The following article by Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and co-author with John B. Judis of “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Why are Democrats fumbling the issue of education, which they have dominated for many years? There are multiple reasons: they mishandled the Covid-related school closures, they are letting the culture wars distract from the core mission of schools, and they are downplaying the importance of merit and academic achievement. Before I discuss how the Dems could effect a turnaround, let’s dig deeper into these missteps and unfortunate trends.

The school closures went on way too long. Democrats, far more than Republicans, worked to keep public schools closed during the Covid pandemic—longer than in other advanced countries and far longer than was justified by emerging scientific understanding of the virus and its effects. Pushed by their allies in the teachers unions, Democrats ignored the justified warnings that extended school closures would severely harm student learning and social development, especially for poorer children. The returns are now in, and it is clear that the warnings Democrats ignored were, if anything, too mild.

This was no minor error made by Democratic officials in the fog of pandemic confusion but a profound tragedy for millions of children that could have been avoided or at least substantially mitigated. To add to the shameful episode, parents in many communities around the country who wanted the schools reopened faster were frequently demonized by progressives as heartless, anti-science right-wingers who didn’t care about public health. The wounds from this still fester today.

Privileging politics over pedagogy. The culture wars rage on in the schools. Democrats argue that it is all the fault of the Right, who they say wishes to “ban books,” prevent children from learning about slavery, and subject gay and transgender-identifying children to bullying and worse. Progressive educators and school systems, on the other hand, simply stand for a modern, inclusive education that no decent, unprejudiced person should oppose.

This is disingenuous in the extreme. Over the last decade, and especially after the George Floyd summer of 2020, there has been a concerted effort by many school systems and educators to promote “anti-racist” education that goes way beyond benign pedagogical practices such as teaching about slavery, Jim Crow, the Tulsa Race Massacre, redlining, and so on. Instead, pedagogy itself is to be infused, from top to bottom and in every subject, with concepts drawn from the anti-racist playbook. As noted by sociologist Ilana Redstone, these concepts include the assertion that “[a]n unwillingness to recognize the full force of systemic racism as determining disparities between groups is a denial of the reality of racism today (and evidence of ignorance at best and racism at worst).” An army of diversity, equity, and inclusion consultants have stood at the ready to assist school systems in training their staff and teachers to implement this creed and incorporate it into their curricula.

This is politics, not pedagogy as traditionally and properly understood. It has little to do with what most parents want schools to do: develop their children’s academic skills and knowledge base so they can succeed in the world. Democrats have been hurt by their increasing identification with this ideological project rather than the traditional goals of public education.

Downgrading merit and educational achievement. Consistent with this ongoing politicization of educational practices, there has been a concomitant downgrading of academic merit and standard measures of educational achievement, especially standardized tests. In the name of fairness and “equity,” school systems in Democratic-controlled states and counties have taken steps to de-emphasize such measures as a means of evaluating students and controlling admissions to advanced courses, programs, and elite schools.

It hasn’t quite reached the “all shall have prizes” stage, but the message to aspiring students and parents who see educational achievement as their route to upward mobility and success in life is clear: students can no longer rely on hard work and objectively good academic performance to attain their goals (see “Your Neighborhood School Is a National Security Risk,” features, Winter 2024). Other priorities of the school system may take precedence, reducing the payoff from their performance. This does not sit well with most parents, who see it as public schools’ responsibility to encourage and reward their children’s talent and hard work. Democrats have been hurt by their diminishing association with what parents care about the most.

Getting Their Groove Back

In light of all this, is it possible for Democrats to regain their mojo on education during the 2024 election cycle? I think it is, though it will require changing their approach considerably from current practices. And it’s worth doing so. Even if education is not a central issue in the presidential contest, it is sure to loom large in many congressional, gubernatorial, and state legislative races.

Here’s how Democrats can decisively change their current image on education and rebuild their advantage on the issue.

Get ideology, whether from the Left or Right, out of schools.Voters are sick of the culture wars around schools. Overwhelmingly, they just want children to get a good education based on standard academic competencies, not instruction in a politically inflected worldview. Democrats must assure voters that the former is their number-one priority. Just as they oppose attempts from the Right to inject their ideology into schools by restricting critical discussion of American history and society, so they must also oppose efforts by those on the Left to impose their views on curricula and analysis of social issues. Neither is appropriate. The job of schools is to give students the tools to make informed judgments, not tell them what those judgments should be.

Articulating this point would signal to voters that Democratic politicians understand what the real priorities of schools should be. But they shouldn’t leave it at that. They should advocate the addition of something positive to schools—that is, to “teach kids what it means to be an American,” in the words of Albert Shanker, the pathbreaking president of the American Federation of Teachers in the late 20th century.

By doing so, Democrats could dissociate themselves from the jaundiced and divisive attitudes of many progressive activists and embrace instead an approach emphasizing what students have in common as Americans. As education scholar Richard Kahlenbergwrites, civics instruction in public schools should embrace (or get back to) teaching

the core of the American Creed: the veneration of liberty and equality promised by the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution…The Declaration and Constitution provide, as the Fordham Institute notes, “a common framework for resolving our differences even as we respect them.”… In emphasizing America’s distinctive system of governance, students can appreciate a shared American identity focused on shared values that counters both right-wing white identity politics that sees only white Christians as “real Americans” and left-wing race essentialism that sees a person’s race, ethnicity, gender, and religion as far more important than what citizens have in common as Americans.

Maintain high achievement standards for all groups, even while seeking to close racial disparities. The Democrats have a merit problem, and that has infected their approach to schools and schooling. The traditional Democratic theory of the case ran like this: discrimination should be opposed and dismantled and resources provided to the disadvantaged so that everyone can fairly compete and achieve. Those who were meritorious would be rewarded; those who weren’t would not be.

Democrats have lost interest in the last part of their case, and that abandonment undermines their whole theory. Merit and objective measures of achievement are now viewed with suspicion as the outcomes of a hopelessly corrupt system, so rewards should instead be allocated on the basis of various criteria allegedly related to social justice. Instead of dismantling discrimination and providing assistance so that more people have the opportunity to acquire merit, the real solution is to worry less about merit and more about equal outcomes—“equity” in the parlance of our times.

But here’s what ordinary voters believe: “Racial achievement gaps are bad and we should seek to close them. However, they are not due just to racism, and standards of high achievement should be maintained for people of all races.” This statement was tested in a nationwide poll of more than 18,000 registered voters by RMG Research and elicited 74 percent agreement versus a mere 16 percent disagreement. In Wisconsin, the statement generated agreement by 91 percent of Republicans and 64 percent of Democrats.

Democratic politicians should fearlessly endorse this statement and assure voters that they are all about high standards, high achievement, and how they go together in successful schooling. Democrats should forthrightly oppose the watering down of academic standards in the name of equity and defend elite programs based on academic merit and rigorous tests. The latter is particularly important for reaching Asian voters and stopping the ongoing decline in their support for Democrats.

Provide more choice within the public school system. Public schools have been losing students lately to private schools and homeschooling, as misplaced priorities and academic failures in many public schools have some parents heading for the exits. That typically means they aren’t happy with the public school their child is assigned to. An obvious way to mitigate this problem is simply to give parents more choice of where they can send their child to school, through both more options within the local school system and a wider array of charter schools.

Read more…

It’s traditional in American politics to fret about “October surprises,” the unanticipated events that throw off years of plans and calculations. October has barely begun, but Hurricane Helene with its terrible destruction already has people wondering, so I wrote some preliminary thoughts about how to assess it at New York:

The upcoming presidential election is so close that it could easily be swayed by external developments. Perhaps a widening war in the Middle East will turn heads in one direction or the other, or possibly a dockworkers strike will shake the steadily improving economy and help Republicans. But the major event we already know about is Hurricane Helene, which took a horrific toll on a swath of coastal and inland communities stretching from Florida to Virginia. Confirmed deaths from the storm have already reached 175, with more likely as rescue crews sift through the wreckage and reach remote areas. Damage is expected to reach as much as $160 billion, making the storm one of the deadliest and costliest in U.S. history.

While the human tragedy of Helene remains front and center, it’s impossible to forget entirely that the nightmare storm hit late in a very close and highly consequential presidential election, and two battleground states (Georgia and North Carolina) were very much affected. Here’s what we know about the possible political fallout.

Will damage from the storm impact turnout?

A lot of what we know about the impact of a major destructive storm on the willingness and ability of citizens to vote comes from Hurricane Sandy, which hammered parts of Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York in October 2012 during the run-up to a reasonably competitive presidential election. Sandy, to be clear, was much more proximate to Election Day (hitting the United States on October 29, eight days before the election) than Helene. On the other hand, early voting has become more significant since 2012, and mail ballots were going out in North Carolina when Helene roared across the area. The major study on the electoral impact of Sandy concluded that the famous “superstorm” did not have a significant impact on voter turnout in 2012.

There’s some talk in North Carolina of flooded polling places that may not be usable any time soon and fears of extended disruption of mail service. However, in all but a few isolated places, there should be plenty of time for recovery in the month before Election Day. Individuals, of course, may experience dislocations and psychological effects that might interfere with all kinds of civic participation, but it will be hard to anticipate the magnitude of such collateral damage.

If Helene does affect voting, will there be a disparate impact on candidates?

The Washington Post took a look at the communities experiencing the most death and destruction from Helene and quickly concluded Trump country was most affected:

“As of writing, the federal government has issued disaster declarations in 66 mostly rural counties across four states: 17 in Florida, 11 in Georgia, 25 in North Carolina, and 13 in South Carolina. The declarations follow Helene’s path, from the section of Florida where the state bends along the Gulf of Mexico, through eastern Georgia and into the western Carolinas …

“Overall, counties in those four states that weren’t declared disaster areas voted for Joe Biden by a slight margin. Counties that were declared disaster areas backed Trump by a nearly 16-point margin. In all four states, counties that were included in the federal government’s disaster declarations were more supportive of Trump than were counties that didn’t receive that designation. In Georgia and North Carolina, non-disaster counties gave more votes to Biden.”

The disparate impact is most notable in North Carolina, a red-hot battleground state and the one where Helene’s impact was most heavily concentrated:

“Trump won North Carolina by a bit over one percentage point in 2020. If no one in the counties currently undergoing a Helene-related disaster had voted, Biden would have won by more than three points. If those counties are unable to vote at the same level as they did four years ago by the time Election Day arrives, that could spell trouble for the former president.”

But again, it’s a long time until Election Day.

Will government relief and recovery efforts affect voter preferences?

People who have lost homes or other possessions to high winds and (especially) flooding and/or who lack power or other essentials for an extended period of time are especially dependent on emergency assistance and may be grateful if it arrives expeditiously. Beyond for those immediately affected, the perceived competence and compassion of government entities dealing with disaster relief and recovery efforts can affect how voters assess those in office, particularly in a high-profile situation like that created by Helene.

An American Enterprise Institute study of Sandy suggested that the Obama administration’s response to the storm was a major factor in the incumbent’s ability to win late deciders in 2012, topped by this finding: “Fully 15 percent of the electorate rated Obama’s hurricane response as the most important factor in their vote.”

At the other end of the spectrum, the George W. Bush administration’s tardy, confused, and seemingly indifferent response to the calamity of Hurricane Katrina in August and September of 2005 had an enduringly negative effect on perceptions of his presidency, even though it occurred nowhere close to a national election, as Reid Wilson explained:

“Voters, already turning skeptical over the mismanaged war in Iraq, blamed Bush for the unfolding disaster in New Orleans. Bush’s approval rating hit 45 percent in Gallup surveys the month after Katrina; they never again reached that high. The number of Americans who said the country was headed off on the wrong track rose north of 60 percent and stayed even higher for the rest of Bush’s presidency.”

While FEMA and HUD are typically the federal agencies most involved in disaster response and recovery, presidential leadership in a disaster always gets attention, too, and the risk of negative publicity or graphic displays of unmet needs won’t go away immediately. Bureaucratic backlogs in distributing funds and approving applications for assistance could cause voter unhappiness long after the initial damage is addressed.

Barring unexpected developments or a major series of screwups in the federal response, Hurricane Helene is likely to mark a big moment in the lives of people in and near the areas of devastation but probably won’t much affect their voting behavior. Obviously the campaigns and their allies will need to adjust their get-out-the-vote operations and show some sensitivity to the suffering of people whose lives were turned upside down. We can only hope the election itself and its aftermath don’t add violence and trauma to the damage done.

Former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for President. The video:

Cheney, whose father, former Vice President Dick Cheney has also endorsed Harris, is the most recent Republican leader to endorse Harris for President. As Andrew Feinberg writes at The Independent:

Other former Republican elected officials who have endorsed Harris include former Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger, who served with Liz Cheney on the House January 6 committee, and former Republican senators Jeff Flake of Arizona and Nancy Kassebaum of Kansas.

But the ranks of former GOP diehards who’ve thrown support behind Harris goes beyond former elected officials.

In September, more than 200 former staffers for Republican presidential candidates — including former presidents George HW Bush and George W Bush, Utah Senator Mitt Romney and the late Arizona Senator John McCain — issued an open letter calling on  “moderate Republicans and conservative independents” to join them in backing the Democratic candidate against Trump, calling the ex-president’s potential return to the White House “simply untenable.”

Numerous officials who served in the Trump administration have endorsed Harris or have declined to endorse Trump’s third bid for the presidency on the grounds that he is unfit to serve because of his disregard for the US constitution.

At the only debate between Trump and Harris in September, two top Trump White House officials — ex-communications director Anthony Scaramucci and former vice presidential homeland security adviser Olivia Troye served as surrogates for the vice president.

Four more ex-Trump White House staffers — Alyssa Farah Griffin, Cassidy Hutchinson and Sarah Matthews — have also endorsed Harris this year, and all three are scheduled to join Cheney in campaigning for the vice president at an event in Pennsylvania next week.

It was a good day for Harris, who also picked up the endorsement of one of America’s most prestigious magazines, The New Yorker. The NYer endorsement said in part:

….For nine years, Donald Trump has represented an ongoing assault on the stability, the nerves, and the nature of the United States. As President, he amplified some of the ugliest currents in our political culture: nativism, racism, misogyny, indifference to the disadvantaged, amoral isolationism. His narcissism and casual cruelty, his contempt for the truth, have contaminated public life. As Commander-in-Chief, he ridiculed the valor of fallen soldiers, he threatened to unravel the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and he emboldened autocrats everywhere, including Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Viktor Orbán. When Trump lost to Joe Biden, in 2020, he tried every means possible to deny the will of the electorate and helped incite a violent insurrection on Capitol Hill.

Trump is a menacing presence in American life, and most of his former associates know it. Of his forty-two former Cabinet secretaries, only half have endorsed him. More than two hundred staffers for four previous Republican Presidents and Presidential candidates have endorsed the Democratic ticket. High-ranking officials who once surrounded Trump—including former Vice-President Mike Pence, former Defense Secretaries Jim Mattis and Mark Esper, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former chief of staff John Kelly, the former national-security advisers John Bolton and H. R. McMaster, and the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley—regard him as unfit, a threat to national security…..

….Harris deserves enormous credit for stepping fearlessly into the role that fate has dealt her. In the face of a malign opponent, she has behaved with poise, conviction, and intelligence. Of course, her ability to carry out her policy ambitions would improve immeasurably with the election of Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate. But, whatever the circumstances, her positions on the critical issues are rational, undergirded by a basic sense of decency, and often compelling.

More endorsements of Harris for President by Republicans are expected in the weeks ahead.

Give it up for Jack Smith, who continues to bulldog-investigate Trump’s role in the Jan. 6th insurrection/riot.  Trump’s delaying tactics have weakened the issue as a potential influence on voters. But Smith does not cower in the shadows like some you could name when it comes to seeking justice.  Here’s how Katherine Faulders, Alexander Mallin, and Peter Charalambous explain it in their article, “Bombshell immunity filing details Trump’s alleged ‘increasingly desperate’ bid to overturn 2020 election” at abcnews.com: “Special counsel Jack Smith has outlined new details of former President Donald Trump and his allies’ sweeping and “increasingly desperate” efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, in a blockbuster court filing Wednesday aimed at defending Smith’s prosecution of Trump following the Supreme Court’s July immunity ruling….Trump intentionally lied to the public, state election officials, and his own vice president in an effort to cling to power after losing the election, while privately describing some of the claims of election fraud as “crazy,” prosecutors alleged in the 165-page filing….”When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office,” the filing said. “With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost….When Trump’s effort to overturn the election through lawsuits and fraudulent electors failed to change the outcome of the election, prosecutors allege that the former president fomented violence, with prosecutors describing Trump as directly responsible for “the tinderbox that he purposely ignited on January 6….The lengthy filing — which includes an 80-page summary of the evidence gathered by investigators — outlines multiple instances in which Trump allegedly heard from advisers who disproved his allegations, yet continued to spread his claims of outcome-determinative voter fraud, prosecutors said….”It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell,” Trump allegedly told members of his family following the 2020 election, the filing said.” Read more here.

In “New Harris ad previews Vance’s dangerous potential power if Trump wins,” Jessica Sutherland writes at Daily Kos: “If Donald Trump wins in November, there are various reasons why he might not be able to complete a second four-year term. That means Americans could suddenly find themselves with a President JD Vance—a very scary prospect. The risks of a Vance ascension are at the center of “A Heartbeat Away,” the latest ad from the Harris-Walz campaign…. For anyone familiar with Vance’s extremism—recently detailed by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow—it’s a stark reminder. For those who might not know much about the novelist-turned-first-term Ohio senator, who stumbled to a 2022 victory over former Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan thanks only to massive cash infusionsfrom Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vance’s mentor, venture capitalist Peter Thiel, it’s a warning….The ad paints a picture of Vance and his “ruthless” ideology, and couches it against the real risk that a reelected Trump won’t be in the White House when the end of his term comes around in January 2029—whether because he’s in prison, or because of health reasons.” It’s hard to imagine Trump giving up power to anyone. But for those old enough to remember Gerald Ford’s pardon of Nixon, it doesn’t seem like such a crazy scenario. Here’s the ad:

If you needed an extra reason to get involved in early GOTV in your swing state, consider that some current events beyond anyone’s control are likely to produce painful price hikes in the not too distant future. Gas prices are relatively moderate at the moment. But the war in the mid east could be a problem. Read, for example “Rising oil prices after Iran strike could increase US gas prices, experts say by Max Zahn at abcnews.com and “Will gas prices, supplies be affected by the port strike? What experts say: Fortunately for Americans, the strike at 36 East and Gulf coast ports isn’t expected to disrupt the oil and gas industry – at least not right away” by Eric Lagatta and Medora Lee at USA Today. As regards your family dinner, check out  “Helene just pummeled America’s chicken farming capital” by Kenny Torella at Vox, in which he writes: “Hurricane Helene, the Category 4 storm that slammed the American Southeast over the weekend, has killed more than 110 people — and likely millions of chickens….Almost half of the more than 9 billion chickens farmed for meat in the US, known as “broiler” chickens, are raised and slaughtered in the region. Georgia is the nation’s top chicken producer, processing 1.3 billion chickens annually. Over the weekend, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp told reporters that 107 poultry facilities in the state had been “damaged or totally destroyed by the storm.”Some of the nation’s largest poultry companies — including Aviagen, Pilgrim’s Pride and Wayne-Sanderson Farms — suspended operations at their local facilities due to power outages in recent days.” Never mind that, for health reasons, Americans should be eating more vegetables and less factory-farmed chicken and that President Biden has done a good job of improving the economy. Regardless of the real reasons for inflation, however, the party that holds the White House usually loses votes as a result of price hikes at the gas pump and supermarket. Hence, the more early votes banked in the next few weeks, the better for Democrats.

Lately I’ve noticed a tendency in some parts of the pro-Democratic commentariat to scorn anyone who isn’t confidently predicting a Kamala Harris landslide in November. So I wrote a warning about this self-delusion at New York:

It’s the nature of the political game that some fans perpetually insist their team is on the brink of a landslide victory. Maybe it’s just a device for maintaining their own enthusiasm, or maybe they truly believe that hype and spin add votes to their candidate’s columns. I usually associate this tendency with conservatives, but in this tense 2024 presidential contest, the landslide-predictors aren’t all in the MAGA camp. There are assorted voices pouring buckets of cold water on the data suggesting the contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is a dead heat, insisting Harris is on the brink of a big victory.

Personally, I try to keep it all in the road by looking at the broadest array of public polling data available, by sticking with averages rather than enthusing or panicking over isolated poll findings, and by using history and common sense to discern trends and avoid overreaction to every survey that comes down the pike. But there’s just so much science you can muster on these matters given the relatively small sample size we have for presidential elections, which occur only every four years. So there’s plenty of grounds for legitimate nitpicking about polls and the experts who interpret them. It can get pretty wonky, as with Nate Silver’s criticism of the presidential-election model being used by his successors at FiveThirtyEight. But it probably affects only the numbers — and the expectations — at the margins.

Another entirely legitimate form of carping about polls and predictions emanates from those who dispute interpretations based on poor analysis of the timing, mix, and provenance of public polls. My old colleague Simon Rosenberg became somewhat famous doing that ahead of the 2022 midterms, when he denied he saw any “red wave” in the data (there ultimately wasn’t one despite an insistent media narrative) and pointed to the skewing of polling averages by strategically released state polls from conservative outlets and firms. He was largely right, though all in all, 2022 polling was very accurate, even if the predictions weren’t. This cycle, Rosenberg is again more optimistic about Democratic prospects in 2024 than your average pundit, but he remains firmly anchored in the world of data and objective reality and admits it’s a close race.

Then you have pro-Harris critics of the polls and pundits who rely on quite different talking points. The distinguished political scholar Michael A. Cohen uses data to support his supposition that Harris is actually in command of the race but ultimately relies on more fundamental arguments that are impervious to numbers:

“I have a few well-argued beliefs about this campaign (and they predate Biden’s departure from the race). Donald Trump is a high-floor, low-ceiling candidate who voters, by and large, don’t like — and they have made up their minds about him. Trump is incapable of and unwilling to change his political messaging to appeal to voters outside of his MAGA base. Democrats have a growing edge with women and college-educated voters, as evident in multiple elections since 2018, which gives them a significant advantage in crucial swing states like PA, WI, MI, GA, and AZ. Democrats have the easier path to 270 electoral votes.

“In key regards, this election is playing out in much the way I expected — even when Biden was on the ticket. With Biden out and his age and mental acuity no longer an issue, it’s that much harder for Republicans to win.”

Maybe Cohen is right. I’ll believe it when I see it empirically. But it turns out my attitude is exactly the kind of thing that veteran progressive media critic Dan Froomkin considers a sign of terrible bias:

“What if Kamala Harris — after a spectacular entry into the race, a stunningly unified convention, and a devastating debate — is basically running away with it, leaving Trump in the dust, while the national media — still mortified by its failure in 2016 to see the extent of Trump’s support — stubbornly sticks to the safer narrative that it’s a horserace going down to the wire?

“But wait, the polls aren’t showing Harris way ahead, you say. At most, they’re showing her with a narrow lead. Well, polls are garbage these days. And the pollsters, whose arbitrary weightings make a mockery of science, travel in packs. They, more than anyone, are terrified of underestimating Trump support again. So maybe this time they’re overestimating it? (Which they sure did in 2022.)

“You could, by contrast, make a solid vibes-and-momentum argument that Harris is winning handily.”

There’s a lot to unpack here. The argument that “polls are garbage these days” isn’t supported by the 2022 record, and to the extent that polls have been garbage lately, they have indeed underestimated Trump’s support. The “arbitrary weightings” of pollsters may or may not be precise, but they are not “arbitrary”; they reflect what we know about the shape of the electorate. And just tossing out all data in favor of a “vibes-and-momentum” take that is 100 percent subjective hardly empties analysis of bias.

Froomkin tips his hand by quoting SFGate columnist Drew Magary, who angrily argues that Harris is “destroying Trump, because Trump is a deranged old s—tbag” and that anyone who doesn’t see that is an Establishment hack.

Maybe all these critics are right and, for various reasons, pollsters and pundits are afraid to admit Harris is romping to victory. I don’t think there’s much question that a lot of the people being accused of overestimating Trump would be ecstatic if Harris wins. But being careful about it, given what we actually know about this election and the electorate, is not just prudent but mandatory.

In the wake of the VP debate, the spinmeisters are working overtime crafting their take-away posts. In all likelihood, however, most impressions of the debate will be faded or forgotten in a month, if not sooner. Such is the power of myriad distractions in modern America. “Interesting Veep debate last night. Oh look, there’s a squirrel.”

Here’s one take from “Consider This” at npr.org:

In a race where so much of the polling is within the margin of error — it seems as though any one thing could affect the outcome of the 2024 Presidential election.

But have Vice Presidential Debates made a difference in past races?

NPR’s senior White House Correspondent Tamara Keith dug into that existential… and political question.

Keith says that vice presidential debates are often forgettable, but the one in 1988 is seared in American popular culture.

Judy Woodruff of PBS did the introductions for Senator Dan Quayle, the Republican nominee, and Senator Lloyd Bentsen, the Democratic nominee.

Benson was in his late sixties while Quayle was only 41, and that dynamic led to one of the most iconic lines in debate history, as Quayle compared himself to John F. Kennedy, and Lloyd Bentsen replied:

“I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”

It was a huge moment in the debate. But it ultimately had no real impact on the outcome of the race. Smackdown notwithstanding, Bentsen and his running mate, Michael Dukakis, lost in a wipe out.

One could could argue that, after all, both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris served as Vice President, as did Presidents Truman, LBJ, Bush (I) and Nixon during the last century. It’s a training school for future presidents. And the voting public undoubtedly likes to be reassured that the back-up is not crazy or lacking in basic intelligence.

The one call I got about the Walz-Vance debate applauded the civility of both candidates. That’s a subtextual knock on Trump, who is all about insults and threats, while Harris has kept a more dignified tone front and center. But my hunch is that Vance’s Cat Lady and other pre-debate gaffes will have more shelf-life than his debate performance, which included his refusal to admit the Jan. 6th riot was Trumps’ doing or that Biden won the 2020 election. His transparently-evasive comments on abortion probably offset any benefit he may have scored from his pre-packaged zingers blaming Harris for all of America’s immigration problems.

All in all, no one should be surprised that the veep debate will not be a game-changer. One revealing way to evaluate the importance of the veep debate is to ponder and answer the question, “Do I know of anyone who has changed their vote because of a vice presidential nominee’s debate performance?”

In “To win over seniors, Harris should highlight her support for Social Security” at The Hill,  top Social Security experts Nancy J. Altman and William J. Arnone write: “A formerly reliable segment of the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition, voters aged 65 and older have leaned Republican since 2000. The Harris-Walz ticket has an excellent opportunity to bring these voters back. Even if the Democratic presidential ticket does not carry older voters, just reducing the margin of loss might well decide the election….We call older voters “always-voters,” because it is only a small exaggeration to say that they always vote. They have disproportionately high turnout rates, including in the seven battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin….In 2020, older voters had a turnout rate of 71.9 percent, compared to an overall turnout rate of 67 percent. In Arizona and Georgia, older voter rates were 20- and 17-percentage points higher, respectively….In 2020, voters aged 65 and older were 22 percent of the total electorate. Voters age 50 and older comprised over half of all voters….the Harris-Walz ticket is underperforming with older voters. The most recent polling indicates that the ticket is losing voters 65 and over by seven percentage points. Before withdrawing from the race, President Biden was winning this segment by three percentage points….The problem is that recent polling shows that the American people do not know where the parties stand. And the Harris-Walz campaign has yet to run ads making the contrast clear.”….Moreover, Trump’s record shows he is no protector of Social Security. As president, he proposed Social Security cuts in every single one of his budgets.”

From “This election, a struggle for the soul of American Christianity is key: That’s why battleground North Carolina will be ‘ground zero for a faith war’” by Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr.: “Religion has created a coalition management challenge for Democrats whose ranks include large majorities of Jewish and Muslim voters and an overwhelming share of voters — particularly among the young — who left organized religion altogether…..But political scientist David Campbell, co-author of “Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics,” argues that the party still has ample room for appeals to religious voters….“We don’t see any evidence that [secular voters] are hostile to Democrats who use religious language,” he told me. “It’s a myth that because they have a secular world view, they are hostile to religion. What they don’t like is the establishment of religion by government, government stepping over the line between church and state.”….Harris seems to take this view to heart. She speaks often about her Baptist faith, routinely dropping religious references into speeches and at times offering detailed accounts of its influence on her worldview. Faith, she said in a 2022 address to the National Baptist Convention, taught her “to believe in what is possible and what can be, unburdened by what has been.”….But there is a more basic reason that religion is unavoidable in this election. It has nothing to do with any “God Gap” or political calculation. Augustine is right: There is an ongoing struggle for the soul of American Christianity between brands of faith that embrace democratic inclusion and extreme forms — particularly white Christian nationalism — that promote exclusion. It’s an argument that North Carolina might be called upon to settle for the nation.”

Should Democrats fund and run more women candidates? Read “How the news media cover women in politics: 5 recent studies to know” by Clark Merrefield at Journalists Resource for a perceptive take. As Merrefield writes: “By 2023, 25% of U.S. senators, 29% of Congress, 33% of state legislators and 24% of governors were women….As women have occupied more positions of political power, so has news framing and language used in media coverage become more scrutinized….The “likability trap,” as it’s known, refers to women in positions of power having to be both highly qualified and broadly likable to colleagues and clients in the corporate world, and to voters in the political realm. It’s similar in concept to the “gender double bind,” in which women in leadership positions are expected to be both competent and warm, according to research out of the University of Michigan.” In 2016 we witnessed the first presidential election in which a woman presidential candidate received a healthy majority of the nation-wide popular vote. If Kamala Harris wins the presidency this year, expect a dramatic uptick of women candidates for elective offices throughout the U.S. And it seems reasonable to expect an significant improvement in the quality of news coverage about their campaigns.

Be not suckered by Speaker Mike Johnson’s low-key demeanor and bland persona. As Nicole Lafond writes in “Now Mike Johnson Is Hedging On Whether The Election Will Be Certified” at Talking Points Memo: “The speaker is leaving town after prevaricating on whether Congress should play its normal role in certifying the results of the election. When asked during a press conference on Tuesday if he’d “commit to observing regular order in the certification process of the 2024 election, even if Kamala Harris beats Donald Trump,” Johnson hedged….“Well of course — if we have a free, fair, and safe election, we’re going to follow the Constitution. Absolutely. Yes. Absolutely,” he said….That big “if” fits alongside the various other cryptic, intentionally vague lines that Trump and his allies have been employing for months as they dodge questions about accepting the results of the election. Trump has said repeatedly that he will only accept the results if the election is “fair.” In other words, Democrats should anticipate the certainty of Republican “leaders” doing Trumps’ bidding by challenging vote counts in swing states. Johnson is every inch a shameless Trump lapdog and a dictator-enabler, who clearly has no commitment to democracy in general, nor integrity in the  certification process in 2024 in particular.

Trying to separate the wheat of legitimate concern about how the presidential election is going from the chaff of mere fear-mongering, I wrote a piece at New York assessing Trump’s electoral college advantage, such as it is:

With under six weeks left until Election Day, there are three major sources of anxiety besetting those who devoutly hope for a Kamala Harris victory over Donald Trump. One may not go away until January: the high probability that the 45th president would again try to overturn a defeat via legal action or perhaps even violence. The other two concerns are less distinct, if still alarming. One is that pollsters will once again crucially underestimate the Trump vote, either in the battleground states (as they did in 2016) or in both the national totals as well as the battleground states (as occurred in 2020). Pollsters keep assuring us they are making every effort to correct past problems and reach a truly representative sample of voters, and it’s worth remembering that there was very little polling error in 2022. But to many Harris supporters, no lead is going to feel safe.

A final source of concern is that any Harris lead in national polls, even if they are totally accurate, won’t be enough because Trump has an Electoral College advantage. This means he can significantly undershoot a national-popular-vote plurality and win anyway, as he did in 2016 (when Hillary Clinton beat him by 2.1 percent in the popular vote) and nearly did in 2020 (when Joe Biden beat him by a pretty big 4.5 percent in the popular vote, but Trump still came within 44,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin of gaining a tie in the Electoral College). So even if Harris leads Trump by two or three or four points in the national polls, and those polls do turn out to be correct, she could lose anyway — in theory, at least.

The source of this Electoral College advantage (which did not exist as recently as 2012) can be explained in two ways. The first is that the handful of key battleground states are simply more Republican than America as a whole, which means they’re winnable with a smaller vote than the average vote share nationally. In 2016 and 2020, the so-called tipping-point state that gave one candidate or the other the 270th electoral vote necessary for victory was Wisconsin, which in both cases was nearly dead even. This year, the tipping-point state might be Georgia or Pennsylvania, and for the most part, polls have shown both as closer than the national vote spread between Harris and Trump. But probably the simpler way to explain any popular-vote/electoral-vote discrepancy is that candidates can and will “waste” votes in states they either can’t lose or can’t win. In 2020, for example, Biden got a huge number of votes beyond what he needed to carry the large states of California, New York, and Illinois, while Trump’s vote was more efficiently distributed among the states he needed to win.

Interestingly enough, in a deep dive on this subject, the New York Times’ Nate Cohn suggests that Trump’s Electoral College advantage could fade significantly this year because he’s making gains over his past performance in both the Deep South states that are in the bag for him and states like New York and California, which are sure to go for Harris but perhaps by diminished margins.

The bottom line is that maybe Harris does not need to beat Trump nationally by 5 percent to win, but what she does need won’t be clear until the votes are counted. The even more basic point to remember, however, is that national polls are simply an estimate of the national popular vote, and, unfortunately, the national popular vote just doesn’t matter in presidential elections beyond conferring bragging rights. If it did, we’d be remembering the presidencies of Al Gore and Hillary Clinton.

This does not mean national polls are useless by any means. Their typically larger samples make them essential for understanding both trend lines and the performance of candidates among different groups of voters. And unlike state polls, they are both frequent and diverse, making averages more reliable. In some states, polling is dominated by pollsters with dubious methodologies and records, making the averages suspect as well. And it bears remembering that the national-popular-vote winner has indeed won the presidency in 23 of the past 25 elections spanning a century.

But until the dust has settled, it will be difficult for highly informed Harris backers to forget the fact that in 2020 the final national polling averages at FiveThirtyEight showed Biden leading Trump by 8.4 percent and it still wound up being a nail-biter. So while you should definitely read national polls, it would be a good idea not to believe they necessarily predict the winner.

 

At The Washington Monthly, Jonathan Alter, author of the forthcoming “American Reckoning: Inside Trump’s Trial―and My Own,” writes that “the nightmare scenario—a Trump win—is still very real, especially if he carries Pennsylvania. So today, I’m paying special attention to polling in the Keystone State, though I’m told no one who lives in Pennsylvania calls it that.

The Pennsylvania electorate is about 25 percent Catholic, with fewer than 50 percent of its voters college-educated. In 2020, that helped Biden, who is Catholic and—before he became unpopular in the state—had some working-class appeal. Now, Trump leads among Pennsylvania Catholics by 18 points. Biden carried Lackawanna County—which contains Scranton, his hometown—by 8 points. (In 2016, Hillary won that area by three).

Unfortunately, Scranton is not Kamala Country, nor is Erie County in northwest Pennsylvania. And “Pennsyltucky”—all of the state’s rural areas—is overwhelmingly pro-Trump, despite hundreds of infrastructure projects underway there thanks to the Biden Administration.

That leaves the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia metro areas, where Harris must run up big majorities. Even if she does that, she has to cut into Trump’s huge margins in the rural counties at least a little to win.

The Post poll shows how deeply Trump’s lies have penetrated Pennsylvania. Surprisingly, the top issue there is not the economy, immigration, health care (the largest employer in the state), or abortion but “protecting democracy.” Good news, right? Not exactly. When asked which candidate is best equipped to protect democracy, 48 percent say Harris and 45 percent choose Trump, an insignificant gap. Nationally, about 40 percent believe the 2020 election was stolen. Those are Trump base voters, and there’s no changing their minds.

Like voters in other states, Pennsylvanians have a peculiar cognitive dissonance on the economy. While two-thirds think the national economy is “poor” or “not so good,” two-thirds are optimistic about their own financial condition. I figure these folks are in the 33 percent of the electorate who say they receive most of their news from social media and Fox News. (Only 7 percent say they get their news most often from “national print or online news organizations, like The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal”).

Harris has an advantage on abortion, with the Post poll showing 64 percent say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. However, among voters who think the economy and immigration are paramount, Trump has the backing of 65 percent and 80 percent, respectively.

While Trump’s 15-point margin among white Pennsylvania voters in 2020 exit polling has declined by a third, a good sign, he is doing surprisingly well in holding down Harris’s margins among Black voters—especially males. In 2020, Biden won 92 percent of the Black vote; Harris is currently winning 78 percent, according to the Post poll. This may be because Black voters in Pennsylvania have been bombarded with ads saying that Harris wrongly prosecuted young Black men as San Francisco’s district attorney. Last week, Roger Stone signaled that another is coming that will feature a Black San Francisco woman who was carted off to jail in handcuffs because her daughter, a sickle cell anemia patient, was truant due to illness.

Harris won’t likely respond specifically to the sickle cell case, but she may engage on this issue more broadly. While her anti-truancy policies led to sharp educational gains among Black third graders, it might look defensive and off-message to point that out.

In better news, Harris leads Trump by 12 percentage points among Pennsylvania voters in union households and a comparable margin among the rank-and-file themselves. In 2020, Trump and Biden were in a statistical tie for that vote. The enthusiastic endorsement of Shawn Fein of the UAW and several Teamsters locals may prove crucial for Harris.

The New York Times/Siena/Philadelphia Inquirer poll held some surprises. Respondents found Trump to be the more “extreme” candidate, 74 percent versus 46 percent. That only sounds good to the uninitiated. “Extreme” is apparently no longer a slur in a good chunk of America. In 1964, Barry Goldwater said in his acceptance speech at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.” This may have played well with the GOP base, but it helped doom Goldwater, who lost to Lyndon Johnson that fall in a landslide. Nowadays, among voters in the Times/Siena poll who say “extreme” described them at least “somewhat well,” Trump won by more than 50 percentage points. And he doesn’t seem to be paying a price for his extreme views among independents.

Harris is making strides in convincing voters that she’s not a San Francisco liberal. It helped when she told Oprah that she wouldn’t hesitate to shoot an intruder. Even so, far more voters see her as too liberal than view Trump as too conservative, though this doesn’t account for independents and Democrats (like me) who would not describe Trump as conservative—because he isn’t. What true conservative is a protectionist, a budget-buster, and an authoritarian?

Both candidates are much more popular in Pennsylvania than they were last year. Trump’s approval rating is up nine points to 46 percent, while Harris’s has reached 51 percent, an astonishing improvement since July. The cross-tabs on “leaners” are ambiguous but appear to favor Harris, which could be critical late in the game. The vice president’s most significant advantage may be her five-point edge on “caring about people like you.”