The simple mindedness of the GOP nominee for president has never been more apparent than it is right now. It’s only been a few short months since Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles were boasting to reporter Tim Alberta how they were virtually assured of a win, nay, a landslide, against Joe Biden. They were positively crowing. Then Biden threw a political anvil at Team Trump by withdrawing from the race. Every political outlet predicted chaos in the event of a Biden withdrawal, including this one. Never have I been so glad to be so wrong.
But while we are joyful as Democrats there is no joy in Trump world. There is only despair and desperation and you can expect that to increase exponentially. Evidently Donald Trump took it upon himself to figure out a winning strategy. He probably is calling his own shots, if the reports we get of the chaos in his campaign are even remotely accurate.
He doesn’t need those states in the west, Trump’s apparently decided. And he’s not crowing about Michigan or Minnesota (which was always laughable) or Wisconsin lately, you may have noticed. No, Trump has figured out how he’s going to win this thing and it’s simple arithmetic: all he needs to do is hang on to every state he had in 2020 and flip Pennsylvania and Georgia. If you do the arithmetic, that’s 270. Period. And so the landslide that was boasted of and counted on (you remember the 49 states brag right after the assassination attempt?) has vanished like the mirage it always was and now the miracle salvation of Pennsylvania and Georgia is the focus of the campaign. How’s that working out for him?
Recent polls of Pennsylvania voters show Vice President Kamala Harris either tied with former President Donald Trump or inching ahead as the post-Labor Day sprint to November begins.
A Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll was the most favorable for Harris, showing her with a 51% to 47% lead over Trump among registered voters, which was outside the margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points.
Um….Donald? It doesn’t look like Pennsylvania is exactly in the bag. But wait a minute, calm down now, let’s check on Georgia. Yes, let’s do that.
Harris’ latest position in the polls comes amid a Fox News survey, conducted between August 23 and 26, that put her 2 points ahead of Trump in Georgia among registered voters, with 50 percent to his 48 percent.
The poll showed 80 percent of Black voters in Georgia approved of Harris, while 61 percent of white voters approved of Trump. However, the Republican’s support among Black voters almost tripled, increasing from 7 percent to 19 percent, the poll found. Georgia has one of the largest Black populations in the United States, 2020 census data shows.
The Fox News poll also found that Trump had support from 77 percent of white evangelical Christians in the state, 71 percent of rural white voters, 74 percent of white men without a degree, and 66 percent of white women without a degree, while Harris had support from 74 percent of non-white voters and 54 percent of voters with a college degree.
For example, the RealClearPolitics poll tracker puts Trump 0.7 points ahead of Harris, while Nate Silver‘s Silver Bulletin model put Trump 0.6 points ahead of Harris. However, his model also shows that the Democrats have gained 0.9 points in Georgia polls in the past week and 3.3 points in the past month.
Polls have consistently shown Trump’s lead decreasing in Georgia and other swing states since Harris entered the race, with polls conducted between July 22 and July 24 in Georgia suggesting the former president was up by as much as 5 points in the state. In a poll published by Insider Advantage on July 16, Trump held a 10-point lead among likely voters in a head-to-head matchup with Harris.
The bolded text is the most important because it shows that the trends since Harris entered the race are unmistakable and they are continuing. At first Team Trump tried to blow all this off as “the honeymoon.” No, it’s been going on a bit too long to be some momentary infatuation. There is a steady and consistent erosion of Trump support and a concurrent increase in Harris support.
Trump got bad news this week when a volunteer named Tom Mountain issued an internal memo saying that New Hampshire was off the table and then resigned. Since then Team Trump has both been minimizing Mountain’s importance in the campaign and denying that the Granite State is out of reach. Trump lost New Hampshire in 2020 and he didn’t even win the Republican primary there, Nikki Haley did, so I don’t know why this comes as a surprise to him but apparently it does.
And what about Arizona? Trump famously lost Arizona in 2020, which was largely attributed to his egregious remarks about beloved Senator John McCain. In August polls, Harris has been as much as 5 points ahead and Trump has been ahead as much as 4. Some polls show them tied.
But continue to watch the polling there and everywhere. Trump may believe that Georgia and Pennsylvania are the way to go, because that will make up for the loss of Arizona, again. Nevada looks to be off the table — again — as well and Trump had high hopes for both those states not long ago.
Plus, this could be a harbinger of doom: North Carolina is a state Trump is counting on and it may be in jeopardy. In just two weeks Harris has narrowed a three-point gap and now she and Trump are tied. North Carolina has 16 electoral votes. Trump cannot lose that and have any path to victory, even if his dreams come true and he wins Pennsylvania and Georgia.
Kamala Harris was in New Hampshire when the school shooting in Georgia happened this week and she jumped right onto the subject and spoke out. Trump, on the other hand, tweeted about what a “deranged monster” the 14-year-old shooter was. Harris merely underscored how checked out Trump is, not only from this shooting, but from the campaign, the American people, and life in general.
It is exactly 60 days until Election Day. Look at how the polls have shifted since July 21. If this shift continues, Trump will be toast. Count on it.
Unless/until V.P. Harris has decisive leads in every swing state, hell in every state she wins, this all means little. Swing states often have red legislatures and she is f*cked if anything goes to them.
Spike I understand your trepidation but there’s still two months to go, and in that period will be the debate, trump’s sentencing, and more time for the grassroots canvassing etc. It seems she should continue to rise and he will continue to insult everyone, flip flop on his issues, and maybe other unknowns that work against him. Never give in and never give up…otherwise we bow down to these evil child killers.