John Kerry receives 48% and George W. Bush 46% in a new American Research Group survey of registered voters conducted Aug. 30-Sept 1. The poll also shows Kerry with a 5% lead among independents.
TDS Strategy Memos
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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July 26: The Obama Coalition Revisited
It’s pretty obvious Kamala Harris’s candidacy changes the 2024 presidential race more than a little, and I wrote at New York about one avenue she has for victory that might have eluded Joe Biden:
During her brief run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019, Kamala Harris was widely believed to be emulating Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign strategy. She treated South Carolina, the first primary state with a substantial Black electorate, as the site of her potential breakthrough. But she front-loaded resources into Iowa to prepare for that breakthrough by reassuring Black voters that she could win in the largely white jurisdiction. She had the added advantage of being from the large state of California, where the primary had just been moved up to Super Tuesday (March 3). For a thrilling moment, after her commanding performance in a June 2019 debate, Harris seemed on track to pull off this feat, threatening Joe Biden’s hold on South Carolina in the polls and surging in Iowa. But neither she nor Cory Booker, who also relied on the Obama precedent, could displace Biden as the favorite of Black voters or strike gold in the crowded Iowa field. Out of money and luck, Harris dropped out before voters voted.
Now Kamala Harris is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee for 2024 without having to navigate any primaries. But she still faces some key strategic decisions. Joe Biden was consistently trailing Donald Trump in the polls in no small part because he was underperforming among young and non-white voters, the very heart of the much-discussed Obama coalition. Can Harris recoup some of these potential losses without sacrificing support elsewhere in the electorate? That is a question she must address at the very beginning of her general-election campaign.
There’s a chance that Harris can inject a bit of the Obama “hope and change” magic into a Democratic ticket that had previously felt like a desperate effort to defend an unpopular administration led by a low-energy incumbent, as Ron Brownstein suggests in The Atlantic:
“Polls have shown that a significant share of Americans doubt the mental capacity of Trump, who has stumbled through his own procession of verbal flubs, memory lapses, and incomprehensible tangents during stump speeches and interviews to relatively little attention in the shadow of Biden’s difficulties. Particularly if Harris picks a younger running mate, she could top a ticket that embodies the generational change that many voters indicated they were yearning for when facing a Trump-Biden rematch …
“In the best-case scenario for this line of thinking, Harris could regain ground among the younger voters and Black and Hispanic voters who have drifted away from Biden since 2020. At the same time, she could further expand Democrats’ already solid margins among college-educated women who support abortion rights.”
Team Trump seems to believe it can offset these potential gains by depicting Harris as a “California radical” and a symbol of diversity who might alienate the older white voters with whom Biden had some residual strength. Obama overcame similar race-saturated appeals in 2008, but he had a lot of help from a financial collapse and an unpopular war presided over by the party of his opponent.
Following Obama’s path has major strategic implications in terms of the battleground map. Any significant improvement over Biden’s performance among Black, Latino, and under-30 voters might put Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina — very nearly conceded to Trump in recent weeks — back into play. But erosion of Biden’s support among older and/or non-college-educated white voters could create potholes in his narrow Rust Belt path to victory in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
These strategic choices could definitely affect Harris’s choice of a running-mate, not just in terms of potentially picking a veep from a battleground state, but as a way of amplifying the shift produced by Biden’s withdrawal. Brownstein even thinks Harris might consider following Bill Clinton’s 1992 example of doubling down on her own strengths:
“The other option that energizes many Democrats would be for Harris to take the bold, historic option of selecting another woman: Whitmer. That would be a greater gamble, but a possible model would be 1992, when Bill Clinton chose Al Gore as his running mate; Gore was, like him, a centrist Baby Boomer southerner—rather than an older D.C. hand. ‘I love Josh Shapiro and I think he would be a great VP candidate, but I would double down’ with Whitmer, [Democratci consultant Mike] Mikus told me. ‘I don’t think you have to go with a moderate white guy. I think you can be bold [with a pick] that electrifies your base.’ I heard similar views from several consultants.”
Whitmer’s expressed disinterest in the veepstakes may take that particular option off the table, but the broader point remains: Harris does not have to — and may not be able to — simply adopt Biden’s strategy and tweak it slightly. She may be able to contemplate gains in the electorate that were unimaginable for an 81-year-old white male incumbent. But the strategic opportunity to follow Obama’s path to the White House will first depend on Harris’s ability to refocus persuadable voters on Trump’s shaky record, bad character, and extremist agenda. Biden could not do that after the debate debacle of June 27. His successor must begin taking the battle to the former president right now.
Vote early and vote often…wait you can’t anymore. Well, JUST VOTE.
BTW, I got an e-mail about winning a free Zippo lighter with the Dem Donkey on it. Cool stuff. Vote on http://www.zippo.com
Get out the vote!
wahoo! Now if Kerry would just fight like hell we’ll win this thing.
This is no time for despair. KERRY IN A LANDSLIDE. The poll showing Bush ahead is an outlier.
It is the democratic party that represents the views of the vast majority of Americans. The delusional are going to vote for Bush, but I think most Americans aren’t that insane.
Like I said, KERRY IN A LANDSLIDE, and then W will GO HOME!
wgoeshome.com
Nice to see the folks at the RNC use the term Liberty as if it where a thousand foot crutch.
Isn’t the term Liberal shorthand for Liberty?
Spread the word… 🙂
The GOP convention ….I think I figured out the formula:
9-11
9-11
9-11
9-11
John Kerry sucks
John Kerry is a flip-flopper
Terrorism ….Bush keynote
Amen
The war party peddles in fear, because that’s all they have left to sell.
After 4 yrs Bush is still all HAT no CATTLE…
with his abysmal record on the US economy.
with his abysmal record on the jobs
with his abysmal record on healthcare
with his abysmal record on the environment
etc.etc. etc.
Net Net: George W. Bush is a “FAILURE”
Kerry Hits Back
NEWARK, Ohio – In a scathing attack, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry accused Republicans of hiding President Bush’s “record of failure” behind insults and promised a new direction for the country under a Kerry-Edwards administration.
Now the debate will turn more to REAL issues like the economy, jobs, healthcare, environment and Kerry/Edwards are going to pummel the daylights out of Bush/Cheney.
George W. Bush: “FAILURE” is a simple, very clear, and true message that most American voters will “Get”
Kerry/Edwards are going to win !
So what kind of bounce do we think the Repubs will get from their convention. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict a negative bounce of 1-2% based on the Miller fiasco of last night.
Ruy, post in the damn comments for once.
Anyhow, when do we start counting LVs and not RVs? Why did the lead in independants shrinks o much?
Apparently, there were a number of security breeches at the RNC over the past few days… If they cant secure their own convention, how on earth are they going to secure the entire nation?
Maybe Brian has a response to this. My passing thru the GOP blogs notes that they gloss over this failure and simply wish the pres. a safe delivery tonight. hmm
Cheers
August was bound to be a bad month for Kerry. He had to hoard his money and Bush got to spend the rest of his warchest. That we’re still even with Bush should be cause for celebration.
Campaigns are marathons and the last leg begins tonight. Fortuantely, Kerry’s a great closer.
excellent news. and I agree that the handringing and teeth-nashing of fairweather democrats over kerry’s chances are excessive.
but it still doesn’t change the fact that kerry campaign did a lackluster job in august, particularly as concerns the swift boat vets for BS. nor does it justifiably mute critics of the campaign.
the facts speak clearly for themselves: the GOP is better at running elections. the issue for me and other dems is that the democratic party needs to be better organized, better disciplined about staying on message, and better about packaging campaign positions in palatable soundbites.
decry the vapidity of the american voter all you want (and we can be stone-cold dolts), but it doesn’t change what kerry needs to do to win.
Once again, the pundits are right. Kerry is toast. He should concede now and donate the 75 million to charity.
What about the latest Economist poll? I see it and the questions seem reasonable to me (I don’t know about polling). If the poll is any good, GWB is not doing very well based on trustworthiness, economy, etc.