Opinion Ignore the horse-race numbers. Harris has other challenges.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
As the election endgame begins, Harris is looking at multiple headwinds.
Former president Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign event on Oct. 5 in Butler, Pa. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
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.
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 is 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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These beltway pundits literally dont care if Trump becomes president. Here we see yet another of a long line of opinion columns about whats wrong with Harris. According to this useless theory, Harris cant win unless she does A,B, and C that the pundit suggests (demands). Not a word about why Trump cant win (he's nuts, he's evil, he's old, he's a traitor.)
American media is an utter failure at one of the most critical times in our history.
I think she should find a more polite way to say that she works for the President of the United States and his policies are her
policies until January 21,2025.
There is no way in hell she's going to say Joe or "we" should have done this or that, not even in hindsight.
This is Biden's administration for 101 more days.
If Harris wins, I am sure that the transition will be seamless but she won't begin to buck any Biden policies until weeks
after the inauguration out of respect to Biden.
It's a little late for that now. Many understand she does not have a plan for this country to go forward but to only copy/paste Biden policies which have done harm to many Americans.
Opinion, no substance.
What has she stated she will do that is different than the current Biden policies?
Add Long Term Care to Medicare.
Long term care is already covered by Medicare. It's called Med B.
I work in a long term facility.
Some caregiver services are already covered by Medicare.
Her proposal was to extend LTC to cover LTC at home.
Conservative think tanks estimate that this might cost $40 Billion.
Not much compared to what Medicare and Medicaid spend now on LTC
What has she indicated she would do differently?
The people I work with are unable to go home for a myriad of reasons. They will still be covered by Med B.
I honestly think it will be too difficult for the federal government to keep track and ensure truth telling of people who claim they are caregivers for someone at home. Medicare is already overloaded with fraud. Her proposal will just add to it.
Here’s one we haven’t heard before, she is going to make the rich pay their fair share. Of course she is too stupid to articulate what that means or define what their fair share will be.
Her biggest challenge is she in not likeable by very many groups. She is irritating and most Americans have figured out long ago she is nothing but an empty suit.
There is another, more silent group of liberals, that never liked the fact that she gained the nomination with zero votes or picked Walz as her VP. Many of them would have preferred someone else, but not someone very few people had heard of. I actually think she is disappointed that she picked him because of his ineptness and lying during the campaign.
Trump is deranged . You would think that irritating would be preferable to deranged, but we live in a degraded country.
Your seed is about Harris but you deflect to Trump.
Why do you think Harris is not likeable by many democrats
Too many opinions, even less substance.
We are having an election, not a referendum on Kamala Harris.
That is your imaginative posit, not JR's.
Um, the entire seed is an opinion.
I added mine. Not my problem if you don't like it.
In a way we are as she is the sitting VP trying to be the president.
Her and Biden's policies have been failures.
Yes, that is my opinion.
it's doubt at this point that she is any more likeable than HRC. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?
Is Kamala Harris A Weaker Candidate Than Hillary Clinton? What Polls Show (msn.com)
Polls suggest that Harris is struggling to break through with voters. Although she is still leading Trump within the margins of error of most surveys, Harris' edge is also smaller than the advantages that both Clinton and Joe Biden had over Trump at this point in the 2016 and 2020 races .
Not promising for the Harris campaign and her supporters.
Who cares? We did likeable in 2016 and that didn't work out IMHO.
Hillary was a bitch on wheels, I suspect she would have done better than Trump in many categories, but we'll never know.
"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."
One has to wonder why. Unfortunately, Harris' record has been laid bare for all to see, and it's not pretty. Her views have not changed. She's more radically left than anyone in Congress.
There is nothing to indicate that she would not carry on the progressive policies of Biden who has been controlled by the radical left of the democrat party. It's not the job of the media to suppress the truth about Harris, because they sure have not held back criticizing Trump.
Great points
pretty hyperbole & opinion.
More radical than the Squad??? More correctly, some voted her the most radical in the Senate.
Dumb. Biden has been a moderate centrist, pissing off the "progressive left",
Media people report what they see with their own lying eyes, not partisan conspiracies
Trump is possibly the easiest target in our ( yours and mine ) lifetime.
He just won't shut up and gets crazier day by day.
In the mainstream media we hear quite a bit about Harris' problems, why she has to do this or that to win. We hear virtually nothing about what this or that Trump has to do to win. Why is this? Because the media wants to make sure that Trump is in position to win. I'm not saying they want him to win, clearly they dont care, but they want to put all the burden on Harris.
Because it's a waste of time. The man is out of control and there is no one who can control him.
The campaign must be an excellent source of income and benefits for so many staffers to have sold their souls to Trump.
If Trump is reelected, will you accept him as your president and will you disagree with any democratic Congressmen or Senators that try and void his election.
Will you be vocal about it if you do disagree?
Absolutely, as I have the last 6 Republican and last 6 Democrat Administrations.
Each party is entitled now to 97 lawsuits and endless non stop braying, it's precedent now.
Get used to it.
I am used to it. It has become a democrat tradition
LMAO. There is a galactic difference between objecting to different issues and / or asking for legally entitled
recounts, ( even if it is year after year, the same as Republicans ),
than the 64 lawsuits the Trump campaign initiated with 187 counts ; Trump managed to win one injunction
relative to shortening the amount of time to cure Pennsylvania mail in ballots which were missing dates.
As a result that small inconsequential number of ballots were not counted.
25 lawsuits started on his behalf and almost 300 initiated in battleground states against the states themselves
or the manufacturers of the voting equipment, questioning the voting computers, security and the baseless
accusations of fraud.
The civil suits won and the billions of dollars awarded to Dominion and Smartmatic and other individual against
NewsMax and Fox, Rudy G and Lindell should indicate that an unprecedented level of Republican partisanship
in 2020 simply amounts to poor sportsmanship as they have lost or settled case after case for record breaking
amounts.
The former CIC Man Child Trump has refused to concede, skipped the inauguration, still insists he won and even his spineless VP candidate can't admit that Trump lost fair and square in 2020.
The evidence, the information and the absolute lack of Democrat candidate lawsuits, timely concessions or
behavior compared to Trump gives lie to your comment "It has become a democrat tradition".
Sorry you can't see that.