18 days and Counting -- Before Counting

The presidential race is close.  We know it’s close.  Not the general election vote, I’m sure that Harris will win that by many millions, but in the Electoral College with the swing states.  Very close.  But there have been six moments this week where Trump showed himself in more trouble than the polls show.  Five of those moments have been widely reported.  One hasn’t been mentioned at all, and it was (in some ways) the most revealing of all.

It began with Trump’s Dance Party, where he took five questions at a Town Hall and then just stopped, and for the next 39 minutes played a mixed tape of favorite tunes and swayed and danced to it.  This is not normal.  To any MAGOP, it should be disturbing for any number of reasons, if only, at best, to show how unfocused Trump is with less than three weeks to go in a tight election.  But that’s “at best.”  At worst, it showed pronounced signs of his early dementia.  With other reasons in between.

This related to all the cancellations of major events Trump has made recently – a second debate, an interview on “60 Minutes,” a CNBC interview scheduled for after the Dance Party, and an NRA rally.  And all of that in contrast to Kamala Harris going into the belly of the beast and doing an interview on Fox – along with her “60 Minutes” interview, and interviews on “The View,” on the highly-popular “Call My Daddy” podcast, the highly-popular Charlamagne Tha God podcast, and with Howard Stern.  It showed her courage and vibrancy as opposed to Trump’s cowardice and weakness as a slowing 78-year-old man.

Third, the other day, at a Univision Town Hall, in answer to a blunt question from a Republican who isn’t registered but wanted to be convinced to vote for Trump, and asked about Trump’s failings on January 6 and handling COVID, Trump described the Insurrection as a “Day of Love”.  As the camera panned the room, all you could see was a wall of stone-faced women and the man twisting his head.  Afterwards, talking to the Univision host, the man was asked if he had decided now who he would be voting for.  He replied, “I will not be voting for Trump.”  It’s hard not to see that as an answer for many other undecided voters watching and looking for a good response from Trump.

Additionally, as part of Trump’s long response to the same question, he talked about the Insurrectionists as "”we" – and the police doing their jobs trying to stop a breach of the U.S. Capitol as “the others.  It stood out that Trump publicly put him on the side of the Insurrectionists.  He’s done this at least once before, sort of correcting himself, and it could have been taken as a slip.  This, repeating it, and so pointedly as part of his long answer, could not be taken as a slip.  It was Trump saying out loud who he was and who he stood with – and against.  And the “against” was law enforcement protecting democracy.

And fifth, in his MAGOP-packed “Town Hall” event on Fox, specifically for women, Trump described himself as the “Father of IVF.”  A subject every women in the room was certainly well-versed in.  And Trump explained, as the “Father,” that he learned about IVF just eight months ago when a “fantastically beautiful” senator called him and explained what the IVF issue was in “two minutes.”  None of that could have gone over well with that roomful of women and most women watching – for an event schedule most certainly because Trump already had terrible support among women.  And this was a deeply-friendly audience.  You could almost sense the paint peeling off the wall with his condescending, paternalistic, foolish answer.  Not helped by him also going "full fascist" during the event by saying he wanted to use the military to go against his American opponents that he called "the enemy from within."

That leaves the sixth moment.  One which got no attention, but to me highlighted a big problem Trump faces in this very close race that even he understands.  Even if unconsciously.  Though he verbalized it in that moment.  It was at the Fox women’s “Town Hall,” as well.  And the moderator said she wanted to ask Trump a question about something he said.  And Trump immediately went, “Uh-oh.”  Which got a laugh.  Me, though, I thought – “Uh-oh”???  A presidential candidate is being asked a question about his own words -- at a deeply friendly event – and, without knowing the subject, his first reaction is “Uh-oh”???!!!  Most candidates for any office, let alone president of the United States, would be thrilled to be asked about what they said, because it’s what they stand for, and it gives them a chance to expand on it.  But Trump’s immediate reaction was, “Uh-oh.”  Which says to me that, even though he wouldn’t ever admit it, and he was just giving an almost unconscious, knee-jerk response, Trump was saying that he knows he says incredibly stupid, false, divisive, dystopian, unsupportable thing.  Which is why he said, “Uh-oh.”

Which is a really horrible way to go into the final three weeks of an election.  All of which are really horrible ways to go into the final three weeks of an election.  But “uh-oh” is the worst.

This all came to mind yesterday when I was asked a question from a friend about the closeness of the polls and Trump showing more leads in swing states than ideal.  Yet my friend surprisingly felt better than he expected – particularly since he’s someone who usually has to be talked off the ledge during elections.

I understood his reaction.

I’m not overly encouraged by the polls.  But as I’ve written here, that doesn’t bother me as much because of how I view polling.  Without going into a long recap, I do think polls are pretty accurate.  But they only present a picture of conditions a week or two previous, when the polling was done.  And even more importantly, most people really ignore that “margin of error” is a very real thing and valid. A person who a poll shows is down by two points, might actually be up by a point.  Or not.  I’d feel exactly the same if the polls showed Harris leading everywhere.  Which they don’t.  Though while one poll I saw yesterday showed Trump leading in North Carolina...another showed Harris up by two points!  Y'know, it's that pesky "margin of error" thingee.

But I also think there are a few reasons to look at this election separate from the polls – though always keeping the reality of polls in mind. 

I’ve long said that I expected Trump’s dementia to kick in towards the end of the campaign, and it (and his dystopia) has.  The signs are showing up daily, as the pressure on him grows.  And it risks becoming very divisive, all the while he becomes unfocused and lost, never a good thing in a tight election.

And though undecided voters are a small part of the electorate, they’re a very real part, and in a very close election, they really do matter.  After all, the reason they’re undecided is because they hate extremes, they want things in the middle, bipartisan, and hate noise and chaos.  And that’s all Trump is.  It’s hard to see if someone has not yet been convinced by Trump to be for him to now suddenly see him in his demented, fascist, misogynistic, dystopian state and thinking, “Yes!  That’s the one for me!!”  I think the undecided vote will break heavily for Harris.  (That’s just an uneducated guess, but I think the reason for it is a reasonable one.)  And undecided voters don’t register in the polls. 

Also, polls only can determine who people are for, not who will actually vote.  And I think it’s safe to say that women are The Most Motivated Voters this year, overwhelmingly.  And they have shown already that they’re going to go to the polls in droves.  And Trump’s recent dementia and dystopia and defense of blocking Roe (the Three D’s…) and saying he’s “the Father of IVF” – which he learned about from a “fantastically attractive” woman senator “for two minutes” are all things that not only will ensure those women go racing to the polls, but could help bring over a few on-the-edge Trump voters.  I also think (and I have zero information to back this up) that some women (in this case, conservative women) tell pollsters they’re voting for Trump because their husbands are voting for him, and they don’t want to create division in the household – but when alone in the voting booth, some might vote for Harris.  This is sort of the same “undercounting Trump effect” we saw in 2016.  In fact, I heard a Democratic strategist saying that women are the most undercounted segment of the populace since the mid-terms.

I also think that not only women, but Democrats as an entire party are far more motivated to go to the polls than Republicans – as an entire party.  The MAGOP base is just as highly motivated, but they’re not the whole party.  Pretty much all Democrats can’t wait to vote Trump out.  That’s not true for all Republicans wanting to vote for Trump.  Just yesterday, we learned that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has said he’s supporting Trump, has also said privately after the 2020 election that he thinks Trump is a “despicable human being,” “stupid,” “ill-tempered" and that the Insurrection is “further evidence of Donald Trump’s complete unfitness for office."  This does not come across like someone anxious to go racing to the polls to vote for Trump.  I can’t even swear from this that McConnell will even vote for Trump – though he’d probably tell a pollster he would.  And I doubt McConnell is alone here.

(By the way, lest it be forgot, regardless of how he feels about Trump in private, Mitch McConnell still endorsed Trump and also could have allowed Trump to be convicted at his second Impeachment trial, but a stop to the man he called a “despicable human being,” “stupid,” “ill-tempered" and had a “complete unfitness for office."  That’s Mitch McConnell.  Lest it be forgot.)

All of which leads to the most important point related to polls and the final result.  The race at this point is the ground game.  Get out the vote.

And while it could possibly maybe be a wildly-clever, new untried strategy – I have to believe that MAGOPs turning over their get-out-the-vote effort to Elon Musk who has never done this before is a potentially devastatingly bad idea.  The other night on MSBNC, Ben Wikler – the excellent head of Wisconsin Democrats -- explained in minute detail how developing a ground game works.  The careful effort over time training volunteers who believe in your cause, teaching them the issues and letting them practice, preparing them how to engage with voters, and starting all this on smaller, earlier elections to get comfortable -- and comparing that to Musk paying people who’ve never done it before, who might just drop a flyer off and consider their job done.  And his company already having had several leaders quit or be fired.

So, the get-out-the-vote ground game seems deeply stronger for Harris, which would appear to be highly critical in such a close race.

None of this is to say what will happen.  Polls do matter.  But they not only matter in the obvious ways, but also in ways most people don’t think about.  And in the end, it’s other factors that also come into play which impact the most important thing of all – getting people out to vote.

We'll see.  Updates as they occur...