Well I guess I was wrong, I just don't belong
But then, I've been there before
— Friends in Low Places
My familiarity with being the odd man out dates back to my earliest memories of school, when I was the odd boy out. When it comes to my professional modus operandi, there's always been a distinct "salmon swimming upstream" vibe to it. So here we are again.
In the past couple of weeks, I've noticed the word "panicking" popping up a lot when I'm gathering material for the Morning Briefing. The feeling is that the Democrats know that they're stuck with a dud candidate in Kamala Harris and are in full freak-out mode. This preponderance of "panicky Dems" stories has led to an uptick in exuberance for a lot of people on the Right. A few out there seem positively giddy.
I may not be the conservative harbinger of doom for the 2024 presidential election, but I have been a bit of a buzzkill in many recent conversations. There are a few good reasons for it.
The first is that, although there are a lot of polling trends that are favorable for Trump, he's still not outside the margin of the Magic Mail-In Ballot Machine. I've written about that several times, most recently in the Morning Briefing at the beginning of this month.
The second is that, even though there are a lot of historical indicators that don't bode well for Kamala Harris, especially the "favorable/unfavorable" numbers, that doesn't mean as much anymore. In elections past, low favorability was a vulture circling overhead in the closing days of a presidential campaign. If we look at historical election trends, Harris's low favorability coupled with voters' negative views on the economy should have already sunk her.
As I have written many times, there is no comfort to be found in historical trends that should be helpful to Trump. We can thank Donald Trump for that. Conventional wisdom flew out the window when he was elected in 2016. It shattered on the pavement and is borderline meaningless now.
The biggest reason that I take the Democrats' alleged panic with a grain of salt is that this ain't my first rodeo. I'm in double digits now when it comes to presidential elections as an eligible voter and activist. I know that the Democrats always do the panic dance in the closing weeks of a presidential race. It's an integral part of their get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts, which, by the way, have always been superior to the Republicans'.
Related: The Morning Briefing: It's Crunch Time and Kamala Is In Modified Basement/Pander Mode
A long time ago, the Democrats may have had positions on issues that weren't financially crippling to taxpayers or existential threats to the Constitution of the United States, but that is no longer the case. It's a fear-based party. The people in charge of the Democratic National Committee know that they have to terrorize the electorate into voting for them. I read the Opinion sections of The New York Times and The Washington Post every day so you don't have to (You're welcome, America), and it's like I'm going over journal entries from characters in a horror movie.
The Dems' reliance on their turbo-charged scare tactics machine is why — as my friend Chris Queen wrote — they weren't able to "manufacture" any joy after they made it the vague centerpiece of the Harris campaign. They have no functional understanding of what joy is because it's anathema to their political philosophy.
There has been a lot of talk this week about the Democrats getting angsty because they realize that Harris is a truly horrendous candidate.
Spoiler alert: they've known that all along.
A little more than two weeks after Biden was tweeted out of the race, I wrote about the Democrats having to pretend that she's the bee's knees (almost certainly the first time I've used that phrase in 20+ years of professional writing), all the while wrestling with the fact that she was their least favorite candidate in the 2020 race:
The Dems may not be discussing that in public but, deep down inside, they're all thinking about it. The only thing that has changed about Kamala Harris since her ignominious exit from the 2020 presidential race is Joe Biden's mental decline. It became obvious to them a couple of weeks ago that Harris would be the less awful option for 2024; sort of like choosing between ringworm and allergy hives.
Now the Democrats are on a bad political Tinder date and talking themselves into enjoying it because, damn it, they shaved their legs and got all dolled up for this.
I am not denying that there is some panic among the party elite about Harris's ability to close the deal; I'm merely saying that it did just crop up. That was baked into the cake on July 21.
What the Democrats and their flying monkeys in the mainstream media are doing now has a twofold purpose: they want to scare apathetic Dems into getting voting and they want to make Republicans feel cocky to the point of maybe not getting around to voting. That's always what the closing days panic is about. I think that the heightened intensity of this election makes it less likely that there are a lot of people in either party who just want to sit this one out. The Democrats have a system, though, and it's worked well for them, so they're sticking to it.
I'll wrap this up by saying that, despite the fact that it seems as if I do all of my writing dressed as the Grim Reaper these days, I'm glad that Trump is where he is in the homestretch polling. However, I think that the Democrats still have a lot of faith in the Magic Mail-In Ballot Machine.
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