in which she was, in fact, politically weaker than her boss – and that it was just a matter of time before the laws of political physics kicked in, and that Harris, like John Kerry and Mitt Romney before her, would be disqualified, rendered an unacceptable president in the eyes of too many voters for her to win.
THE MIDDLE
HARRIS
1. The candidate and her team performed one of the greatest acts of political proficiency in modern American history – a bloody miracle, actually – by simultaneously taking over and retrofitting the Biden campaign team, fundraising capacity, and national political infrastructure, while planning for the convention, preparing for debates, picking a running mate, and so much more.
2. Harris failed to win the battle to define her by falling short of the mark in convincing undecided voters in the battleground states that she would be a good steward of a good economy, a fierce and savvy commander-in-chief, a moderate, and someone whose presidency would be different in significant and recognizable ways from that of Joe Biden. (What most accounts for this failure: Harris’ Achille’s heel is making tough decisions under pressure, which is practically the job description of both a presidential candidate and a president.)
3. Wilmington struggled to solve its young Black men problem, its Hispanic problem, its union household problem, its Muslim/Arab-American problem, its Jewish problem, and its you get the point.
TRUMP
1. In a complex matrix, Team Trump had substantial success using its four words (weak, failed, dangerously liberal) to define Harris over all three of Ronald Reagan’s stool legs – national security, economics, and social issues.
2. With the national media alternatively oblivious or turning up its Resistance nose, Trump softened his image through podcasts, videos, photos ops, and, yes, his reaction to being shot.
3. Mar-a-Lago raised just enough money to not lose the race over being badly outspent by the Harris fundraising juggernaut.
THE END
HARRIS
1. Harris will close with a three-part message (abortion, the economy broadly defined, Trump’s lack of fitness) that is more darkness than joy.
2. Harris’ diminished chances of winning rely on her four pillars: the power of the issue of reproductive freedom; the turnout of female voters; a well-financed GOTV operation; and the reality of Trump Fatigue.
3. In the final days, Team Harris will be burdened by the burdens a presidential campaign that its own side feels is behind is burdened by (think Dole ’96), where every shift in strategy or rhetoric is seen not as an adroit reaction to new circumstances but as a desperate and doomed gambit; where down ballot allies start to jump ship; where the press accounts toggle between “circular firing squad” and “finger pointing”; and where one good poll or one large crowd is seen as the first of many oases on the path to Election Day, as opposed to a cruel mirage.
TRUMP
1. Brimming with confidence, seeing an overwhelming Electoral College win (6 or 7 battleground states, plus up to four others) as more likely than a loss.
2. Activating a field operation that, below the radar, is more sophisticated and tech-driven than Mar-a-Lago has let on.
3. Letting Trump be Trump, harnessed to a well-curated schedule of special stops (Joe Rogan, Madison Square Garden, Nikki Haley (?), and some secret surprises to come).
Both Harris and Trump have upped their games in the last two weeks; the problem for Democrats is that Trump is one of the finest presidential campaign political athletes of all time, while, we now know what Joe Biden and Ron Klain knew all along – Kamala Harris is not.
To be continued….
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TEN OTHER POINTS
1. No one, including me, can tell you how Israel-Iran will impact the presidential race, but it is more likely to help Trump than Harris at this writing.
2. Here’s how the Harris Friday night abortion/Beyonce rally in Houston played in the battleground state papers (spoiler alert: it played not at all):
3. ICYMI: Friday’s “2WAY Tonight,” featuring a spirited appearance by Jonathan Alter:
4. Trump on Joe Rogan for three full hours:
5. This is both a big story and the continuation of something big, per the Wall Street Journal:
The Chinese hackers who burrowed into the networks of U.S. telecommunications firms have used their deep access to target the phones of former President Donald Trump, his running mate, JD Vance, and people affiliated with Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, according to people familiar with the matter.
6. Never in the history of presidential campaign journalism has there been a wider gap between what the media elites care about and what the good folks in Green Bay diners care about than there is with the story of the Washington Post’s decision not to endorse in the presidential race.
7. Leonardo DiCaprio goes Harris:
8. Get ready for a bunch of last-minute ads from shadowy groups swooping in, like this new pro-Trump ad on abortion, that has Democrats, the family of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the Dominant Media up in arms – and has the Trump high command high fiving:
9. Essential reading:
* Associated Press on the Harris bid to win over non-college whites.
* Wall Street Journal on the Harris bid to win over suburban voters.
* New York Times on the power of Donald Trump, Jr. having risen.
10. The Dodgers win Game 1 with a walk off grand salami: