Bob Sheak, Oct 4, 2024

The odds that Kamala Harris will defeat Trump in November have improved, but there are challenges. In this post, I refer to the polls, Harris’ policies, the debates, trends that favor Harris/Walz, Trump’s anti-democratic agenda, and concerns about the Electoral College.

I -The polls

Andrew Howard reports on the polls and how Harris and Trump are deadlocked in every battleground state (https://politico.com/news/20124/10/02/harris-trump-polls-00182150). Here’s some of what he writes.

“Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump remain neck and neck in all seven battleground states, according to new polls released Wednesday.

“The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter’s Swing State Project surveys, conducted by a bipartisan team of pollsters, shows Harris between 1 and 3 points ahead in five of the states, easily within the margin of error. In a sixth state, North Carolina, Harris and Trump were exactly tied.

“Harris leads Trump in Michigan by 3 percentage points, and she also leads by 1 or 2 points in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

“Trump is leading by 2 percentage points head-to-head in Georgia.

“In each of the states, the result is statistically unchanged since the last iteration of the survey in mid-August.”

“While Harris is virtually tied with Trump, Democrats running in other key statewide races have more significant leads across the map.

Senate races

“In Senate races, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego leads his GOP opponent Kari Lake in Arizona, 54 percent to 41 percent; in Michigan, Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin leads former Rep. Mike Rogers, 50 percent to 46 percent; Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen leads Republican Sam Brown in Nevada, 53 percent to 40 percent; Democratic Sen. Bob Casey leads Republican Dave McCormick, 52 percent to 45 percent, in Pennsylvania; and Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin holds a 2-point lead over GOP nominee Eric Hovde in Wisconsin.

“And in the North Carolina gubernatorial race, Josh Stein leads Mark Robinson, whose vulgar comments on a porn website were reported last month, 59 percent to 35 percent.

II. Harris’ policies

April Rubin offers a summary of the proposals (https://axios.com/2024/09/06/kamala-harris-policy-proposals-economy-abortion-immigration).

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Some of the major proposals Harris has announced or backed, across policy areas:

Economy

First-time homebuyers could receive a $25,000 tax credit as a shortage of available homes keeps prices high under an economic plan Harris outlined in August.

Harris also pitched tax breaks for homebuyers who build starter homes and those who rehabilitate older housing stock.

Capital gains tax of 28% could affect wealthy Americans, a pitch more than 10 points lower than what Biden has proposed.

This marked a move to the center,Axios’ Hans Nichols reported.

A small business tax credit could expand tenfold from $5,000 to $50,000.

She proposed reducing barriers to getting occupational licenses across state lines with a goal of 25 million new small business applications in her first term.

A ban on grocery price gouging could mirror existing state laws, although Harris hasn’t provided details on this policy.

38 states prohibit companies from increasing prices during emergencies.

On child tax credits, new parentscould receive $6,000 during the first year of their child’slife.

The earned income tax credit would expand for lower-income adults who aren’t raising kids.

Taxes on tips could be eliminated, in a rare policy position where Harris copied what Trump has promised service and hospitality workers.

Such a policy could incentivize workers to push harder for more tips, Axios’ Emily Peck reported.

Health

Abortion and reproductive care have been central to Harris’ campaign.

She said she would sign a law to restore Roe v. Wade, which protected federal abortion access, though incompletely as women across the U.S. faced barriers to accessing abortion and states could still enact strict bans.

The campaign kicked off a 50-stop bus tour focused on reproductive rights, zeroed in on battleground states. It started in Florida on Tuesday.

Programming at the Democratic National Convention in August reflected a frank approach to discussion abortion rights by platforming women who shared how bans impacted them, Axios’ Ivana Saric reported.

Out-of-pocket drug costs would cap at $2,000 per year for everyone and insulin copays at $35 per month.

Immigration

New security measures at the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico would be funded under a bipartisan border proposal that Harris said she’d support.

Trump, earlier this year, successfully urged congressional allies to oppose the bill.

Her stance on the border and immigration has flip-flopped from previously held, more liberal policy positions, Axios’ Alex Thompson and Hans Nichols reported.

Migrants would largely be barredfrom seeking asylum under the bipartisan proposal, CNN reported.

Energy

Fracking could survive under a Harris presidency.

She said last month in her first formal interview with CNN as the nomineethat she wouldn’t ban fracking, a reversal from a position she held during her first presidential run.

Reality check: A fracking bill would take an act of Congress that is unlikely anytime soon, Axios’ Ben Geman reported.

Foreign policy

Harris called for a hostage and ceasefire deal during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in July. While her tone has been perceived as more critical of Israel than Biden, she’s been playing a similar balancing act.

Harris said during her DNC keynote speech weeks later that said she would “always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself.” She said she and Biden were working to secure a deal and protect Palestinians’ “right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.” [But the US continues to provide Israel with the weapons it needs to continue the attacks on Palestinians in Gaza.]

The pro-Palestinian activists, including the Uncommitted National Movement, have protested at the DNC and at her campaign rallies.

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III – The debates

#1 – Harris vs. Trump

Kamala bested Trump in their debate, as reported widely after the debate. For example, NPR’s Domenico Montanaro reports that it wasn’t even close (https://npr.org/2024/09/11/g-s1-22023/debate-harris-trump-takeaways).

Here are 3 takeaways reported by Montanaro.

(1) This debate wasn’t close.

“Harris was far more dominant than Trump, from beginning to end. She called him ‘weak and wrong,’ inverting the political cliché that ‘strong and wrong’ beats ‘weak and right.’ Harris answered questions, then redirected and baited him on a host of issues.

“She got under Trump’s skin — something he usually tries to do — by saying that people at his rallies leave ‘early out of exhaustion and boredom,’ painting him as out of touch and a bad businessman for inheriting $400 million ‘on a silver platter and then filed for bankruptcy six times,’ and chiding him for being ‘fired by 81 million people’ in the 2020 election and now being ‘confused’ about losing.

“Harris addressed policy, including tax breaks for small businesses and parents and touting her idea for a first-time home-buyer credit for down payments. She repeatedly said, ‘I have a plan,’ while Trump was left saying, ‘I have concepts of a plan’ when it comes to replacing the Affordable Care Act.”

“Trump made the unusual move for a presidential candidate to go into the spin room after the debate and talk to reporters. That’s not something that’s normally done when someone has a good debate. That’s usually reserved for low-polling primary candidates, who felt they didn’t get enough time or attention during the debate.”

(2) The spotlight should now be on Trump’s incoherence and general lack of any serious grasp on policy.

“With a more-than-competent performance from Harris Tuesday, Trump’s lies, meandering, conspiracies and often general incoherence was made even more glaring.

“He wandered through conspiracies about, not just the election, but also about who is currently president (Joe Biden), the usual about immigrants who (aren’t actually) coming from “mental institutions and insane asylums” and the newly unusual (and debunked) about immigrants who (are not) “eating the dogs” or “cats.”

(3) Trump was on the defensive and evasive, even on issues that should benefit him — and didn’t land much, if anything, that stuck.

“Harris had Trump on the defensive from the get-go on the economy (about his tax cuts and tariffs), his jobs record, his handling of the pandemic and Jan. 6. There were times, even on immigration, when Trump decided to address a Harris attack instead of talking about the issue he ostensibly wants to talk most about.”

“He declined to say if he wanted Ukraine to win against Russia, wouldn’t answer if he had any regrets about his response to the violence on Jan. 6, and he twice refused to say if he would veto a national abortion ban, like his vice-presidential running mate said he would.

In fact, he went out of his way to say essentially that Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance doesn’t speak for him — in a clumsy and meandering way that led him to student loans.”

“Never mind that Republicans in Congress would not act to help relieve student loans or that Republican-led states sued to end Biden’s executive action on student-loan forgiveness. But Trump was digging the hole even deeper for himself on abortion rights.

“‘I did a great service in doing it,’ Trump said about the overturning of Roe. ‘It took courage to do it. And the Supreme Court had great courage in doing it. And I give tremendous credit to those six justices.’

“Nearly two-thirds have said they opposed the overturning of Roe.”

Montanaro concludes as follows. “Could this debate have changed some minds? Maybe. But views of Trump have been ingrained. This race is very much a coin flip, according to the polls, and that’s unlikely to change very much even after this debate, because of how hyper-polarized this country is.”

#2- Walz vs Vance

John Nichols, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation, offers some insights (https://thenation.com/article/politics/walz-vance-vice-presidential-debate-reality).

Republican vice-presidential candidate Senator JD Vance and Democratic vice-presidential candidate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz participated in a debate at the CBS Broadcast Center on October 1, 2024, in New York City.

Nichols writes: “JD Vance began his assault against reality with his response to the first question in what will probably be the only vice-presidential debate of the 2024 campaign. When asked whether he would support a preemptive Israeli strike on Iran, the senator from Ohio blamed the Democratic administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for the violence in the Middle East and the rest of the world. Then, he announced that, during his running mate’s one term as president, ‘Donald Trump actually delivered stability in the world.’ Trump, Vance claimed, ‘consistently made the world more secure.’”

“That was a jaw-dropping pronouncement about a scandal-plagued former president who cozied up to dictators, cheered on the spread of right-wing extremism across Europe, and supported vile attacks on refugees at home and abroad.”

Nichols continues. “

Overall, Walz proved up to the task of fact-checking Vance. He responded deftly to that claim from Vance that Trump had ‘delivered stability in the world’ by saying, ‘Look, our allies understand that Donald Trump is fickle. He will go to whoever has the most flattery or where it makes sense to him.’ Walz had already highlighted the damage done to America’s credibility ‘when our allies see Donald Trump turn towards Vladimir Putin, turn towards North Korea, when we start to see that type of fickleness about holding the coalitions together.’ And he told viewers, ‘It’s those that were closest to Donald Trump that understand how dangerous he is when the world is this dangerous. His chief of staff John Kelly said that he was the most flawed human being he ever met, and both of his secretaries of defense and his national security advisers said he should be nowhere near the White House.’

“Walz delivered the facts, pointing out that when Trump was in office he could have worked with ‘a coalition of nations that had boxed Iran’s nuclear program.’ Instead, Walz explained, ‘Donald Trump pulled that program and put nothing else in its place. So Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon they were before because of Donald Trump’s fickle leadership.’”

Nichols refers to the controversy over Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. Vance made the false claim that Haitian immigrants were stealing the pets of their neighbors in Springfield and eating them. On this issue, “Walz delivered a stinging critique of the lies Trump and Vance have told about Haitian immigrants who are legally in Springfield and who are credited by honest Republicans, such as Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, with having revitalized the community. The Democrat rightly accused Vance of seeking to ‘dehumanize and villainize other human beings.’”

There were other issues discussed, “with exchanges highlighting Vance’s extreme stances on reproductive rights, healthcare, childcare, and a host of other issues, including the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy—but it finally returned to immigration. When Vance repeated the wild claim that Harris is responsible for chaos at the nation’s southern border, the Democrat clarified that border crossings have, in recent months, been down compared to when Trump left office.”

IV – Some good news for Harris and Democrats

#1 – Overall, workers are better off now than they were under Trump

Dean Baker, the co-founder and the senior economist of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) and the author of several books, presents evidence that US workers are much better off today than they were during Trump’s presidency (https://commondreams.org/opinion/workers-better-off-under-biden).

This may well benefit Harris and Walz in November.

Baker writes: “First and foremost, workers are better off today because they overwhelmingly have jobs if they want them. They also are getting higher pay, even after adjusting for inflation. And they tell us they are much more satisfied at their jobs.

“When President Biden took office, the unemployment rate was 6.4 percent. It is currently 4.3 percent. For most of his presidency the unemployment rate has been below 4.0 percent, a stretch of low unemployment not seen in more than half a century.”

Baker points out that “wages for workers in the bottom ten percent of the wage distribution increased by 13.4 percent from before the pandemic, after adjusting for inflation.” Workers in the middle saw average increases of 3.0 percent after inflation. He notes that 3% is not great, but it’s better than it has been over the prior four decades, “when wages were often stagnate or falling.”

A tight labor market favors workers, giving many of them a choice of jobs. Under such circumstances, they often have the option of leaving jobs “where the pay is low, the workplace is unsafe, or the boss is a jerk.” Thus, in 2021-2023, workers switched jobs in record numbers: “Tens of millions of people quit their jobs and moved on to better ones. One result was that workers reported the highest rate of job satisfaction on record. This is a big deal, since most workers spend a large share of their waking hours on the job.”

Job growth slowed in the late three months of the Trump administration, with a paltry rate of increase of just 140,000.

“The Biden administration’s recovery package got back these jobs in less than a year and a half. The rapid job growth has continued so that we now have 6.4 million more jobs than we did before the pandemic. With the economy still growing at a good clip and inflation back to its pre-pandemic pace, for workers the future is bright.”

#2 – Trump is losing his advantage among voters on the economy

Abha Bhattarai, the economics correspondent for The Washington Post, also reports on evidence that “Trump is losing his edge on the economy among voters” (https://washingtonpost.com/business/2024/09/25/economy-election-harris-trump-polls).  Here’s some of what she writes.

“Although voters still favor former president Donald Trump over Harris on handling the economy, his advantage has dropped dramatically in recent weeks. Trump now averages a six-percentage-point edge on the economy, compared with a 12-point lead against President Joe Biden earlier this year, according to an analysis of five polls that measured voters’ opinions before and after Biden dropped out.

“A Fox News poll this month, for example, found that 51 percent of registered voters favor Trump on the economy, compared with 46 percent who favor Harris. That’s compared with a 15-point advantage Trump had over Biden in March. Other recent polls — by ABC-Ipsos, NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist, USA Today-Suffolk University and Quinnipiac University — show similar shifts.

“‘Voters are beginning to give [Harris] the benefit of the doubt — and that’s really significant,’ said Frank Luntz, a longtime GOP pollster. ‘Affordability is a top issue for voters, but Trump has failed to hold Harris to account or to tie her to Biden’s inflation failures.’”

“Underlying that sea change, analysts say, is the fact that Americans are feeling better about the economy. Prices are stabilizing, interest rates are coming down and wages are rising faster than inflation. At the same time, voters seem to view Harris as a clean slate, unburdened by the rapid run-up in prices that has plagued Biden for much of his presidency.” It also helps that prices have stabilized and Harris is focusing on issues important to middle-class voters, including affordable health care, housing and childcare.

“The shift in economic polling coincides with Americans’ improving views on the economy. Consumer sentiment, at its highest level in four months, has risen 40 percent from its low in June 2022, according to a closely watched survey from the University of Michigan. The latest figures show that Americans are feeling better about inflation, as well as the economy and their own finances. Researchers also noted that ‘a growing share of both Republicans and Democrats now anticipate a Harris win.’”

Trump’s proposed tax cuts and spending proposals “would add $5.8 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade — roughly five times the $1.2 trillion Harris’s plans would cost in the same period, according to estimates from the Penn Wharton Budget Model.”

“More than 400 economists and former U.S. policymakers endorsed Harris for president in an open letter this week, calling her ‘a strong steward of the U.S. economy.’ Meanwhile, they said Trump’s proposals ‘risk reigniting inflation and threaten the United States’ global standing and domestic economic stability.’”

Harris and the Democrats have advantages going into the November elections. The Harris/Walz domestic policy agenda is strong. They are raising funds to support their efforts. They have organizations aimed at getting out the vote in all states. And Harris and Walz are conducting an energetic campaign across the country.

V – Trump’s Republican Party

While the Trump/Republican priorities, especially as contained in the 900+page Project 2025, are extreme and anti-democratic, there are tens of millions of cult-like Trump supporters, along with support from rich and powerful people and organizations, who will go along with whatever Trump wants, that is, an authoritarian/fascist presidency and executive branch with Trump as the dominating leader. He and his party will continue their attempts to suppress the votes of opponents. In Georgia, Republican election officials have mandated that all votes must be hand counted, thus delaying the results for weeks or more.

Trump is for maximizing the development and use of fossil fuels, with no regard for the increasingly destructive climate effects. He says he will order massive deportations and detentions of millions of undocumented residents and build walls on the southern border to keep most of them from entering the US, despite international asylum laws and despite the dire economic consequences of potentially losing workers who contribute to local economies and pay taxes. He will support the imposition of high tariffs, regardless of their inflationary effects. He will support tax cuts for the rich and corporations and drive-up inequality. He will likely support a national abortion ban or something like it. He is for work requirements for those who get government benefits (e.g., for disability). He will support the continuation of the Electoral College. Chris Walker finds that two-thirds of Americans back ending the Electoral College (https://truthout.org/articles/nearly-two-thirds-of-americans-back-ending-the-electoral-college).  It is a dystopian vision. As president, Trump will likely withdraw the country from NATO, and will support authoritarian governments.

Consider two examples of the extreme and anti-democratic implications of Trump’s and Republican following and agenda.

#1 – A cult-like following

Dana Milbank, opinion columnist for The Washington Post, considers “why Trump supporters will believe absolutely anything” Trump says (https://washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/12/trump-jesus-mandela-lincoln). Milbank develops his argument in a book, “The Destructionists: The 25-Year Crackup of the Republican Party.”

Trump presents himself as a great leader, perhaps one of the greatest in all of human history. Milbank reports, for example, that in April of 2024 Trump “’styled himself ‘a Modern Day Nelson Mandela.’” Of course, this is absurd but an example of Trump’s “pathological narcissism.” (See the book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President”).

His tens of millions of die-hard followers have been unquestioning in their adherence to Trump’s claims. Milbank refers to a Post-Schar School poll showing  just how deep this pathological adherence runs.

“As The Post’s Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, and pollsters Scott Clement and Emily Guskin report, Trump’s supporters have become substantially more persuaded by disinformation than they were six years ago. They are more likely to say today that the 2016 election was marred by millions of fraudulent votes and that Russia did not interfere in that election — both demonstrably untrue. A majority of strong Trump supporters today believe his provably false assertions that Joe Biden won the 2020 election because of fraud, that the United States funds most of NATO’s budget and that global temperatures are rising because of natural, not human, causes. While only 28 percent of Americans believe Trump’s false claims on average, those who list Fox News as a primary news source are 13 percentage points more likely to accept the disinformation as true.”

#2 – Violence against opponents is acceptable

Thom Hartmann, a talk-show host and the author of more than 25 books,” analyzes how “Trump Has Delivered Unto Us a Nation of Fascist Bullies” (https://commondreams.org/opinion/trump-fascist-bully).

“Brownshirts, Blackshirts, Proud Boys, Three Percenters, you name it; they’re all mostly made up of men deeply insecure about their own masculinity or role in the world who find safety and meaning by joining the über-bully’s gang.”

Hartmann continues.

“To some extent the groundwork for this bullying was laid by a group of rightwing billionaires who believed they could keep their own taxes low by bullying politicians and voters who wanted ‘nice things’ for average Americans like a national healthcare system.

“They funded astroturf groups like the Tea Party to harass ‘socialist’ Democrats inclined to vote for President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, even though it was a massive giveaway to the insurance industry that was first written by the Heritage Foundation and put into place in Massachusetts by then-Governor Mitt Romney.

“These, in turn, inspired other groups more closely aligned to the Klan — America’s first national bully group — to show up in the streets with torches and swastikas chanting, ‘Jews will not replace us’ as they murdered a young counter-protestor, Heather Heyer.

“And that, of course, led to the murder of three police officers and the death of five others — and the near death of our democratic republican form of government — at the hands of Trump’s mob on January 6th.

“America is today suffering from a surfeit of bullying. It drained many of us of our hope and optimism, much as it did in the 1950s when Joe McCarthy last led a national bullying campaign. It was causing people to check out of the political process, to essentially give up like an abused spouse, or to retreat into sports, music, and hours of binge-watched TV dramas.

“America, in other words, has been suffering for nine long years from being tortured by an unrepentant bully and the ‘tough guys’ who attached themselves to him.”

“If we don’t take on bullies — particularly fascist bullies — they keep going further and further until either they win or you fight back and defeat them.”

“That’s because bullies never stop, unless they are stopped by somebody stronger than them. And, most importantly, every time they win they set their sights on the next conquest. Giving in to their demands only creates a newer and more elaborate set of demands. Responding to their bullying with anything other than a literal, verbal, or metaphorical punch in the face is a waste of time.”

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Concluding thoughts

With just a month away from the election, polls indicate that Harris and Trump are virtually tied in crucial swing states. Republicans are doing their best to reduce Democratic turnout, while Democrats under Harris are doing the opposite, namely, to encourage voting. Indeed, Harris says, as president, she will govern for all Americans. Unfortunately, the outcome will not be determined by the popular vote in most states, but rather by the winner-take-all Electoral College. Sarah Pruitt describes how Electoral College Electors are chosen

(https://history.com/news/electors-chosen-electoral-college).

“There are 538 total electors, including one for each U.S. senator and representative and three electors representing the District of Columbia, and presidential candidates need a majority of 270 votes to win the White House. Most of the time—but not always—the winner of the Electoral College is also the winner of the popular vote.” For example, Trump won the Electoral College in 2016 but lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by almost 3 million.

The Democrats have a chance to win both the popular vote and the Electoral College. However, Trump and the Republicans will try to create chaos, delay the vote and challenge outcomes they don’t like. They did not succeed in 2020, but they won’t give up.

Then there are unexpected events. Dockworkers at ports from Maine to Texas began walking picket lines early Tuesday, Oct. 1,  in a strike over wages and automation that could reignite inflation and cause shortages of goods if it goes on more than a few weeks. It’s not clear yet which political party will gain or lose from the strike. But it is another wildcard variable that opens up opportunities for Trump to stoke fears on the legitimacy of the election. There are at least two other wildcards. How many votes will Democrats lose because of the Biden administration’ support of Israel’s war on Palestinians or because of Harris’s support for fracking.