The Democrats are in a funk. A YouGov/Yahoo News poll has determined that the US presidential race is tied with Kamala Harris and Donald Trump on 47 per cent each among likely voters. Quick, pass the smelling salts! With four weeks to go until the November 5th election, the Democrats are panicking over the outcome, while the Republicans appear serene. Trump supporters are addicted to disinformation and keep pretending their guy can’t lose unless the other side cheats. But all their bellyaching about election-rigging and their attempts to lay the groundwork for challenging the results suggest they know Trump’s going down.
Relax, Democrats, Harris is going to win. Am I sure? No. Trump could close strong. This is a very tight election, but there has been no meaningful improvement in Trump’s fortunes since Harris flummoxed him by replacing Joe Biden. What is more, Trump is behaving like a loser. He would rather cut off his right hand than reach out to moderate voters and rein in the swagger. “Trump being Trump” necessarily involves plenty of lies and fiery rhetoric. People love him for it. But like a magnet, he repels as many voters as he attracts. That is why he is stuck.
Here’s another reason to be cheerful. Trump is on the run and afraid to face scrutiny after being walloped by Harris in debate. “He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought,” the New York Times claimed last weekend. Sometimes this is just part of his schtick but it could be why he pulled out of a planned interview with CBS 60 Minutes with a batch of lame excuses (which the program rightly roasted him for). The result was a free, almost hour-long commercial for Harris, who went ahead with her own 60 Minutes interview on Monday.
One of the most attention-grabbing lines of the night was that Harris owns a Glock, a semi-automatic pistol. Why? Because, “My background is in law enforcement,” she said. Have you ever used it? “Yes of course!” she laughed. “In a shooting range.” This placed her on Planet Normal in comparison with Second Amendment gun fanatics.
Trump supporters have divided the country and divided families
Harris went out of her way to sound moderate and thoughtful. She explained her flip-flops over immigration and fracking by claiming she had learned in office to seek “common ground” with “folks” and bashed Trump for being out of step with “reasonable people”. Reinforcing the point about weirdos being for Trump, 60 Minutes wheeled on an election denier from Arizona – actually a senior local Republican official – who claimed to be on a “mission” from God. I’m not joking. The same lady added she wanted to “lynch” a Republican election official who had upheld Biden’s 2020 win. He was filmed sounding ultra-reasonable and polite.
Trump supporters have divided the country and divided families. One of my friends can barely talk to her brother without falling out. “If Harris wins, we won’t have a country anymore,” he told her yesterday, repeating one of Trump’s favourite soundbites. “Be sure to have enough food on hand after the election,” he added. Was he worried about the economy collapsing under the Democrats? Was he warning his sister to expect violence? Or has he inhaled too much of his own propaganda?
Let’s talk about the economy for a moment. Inflation is at 2.5 per cent, the lowest figure since 2021. The stock market is at an all-time high. There is near full unemployment. Wages have risen. The US is outperforming every other Western economy. There is no evidence America is on the verge of breaking down if the Democrats stay in power. Only one side is threatening post-election violence – the one that takes its orders from Trump.
I refuse to believe a majority of Americans want to go down this route. But it’s not my gut telling me the Democrats are going to win. That part of my anatomy still suffers from a few outbreaks of nerves. According to the polling website 538, Harris leads Trump by an average of 2.6 points and is narrowly ahead in the swing states of Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump leads by a whisker in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina (where a devastating hurricane is up-ending political calculations).
Can we trust the polls? Anxious Democrats still suffer from PTSD over the trap that led Clinton to beat Trump by three million votes in 2016 and lose the electoral college. But my confidence stems from the groundswell of support for Harris among the most reliable voting blocs in America: college-educated white people and women, including black women.
‘My own gut feeling is there will be an uprising of women at the polls’, said filmmaker Michael Moore
True, the vice-president appears to be underperforming among Latino voters and black men. But according to CNN’s pollster, Harry Enten, “Kamala Harris seems to be on track to put up the best numbers ever for a Democratic presidential nominee among white voters with a college degree and among all voters with a college degree.” Every poll shows women backing Harris in huge numbers.
Michael Moore, the leftwing film-maker who warned in previous elections that Trump was hoovering up blue collar voters, thinks Trump is “toast”. Do the “math”, he urged on Substack. He added, “My own gut feeling is there will be an uprising of women at the polls.”
This doesn’t impress Trump of course. “I do very well with the women(sic). The polling is fake,” he has claimed. On his side he can boast Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, who has just claimed the handle @america for himself. But jumping up and down like a teenager at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania last weekend has confirmed Musk’s increasingly weird status as the “Dork Lord” of the internet. Do women want a bro like him with 12 children by three women controlling their fertility? If Trump loses, “I’m f***ed,” Musk said yesterday. How satisfying.
Along with CBS 60 Minutes, one of the last of the “serious” mainstream news programs, Harris has just appeared on the female-friendly podcast Call Her Daddy, one of the most popular podcasts in the US (after Joe Rogan, who said last month Harris was “nailing it” against Trump) and is appearing on the morning TV show, The View. She knows her audience – and is courting Howard Stern’s older male listeners to counter all the baby-faced male podcasters Trump has been fawning over.
Every day, more senior Republicans are coming out in support of Harris. Not just national figures like Dick and Liz Cheney, but regional players such as the respected Cuban-American former chairman of the Florida Republican party, Al Cárdenas. A Republican party official I met during the 2020 election in Georgia – a big Brexit fan – is refusing to back Trump over his election lies in his state.
Trump supporters love their cult leader. That much we know. But are there enough of them? “I believe in my soul and heart, the American people are ready to turn the page,” Harris said yesterday. I think she is right.
