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442375 |
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Date: October 13, 2024 at 17:52:25
From: old timer, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Ignore the horse-race numbers. Harris has other challenges. |
URL: Ignore the horse-race numbers. Harris has other challenges. |
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Ignore the horse-race numbers. Harris has other challenges.
As the election endgame begins, Harris is looking at multiple headwinds.
By Karen Tumulty
October 12, 2024 at 1:48 p.m. EDT
Paying attention to which presidential candidate is ahead in the polls is
exhausting — and pointless. The race is tied, and likely to remain so until
Election Day.
Lately, though, it is hard to ignore a different kind of anxiety among
Democratic veterans with whom I’ve been talking.
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What has gotten less attention than the horse-race numbers are some
sobering trends and structural challenges for Vice President Kamala
Harris and the Democrats.
Though Harris united and energized the party with dazzling speed after
President Joe Biden dropped out, Democrats find themselves, as Gallup
recently noted, in an electoral environment tilted in favor of Republicans.
Start with the fact that nearly 6 in 10 voters disapprove of the job that
Biden has done. President Donald Trump’s job approval was around that at
this point in 2020 when he lost.
So, the imperative for Harris, who portrays herself as a candidate of
change who will “turn the page,” is to show how she would do things
differently from the administration in which she has served as vice
president for nearly four years.
It is a question she has stumbled on so far. Asked during her recent
interview on ABC’s “The View” to name something she would have done
differently than Biden, Harris said “there is not a thing that comes to
mind.” If that’s really the case, she should think harder.
And there are some other hurdles looming. Where Democrats for more
than three decades had an advantage when it came to party loyalty, this
election has seen a trend in which more voters are leaning toward or
identifying with the Republican Party.
Look, for instance, at voter registration data collected by the Pennsylvania
Department of State in that crucial battleground, where 19 electoral votes
are at stake and where both parties are spending more money than in any
other state.
Democratic registration has risen since Biden got out of the race, but
Republican numbers are going up faster, Spotlight PA reports. The
traditional Democratic edge in voter registration in Pennsylvania has
dramatically eroded. Amy Walter of Cook Political Report noted that where
there were 686,000 more Democrats than Republicans in November 2020,
when Biden carried the state by just over a percentage point, that margin
has been cut by more than half, to 325,000.
And on the issue people care most about — the economy —
Pennsylvanians and voters across the country have more confidence in
Trump. The fact that all the economic statistics are looking good these
days doesn’t seem to matter to voters.
A national Gallup poll conducted in mid-September asked voters about
their views on 22 issues and found that 52 percent said the candidates’
positions on the economy were “extremely important” to their choice for
president.
The economy was the only issue where more than half of those surveyed
expressed such a view, and did so with an intensity that Gallup said was
greater than at any time since October 2008, when the financial meltdown
was sending the country into the Great Recession. Those surveyed viewed
Trump as better able to handle the economy by a nine-point margin.
Meanwhile, though much has been made of the staggering $1 billion that
Harris hauled in since taking the baton from Biden in July, and her
campaign has been outspending Trump’s by nearly 2 1/2 times, that
financial advantage is not as pronounced in some of the battleground
states.
It’s also worth noting that Republicans have opportunities to flip three
Democratic Senate seats in the “blue wall” states, and the super PAC
aligned with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) recently made
nearly $70 million in ad reservations in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and
Michigan.
In Wisconsin, not only is the already close presidential race tightening,
but the reelection bid of Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D), once seen as relatively
safe, is imperiled as her multimillionaire, self-funding Republican
opponent, Eric Hovde, has stepped up his spending.
“The GOP sees their opportunity in Wisconsin,” state Democratic Party
Chair Ben Wikler told me. “We have a giant fight on our hands.”
Harris and her campaign clearly recognize the challenges. They have built
a formidable operation and their strategic decisions so far have been
smart. The candidate herself has moved out of the bubble she was in and
embarked on a media blitz, though mostly — her recent sit-down with “60
Minutes” being an exception — in friendly settings so far.
One welcome development is the announcement that Harris will be
appearing at a town hall in Pennsylvania sponsored by CNN on Oct. 23, as
she did with a Latino audience on Univision on Thursday.
The vice president should be doing even more of them; these are
humanizing settings where she gets to directly hear from voters about
their concerns, and they get to judge for themselves how well she
understands them.
Democrats are worried. And they should be. But while this election that is
so unlike any other is barely three weeks away, there is still time for Harris
to make up the ground she so badly needs.
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Date: October 13, 2024 at 22:25:53
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Ignore the horse-race numbers. Harris has other challenges. |
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yah...idiots like yourself that will hold their nose and vote for fascism...
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Date: October 13, 2024 at 23:17:40
From: old timer, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Ignore the horse-race numbers. Harris has other challenges. |
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the dems still have a chance, but maybe next time they won’t try to elbow
contenders out of the primary and let the people actually select the
damn candidate. this year they basically controlled the primaries so a
president with historically low approval ratings and dementia was your
guy and when the inevitable collapse happened and he was forced out
they put in the equally low approval rating vp who tells audiences she
wouldn’t do anything differently than biden!
the fascism crap only works on simple minded idiots that get their
opinions from tv talking heads. hell the democrats were guaranteed about
40% of the vote with the anyone but trump voters and the election is still
coming down the the wire because of the poor candidates put up by the
democrats
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Date: October 13, 2024 at 23:26:18
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Ignore the horse-race numbers. Harris has other challenges. |
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i may be simple-minded but i don't have opinions on this...i got it straight from lardass' mouth....he keeps saying it over and over...you just hear what you want to hear...your justifications are pathetic...if the orange turd should happen to win, you will soon realize too late what an ass you have been, and the price we are all going to pay for assness...
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442380 |
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Date: October 13, 2024 at 23:42:16
From: old timer, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Ignore the horse-race numbers. Harris has other challenges. |
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you are so simple minded you defended sleepy joe on everything from the
economic mess he made to the immigration mess he made to the massive
wars in far off places that look to be expanding to his obvious cognitive
issues, and now the end is just a few weeks away, hopefully the damage
dementia joe made can be repaired in short order
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Date: October 13, 2024 at 23:49:22
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Ignore the horse-race numbers. Harris has other challenges. |
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i can't help you ot...you'll just have to wallow in your own demented shit...god help us all...
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