Jonathan V. Last, over at the Bulwark, is one of my favorite voices of sanity. But he’s more optimistic than I am, and today he loses me with the speculation that the polls have finally caught up to Donald Trump’s secret strength in the electorate and are not undervaluing him, for a change, this year. In other words, he won’t get an unexpected boost from unseen hordes of Trumpster on Election Day, as he did the last two times.
He may be right, of course. But I have two problems with it. One is that it doesn’t feel right. Despite a few good polls for Kamala yesterday, this race is too damn tight for comfort and Stan Greenberg, who I’ve never known to be much of a pessimist, feels the same way:
“Trump shifted the momentum in the race when he began his outrageous, slanderous, and racist statements about Haitian immigrants. He has also made immigrants the cause of high rents and food prices and spread the false rumor that FEMA ran out of funds for North Carolina hurricane victims.”
“It was very effective and is still shaping the race.”
This is depressing and terrifying. I am boggled by the idiot credulity of my fellow citizens, but then democracy always was a close-run thing and the founders never imagined the radically untrammeled democracy we have now; indeed, Madison feared it. They chose a representative republic—if we could keep it—with limitations on who could vote: property owners, men, white people. We have bent the arc of freedom toward a more just democracy since then—but I wouldn’t be upset if you had to pass a certified national civics test (once) in order to vote.
Certainly, the failure of a near-majority of our electorate to know a charlatan showboat hater when they see one—or worse, to like Trump’s viciousness—speaks to a certain moral retardation among the people. The least incredible, but still ridiculous, rationale for people to vote for Trump is that they’ve “seen” him run “his business” decisively on The Apprentice, but that was just make-believe. Given the lax, waning state of American education, this shouldn’t be all that surprising. But it’s interesting to watch a solid, old-fashioned conservative like Gerard Baker of the Wall Street Journal mystified by Trump’s appeal.
The second problem is that I fear Kamala Harris has reached the limits of the possible with her vague campaign. I fear that Tim Walz is all too accurate when he describes himself as a “knucklehead.” I fear that the risk-averse clutch of Democratic consultants, crouching under their desks as we used to in nuclear bomb drills, still think their client is tongue-tied Joe Biden rather than fluent Kamala. She’s going to do a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania on October 23…but I’d like to see her really go for it and do one on Fox. Somehow Pete Buttigieg and Gavin Newsome are able to survive that cauldron. If Trump’s appeal is that he’s strong and she’s just nice, a trial-by-Fox would certainly prove her toughness. She needs, I suspect, to move two percent of the electorate to bring this one home. But I’m feeling kind of pessimistic today, so I’ll reduce the Klein Fever Barometer from 5.2 to 4.4 (on a scale of ten) today.
Hi, Joe: Cindy and I just completed a 4,200 mile roadtrip through the south, barely getting through the Helene rains in Atlanta on our way home. On the trip, I talked to a number of people about Trump and Harris. What I heard surprised me; most of the people I talked to agreed that Trump is crazy, but to a person the people I talked to about Harris expressed they were really reluctant or just not going to vote for her. The reason they gave is they did not know who she was and what she stood for. Also, on the trip I saw at least a thousand Trump/Vance yard signs, and exactly one Harris/Walz sign - on Emerald Isle, NC. Okay, I was driving through Red America, but just saying... If Harris doesn't get in the barrel soon I fear she is doomed to lose.
I do not mean to improve your pessimism, but, a report from Gallup, showed the American public with a 3 percent tilt towards Republicans. It was on Tom Bevan’s X site, of Real Clear Politics. If accurate, and Gallup has a good history of accuracy, there is indeed reason to be pessimistic.
For myself, am in California, Harris should win it by seven million plus votes, any thing seriously less, barring a major earthquake, would really surprise me, so I can ignore both major party candidates and vote for someone who at least is closer to my positions, than anyone else.
May the best person win.