The Briefing, Vol. XII, Issue 31
This week:
- ‘Soul-destroying bully’ and border failure — Harris’s vulnerabilities
- Electoral College picture instantly reverts to pre-debate
- Harris already polls better than Biden in some states
President 2024
Now that Kamala Harris is set to become the Democratic nominee, here is a public service announcement about how to say her first name, given the dumb and irritating accusations that Republicans are mispronouncing it on purpose.
The accusers seem (or pretend to be) oblivious to the fact that it is just a hard name to pronounce. The standard conventions of English pronunciation and emphasis would suggest ka-MAL-a. Indeed, many Democrats have called her this, too. But it’s incorrect. If anyone asks you, her name is “COMma-la,” with an emphasis on the first syllable — or even better, just COM-la, with the middle syllable dropped.
Harris hype: Since Joe Biden was forced out of the presidential race and endorsed Harris, the Democrat-media industrial complex has gone all-out to make Harris seem like the second coming of Barack Obama. She is not that, however, and today’s circumstances are not at all like those of 2008. Still, the voters will make up their minds about all that one in due time. The question is, will the honeymoon end and when?
We view Harris as a problematic candidate whose low approval ratings tell most of the story already. In public, she lacks Obama’s natural charisma and indeed becomes harder to like with greater familiarity. She has many of the same liabilities as Biden, especially given the prominent role he gave her on the issue of illegal immigration, whether you want to use the phrase “border czar” or not.
Harris was forced to drop out of the 2020 presidential primary after heavily insinuating on national television that Biden was a racist because he had espoused racist views about school integration. Democratic voters rejected her before even a single vote had been cast. She also has a 90 percent staff turnover because she is reportedly extremely cruel and mean-spirited employer — a “soul-destroying bully” who abuses employees mercilessly. (In fairness, this is more common in Washington than you might think.) Her political rise to the top of Democratic politics in California — largely a function of her having been San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown’s mistress — was a lot easier than it might have been in a competitive state.
Outlook: Will these negatives catch up with her? That’s for voters to decide. Donald Trump is already seeing that some attacks against her will work better than others. The public will have time to absorb who Harris is, whom they want to believe, and whether they will support her.
Yet here is the fact that Trump and Republicans are going to have to accept: Harris was inevitably going to claw back some of the Biden-doubters — especially those who had been steadfastly in his corner and then decided he had to go after his abysmal June 27 debate performance.
It stands to reason. Harris is not senile, therefore those Democrats panicking at Biden’s evident senility after the debate can now step back from the ledge. They can shift their support to her without having to do much in the way of mental gymnastics.
Indeed, there are signs that Harris is outperforming Biden in some states. And although she does not seem to do better than Biden in others, there is no state yet where Harris is currently dragging the ticket down worse than Biden was.
National polling remains very tight, with Trump leading narrowly in most surveys but not all, similar to the pre-debate Trump-Biden race.
Swing States: Again, Harris is already performing slightly better than Biden in at least some key states.
No single poll should change anyone’s mind on its own. However, it is significant that, whereas Biden had trailed in all polls of Pennsylvania since March, Harris already ties Trump there (less than the margin of error) in a head-to-head, and leads him by two points in a multi-way contest in the latest Fox News poll.
That is just one poll, and its mixed result is counterintuitive. Harris also trails Trump in that state in two other polls taken this month, so it doesn’t necessarily hold out too much hope for a Harris victory. However, it is already undeniable evidence that she is less hopeless than Biden was in a key state. It prompts us to put Pennsylvania back into swing-state territory, now that the candidates in the race have changed.
Harris also seems to perform better than Biden did in New Hampshire and Maine, and possibly also in Virginia. Still, the data from these states are thin at this point and we will need to see more evidence before assigning them a red or blue tilt.
On the other hand, Harris has trailed Trump in three of the four Wisconsin polls taken this month. This is not substantially better than Biden, who had been within the margin against Trump all along, but it is also not necessarily worse than Biden. Harris also continues to trail Trump (again within the margin of error) in Michigan. The fact that she does no worse than Biden in these states may be little consolation, however, as we note further below — if she loses either one, the whole thing is over for her.
Harris does no better than Biden in Arizona (down by eight points) and trails in the two latest post-Biden polls of Georgia. There are no reliable recent data coming out of North Carolina or Nevada, although Trump’s lead over Biden was large enough in those states that we are leaving them red for now. A single poll shows Harris with a ten-point lead in Minnesota. That one is such an outlier that we would like to see more data before making any changes, but it could be that Minnesota becomes the first state where Harris claws back electoral votes Biden seemed on the point of potentially losing.
Electoral Map: In short, the shift from Biden to Harris does indeed seem to have helped Democrats at the margins and in the short run. The bigger question is whether she is peaking now or has room to improve.
Our analysis is that her accession has turned the clock back in this election to the spring, to a point when Democrats were very likely to lose the presidency but still not in the full-blown panic of late June and early July. Harris is in roughly the same shape Biden was in early April, when we pointed out that he had a leaky electoral boat with an increasing number of holes to plug. Here is a map of the current situation, very similar to the one we were talking about at that point:
Trump is still on the verge here, with 268 electoral votes apparently falling into his column. Harris therefore, like Biden in March and April, has her work cut out for her.
Trump will likely return to the White House in the event of a 269-269 Electoral College tie, and if he will win outright with two or more additional electoral votes not assigned to him above. Thus, Harris must win every single unassigned swing state and Nebraska’s Second Congressional District. She needs to win every single swing state and swing district just to get to 270.
