On a larger scale, I’ve come to realize the office of VP gets a bad rap. She’s there for all of big meetings and crisises, and has met a lot of leaders.
John Nance Garner was right at the time he said that the vice presidency isn’t worth a bucket of warm piss, but things did change shortly thereafter.
Harry Truman, due to his experience of succeeding FDR to the chair during a world war, made sure to put the veep on the National Security Council so that they might know in the future about relevant things such as atom bomb projects. Jimmy Carter later gave the office a boost by giving Walter Mondale a portfolio of helping to navigate the federal bureaucracy - sort of an “assistant president” - in a pattern that pretty much every president since has replicated to one extent or another.
It’s almost a recognition that the presidency has grown too large for one (so far, only) man to master, and informal, extraConstitutional structures have grown up to help with managing the job. It has made the VP more able to take over for the president - or become president, and do a good job with the office, later - as a result.
I want to say that it was Webster who, upon being offered the VP slot, said, “I refuse to be buried before I am dead,” but it seems it was someone else.
In AZ, remember, Abortion is on the ballot. This will bring out many women voters to vote NO.
A no vote on that proposition would be a vote to allow the state to ban abortion. Is that what you meant?
A yes vote protects abortion rights in the state constitution.
Good point, it depends on how each prop is worded- I menat women will generally vote NO to ban abortion.
The above is from August 14th which was Harris’s high water mark in the model.
Harris has lost some ground in Silver’s latest model (yesterday). RFK is removed and it only helps Trump a small amount. The post convention bounce is partially there since we need a few more polls to fully account for it. The model takes bounces into account and blunts them.
One interesting tidbit is that RFK being out makes a tie less likely since there was a very remote chance that he would get some electoral votes so more ways that a tie between Trump and Harris could happen. More RFK votes will go to Trump than Harris but a lot of them will go to Stein or Oliver and some will decline to participate.
Harris has a 53.2% chance of winning
NV: Harris 51.1% chance of winning
AZ: Trump 52.2%
WI: Harris 61.5%
MI: Harris 63.7%
PA: Harris 53.3%
GA: Trump 61.7%
NC: Trump 60.2%
PA down from 59% to 53% is worrisome.
I think abortion on the ballot will blow that lead away.
I cant figure than one out- where is Stacey?
Little blips of even 5% can easily happen- trends are important.
The polls in GA are pretty close; I might guess that it’s a question of election ratfuckery down there, as well as the fact that there isn’t a Senate seat up in GA this year.
More of a Spidey-sense than something I can support with numbers … but I’m thinking this time around, North Carolina comes in Democratic and Georgia drifts back over red this cycle. Not really counting on Georgia.
Same.
The crazy dude running for Gov in NC is likely to help Harris. We will see.
On the other hand, NC Republicans last year pulled off an egregious but very effective gerrymander that flipped three Congressional seats from D to strong R. Democrats have all but conceded these seats, which could depress turnout somewhat.
But you can talk your way into and out of these states going either way. When I see some post-Labor Day polling is when I’ll feel like I’ve got some real information on the state of play in the swing states.
Labor Day is one week from now. I don’t see the polling shifting or suddenly becoming more predictive in such a short time. If you really think it’s not “real information” yet, why do we not possibly need October, at the least?
I don’t think we will see any real shift until the debate. Even then, it will depend much on how Harris holds Trump feet to the fire when he lies. She should be able to to do a much better job on her feet doing so than Joe was able to do.
Remember, although the last debate did not hurt Biden so much in the polls, his performance style was so bland that it caused him to remove himself from the race. Kamala has a chance to knock this one out of the park and take Trump down face to face. Her perfomance in the debate will be key.
Trump apparently already putting out the feelers for backing out of the Sep 10 debate:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/08/26/trump-harris-debate-abc/
Paywalled for me.
He’s also raising “concerns” about the setup of the debate. Sorry if that’s also included in the other article.
I’m very surprised that Harris wants the mics on when it’s not the candidates’ turns. First, that seems like a poor format: it encourages interruptions. Second, the worry before was that Trump would just talk all over the Dem candidate. Third, it’s what was agreed to.
I can understand the second concern being obviated by Harris’s prosecutorial experience: she’s not afraid of being bullied. But the first and third concerns seem real, and honestly I’m on Trump’s side here–a sentence I dont’ think I’ve said before.
Is it possible that this is a maneuver–that by agreeing to have the mics silenced, they can extract some other concession? Or is that too 7-dimensional-chess?
I think it’s just straight reverse psychology. Trump was almost certainly going to demand the mics be on all the time so he could shout over her. So instead, the Democrats demand this, knowing that Trump et al. are reflexively contrarians, and will thus demand that the mics are muted. You also get this nice tag line:
Trump’s campaign has argued that when they agreed to the ABC debate with Harris at the top of the ticket, they were agreeing to the same guidelines of the previous debate.
“Enough with the games. We accepted the ABC debate under the exact same terms as the CNN debate,” Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller said in a statement.
So if Trump starts making other demands, they can throw this back in their face.
Odd, I’m not a subscriber. I did get a “subscribe” footer thing, but it went away when I clicked off.