Posted on 07/25/2024 3:39:40 PM PDT by lasereye
Democrats are nothing short of giddy. Biden, who looked like a sure loser, bowed out of the presidential race and was seamlessly replaced by Kamala Harris through deft and lightning-fast intraparty maneuvering. The race is reset! All is possible!
Who can blame Democrats for being a bit slap happy? They were staring into the abyss and now have a reprieve. They have a younger candidate and a more enthusiastic, unified party. Those are important and positive differences. But there are also similarities to their previous situation that are highly negative and can’t be wished away. Here’s one that I wrote about back in January:
Here is a simple truth: how working-class (noncollege) voters move will likely determine the outcome of the 2024 election. They will be the overwhelming majority of eligible voters (around two-thirds) and, even allowing for turnout patterns, only slightly less dominant among actual voters (around three-fifths). Moreover, in all six key swing states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—the working-class share of the electorate, both as eligible voters and as projected 2024 voters, will be higher than the national average.It follows that significant deterioration in working-class support could put Biden [now Harris] in a very deep hole nationally and key states. Conversely, a burgeoning advantage among working-class voters would likely put Trump in a dominant position.
This is very important to keep in mind as we are swamped by a tsunami of favorable Harris coverage in legacy and other center-left media. Where once her retail political skills were disparaged, we are told that she is now (or always has been) a consummately effective, charismatic retail politician.
Polls of course will be scrutinized for signs that the race is shifting in the Democrats’ favor and even small changes will be interpreted as signs that Trump is on the run. But in truth it will take a few weeks for the race to settle out and one should be cautious about interpreting initial results.
That said, what we have seen so far does not suggest a fundamentally altered race. Trump was ahead and is still ahead. Democrats still badly trail among working-class voters and have compressed margins among nonwhite and young voters relative to 2020. Of course, that may change in coming weeks but that is what we see now.
Looking at the running poll averages, we have the following for Trump-Harris matchups: RCP has Trump over Harris by 1.7 points (2.8 points with the full ballot including Kennedy/West/Stein). New York Times has Trump over Harris by 2 points and DDHQ/The Hill has Trump by 2 points. Pretty consistent.
Another approach is to compare averages of Biden vs. Trump and Harris vs. Trump. Naturally, these only overlap when Biden was the actual candidate and Harris was a notional candidate. But the data are still of interest.
Split Ticket has the most recent data on this, covering the month of July, and they do not show much difference between the candidates. Harris does slightly worse overall, with a margin against Trump .4 points worse than Biden. She does worse among men, a bit better among women; worse among seniors, better among those under 30; worse among whites and Hispanics and better among blacks and, significantly, worse among working-class voters and better among the college-educated. But the differences are generally quite small.
If you confine one’s sample of polls to those that were entirely in the field after Biden dropped out (i.e., after July 20), rather than just partially—a tiny group--there are some signs of a tightening race. But Trump is still ahead.
CNN is one of those polls and it does indeed show Harris doing better against Trump than Biden did prior to dropping out. But Trump is still ahead and, interestingly, Harris is doing no better against Trump than she did before Biden dropped out—in fact, a bit worse (3 point deficit now vs. a 2 point deficit in late June). And the internal demographics are quite similar to the earlier reading and all run far behind how Biden did in the 2020 election. Notably, her working-class deficit to Trump is 15 points, compared to Biden’s 4 point deficit in 2020.
These double digit Democratic deficits among the working class have been a regular feature of this election cycle. These deficits have been driven by worsening performance among the white working class (recall that Biden in 2020 actually did a bit better among these voters relative to Clinton in 2016) and much lower margins among nonwhite working-class voters. It is difficult to see how Harris prevails without strong progress on this front.
Can she do it? Sure, anything’s possible. But Democrats would be well-advised to be clear-eyed about the challenge. What Harris has to overcome is illustrated by an early July Pew poll that had a large enough sample size (N=over 9,400) to allow blacks and Hispanics to be broken down by working-class vs. college-educated. Both racial groups show strong educational polarization that is much larger than what was observed in 2020. Hispanic working-class voters in this poll preferred Trump by 3 points over Biden, compared to a 22 point margin for Biden over Trump in 2020. Among black working-class voters, Biden was leading by 47 points over Trump, compared to an 82 point lead for Biden in 2020.
A working class-oriented campaign would appear to be in order. But so far there is little indication that is what the Harris campaign has in mind. A widely-circulated memo from the campaign sees Harris’ candidacy as building on the “Biden-Harris coalition of voters” and mentions black voters, Latino voters, AANHPI voters, women voters and young voters. Working-class voters are conspicuous by their absence. The memo proposes to expand this coalition among, for example, white college-educated voters by taking advantage of the fact that:
…[Harris] has been at the forefront on the very issues that are most important to these voters—restoring women’s reproductive rights and upholding the rule of law following January 6, Donald Trump’s criminal convictions, and the Supreme Court’s immunity decision.
There is little mention of any other issues. This is despite the fact that Harris is rated far below Trump on handling issues like crime, inflation, and immigration. The latter two issues typically top voters’ list of concerns.
To the extent Harris has talked about issues other than abortion, “democracy is on the ballot,” and Trump’s character it has been to emphasize, according to Axios, that:
…she'll pursue big—and expensive—parts of Joe Biden's domestic agenda that never made it across the finish line…Harris is signaling that even as Democrats play defense on Biden's mixed economic record, she's eager to go on offense for the next four years…Her plans include pushing for nearly $2 trillion to establish universal pre-K education and improve elderly care and child care…
This seems…unwise in light of working-class voters’ inflation fears and how poorly they view Biden administration economic management. Pushing for massively increased spending is highly unlikely to win them over to your side, even if they approve of some of the end goals.
As some of the saner voices on the left have noted, Harris needs to make a serious effort to assure skeptical voters, particularly working-class voters, that she will in fact do things differently from the Biden administration on key issues where Democrats are vulnerable. David Leonhardt mentions crime, immigration, inflation, gender issues, and free speech. As Leonhardt points out:
Democrats often describe Donald Trump and other Republicans as radical….But many voters also see the Democratic Party as radical. In fact, the average American considers the Democratic Party to be further from the political mainstream than the Republican Party……[S]uccessful presidential candidates reassure voters that they are more moderate than their party. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Biden all did in their own ways. Even Trump did in 2016, by supporting Social Security, opposing trade deals, and endorsing same-sex marriage. The strategy works because most voters see themselves as less conservative than the Republican Party and less liberal than the Democratic Party….
[These politicians] were sending a larger message. It was the same one Clinton sent when he called himself “a new Democrat” and George W. Bush did with his talk of “compassionate conservatism.” It was also the one Trump recently tried to send by saying he opposed a national abortion ban.
All these politicians were asserting their independence from their own parties. It’s hard to get elected president without doing so.
So far there is little indication that Harris will do anything of the kind. As Politico Playbook noted: “Three sources in Harris’ orbit we spoke to said people expecting Harris to take drastically different positions [to distinguish herself from Biden] are going to end up disappointed.”
Thus, instead of a “different kind of Democrat” what voters will likely get is a younger, nonwhite, female version of the same kind of Democrat. Put another way, the Democrats seem content to remain a Brahmin Left party and see how things work out. Gulp.
Correct.
Teixera discovered that when these Democratic Party demographics assimilate, they start thinking like Republicans.
In 1973, 7 guys in black robes made a sweeping judicial decision out of whole cloth that changed the legal status of abortion in the US for every man, woman and unborn child. Nothing remotely democratic about that.
Then the Supreme Court re-visited this with Dobbs and determined that the federal government should not be making such decisions. They returned the matter of abortion to the 50 states so that voters in each state -- all the men and women who show up for state elections to have their voices heard -- they could decide at a state-level how abortion should be handled where they live. It's the definition of democracy.
Liberal women understand none of this.
Two words I’m newly familiar with: “Populism” and “Ameritocracy”
That 46 Percent of America are leftist noonbats is infuriating.
American Blue Collar can relate to a
Canadian Indian Brahmin elitist like Camel Toe .
Sure right.
“It’s a Working-Class Election” sounds about as Hype-ish as it can get.
Read this earlier today, it’s very good. The linked pieces are good too.
Unless you live in a deep blue state and that percentage goes much higher!
Sorry Ruy, but this isn’t the beginning of the Clinton era when the Democrats were the working-class party and the GOP was for the elites. Now the tables have turned because of Trump. Giggles acts and talks like the elitist west coast liberal she is. Working class people of all races identify more with Trump than with her, and that will become very evident in this election cycle.
Cell cluster elimination is alive(?)and well in NV. Put into Nevada Revised Statues in the early 90’s. It will likely never get taken out.
Harry Blackmun deserved to burn in hell for what he did for this country. Half a century of turmoil and multiple radicalized generations
They will pay a significant price if Harris wins.
I don’t believe they are. I don’t believe the polls which are generated to make election fraud believable.
I would disagree with the premise, and in fact it is belied by the substitution of Harris for Biden.
The rats have already written off the working class voters. They have been trending towards the GOP ever since the Reagan era, and Trump succeeded in bringing them into the GOP fold more or less permanently. Dumping Scranton Joe for Kamala will actually send more working class voters to Trump.
The only way for the rats to win is to increase their edge with suburban voters and particularly suburban women. Trump snagged just enough of these voters to win key states in 2016, but he lost them in 2020. After 4 years of Biden they were trending back to Trump until this week.
I hate to deliver the bad news but Kamala actually has more appeal to the suburbs and obviously to women than Biden did. Hence the immediate bump in polling numbers. Kamala will bring GA, NC, AZ and NV back into play, which will allow her to lose MI, WI or PA to Trump (though plenty of suburban voters in these states).
These voters care about inflation, crime and to a lesser extent immigration (they like having cheap gardeners, maids and fast food). Trump needs to hammer Kamala these issues and simply remind people - were you better off 4 years ago (before COVID) or now?
I just read an old cnn article around the time Obama offered him the VP position the headline read “Biden appeared confused when...”
I intended to save it. Must have been around 2015 I would guess
Further to my premise, the polls now show that almost all of the poll bump for Kamala is attributed to black voters and young voters. Neither is a surprise.
It is unlikely Trump will win back people who vote on the basis of race, but he still has a good shot with young voters who are unhappy about the lack of well compensated jobs and inflation.
It would have been 2008 when Obama offered him the VP.
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