And it is...Abraham Lincoln!
It’s just one poll, but it’s a New York Times poll, and if any left-leaning, biased polling result is likely to try to bury bad news for the Democrats, it’s this one. The New York Times/Siena national poll was released this morning, and showed Donald Trump starting to regain the edge he had before Joe Biden was forced out and the news media joined the Democrats in a “She Isn’t What She Is” campaign of excitement, joy, and virtually no substance whatsoever.
Trump now leads Kamala Harris nationally among likely voters by a 48–47 margin, and Trump hasn’t received as much as 48% at the ballot box yet, not in 2016 or 2020. Though Newsbuster’s analysis shows Harris getting over 80% positive press coverage in this period (for doing nothing but repeating boilerplate, non-substantive speeches off teleprompters and avoiding any one-on-one interviews with even friendly journalists), and though she has reversed many of her most radical positions (more on that in a second) while saying that “her values haven’t changed,” whatever that means, “the ruse isn’t working,” as Jeff Blehar says at the Never Trump National Review:
The inexplicably controversial Nate Silver is taking an admirably dignified victory lap on X this morning, running a gentle circle around everyone once again accusing him of pro-Republican (?) hackery by having a model that has persistently suggested a narrow advantage for Trump… The media can try to continue selling Harris as a “fresh start,” but voters are smart enough not to buy it for a second — if for no other reason than that she utterly refuses to tell voters what she actually is for in any way they are allowed to query.
The NYT/Siena pollsters asked likely voters: (1) Do you want a “major change” in this election? (2) Between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, which candidate “represented a major change” from Biden. 60% said yes to Question 1; they want major change. Harris’s impossible stance has been that she represents major change while adamantly defending how successful the Biden policies have been. It’s like “Chinatown,”
except Harris is alternating between “everything is great” and “we need change!” instead of “she’s my daughter” and “she’s my sister.” The public is going to do a Jack Nicholson impression, and Harris is asking for it.
In answer to question #2, only 25% of likely voters said Kamala Harris represents the kind of major change they want. 53% said Trump did. True, not all of those in the 53% will vote for Trump after being told since 2016 that he’s a combination of Hitler and The Thing Under the Bed, and there always those obnoxious tweets. Nonetheless, the poll strongly suggests that the answer to Blehar’s rhetorical questions, “Could media hype sell Kamala Harris forever? Could she truly “hide” her way to the White House?” is most likely no.
Not helping any was Bernie Sanders today. On “Meet the Press,” he described Harris’s supposed change of heart on previous positions like a fracking ban and “Medicare for All” as “pragmatic.” She’s “doing what she thinks is right in order to win the election,” he said. What Bernie was saying is that those suddenly altered policies are cynical poses meant to win votes, and that once Harris is elected, they will flip back again. Yes, like so many 21st Century Democrats, lying is “the right thing” if it’s necessary to hold on to power.
Nice. Did you know Donald Trump lies all the time?
Of course, Trump is like Forrest Gump’s chocolates: you never know what you’re going to get. He’s perfectly capable of behaving like such an undisciplined asshole in the upcoming debate that even an empty suit like Harris looks like a better bet, or at least a less nauseating one. If that happens, however, the voters will at least know what they voted for (or against), because they are already figuring it out.
Abe said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”
I predict that Honest Abe will come out of the 2024 election looking wise and prescient. As usual.
Ethics Alarms 
We shall see. Right now all the major polls except ABC are within the margin of error, and when four poles show things tied or one or the other candidate ahead by one or two points while this pole shows one candidate ahead by six points, I think that we can discount that poll. Harris appears to have gotten a bounce early, but no convention bounce, and, since we are no longer in a pandemic and haven’t been for a while, I think that the electorate is unlikely to let her hide in her basement like Biden did.
the idea that she brings some kind of major change to the table is a mirage. She has been solidly behind everything this administration did and failed at the tasks she was given. Now she wants to say she was never given those tasks. She also spent the last almost 4 years at this point hiding the president’s incapacity. Maybe it wasn’t that bad at the beginning, but by the end of the second year it was obvious that he could not continue as president, yet she was right out there with everyone else saying he’s sharp as a tack and all of this stuff about him being incapacitated is just a Republican’s lying and by the way, did you know that Trump lies all the time?
Here’s the thing, Harris might not be able to hide all the way to the White House, but she could still cheat her way to the White House. Like 2016, this election is going to come down to a handful of battleground States, and chief among them are Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. She was a complete idiot for not putting Josh Shapiro on the ticket and locking down Pennsylvania, but she’s still got a chance there. All of these states can be one by the traditional Democratic approach of holding off on reporting the cities until everything else is in. It worked last time, and there’s really no indication that it’s going to change this time. It’s entirely possible that there could be sweep of the battleground States using that same tactic. In all of those states where there are Senate races going on it’s looking like the Democrats have them locked up. For Trump to win them would require a lot of split ticket voting.
What I’m nervous about is what’s going to follow. You know Trump isn’t going to take a loss lying down. You also know that the resistance is ready if Trump does pull it off. This country does not need another low level civil war where half the governors and almost all the big city mayors are going to simply look the other way or actively support something that’s going to be a lot more like an insurrection than January 6th. On the other hand, maybe that’s less likely to happen, because Trump won’t be fighting this insurrection with one hand tied behind his back by a pandemic and the fact that he’s trying to campaign at the same time.
The Dems will succeed in stealing the elections with truckloads of mail in ballots in Dearborn, Milwaukee and Philly. Trump won’t have any success challenging (even ability to challenge?) anything. If Trump were to somehow win, there will be riots and then the AUC will go full bore for another “four more year.” as they have ever since 2016. The Dems and the deep state simply will not, ever, stand down. They’re like the commenters here that get banned: they never stop.
This is cynicism/pessimism without due cause. Voter fraud on the scale you are talking about 1) didn’t occur in 2020 and 2) like all major conspiracies, are impossible to hide or coordinate. The Democrats are not “that smart” as Wilford Brimley would say.
Well, let’s hope so. Am I a pessimist? Yes. Guilty as charged.
I appreciate the reference to one of my favorite films: Absence of Malice. Just rewatched it a couple of weeks ago.
“I appreciate the reference to one of my favorite films: Absence of Malice.”
Same here.
PWS
I used to think conspiracy theorists about, oh, say, the Kennedy assassination had to be wrong because surely, over time, someone would have spilled the beans. Generally, I’m just not sure that’s a safe assumption anymore.
When all the major polls show a tie or close to it, Trump is really ahead. The Electoral Colleges also favors the GOP, though I think that another 2016, 2000, 1876 scenario would be dangerous.
“The Electoral Colleges also favors the GOP, though I think that another 2016, 2000, 1876 scenario would be dangerous.”
Exactly. The last thing we need is another Trump victory without the popular vote. I am praying that there is a clear winner in both the popular and electoral vote count to avoid, at the very least, that stigma.
Unfortunately for everybody, I do think Trump winning in the EC is the most likely scenario unless there’s a massive shift at the end, like we saw when Reagan thrashed Carter.
Have to agree. The only time since 1988 that the Republican party has won the popular vote was 2004.
Against another dim bulb Democrat trying to pretend to be something he wasn’t and flip-flopping like the Flying Wallendas.
I know it can be discounted as pessimism, but I believe the electoral reality has changed since 2004, and drastically so since 2016. I think the Dems have mastered ballot manipulation … somehow. And all Democrats and right-thinking people (you know, anyone who’s not a Republican) have lost their minds because of TRUMP! and become Yellow Dog Democrats. And Harris is the proverbial Yellow Dog incarnate!
Interestingly, this post lost me more followers on Twitter/X than any three I’ve posted there. My diagnosis: MAGA cultists can’t handle reality. EA has never pretended that Trump was not, as I wrote in the post, “like Forrest Gump’s chocolates: you never know what you’re going to get. He’s perfectly capable of behaving like such an undisciplined asshole in the upcoming debate that even an empty suit like Harris looks like a better bet, or at least a less nauseating one.” Unfortunately, the market doesn’t want objectivity or truth, it wants comforting support for its biases.
The same could be said for the other side. They don’t want the objective truth, they want their truth.
Of course.
If Trump acts like he did in the Trump-Biden debate, Trump wins it hands down. Harris was silly to demand no audience and mics turned off. Those things worked in her favor against Pence where got to demand silence from the vicious silver haired devil. Here, if Trump keeps his invective to a minimum and keeps to the issues, challenging her on policy and Biden’s awful track record, she is going to have a hard time swatting him down.
I agree with the assessment that if Trump wins in November, it has to be decisive, with the popular vote and the EC. Assuming he wins, though, I see violence coming from the Left.
jvb
John, I think the invective is Trump’s secret sauce. He must have heard the nostrum of speaking to a jury as if they are seventh graders. Remember how much invective was thrown around by the smart alecks in seventh grade before the bell rang? I suspect there are a lot of votes to be obtained from the seventh graders who are still out there. “We don’t grow up; we just get older.”
Maybe, but, in reality, who is undecided about Trump or Harris? How many are there? Something like 5 or 6 people total? Democrats aren’t voting for Trump; Republicans aren’t voting for Harris. That doesn’t leave a whole lot of wiggle room.
jvb
Ergo, the invective will continue without consequence.
I simply (and respectfully) disagree with this sentiment. I’m sure it’s been said a million times, but this is not all that far removed from the the novice baseball fan saying, “The last thing we need is another Yankees World Series victory in which they get more runs, but fewer hits, than the Dodgers.”
More hits often lead to runs, but it’s not a guaranteed outcome. In baseball, “runs” are a check on the team that simply loads its lineup with Tony-Gwynn hitters that get a hit 35% of the time. You still have to score a run for the hits to really have mattered.
In a similar manner, more votes often lead to more votes in the Electoral College, but it’s not guaranteed. Similarly, the Electoral College is a check on the unmitigated tyranny that inevitably results from pure democracy. Jefferson said it best: “Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the population takes away everything from the other 49%.”
So I recommend you stop taking a worried, hand-wringing approach to the Electoral College/popular vote issue. It isn’t an issue unless you act like it’s one. Speak with confidence regarding the brilliance of the structure and its check on tyrannical democracy. Ask your Democratic friends this, “If the US population were 60% Republican, would you be in favor of ‘the most votes wins every time’, or would you prefer that Democrats have a chance to win sometimes, even without the most votes?”
The fact that so many Democrats hate the Electoral College should be proof enough of its benefit. They believe they are in the majority and the EC is their primary barrier to absolute power. If they were truly in the minority, they would love the EC…almost as much as they love butchering unborn children.
But Joel, democracy works on trust. I agree completely with your assessment of the Electoral College, but the vast majority of the public doesn’t get it: it seems counter intuitive to them. In a fair election, getting the most votes should win. And the Democrats began pulling on this loose thread in 2016, leading to the “he’s not a legitimate President” trope that is the foundation of the 2016 Post-election Ethics Train Wreck. It’s fine to say that the EC works, but if most of the country thinks it’s a way to let the minority elect a national leader, that’s a big problem. An EC fluke every generation or so is one thing—people move on. Three times in a little over 20 years is asking for trouble.
It’s California’s fault, of course.
The solution for Democrats is easy. Gather the eight million surplus Democratic voters in California (or however many it is) and tell 80% of them to move equally to PA, OH, WI, MI, FL, and GA, being sure to take their rotten ideologies and voting patterns with them. Assuming other demographics don’t change, they won’t lose a Presidential election, EC-wise or popular-vote-wise, for another generation. Problem solved.
It’s completely illegitimate for Democrats – or anyone, for that matter – to claim the Electoral College is unfair. All legal American voters, regardless of party, have operated under the same system since it was created. Democrats are just mad because it’s not giving them the result they want.
In America, most fair elections end with the victor getting the most votes. But when electing the President, the victor is the one with the most Electoral votes. That’s different…and that’s how the system works.
So Democrats can work within that system and, as I suggested, redistribute themselves such that they win the most Electoral votes, or…they can introduce an Amendment to destroy the Republic and nix the EC…and hope they get 38 states to choose to nullify their voting power for the sake of a tyrannical majority.
I apologize, Jack. This was supposed to be a response to your response to me. I obviously don’t always know how to reply.