Is Indiana In Play Due To Mike Pence?

Time has slowed down measurably the past week or so. The fact that the official daylight savings time change happened just this past Sunday has only exacerbated this sensation. We’re all a little bit thrown off, out of kilter, due to the seasonal time change and that coupled with Election Day, has just made this week, only two days old, seem like it’s been going on for a month.

Rumors are flying like bats out of a condemned building right now. The latest one is that perhaps Indiana is in play. What spawned this notion? The Iowa/Selzer poll, mainly. If Iowa is in play, then that raises a lot of questions about what state is safely red. And neighboring Indiana comes into play. After all, Iowa and Indiana went blue in 2008 for Barack Obama and so it’s not too wild a speculation to suppose that there’s a causal connection, if Iowa goes blue, so does its neighbor.

Also, there is the fact that Mike Pence has ended his relationship with Donald Trump. Yes, it could be argued that that took place on January 6, 2021, when Trump put his then-Vice President’s life in danger and responded, “So what?” when informed of that simple fact? But the real nail(s) in the coffin came when Pence said that he would not endorse Trump for a second term. Finally, bear in mind the fact that Democrat Pete Buttigieg is well loved in Indiana and you might have the makings of an upset. Journalist Vicky Ward spoke to a Republican campaign manager about this very thing.

I’ve even heard this morning that the Harris campaign believes Indiana is in play. And that if Trump loses North Carolina (which he may, courtesy of the disastrous recent remarks of Governor Mark Robinson, who looks likely to be defeated), then what?

I spoke today, as my readers know I do most days, to Trump’s first campaign adviser Sam Nunberg, who has been plugged in since the early hours. (At the end he has to hop off to take one more campaign call).

Here’s his take on where we are. I think he sounds less confident than he was a couple weeks ago but he says the Trump campaign thinks Pennsylvania is “doable” and, says they are optimistic.

And yet the Harris team says the same thing. […]

But I wouldn’t take a lot out of the Iowa poll because the Iowa poll, there are some inconsistencies or weird metrics in there that the Iowa Poll by Selzer has, which if she’s correct on, then it’s a rout. It’s an Obama type route for Harris, – which it isn’t. And then the other thing you have to remember is that the six-week abortion ban went into effect in the summer. There were only four house seats there. Two of them frequently flip from Republican to Democrat. Democrats have been targeting those and placed massive amounts of money on abortion.

…And that’s the Kansas model. That’s the Ohio model, and it may win it for them. But look, Donald Trump, I believe is going to win on.

You’ve told me that somebody from the Harris campaign says Indiana is in play.

VW: Yes, I consider that remarkable.

SN: But I consider that misinformation. What I would assume is that a high amount of Republicans are possibly not voting or voting for Harris because of Mike Pence.

But I have friends working on the governor’s race there. They’ve been telling me for weeks it’s way outside the margin of error. So I think that’s misinformation. Or they got an outlier poll somewhere, but I don’t see it. And when I tell you that too, that there’s been a lot of Republican ads there, meaning just because Trump may have not put money in there, the [Republican] candidates running for governor—I forget if there’s a Senate race there—but they put a lot of money into those states. So they’re not getting killed on the airwaves.

And they probably are getting killed on the airwaves in Iowa.

But that’s another issue. Let’s see. That’s an early indicator. What if Trump wins Iowa by 9 or 11? He still wins it. Then we know that that Ann Selzer poll was bullshit and all this happy talk about the Midwest was bullshit. Because you have to remember in 2020, Selzer said that Biden and Trump were statistically tied in September. Then she comes out that Trump’s winning by 7. Let’s see if she’s right this time. Sometimes she was off. She was off in 2004. Maybe she’s made adjustments. She was off in 2000. Excuse me, she was off in 2000, I believe, when Bush won Iowa.

This last paragraph is waffling nonsense. Yes, it is accurate that J. Ann Selzer’s poll in September, 2020, had Trump and Biden tied. But the last poll she did had Trump winning by seven points and in fact he won by eight. So if Selzer was within one point of the final number, she pulled off a miracle of polling. If she could do it four years ago, why not tonight?

Selzer is not off. That’s why her poll is the gold standard. Again, all we can do is speculate. We could be looking at a repeat of 2008. As I write, it’s not even 3:00 p.m. in the Pacific time zone. So it’s still before the closing of the polls in the east and all anybody can do is grab some exit polls and wait for counting to begin.

All eyes are on Pennsylvania, that much I will caution you. And I say “caution” because it is a state where the mail-in ballots and early ballots are counted after live voting, so the possibiity of a red mirage is high. And make no mistake: Donald Trump is hoping and praying for the red mirage so that he can claim an early victory tonight and get the conspiracy theory ball rolling.

Let’s see what happens in Indiana. I’m not saying so much that Mike Pence is so beloved that his disfavor with Trump would sway Hoosier votes. I am saying that the same behavior of Trump’s that swayed Pence in the first place to disown his former master may strike other Hoosiers the same way.

The polls will close in Indiana in fifteen minutes or so, as I write. Let’s see what happens. Because it would be a mind blower if Trump began to lose. Let’s not get ready to celebrate it, let’s just keep it in the back of our minds.

The night is young. It is probably going to be interminably long, but for now, it is young.

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