Donald Trump might claim he won his debate with Kamala Harris. Right-wing buffoons like Greg Sheridan might insist it was a draw. But investors know who won, who was able to provoke and rattle whom, whose temperament was displayed to better effect. Look at what happened to the share price for Trump Media. It had slowly been recovering from record lows in the days leading up to the debate. But the day after the evening debate: ouch.
The debate was timely for Harris: her average lead in national polls, which had reached 3.7 percentage points around August 23, had shrunk back to 2.6 points on the eve of the debate. She’s now hitting battleground states, trying to coax Republicans disgusted with Trump, and those with fresh doubts about his temperament in the wake of the debate (what took them so long).
A particular target will be the smoking ruins of the pre-Trump Republican Party, after Harris received the backing of long-time Trump critic Liz Cheney and her father Dick. The latter, the Darth Vader of the GOP, savaged Trump, saying “in our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.” He was backed by another Dubya-era veteran, torture fan and former attorney-general Alberto Gonzales, who labelled Trump “perhaps the most serious threat to the rule of law in a generation.” Many might say torturing people is worse, Al, but hey, there was a War on Terror to win, right?
Problem is, Cheney and Gonzales aren’t just yesterday’s men, but represent a wing of the Republicans that was once dominant but is now desiccated. The Trump-era GOP is as if the Birchers of the 1960s somehow combined with the isolationists of the 1930s and the southern Democrats of the pre-LBJ era. The free trade, neocon, globalist, imperialist Republicans — for whom racism was only ever a strategy, not a core belief — have been ground underfoot by conspiracy theorists, America-Firsters and white supremacists whose goals are less about transforming Middle Eastern states into pro-American markets for US capital and more about transforming the United States into Margaret Atwood’s Gilead — if possible located in the Antebellum South. Forget the party of Lincoln — in this GOP, Jefferson Davis is the guiding star.
Still, if Harris can lure a segment of disgruntled traditional Republicans to her column in battleground states, it will give her a real chance of besting Trump not merely in the national vote tally, but in the electoral college. Trump is doing nothing to attract unhappy Republicans — if anything, he has doubled down on the personal attacks and racist invective since the debate. But to attract that floating support, Harris needs to continue the relatively flawless campaign she’s produced so far.
An important dimension to bear in mind about Harris’ campaign — especially compared to what Joe Biden would have managed — is that, even if she doesn’t win, she might well make a difference to the composition of the Senate and House in a second Trump administration. The Democrats are up against it in the Senate — nearly twice as many Democrat seats are being contested in November as Republican ones, and CNN reckons nearly all of the top 10 Senate seats most likely to change are currently Democrat. Even a Harris win could still see her facing an obstructionist Republican-controlled Senate. But given how much difficulty Trump had with his legislative agenda even with the GOP controlling both houses after 2016, every spot a Harris-Walz ticket can save will be precious.
Harris just received one of her best polls of the year (conducted before Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt on Trump), but this far out, the most likely outcome is probably Harris winning the popular vote and Trump winning in the electoral college. Happy to be wrong, of course, very much so, but of all the bullshit and offensive drivel that has poured from Trump’s mouth over the past nine years, his statement “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters” remains the truest thing he has uttered. He may not have killed anyone, but he’s an insurrectionist and rapist, and neither have harmed him.
It’s almost impossible to imagine Trump doing something that would turn off more than a small part of his base — even dissolving into complete incoherence in public is unlikely to alienate too many of his voters, because he is the avatar of white resentment and grievance, regardless of what he does or what he says. He might be a vicious, babbling dotard, but he’s their vicious, babbling dotard.
You might want Harris to win, even if you’re a conservative. But the horrible feeling in your gut that Trump will triumph? Don’t ignore it — it’s probably right.
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