For some days now I keep reading and hearing about a ‘Harris Honeymoon’ and not just from the GOP. However, Republicans are the one mostly trying to push this narrative and there’s no sign they will stop. It’s been quite a month. The swiftness with which the Democratic Party rallied behind VP Kamala Harris and made her the presumptive (now official) nominee mere days after President Biden announced his withdrawal from the race startled even many Democrats. However, it flat-out STUNNED Republicans and they’ve yet to recover from the blow(s). Anyone who follows the news sees reports that Harris is enjoying a ‘Honeymoon’ phase that won’t last. The question is are they right or engaging in what’s starting to look like mass self-delusion? As in whistling past the graveyard.
It’s not unreasonable for some Republicans, those who actually know stuff (such people close to Trump are in short supply however) to have taken a deep breath. To say ‘Let’s see how all this shakes out in a week, perhaps two.’ Well, it’s been a month now and there’s no sign the Harris (now Harris/Walz) train is slowing down. If anything it’s picking up momentum! Like Trump himself the GOP is flailing, and now it seems they have talked themselves into this whole ‘Harris is having a Honeymoon but it’s about to end’ mentality. Whether they are right remains to be seen. However from where I sit it’s dangerous for Team Trump and the GOP to pin any significant part of their hopes on it. Much less bet the election on it.
I read an interesting article by John Bowden for The Independent on Aol. (yes, they still exist) that tackles the subject. He starts off noting Republican’s insistence Harris is merely riding the wave of a honeymoon phase. However he goes on to note there’s no sign of it ending, pointing out that attacks on Harris and now her running mate Tim Walz don’t seem to be registering with voters. He goes on to write:
Republicans have dismissed her sudden shift in the race’s dynamics as nothing more than a temporary plateauing of support for Harris even though they have shown no signs of being able to blunt it. The vice president and her running mate will appear onstage in front of a major national audience later this month at the four-day Democratic National Convention, and given that party conventions are typically accompanied by boosts in popularity Harris could see her momentum continue through the end of the month.
I look at that and think that’s one hell of a honeymoon. Most couples who go on an actual honeymoon get a week or so. Two at most and most don’t get even that much. By the end of August that means, even according to Republicans who say she’s having her moment but it will pass and things will get back to “normal” (Normal? WTF has been normal since Trump rode down that fake gold escalator at Trump Tower in 2015?) but by then Harris will have enjoyed almost SIX weeks of “Honeymoon.” Of mostly dominating news cycles, setting and cementing the narrative for the post Labor Day part of the campaign. Anyone who follows politics knows that in a Presidential year a month (sometimes only a week) can be a lifetime. This is for Trump and the GOP a really, really bad time to have the other side enjoying any length of “Honeymoon” except perhaps for the four days of their convention.
Bowden’s article reports some Republicans are well aware of the sea change in the race:
Even Trump’s pollsters noted the shift in the polling since Harris took the Democrat’s top spot. Pollster Tony Fabrizio told campaign staff that polls would get worse before they got better, but stressed the race had not fundamentally changed, according to the New York Times.
Fabrizio said voters will saddle Harris with Biden’s policies and her backing of a liberal approach to criminal justice. That will cause a dip in her polls, but not for three weeks, according to the Times.
However Bowden’s piece immediately says: “So far, there have been few signs of a dip.” Ouch. The linked article goes on to discuss how certain states have shifted and even a couple thought lost are now back in play. Worse still others thought to be safely red show signs of being competitive. As a result he notes it could force the GOP to expend money defending crucial states they thought they didn’t have to worry about. What he doesn’t say is how much having to do so will both increase the frequency of Trump’s meltdowns and make them all the more intense and newsworthy. That friends is a real possibility that will doom Trump and perhaps the rest of the GOP in November. The worse he acts, the more easily any down ballot Democratic candidate can tie Trump around the neck of their GOP opponent. Questions about Trump support, and even outright calling them out for cowardice for kowtowing to Trump could prove a difference maker in a lot of races.
Let’s get back to this honeymoon talk though. As I said with the Democratic Convention next week it seems likely the traditional post convention bump will indeed carry the Harris/Walz campaign through the end of August. Come September Trump will be facing some court issues. If that’s not bad enough the public is going to see another GOP mess in the news as it doesn’t look like George Santos will take a plea deal. HIS trial will start and again, provide a useful tool for down ballot Democrats to hammer their opponents with. The entire Party can keep hitting the GOP with a double barreled blast of ‘From Trump down to people like Santos, THIS is what people get from voting for Republicans!’ Then there’s the Sept. 10 debate which whether he shows up or not will be a loser for Trump.
It’s no wonder the entire Democratic Party is energized. Tons of donations are coming in from small donors, the majority of them donating for the first time. By now a couple hundred THOUSAND of NEW volunteers have signed up and an already robust field operation had been set up around the country to register voters and turn out the vote. The energy is real. The donations keep coming in and I’m betting that soon big money donors, or celebrities that organize major fundraisers will be kicking in all the additional resources that are needed. Even some Silicon Valley “tech bros” are grudgingly coming around to the notion they should hedge their bets and contribute to Democrats to at least get their phone calls taken.
For all that one line near the end of the linked article jumped out at me. Look, you know that abortion and reproductive rights are STILL going to be a major issue this election. Republican’s confidently assumed before the Dobb’s decision was actually formally issued that there’d be a month or so of outrage and then the majority of the country who they KNEW disagreed with it would simmer down. To “get over it” and it wouldn’t matter at election time. Well, they were wrong. It has been biting the GOP in the ass ever since and will again this fall. More states including Florida have referendums on the ballot to enshrine abortion RIGHTS into their state’s Constitution come November. It’s why incredibly Florida might be in play, or enough of a concern Trump has to spend money and energy (the latter of which is in short supply for him now) defending his adopted state. There are other issues where Trump and the GOP are on the wrong side of public opinion.
Still, there’s been one issue on which Republicans have inexplicably held an advantage even though decades of date prove the accepted (with a sickening level of obedience from major news outlets) prove is a mistaken but widely held public belief. The Economy. As in Republicans, including even Trump are better when it comes to the Economy than any Democrat has ever been. THAT is why so many are worried, if not openly begging Trump to knock off the grievance stuff and ‘focus on The Economy.’ It is after all if not the top issue with voters, then one of the top two (or three).
For Bowden this was an almost throwaway line at the end of his article but as I said it JUMPED out at me:
A second poll released by the Financial Times showed the vice president leading Trump slightly on the issue of the economy, after he had led Biden on the issue for months.
The Financial Times? Say WHAT? We’ll have to wait and see if this is an outlier but if Trump and the GOP are losing on that issue, or even on a level playing field it’s no wonder they are on the verge of panic mode. With some already in it. Consider this: For a period of months there were sometimes stories about how Trump’s Campaign Co-Chairs LaCivita and Wiles had been running what by Trump standards was a semi-disciplined campaign. I don’t think after the past few weeks anyone will say anything resembling that again. Now, that Financial Times poll may or may not be an outlier but what if internal GOP polling is indicating the same thing? Or at least that things are trending that way? Trump’s reaction when informed of it would be thermonuclear!
If you consider just the past week, if Trump has in fact been told there’s polling that Harris/Democrats are at least even with Trump/the GOP on the Economy even Trump knows how bad that would be. It could explain how incredible as it was to see Trump got even more unhinged. It’s a theory to be sure but it fits the facts.
In any case none of us have crystal balls and can see the future. About the only thing we can be sure of is that we aren’t done with surprises in this Presidential campaign. The only question is how those surprises will affect each campaign and therefore the race and its outcome. Who knows? President Biden pulled a diplomatic miracle out of the rabbit hat with the hostage release. Free to concentrate on his job who knows what else he might pull off, with Harris standing right there with him as Biden gives the country another dose of “old man my ass!.’
I’m not sure, but it seems likely the GOP is going to be pinning its hope on the ‘Harris is enjoying a honeymoon’ but reality will set in – and then we’ll “get” her’ strategy. For what it’s worth I’m getting more convinced by the day they are whistling past the proverbial graveyard. Time will tell.
Interesting, I tried to post this on X and the graphic wouldn’t come up. I posted it to FB and the graphic was there.
I suspect that a really good honeymoon can lead directly to a very good marriage. The idea of a Harris/Walz honeymoon depends on an assumption that voters will soon get over the initial infatuation and grow disillusioned with the object(s) of their affection. That assumption’s based on a related assumption that Harris/Walz have no allure past a summer-love-type crush. That’s truly stupid. The Democrats have an enormous attraction for anyone aware of the awfulness of the MAGAt GOP ticket, especially for women who have not and will never forget and forgive the destruction of Roe v Wade.
I’ve always felt that the names of the legislation passed by President Biden in 2021 and 2022 were really poor. Heck, they should have called one of them Infrastructure Week! The “Inflation Reduction Act” took a long time to get around to its goals, but where we are now is just the right time to point out: It Worked!!!
Let the Rs keep asking “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
Anybody who says no is lying. 2020? Oh, right, such a wonderful time…
You make a good point. One thing that’s driven me nuts for decades has been conservative’s ability to name stuff in a way that makes the shiite sandwich they’ve created and want to force people to eat is a gourmet meal.
I smell fear!
The ‘pubes/magats/con xtians have given Dems ad campaigns that, if used often, win them elections: a lot of them. You can’t write better ads than the ones gifted to the dems by the corrupt cons on the s.c., the senility of von shitzinpants, and the self owns by hillbilly boy and you don’t even need to be creative–just report what these fools did, do, and say. Do it nonstop until election day. If the dems are smart, they will do this. Unfortunately, I seldom see smart electioneering by the dems. For all that staying on message, as a party, will win them solid majorities in congress, the w.h., and maybe even some statehouses/gov mansions, I will make book they don’t. They will likely not just shoot themselves in the foot, but actually blow their damned legs off. That is dem electioneering, or at least has been thus far. If they want to actually win elections, they probably need to stop their usual nonsense. Making good and damned sure the voting public knows A) who is responsible for making 1/2 of the population’s lives a living hell, B) who really despises anyone not white, xtian, male, and C) how their planning to give the whole shebang to white, xtian, males, ought to be the only thing coming out of dem mouths, ads, zitter messages, etc.
IF they were smart, they’d stay on message. They won’t.