As Harris Support Stagnates, She Pays for Her Past Progressivism
Many Democrats have lived in an agitated state over the last month, seemingly obsessing over every single poll in every swing state, changes in survey results that were little more than statistical noise, the splitting of psephological hairs. Now with a small but visible shift in the direction of former President Trump over the last four or five days, one wonders whether Democrats have the emotional bandwidth to cope. The shift in numbers is neither dramatic nor decisive, but it appears across the swing states and national surveys alike, making it too much to ignore.
Using Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin model, Pennsylvania is now dead even, while Harris is ahead by three-tenths of a percentage point in Wisconsin, five-tenths of a percent in Michigan, and six-tenths of a percent in Nevada. Trump is ahead by eight-tenths of a percentage point in North Carolina, 1.6 percent in Georgia, and 1.7 percent in Arizona. All should be considered basically even, although the overall landscape is a bit better for Trump now than it was a week or a month ago.
The New York Times average of polls shows a different sequence, but fundamentally similar results and direction: Harris up 1 point in Wisconsin, while Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania are dead even. Trump has 2-point leads in both Arizona and Georgia.
Interestingly, before the debate between President Biden and Trump, the only plausible reelection route for the incumbent was winning the three Frost Belt swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, as well as Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District (where Democrats now clearly lead). Under such a scenario, Biden would have received precisely 270 Electoral College votes, the bare minimum majority. Today, while it is not the only plausible combination of states for Harris to win, it still seems the most likely way for her to hit 270.
Even the national vote margin has eroded to a point that must make the Harris campaign nervous. A 2-point Harris win in the popular vote is unlikely to translate into 270 electors, given the more efficient distribution of Republican votes nationwide.
A question that Democrats ought to be asking themselves is, “Why should it be this hard to beat Donald Trump this year, with all of his baggage?” Although always an unorthodox campaigner, Trump’s eccentricities are even closer to the surface this year. Who would have thought that a major-party nominee for a president would go to the hometown of a celebrated athlete, in this case to Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where Arnold Palmer was born, and comment on the size of the golfing great’s male anatomy, and that this would be the candidate embraced by white, evangelical Christians? (On my first visit to Latrobe, I found it far more interesting that the banana split was invented there.)
One thing we are witnessing today is the demise of our two major political parties as moderating influences. Given their ideological and geographic diversity, each once served to keep their candidates from veering off to the extremes. Those days are over.
Today, Harris is paying the price for positions taken and statements made when she and most of the other Democrats vying for the party’s nomination in 2019 were veering off into exotic territory on the Left.
That legacy makes it even harder to pull over to her side Trump-skeptical Republicans and independents, people who would prefer he not be in their living rooms and on their television sets for the next four years. But whether they are “Haley Republicans” or something else, many are holding back because they see the last four years as a bridge too far to the left.
When Biden began to lock up the Democratic nomination in the spring of 2020, he did so as a center-left candidate, certainly not as moderate as Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, former Colorado Gov. John Hicklenlooper, Sen. Michael Bennet, or former Rep. John Delaney, but certainly not in the neighborhood of Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. While in the Senate, Biden may not have been in the center of the country ideologically, but he was certainly in the center of his party.
Once in office, however, the Biden-Harris administration charted a course that was decidedly more progressive than that of either Presidents Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. Whether it was the American Rescue Plan, passed about nine months after the 2020 recession ended, or the $1,400 stimulus checks that spiked inflation faster and higher than in comparable countries, plenty of persuadable voters feel like the Biden administration simply took too big a swing. There is no question that the cost of living, currently 20 percent higher than it was when Biden took office, has been one of the two biggest political liabilities that Democrats have had to contend with this year, the other being the border and immigration policies.
Many of those swing voters hail from the pro-business, Chamber of Commerce–friendly wing of the GOP. They bristle at the administration's far more acrimonious relationship with corporate America, especially on the regulatory and the antitrust front, an aggressiveness that was unheard of the last two times Democrats occupied the White House. I know I slept better at night knowing that the vigilant Federal Trade Commission was stepping in to prevent a merger of luxury brands Coach, KateSpade, and Michael Kors.
Although some attribute it to Oscar Wilde, it was Samuel Johnson who first said that second marriages are the triumph of hope over experience. Democrats this year have to pray that in the minds of the ambivalent, persuadable, and undecided voters who will determine the outcome of this election, hope that Harris will do better prevails over the experience of the last four years.
This article was originally published for the National Journal on Oct. 21, 2024.