The Democrats’ hasty and desperate decision to appoint Vice President Kamala Harris as their 2024 presidential nominee in lieu of outgoing President Joe Biden is already beginning to backfire on their party and play directly into the hands of GOP nominee and former President Donald Trump.
Above all, Biden had no choice but to withdraw politically due to the Democrats’ desperate attempt, which began several weeks after the Trump-Biden debate in late June, to remove the hesitant candidate from the race. After Trump withstood a botched assassination attempt and the wildly successful RNC in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Biden eventually withdrew from the race on Sunday afternoon. However, rather than allowing multiple Democrats to openly vie for the Democratic Party’s nomination, the party’s elders swiftly united behind Harris, their standard-bearer, within 48 hours. After enough Democratic National Convention (DNC) delegates publicly pledged to support Clinton, the focus of the quick coronation has switched to the question of who she would choose as her running mate.
Democrats, terrified of the numbers and the impact a weak Biden would have on their prospects, acted with such feverish dread that the move was so sudden and drastic that it smacked of desperation. Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), one of the few reasonable Democrats left in the contest, even attacked other Democrats for forcing Biden out of the race:
It begs the question: Did they make a crucial error as this front-runner move develops, and it becomes increasingly evident that Democrats are trapped with Harris, just as they were with Biden before? Based on the early evidence, it appears that they did. At this point, let’s go over all the data and see if any trends or patterns show up. It’s important to remember that in this quickly changing climate, the research presented here is a very early look at what the data indicates thus far, and things might change. It’s also important to note that, even when contrasted to Biden, this research hardly scratches the surface of how radical and extreme Harris is—a picture that will probably become clear in the near future. Based on a cursory examination of polling data and other campaign mechanics, it appears that Harris is not off to the robust start that many would have you think.
To start with, in response to the evident Democrats and Harris supporters celebrating Kamala’s selection: Yes, in her early days as Biden’s likely successor, the vice president has reported record fundraising figures. She grew up to $80 million quite quickly. Although it is a significant figure, there are a few things to consider that make the startling statistic less remarkable than it first appears. Firstly, Democrats had completely stopped fundraising for their ticket a number of weeks before this. Both large and small contributors completely stopped their contributions as they lost confidence in Biden’s leadership. Thirteen days of pent-up contribution energy went into the Harris campaign after Biden said he was stepping down. That is to say, all she accomplished was to essentially recover the funds that the previous Biden-Harris ticket had lost over the course of a month. These funds were probably going to come in any case, as the Democrats had a candidate this time around who was not obviously mentally incapacitated to serve as President of the United States.
However, a closer examination of the actual data indicates that Harris may have a lower floor than Biden and that this might have a considerably more negative impact on Democrats as a whole. Republicans are the ones who are genuinely celebrating right now, albeit mainly in private but also occasionally in public. They are applauding loudly and feeling extremely fortunate that Democrats have chosen someone as radical as Harris to be their candidate through what is obviously a corrupt coronation and anything other than the grassroots and open “process” that the Democrats had promised.
In light of the tainted coronation, rather than an open process, BLM is now officially denouncing Harris and Democrats for ignoring everyone else in favor of easily sweeping her into the nomination:
According to preliminary polls, Harris’s nationwide lead against Trump might range from 2 percent to 10 percent. These statistics are appalling for Democrats’ chances of winning the electoral college, just as they were when Biden was the Democratic nominee. In the national popular vote, a 2 percent victory for Trump virtually guarantees him a landslide in the Electoral College; a 10 percent or more victory guarantees him territory beyond the mandate in the Electoral College. Even if the worst-case polling scenario for Trump were true—a Reuters survey released on Monday that showed Harris leading him by 2 percent across the country—Trump would still likely win the electoral college. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a Democrat, lost the presidential election in 2016 despite defeating Trump by a little over 2 percent in the popular vote throughout the country. Biden narrowly defeated Trump in the Electoral College and the national popular vote in 2020 by 4.5 percent. Harris must be well over 2 percent ahead of Trump in national polls in order for her to feel confident going into the general election. If that’s the highest she reaches on her best days, she and all the Democrats who are currently fuming will face a harsh awakening.
In a longer email made public on Tuesday, Trump’s pollster Tony Fabrizio addressed Harris’ brief “honeymoon” bump in the polls:
In his memo, Fabrizio argues that nothing really has changed or will change, and the immediate “Harris Honeymoon” effect will soon wear off, despite the best efforts of Democrats and establishment media outlets to portray the race as having “changed” significantly in the next few days using polls like this one from Reuters. Therefore, Fabrizio stated, “Harris cannot alter who she is or what she has done, even though the public polls may change in the near future and she may consolidate a bit more of the Democratic base.” “Pay attention”
Astute Democrats are not rushing to the coronation because they understand that this is true. T.J. Rooney, the former chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, has grave concerns about Harris’s prospects in the Keystone State. Reporter Salena Zito, who focuses on Pennsylvania, wrote this important passage for the Washington Examiner:
According to T.J. Rooney, a former chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, Harris will struggle even more due to her views on fossil fuels. In 2016, Hillary Clinton struggled to win over crucial smaller Pennsylvania counties like Erie, which ultimately cost her the election.
Rooney said that race had no bearing on her weaknesses. “Keep in mind that Barack Obama won counties like Cambria, Erie, Elk, Luzerne, and Northampton. Her electability in our state stems from her worldview, not gender,” he said.
According to Fabrizio’s statement, a National Public Radio (NPR)-Marist poll released just hours after his letter became public revealed that Trump was leading Harris by 1%, 46% to 45%:
For the record, this same pollster was one of the few who had Harris ahead of Trump just before Biden left, by a mere percentage, 50 to 49 (the majority of the others had Trump ahead, and most of them by a significant margin).
According to the most recent HarrisX poll for Forbes, Trump leads Harris by 9 percent to start the slightly longer than 100-day countdown to November 5. This suggests that all 50 states may be in play for him, and the battleground states will likely be Oregon, Washington State, Delaware, and Maryland rather than Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania. However, since we are living in the real world, we are aware that Trump likely has an idealized picture of the situation rather than the actual one. Now let’s examine the data from the relevant locations. Early polling from battleground states, including some important ones like Virginia and New Hampshire, indicates that Trump is leading Harris in both of them. Although Trump did not win these states in 2016 or 2020, he still won the presidency in 2016 without them, so if things go his way this time, he will almost surely win in 2024.
Even the New York Times poll, which favored Trump over Biden in Pennsylvania, also favored Trump over Harris in that state (although the Times gave Harris a slight advantage and Biden a disadvantage in Virginia).
Furthermore, polls from Democrat-run polling firms in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, and North Carolina demonstrate Trump’s decisive lead over Harris in each state:
Furthermore, early Democratic enthusiasm for a Harris ticket looks to be based more on “hope” than on fact, as even MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki acknowledged on live air. According to Kornacki this week, Harris’s popularity ratings and head-to-head polling numbers versus Trump are nearly as dismal as Biden’s were. Without a drastic change soon, it’s unlikely that circumstances will change during the campaign.
