You may remember how, back in 2016, Hillary Clinton asked, “Why aren't I fifty points ahead?” It still makes me laugh.
Her comment reminded me of Pauline Kael’s infamous (and often misquoted) statement back in 1972: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon.”
Democrats tend to live in a bubble. They surround themselves with like-minded people who only reinforce their worldview rather than challenge it. In fairness, both sides have a tendency to be unable to grasp why there’s mainstream appeal for the opposition, but the left continues to prove that they really can’t understand Trump’s appeal and why he may very well win the election.
And believe it or not, Nate Silver, of all people, has tried to break down for us why there are so many factors favoring Donald Trump in the 2024 election. I’ll go through some now.
Although Silver suggests that Harris is the favorite to win the popular vote, the math behind the Electoral College clearly tips in the Republicans’ favor. The built-in bias could give Trump an extra 2 percentage points—a margin Harris will find hard to overcome in an already polarized climate.
The economy, always a critical factor, isn’t doing Harris any favors either, obviously.
Silver notes that inflation peaked at 9.1% in 2022, and while the rate of inflation has gone down, voters can remember prices before Biden took office. Silver points out that inflation, combined with sluggish growth in take-home pay, has left a bitter taste in many voters’ mouths, making Democrats the obvious target for blame.
Another problem for Kamala is that “incumbent parties worldwide are doing very poorly, and the historical incumbency advantage has diminished to the point where it may now be an incumbency handicap instead given perpetually negative perceptions about the direction of the country.”
Related: There's Something Odd About the Harris Campaign's Response to Trump's McDonald's Visit
He also cited the effective strategy of “populism,” the backlash against unchecked illegal immigration, as well as Harris’s previous far-left positions and her poor explanation for her flip-flopping as other things that are hurting her candidacy.
The left’s cultural momentum from 2020 is also faltering. The backlash against “wokeness,” crime spikes, and COVID overreach continues to push cultural vibes to the right, which is a completely fair assessment.
Sometimes Silver makes a decent point for the wrong reasons. For example, he says that “Voters have nostalgia for the relatively strong economic performance in the first three years of Trump’s term,” which, of course, is true, but then he says that voters “associate the problems of 2020 with Democrats, even though they weren’t in charge at the time.” I would argue that voters recognize that the economic downturn of 2020 was related to the pandemic, which was caused by China, not any economic policy.
But I digress—I’m not even halfway through the list yet. Silver notes that Democrats are slipping with minorities, the growing gender gap, and how Kamala’s attempts to make Trump’s age and cognitive fitness an issue are falling flat because of the cover-up of Biden’s obvious cognitive decline by the left and the mainstream media. He also says Kamala’s late entry into the race is a problem for her, though, given the way the polls are shifting now, a short race was likely to benefit her overall.
The bigger lesson for the left is that they need to get out of their echo chambers. They keep pretending issues like inflation, illegal immigration, and economic stagnation aren’t hurting them, but that’s exactly what’s driving voters toward Trump. The cultural pendulum is swinging back to the right, and Democrats are losing their grip on key constituencies. If Harris and her campaign don’t wake up and start addressing these real concerns, and come back toward the middle, the rightward shift of the nation that Silver alludes to will continue even faster.
