Trump, out of nowhere, sucking up to GA Gov Kemp after Vance just spoke with Kemp (post from today):
Late: I’m started to believe my own hype so I’m going to let this be. But it’s certainly brewing.
Bear in mind that abortion rights are also on the ballot in Arizona and Nevada.
Fantastic news! Thank you.
Perhaps this can help with keeping Jon Tester around another six years.
Texas is not in play. It’s just one poll, and as was pointed out by @Great_Antibob, Harris is trailing Trump by about the same margin that Trump beat Biden in 2020. And being down “just” 5% in Texas still means needing to find a half a million additional votes. The Harris (and previously Biden) campaigns have invested nothing in building a GOTV operation in Texas, and there’s no way she’s going to drop the enormous amount of money it would take to even have a chance at driving that kind of turnout in the 60 days before early voting starts.
Also, considering the many shenanigans that were pulled (take a look at what they did in Harris County back in 2020 for one such example) and will likely be pulled, even more expensive than if the governor and state government weren’t actively working against democratic norms.
That said, down ballot is critically important in the state. So, yes, there are GOTV operations but less for POTUS and more for the many, many other races involved.
Various notes on the topic:
- Trump was heard slurring his words on his stream with Elon, and he continues to do so in various clips I’ve heard (but not all the time). He looks disheveled as hell, max low-energy, and not at orange as before, as though his team can barely get him up, made up, dressed, and out the door. He’s calling into Fox and Newsmax, ranting and raving so incoherently that they have to cut him off at times for his own benefit. In sum, he’s looking and sounding really, really bad.
- Concurrently, Trump’s loss of message discipline continues to get even worse. He just called Josh Shapiro a “highly overrated Jewish governor.” Should be great for his polling among both Pennsylvanians and Jews!
- The DNC was a huge success. Even Republicans are having to recognize this. The ratings destroyed those of the RNC. It wasn’t even close.
- Dems are crushing the GOP in fundraising. Harris has raised over $500 million thus far, whereas Trump took in just under $50 million in July.
- The polls I’ve seen are good. 538 has Harris up 3.6%.
- More and more MAGAs, rightwingers, etc., are beginning to panic. You see how many people in this thread are worried that we will lose (mostly reasonably, but sometimes a bit exaggeratedly). Well, the other side is starting to feel that way too.
More stuff soon, no doubt! I feel that our position continues to improve…
All good points.
This quoted one, however, is natural when each candidate has anything close to a 50-50 chance. By “anything close,” I typically mean up to about 70-30 (30% is still a big chance). Even if one’s candidate is up 75-25 in such a model, one has every right to worry – when the stakes are this high. (If the opponent were Mitt Romney, say, I’d quit worrying at around 65-35. But when it’s Trump? You have every reason to worry even at 80-20.)
The 538 Harris-Trump forecast (not predictive, forecast) model is finally up and running. It currently has Harris winning about 59% of their model runs. That means Trump will be president for the next four years, according to 41% of their model runs. Not “sort of president.” Not “maybe president.” President!
The constant theme of the DNC was “be joyous – and then get to work!”
(Also, scroll down to Andromeda Galaxy-like graph “How the popular vote translates into electoral votes.” Note where 2016 and 2020 were positioned – and how Trump has more paths to winning the EC but losing the popular than Harris does.)
(Scroll down yet further, and note we’re already at 70-30 for Harris winning the national popular vote.)
I’m just gonna say it. Kamala should have made a deal with RFK Jr. (without an explicit quid pro quo) and found a way to reneg later. She’s down by 2% on PredictIt since he endorsed Trump, and that’s right after the typical post-convention bump.
No, she should not have. She does NOT need that loony anywhere near her race. Trump can have him, and I don’t think that in the end it’s going to do much good for him.
Gamblers overreact to news.
Also, if the deal was public, Harris would lose some swing voters because of having made a deal. And if the deal was secret, risk is high of it being a leaked to the press, and the negative impact on her candidacy, of the scandal, would be even greater.
More important, she shouldn’t make a deal because it would legitimate anti-vax, causing deaths. That’s true if she followed through on the deal, and even true if she reneged, because the betrayal would come out.
I agree. He’ll only add more lunacy to Trump’s campaign and make him look worse… as if such a thing were possible.
WOOT!
Now why did I say “woot”?
“Don’t say ‘woot’!” say you?
Ah… but I have a reason!
The flop sweat cycle. I think this was one of my insights in my OP that has played out even better than I had expected. Trump is clearly hanging onto every poll, every good DNC rating, every insult hurled at him by our side, every chunky fundraising number we log, every tiny little (and big little and big big) success of Harris and Walz and their team–and eating his fucking heart out and losing his mind over all of them. He’s seeing MAGAs on social media telling him he’s losing, and he’s flipping out. He’s been told literally a hundred times now to fix his message–but he can’t. And he just becomes even more disheveled, more low-en, more erratic, and more just plain fuckin’ NUTS as each day passes.
He’s in a death spiral. And that 59%–which he will definitely hear about–will push him even further into the vortex.
We hope.
Just to reiterate the point that 538’s staff has been trying to drill home for eight years now:
That 59% is NOT “how many in the US will vote for Harris, according to current polling.”
It is “how often our model (at this time) spits out a win for Harris in November, given current state-by-state polling (not national, which matters not a whit), plus some other factors like the economy and how people (many – nay, most – of them wrongly*) feel about the economy**”.
So, again, it’s still pretty much a coin toss at this point. But, yes, we have the momentum – and, yes, Trump is clearly falling apart even faster than he would have otherwise, thanks to that momentum.
*And I do mean wrongly. Enough of this “oh, but what people feel about the economy is important” horseshit. Did you know that half of Americans think unemployment is at a fifty-year high right now…when it’s actually at a fifty-year low? (Cite below). Did you know that a majority of Americans think that, if a hamburger costs two dollars on Monday, three dollars on Tuesday, and three dollars again on Wednesday, that between Tuesday and Wednesday, there is a high inflation rate? No more coddling “economic sentiment.” Most people are fucking idiots, full stop.
**Interestingly, at this time the 538 model sees the economic factors as a wash. They don’t really change the forecast either way. We’re in a rare moment where the overall, average economic picture (when we include the factually incorrect “feelings” of millions) is exactly meh. (“Exactly” according to G. Elliot Morris, that is. You may choose to emphasize different components of the economy in your model.)
Expect that economic feeling to change over the next few months as borrowing becomes more robust.
If you add in a solid debate performance by Harris and a negotiated release of Middle East hostages before the election, then Trump is toast.
Now, those are pretty big variables. But the trend line is very promising.
59-41 is a coin flip, man. Nothing has changed, and there is good reason to believe the RFK thing will slightly improve Trump’s chances.
To perhaps put it in a more charitable way, most people do not take the time to inform themselves on the things about which they have strong opinions. People don’t know what epistemology is and have never once thought about their own personal standards for thinking a thing is so or not so. They go by emotion, feel, and whatever Fox News tells them.
As for how people feel about the economy, two points. One is something I’ve said before including in this thread: Biden was a fucking terrible communicator. His only press conference thus far was, what, a couple weeks ago? He should have been communicating the whole time about anything and everything that Trump and Fox were saying against him–especially the border and the economy. What the fuck was he even thinking?! 'Tis past, but Harris has been left cleaning up the damage. Effectively, I think, but still…
The other point is that this economy is weird (to use a recently popular word). This kos diary by Hunter, who had been a member of the dailykos staff until recently, has stuck in my mind:
Now that was back in June, but the things he talks about are still relevant. The story about how his dentist suddenly closed without warning is haunting to me.
Yes, the economy is strong by many measures, but inflation is a beast we really haven’t had to deal with since the early 1980s. Thus, understandably, people have had a difficult time processing it.
And it’s not just inflation. Things are subject to strange dislocations. Companies are pouring massive amounts into things like AI, the gig economy, and the metaverse (lol!) without seeing any kind of return. Business models are subject to explosive decompression with little warning (look at the strage fortunes of Starbucks recently). It all feels a bit scary and unstable–per Hunter’s story.
I think Harris has spoken intelligently, empathetically, and effectively on the economy and proposed some concrete policies that can do real good. Meanwhile, Trump is able to stoke the pain of the masses via saying that everything is terrible (a lie but a simple one to repeat ad infinitum). That and the border are his campaign at this point.
I’ve been deep-diving on the RFK thing. I think it will close the popular vote a little but not effect the electoral vote. It doesn’t help Trump in Pennsylvania from the polling from what I can see.
But so much can still go wrong. A lot of time left. Conversely so much can still go right also.
Do you have any further details on the RFK thing? I am curious (and I love good news).
I’ll go dig up the Pennsy polls from the Kamala Harris and the runup to the 2024 Presidential Election thread.
Actually, I can’t find my cites. Very sorry. I’ll try looking later.