Snap out of it, Democrats. Take a deep breath and stop hyperventilating. Vice President Kamala Harris has maintained a consistent lead in the national polls, and there is no way anyone can be certain which way the swing states are swinging until the votes are counted. Stop all the doomscrolling and go win the election.
Democratic Party guru David Axelrod fretted publicly that Harris is not doing enough barnstorming. Jamal Simmons, the vice president’s former communications director, told the Hill that, given the unknowns about how Harris’s race and gender might influence the vote, “if you’re not nervous, you’re not paying attention.” Anecdotally, the question readers most frequently ask me is: Why doesn’t Harris have a bigger lead?
The nation has been here twice before, facing the possibility that Donald Trump will be elected president. In 2016, we didn’t take the threat seriously enough — hence the angst that the “Never Trump” majority is feeling right now. But don’t forget 2020, when Joe Biden not only defeated Trump but also won traditionally Republican states such as Georgia and Arizona. There is no rule that says all Election Day surprises must be bad.
There is nothing more that the polls can tell us. There is nothing much that they’ve told us all along, except that the race is within the margin of error. Since August, Harris has been ahead in the polling averages. On Monday, RealClearPolitics said she was 1.7 points ahead; the ABC News 538 average had her up by 2.4 points; and the Economist had her leading by 3.2 points.
Too close for comfort? Sure. But imagine the reverse: if it were Trump with the margin-of-error lead. How much more uncomfortable would that be?
And though Trump did outperform his polling in 2016 and 2020, it doesn’t take a PhD in statistics to know that two data points are a shaky foundation on which to establish a general rule, especially since there is a more recent contravening data point: the 2022 midterm election, in which Democrats did better than expected. Remember how Republicans crowed about the red wave that was going to give them control of the Senate and a huge majority in the House? Remember how that worked out for them?
So no one should be intimidated by the fact that the GOP is crowing now as if Trump has already won. This election will not be decided by vibes. It will be decided by votes.
David Plouffe, the Democratic strategist who plotted Barack Obama’s 2008 victory — and now is advising the Harris campaign — gave his prediction in an interview with New York magazine: “This is going to be close. And this one may be close in more states than we’ve seen in a long time. We could have six, seven states come down to a point, point-and-a-half. That’s probably where this is headed.”
That might not be ideal in terms of the Democratic Party’s collective blood pressure. But a tight contest is one that Harris should be better positioned than Trump to win.
Since Harris replaced Biden on the ticket, her campaign has raised staggering amounts of money — more than $1 billion. That haul has allowed the campaign to open more than 350 offices with more than 2,500 staff members in battleground states alone, and to support hundreds of thousands of volunteers across the country. The Trump campaign, by contrast, has outsourced much of its fieldwork to the ostensibly independent political action committees that support Trump’s candidacy, including Turning Point Action and billionaire Elon Musk’s America PAC.
In a close election, the Harris campaign should have more capacity to get its voters to the polls. Dan Kanninen, the campaign’s battleground states director, told The Post: “We’re mobilizing voters but also persuading people. We need to persuade even our own folks — persuade them to be engaged in the election, to understand the stakes and to take that extra step of not only voting but bringing friends and family to vote.”
The Trump campaign’s focus is on beating the bushes for potential supporters who don’t usually bother to vote. The Harris campaign is trying to do the same thing — and Democrats who are spending too much time wringing their hands could do something useful by impressing upon occasional voters that this election is too important to sit out.
Early voting and mail-in voting have already begun in some states. In 2020, Trump told his followers that any votes not cast in person on Election Day were suspect. Now, since this is the way so many Americans vote, Trump is trying to change his tune — while at the same time already claiming that the vote will be “rigged.” His followers have never demanded consistency from him, but he should worry that this switcheroo could leave some voters behind.
Democrats needing a confidence boost should consider the fact that in 2016 and 2020, Trump’s share of the national vote fell short of 47 percent. There is no reason Harris shouldn’t have a higher ceiling. And there is no reason Democrats, instead of worrying so much, can’t go out there and help her shatter it.
