After 4 years of Biden the Country Wanted Trump Back
A few days before the election the Des Moines Register released a poll showing Kamala Harris was ahead in the state by 3 points. Trump ended up winning the Hawkeye state by 13. A crush. To say the poll was off is a major understatement. The Economist magazine, they call themselves a “Newspaper” (Maybe it’s a British thing, like they call a shoe, a boot), predicted the day before the election that Harris would win with 276 electoral college votes to Trump’s 262. The great Nate Silver predicted a very close race. It wasn’t, Trump won with 312 electoral college votes (maybe more) and will win the popular vote, no one predicted that. Now I for one don’t believe that Harris was ever really ahead in this race, at any point, no matter what the polls said. Even in her post Biden stepping down honeymoon. Even at her convention, and even when she was sending out “joy” and “Good vibes” she was never ahead. Why did the polls show such a close race?
It is easy to dismiss the polls as biased because the news outlets are biased. The people that work in the mainstream media are for the most part progressive Democrats. The country’s elite back Democrats, and they own the media outlets. And the media wants favorable polls for Democrats, in part to depress Republican turnout. And while I think that there is more than a little truth to this, I would say that the main reason for the polls being off is that pollsters don’t know how to find Trump’s voters. They never have. Maybe it’s a combination of not finding them because they don’t know where to look and when Trump voters are contacted by a pollster, they don’t admit that they are voting for Trump. So, I don’t think it is simply anti Trump bias.
The polls couldn’t see the coming landslide, but surely, we should have seen it. After 4 years of Biden, voters still had a memory of Trump, and Trump’s performance in the White House. They clearly wanted to return to those days of low inflation, peace and prosperity and a secure border. I think that even if Harris ran a good campaign she still would have lost. But she didn’t run a good campaign, and I will point out a few examples and finally I will point out her biggest mistake.
First her selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. I can’t understand what he brought to the ticket. His selection is a baffling to me as Nixon picking Maryland Governor Spiro T. Agnew in 1968. Harris was going to carry Minnesota anyway, but ironically Trump performed better in the state then he did 4 years ago. Funny, Walz might have cost her votes in Minnesota.
Walz was to Harris’s left ideologically, so he wasn’t going to help with independents and moderate Republicans. He was a white male, true, so maybe that provided a little balance, but he was a woke guy. And other men don’t respect a woke guy. Think of Will Farrell and Howard Stern and the other C list celebrities that make up “White Guys for Harris.” No body respects them. Certainly, no real man would take their political advice.
Walz also had a questionable resume, questions about his dealings in China, and his military record, among other things. Didn’t she vet him. Walz turned out to be a bad campaigner and a bad debater, getting crushed by JD Vance in their one Vice Presidential debate. And if that weren’t bad enough, he looked and sounded like Elmer Fudd.
The other mistake she made, was that she was AWOL from the campaign for so long. Biden dropped out July 21, she gave her nomination speech on August 22nd, during all this time she laid low. No interviews, little press, and no talking to voters. Even after she was nominated, she remained in near hiding for a couple more weeks. Maybe she felt her best bet was to say as little as possible; I suspect that is it, but I think if you want to win an election you need to make your views known and you need to connect with as many voters as possible. The basement strategy rarely works. She finally did a Townhall interview on CNN, but not until two weeks before election day. Too many moderate and independents had already voted by then to do her any good.
Also, in the last couple weeks she decided to play the Trump is like Hitler card. This attack clearly smacked of desperation. She realized that “joy and “good vibes “weren’t working so she went very negative, too negative in fact for most voters. Such an attack is ridiculous and in bad taste, but it is also a waste, for a simple reason. Anyone who thinks that Trump is a “Fascist” Hitler type is already voting for Harris. The attack doesn’t win her anyone else. And spending a couple news cycles on such an attack is totally counterproductive.
Ok. For the biggest mistake of all. The very moment that her chance to win died. Ironically it took place on a show that loves her. The View on ABC. It was a softball question. She was asked what she would do differently from Joe Biden. This election was a change election. The American people want a change of direction as much as I have ever seen. Her answer was stunning, she said she couldn’t think of anything she would do differently than Biden. She made it even worse by admitting that she was involved in all major decisions of the administration- a very unpopular administration. In a year when nearly 70 percent of the American people want a new direction, she promised the status quo.
I watched that clip and I knew she was done.
David Shephard is the author of two books. Elections Have Consequences, A Cautionary Tale.
Norton’s Choice: An Inside Politics Exposé: Shephard, David: 9781892538802: Amazon.com: Books
1 comment
This is off topic, but I couldn’t resist commenting on the photo in this good article.
I would love to watch The View if the producers had a split screen; the hosts on one side, the audience on the other.
Then I could observe, at length, how mentally deficient people act in an audience.
The above could also be seen via the audiences of the late night “comedians,” although to a lesser degree.