Real Clear
Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst addresses relevant political and social issues of our times in a straightforward and honest manner. Taking on anti-logic factions that are growing in society. News and opinions that you can rely on for integrity and depth!
Real Clear
State of the Race October 2024
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Can Kamala Harris overcome the challenges that echo Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, or will Donald Trump once again defy polling expectations to reclaim the presidency? As we dissect the 2024 U.S. presidential election, we confront the tense political atmosphere where a voter's choice is often misjudged as a measure of their personal worth. We scrutinize Harris's narrow lead in the RealClearPolitics average and the significant hurdles her campaign faces in battleground states like Michigan. With Trump gaining ground and historical trends of under-polling, the stakes are high. We offer an analysis of Harris’s recent media engagements, where her struggle with coherence under pressure could sway undecided voters, and why a Trump victory might be on the horizon.
Comparing Trump and Harris, we explore the public's weariness of Trump's antics and yet how Harris's interviews have unexpectedly cast him in a more articulate light. We question the Democratic Party's strategic decisions, pondering the potential advantages of alternative candidates and why Harris's absence from key events like the Al Smith dinner may have reinforced negative perceptions. We also consider how Harris's current challenges parallel those faced by Clinton in 2016, particularly in engaging with MAGA voters. As betting odds shift in Trump's favor, we discuss how public comments and media engagement shape electoral outcomes and invite listeners to reflect on the evolving political landscape with us.
And good morning everybody. It is Sunday, october 20th 2024. And I wanted to come to you with my perspective on the race and election dynamics. As most of you know, at this point, I like talking about political dynamics and features of the race rather than telling you what I think is the right or wrong way to cast your vote or to believe I'll say before I get into the political dynamics. I hope that Americans can at some point start to at least try to get along with one another, despite who someone is voting for. We've begun using someone's presidential ballot casting as a total personality measure for the worth of the individual, and I think that's a shame. What hope do we have for being able to do the chief developmental task of any emerging adult, which is to integrate good and bad aspects of the other person? And we've become so borderline as a nation that we've begun assuming that someone has a personality profile that is indicated by whether they are a Trump supporter quote-unquote or a Harris supporter, and we may have a rough estimate as to whether we're going to get along with someone based on how they cast their ballot, but I think we probably ought to behave as though those are not good prognosticators. Nevertheless, here we are really close to the November 5th election. A very tight race, but is it so? The RCP average for Harris versus Trump is Harris up 0.9.
Speaker 1:But let's look closer at those polls. Harris had a sugar high when she came into the election about three months ago and that's really eroding. There are signs that the Harris campaign is in a tailspin. They're leaving certain areas entirely. Michigan is seeing an exodus of Harris campaign expenditures, indicating that they likely think that they're going to lose it and they're probably ushering those funds over into Pennsylvania. Harris also started to lose steam around October 11th through 13th and Trump then started to see an uptick in his polling. He's actually ahead in recent polls from Fox, rasmussen, tip and Atlas, and so the Harris campaign has a 0.9% lead overall. But if you look at the same polls on October 20th in this day in history, but if you look at the same polls on October 20th in this day in history, biden was up almost nine points and Clinton was up over six points. The fact that Trump is leading by three in the most recent polls and two respectively and Harris has only a 0.9% edge may indicate what I had predicted months ago, which is that Trump is under-polling, as he usually does, but he's not under-polling anywhere near what he historically has been. I think this indicates that we're going to see a Trump victory, although it's going to be a very tense election night. I don't think we're going to know the clear results on election night. I think that is going to drag into the next day, probably two or three days later, but ultimately we're going to see a Trump victory.
Speaker 1:Now, everyone listening on the left side of the spectrum just hold on to your seats. I'm not saying you have to view that as a good thing. Again, this is a political analysis. We're looking at the dynamics involved in the election. That being said, I think it's pretty clear at this point that Harris is losing steam as a candidate.
Speaker 1:She recently had a 60 Minutes interview and she also had a Fox News interview with Brett Baer. Brett Baer was tough with her, as he knew he needed to be and as everybody probably expected he would be coming from Fox, although he's a pretty even-handed anchor as far as Fox goes and in general most of the time. The issue was that Harris came in 15 minutes late and then tried to cap the interview at 20 minutes and knew that he was up against a six o'clock news hour live for his program and so she then was planning to grandstand and basically filibuster through the interview and he wasn't going to let her do that. When you look at these interviews you have to understand it really is the campaign against the interviewer and the campaign is trying to bloviate and filibuster so that they can use the allotted time to take away from the strategy of the interviewer. The interviewer has to fight with the candidate, especially if they're not coming from the strategy of the interviewer. The interviewer has to fight with the candidate, especially if they're not coming from the same camp, because they are actually competing for the airspace. It's really a boxing match.
Speaker 1:That being said, I think Baer was a little too heavy-handed. He came out the gate a bit too aggressive and I don't think that actually is as effective for the aims that he was trying to achieve. And actually, whitaker's interview on 60 Minutes was much more effective and, I think, much more catastrophic for Harris. Whitaker interviewed her in a completely, from what I could tell, neutral stance. His tact was not aggressive, he was extremely level and well-mannered and so forth with her. Now, of course, there was some controversy around 60 word salad and then, when the program actually aired, they had inserted a different answer, meaning that potentially they either synthesized that from her various responses or gave her a second chance at the question. If that's true, obviously they've lost total credibility. But don't let that blind you from the realities of that interview. It was catastrophic for Harris. She didn't answer a single question, as far as I could tell, coherently, and she hasn't been doing that in any of her interviews.
Speaker 1:This is scaring people who are actually watching from a substantive basis. I'm not talking about people who have already made up their minds. There are still people who are thinking about the candidates. I know that's hard to believe, but there are people like that. Whether they're in swing states or not, they exist, and I think a lot of them are viewing Harris and saying she gets irascible when people challenge her and she does.
Speaker 1:By the way, if you watch the interviews, especially from the seat of a psychoanalyst like I'm coming from, you can see her perturbation. When people challenge her, she becomes not only flustered like deer in the headlights, but also quite angry. You can see this seething up in her. And then she takes this kind of admonishment stance, as if to tell the interviewer how dare you ask me this question and I'm going to basically scold you and act as though I am aghast that you would not already come from a position of assuming that I am going to be perfect on this matter without telling you specifically what my policy positions will be. As far as her specific policy positions, she has not spelled them out in these interviews, and then she told Brett Baer that if people want to understand her specifics, they should go to her website and read through the I can't remember exactly what she said 85 pages or something on policy positions. So, in other words, go to the wonks who are creating my policies for me. Don't ask me directly to have command of the knowledge.
Speaker 1:I believe that this is actually causing her campaign to backslide. I think that this dismal performance is causing the polls to be what they are, which is, since the 11th, through the 14th and through the 19th Trump plus two, harris plus one for Emerson, trump plus two plus three, and that's where the trend of the likely voting is going. Keep in mind these voting polls are conducted with almost a captive audience. They're going back to a return pool rather than randomizing their groups every time, and so my pointing that out is to say that these may actually underestimate the amount that Trump is likely to come out on top in these various states, especially the battlegrounds of Arizona, nevada, wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania, north Carolina, georgia. North Carolina, I think, is likely to go strongly towards Trump, where it should be a battleground state. There has been a catastrophe there with the hurricanes and people are very upset with FEMA. Again, whether they should be or not, in your eyes they are, and I think they likely view their current condition as associated with the Biden-Harris campaign, and anytime that happens, you're likely to see a shift towards the opposing candidate. And so North Carolina may be firmly in Trump territory, but Georgia, in my view, is going to be a true toss-up. Pennsylvania, obviously, is where the heat of the moment is at. Michigan, I think, is going toward Trump, as is Wisconsin. Nevada, I think, is also going to swing towards Trump, and Arizona, I'm not sure. Remember what happened last time it actually swung the other way, towards Biden. So I think we're likely to see more of a toss-up in Arizona and Georgia. I should say Pennsylvania as well. We've got three real toss-ups Arizona, pennsylvania and Georgia, and then we've got Nevada, wisconsin, michigan and North Carolina, I think, going strongly for Trump. What does this mean? Well, it likely means that Trump is going to win the electoral college and Harris is going to win the national popular vote, very similarly to what happened in 2016.
Speaker 1:Now there actually has been a pact that has been established by 17 states to have their electoral votes follow the national popular vote instead of the vote in their state the popular vote in their state. This national popular vote compact has been enacted, according to nationalpopularvotecom, by 17 states and the District of Columbia and the District of Columbia, and the states include Delaware, hawaii, maine, rhode Island, vermont, colorado, connecticut, maryland, massachusetts, minnesota, new Jersey, new Mexico, oregon and Washington, as well as California, illinois and New York. These jurisdictions have 209 of the 270 electoral votes needed to activate the law. What does this mean? It means that the national popular vote law will take effect when enacted by states with a majority of the electoral votes 270 of the 538. At that point, the presidential candidate receiving the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC will get the electoral votes from all of the enacting states, and this means that the candidate receiving the most popular votes nationwide will be guaranteed enough electoral votes to become president. This is maybe the most important interstate legislation compact in our lifetimes and it's really not getting a whole lot of news. So here's the rub with this no more technicalities. Here's the rub. What this means is, if this takes hold and gains momentum, that we will have presidents elected by cities, because the cities have the most people, the most population. No longer will rural or flyover states have any say as to who is president. The Electoral College was enacted because they knew that there were geographical disparities and differences in such a large, diverse region called the United States that they needed to have something that made sure that the minority positions of various regions was taken into account for legislation. This is basically an overturning of the founding vision for United States politics, returning to the politics on stage and so forth.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of people are very fatigued with Trump right now. I must admit some fatigue with his antics, but, as Sam Harris once said, he was watching a clip of George W Bush and, by contrast, he thought that Trump made George W Bush look like a Rhodes Scholar. And I have to retort to Sam Harris that Kamala Harris in her interviews I never thought this would be possible is somehow making Trump look well informed and articulate and, in contrast to Harris, he does seem much more informed on various matters like economics and foreign affairs. This is, I think, obvious to people watching. And I always said both parties, since Trump and Biden seemed to be electing the only candidates who could possibly lose to the other. And then I thought, if they have a chance to ditch Biden because of his age and senility, they surely would pick someone who would be an easy conqueror over Trump.
Speaker 1:Strange coronation avoiding a convention where they could have had a Newsom who I think would have easily bested Trump based on his popularity and suave, I think. What you will of him. I don't actually like his politics at all, but he's a pretty good politician, at least for 15-minute soundbites. But they coronated Harris, which was very strange because most people inside the politics, inside the Beltway, are apt to say everyone knew she was not going to be a good candidate. It would be a disaster that it would be a likely Trump win, and so it's very strange to see how she was coronated and circumvented an open convention. They could have gone with a Gretchen Whitmer, although she's had some pretty embarrassing publicity recently. They could have had Amy, a gretchen whitmer, although she's had some pretty embarrassing publicity recently. They could have had amy klobuchar come out, just a a number of people could have been more effective in going against trump almost anybody who has the ability to articulate a basic position in response to a question. Harris doesn't seem to be able to do that. She had one good moment in the debate against Trump where she was very well prepared and she goaded him and he fell for it and essentially allowed himself to be bested that night.
Speaker 1:The charity dinner in New York City. Every presidential candidate has gone, except for Mondale in 1981. And that didn't turn out so well for him. And I think I know why Harris didn't go. I think because Trump is brutal at these dinners, not in a good way, by the way, I actually really think that he does a terrible job.
Speaker 1:At the Al Smith dinner, he reads the jokes as if they're not his. They aren't his and we have joke writers writing them for each candidate. But if you look back at, say, romney and Obama, they were really enjoying themselves. They got into the role of reading the jokes. They laughed with and at each other and it was just a nice evening when Trump goes to these, say, in 2016, with Hillary, and then this past week he reads the jokes while commenting on the fact that they're stupid jokes Corny and boy, that was a bad joke and so forth and talks about the joke writers. In other words, he dispossesses the jokes and then he peppers in actual critical commentary on his opponent. That's not what the night is for. It's very disrespectful. It's a departure from even basic momentary parlance of our comedy.
Speaker 1:And I think Harris didn't want to go because of it. I think she knew she'd be sitting there and he would be making jabs at her and so forth. That being said, my response to that is Get over yourself and go. Your constituents want you to be there. It actually isn't about your personal sensitivities. And there's an additional layer to this. As I'd mentioned, she ventures into word salad in her interviews. She has not been doing well. I think her campaign may actually have been worried that she would be terrible reading from the cards.
Speaker 1:Mind you, there is no teleprompter allowed for the presenters for the presidential candidates at the Al Smith dinner. They can bring up paper, but they cannot read from teleprompters. And she had a real debacle recently where her teleprompter went out and she looked like a deer in the headlights. She didn't know what to do. It was quite embarrassing for her. I'm sure I don't think, in addition to enduring Trump, that she wanted to be there or her campaign wanted her there without the use of a teleprompter, and so what she did was she pre-recorded something with Molly Shannon, a former star from SNL, and it just didn't work. It really didn't work.
Speaker 1:As rough around the edges as Trump is, he went, he endured the roast by Jim Gaffigan, he took it on the chin, as he always does, and then he delivered his remarks, as rough around the edges and as departing from parlance as they are. He did it. He went there. She didn't. She didn't. I think that Gaffigan said it well.
Speaker 1:The emcee where he said big mistake not coming. This is a room of Catholics and Jews in New York City. This is a layup for any Democrat candidate and she avoided. Her recorded video was in no way self-deprecating. It relied on Molly Shannon to provide some kind of strange supportive I don't know how to describe it. She had revived one of her characters from SNL, while Harris stood aside looking at Shannon's character, askance, as if the character was absurd, and Harris was this regal person who just couldn't believe in the strangeness of Shannon's character, and that's all it was.
Speaker 1:I think they're trying to preserve her in the image of some kind of unassailable character who wouldn't sink down to even sharing space with Trump. That may have been what they hoped would come across to viewers. I don't think that's going to work. I think it looks like avoidance when your own emcee is calling you out for avoidance and then even news stations and papers of record, who are typically supportive of the Democrat candidate, are commenting in the headlines, no less, that she made a terrible error, an unforced error, by not attending. I think she loses even more points. Will she lose these points in the swing states? I don't know, but this was not a good move on her end and it comes down to the interpersonal dynamics between the candidates. Trump has made some unforced errors. Where he said I hate Taylor Swift in response to Swift endorsing Harris Very unforced, stupid error. No need to alienate three to six million working class white women, probably in the center of the country, largely inhabiting the swing states you need. And because of Trump's brusqueness and Harris's relative political immaturity, she avoided the Al Smith dinner complete unforced error and she's going to lose some points for that.
Speaker 1:Like I've always said, each party seems to be electing the only candidate now who could possibly lose to the other, and my closing remarks here will map onto my opening remarks. Enjoy the political dynamics for what they are. I enjoy analyzing the political factors at play and I really try not to demonize my fellow American based on who they're voting for. Roger Whitaker asked Harris you've characterized President Trump as a racist and so forth and all the rest, yet roughly half the country is voting for him. How do you explain that? She really wasn't able to do that? And I think that our politics Harris and Trump as well, to a large extent although ironically less so than Harris have been characterizing the other side as bad people.
Speaker 1:She's falling into the same trap that Hillary Clinton fell into in 2016 with the basket of deplorables comment. When she made that comment, she lost the election. She maybe was going to anyways, but she was going to lose it by a slimmer margin. But when she referred to Trump supporters as a basket of deplorables, it was game over. Harris has been making similar mistakes. She is not courting MAGA voters Now, of course, maga voters are not going to vote for Harris, but you have to publicly court them so that you appear like you're open. She does not appear that way, and Whitaker was onto her there. That's why I say he was a much more effective interviewer than Baer was, though coming from a more hospitable stance he was actually much more effective, probably because she had her guard down and didn't think it was going to be a challenging interview. When I watched those interviews side by side, I think there's no question 60 Minutes was much more damning for her. No one on the other side is going to be watching Fox News and thinking that it has much to offer their perspective.
Speaker 1:And final comment on the political dynamics here the betting odds in Vegas are tilting pretty heavily toward Trump at this point. This has been a happening over the last couple weeks, which roughly coincides with the reversal of those polls that I'd mentioned earlier. So is Vegas a good reference for what's going to happen? I don't know, but they are betting their money that Trump is going to win. Those are my thoughts for this Sunday. Enjoy yourselves, enjoy your weekend prior to going into this next work week. Life goes by at the pace of weeks, I find, and in this divisive world of our politics, maybe this week you try to just keep an open, receptive mindset towards your fellow human, whichever way they cast their vote.