“There is chaos under heaven and the situation is crap” to paraphrase, actually reverse, Chairman Mao, with regards to the US elections. With nine weeks until polling day, and the first early polling opened, the race is getting very intense — or rather, what surrounds the race. Endorsements, voter suppression, and the first jockeying for position after the poll have already begun.
There is a small but very uncertain sign that the Harris campaign got some sort of bounce from the second and last presidential debate, with a new poll (Quinnipiac) suggesting the vice president enjoys a five-point lead in Pennsylvania, the key keystone state, where the candidates were hitherto running even.
That polling firm has a better record than most, but it’s only one poll. Harris retains a slight lead in Michigan, Wisconsin is a tie, and she is slightly behind in Georgia and Arizona. The polls that emerge in the next week or two, with time to absorb whatever effect the debate might have had, will be the most crucial of the campaign.
Harris’ troubles are exactly what Joe Biden identified, though did not say, and why he stayed in the race until his fingernails were prised from the Oval Office doorframe. Harris is doing terribly with white non-college-educated voters in the swing states, especially white men. She’s 15 points behind in Pennsylvania and 18 in Arizona.
These are truly awful numbers, since the non-college proportion remains 67% of the population, and whites, depending on how you count them, about 70% of the population. Overall support for the Democrats in this demographic is diabolical (though it includes heavily Republican states): they run an average of 35 points behind Republicans, with a 15-point gender gap: a 42% GOP lead among white men, a mere 27% among white women.
Harris’ accession has turned out support among women, but also deepened Republican support among white men overall, from 12% (under Biden) to 17% (with Harris as Democratic candidate). That, plus the college/non-college gap within female voters, spells deep trouble in the swing states.
That this has hit a new pitch is signalled by the decision of the powerful Teamsters union — i.e. the transport workers — to not make a presidential endorsement because the union is split between its pro-Democrat leadership and its pro-Republican base.
This signals a new level of estrangement between Democrats and the white working class, because the strongest link between the party and the class was hitherto in areas where unionisation was, or had been, strongest. Union members are less atomised, have different sources of information etc.
Hitherto it was the atomised workers who were increasingly taking their politics from media and from questions of culture and identification. But now there is also the question of whether better informed workers are now simply making a choice which is a repeat of 2016: going for anyone who will do anything about the economy, even the same tariff wars that Trump overclaimed for in 2016.
Because every vote counts, an entirely different skirmish is going on. From the presidency, Joe Biden (remember him? You won’t believe what he looks like now) has enacted a series of executive orders to try and make an end run around states-based voter suppression that uses ID laws or pettifogging regulations.
The Republicans have responded by attaching a SAVE law to a looming supply bill. SAVE purports to prevent illegal immigrants from voting, but it really enacts voter suppression. It’s a game of chicken, since the GOP would surely be harmed by causing a government shutdown weeks from an election. But who knows who will be blamed?
For the Democrats, it’s a six-way mess. The Republicans are thriving on chaos, on baiting Democrats into shock horror at whatever outrageous statement comes next; the latest being ostensibly attacking Harris’ childlessness — the bait — while really attacking her perceived arrogance and elitism — the switch.
All good fun. No it’s not, it’s hideous and alarming and bizarre that control of the world’s largest nuclear arsenal is being handled in these terms. But there it is. Crap under heaven, and in a week or so, we will really know what the last weeks of this stoush will look like.
Does Kamala Harris have enough support to win the swing states? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
