Wisconsin May Be Ground Zero … Again

To state what you already know:  given polling trends, Vice President Kamala Harris’ surest path to the 270 Electoral College (EC) votes she needs to win the White House remains the “Blue Wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin plus the single vote in Omaha, NE’s congressional district.

Let’s take Omaha first.  Although former President Donald Trump is vastly ahead of Ms. Harris in Nebraska as a whole, Ms. Harris is up by double digits in Omaha.  Since the state allocates its EC votes by congressional district – an idiosyncrasy that may well be vital to Democrats’ hopes — that vote is as secure for Ms. Harris as California’s.

Let’s look at Michigan next.  President Joe Biden defeated Mr. Trump there in 2020 by about 150,000 votes, and Ms. Harris presumably picked MN Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate instead of PA Gov. Josh Shapiro in part to avoid having Mr. Shapiro’s sharply pro-Israel stance in the Israeli-Hama conflict alienate Michigan’s powerful progressive Muslim, pro-Palestinian constituency.  Right now, although the polls indicate that the race in the state remains close between Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump, if she can’t win despite all of the support she will get in the city of Detroit, from the endorsement of the United Auto Workers, from Michigan’s two huge state universities, and from the progressive Muslim voter segment, she’s not going to win the presidency.

On to Pennsylvania.  As all who have read any number of notes posted here are well aware, I have been obsessed with the Keystone State’s 19 EC votes since it became clear that the MAGA movement wasn’t fading away.  Although it is mathematically possible for the Democratic presidential nominee to win the presidency without winning Pennsylvania, such a path has looked (and looks) to me to be considerably more doubtful.  I have seen it reported that the Trump camp feels that if it can win both Pennsylvania and North Carolina, it will win the presidency, and from purely a mathematical standpoint, it’s hard to disagree. 

I’ve always thought that Pennsylvania was going to be this election’s Ground Zero, and it may well still be.  Mr. Biden defeated Mr. Trump in 2020 by 80,000 votes out of almost 7 million cast – decisive but hardly overwhelming.  I have noted here earlier the observation of James Carville, former President Bill Clinton’s chief political strategist, that between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is Alabama.  That said, if there is going to be an “October Surprise” in this race – akin to then-FBI Director James Comey’s declaration, less than two weeks before the 2016 Election Day, that the FBI was reopening an investigation into Democratic Nominee’s Hillary Clinton’s emails – it may well have come at the Trump rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden this past weekend, in which a so-called comedian declared, Latinos “love making babies. There’s no pulling out. They come inside, just like they do to our country,” and “There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”  I have seen it reported that the Puerto Rican community is understandably outraged, and that there are approximately 500,000 citizens of Puerto Rican descent living in Pennsylvania.  If these citizens are registered or can still register to vote, they can be decisive.  While one has to assume that the vast majority of Pennsylvanian Puerto Rican citizens who cast a vote in 2020 supported Mr. Biden, it would also seem that the so-called comedian’s remarks could markedly increase turnout among Pennsylvanian Puerto Rican and other Latino voters for Ms. Harris.  I would submit that if the traditional Democratic turnouts in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Mr. Shapiro’s enthusiastic and able assistance, and a galvanized Puerto Rican/other Latino citizen voting bloc don’t provide Ms. Harris a decisive edge over Mr. Trump in Pennsylvania, she’s not going to win the presidency.

Which brings us to – I note with a sigh for all Badger State residents – Wisconsin.  If Ms. Harris can’t win Wisconsin’s 10 EC votes, she needs to win either Arizona (EC 11) – where according to 538, she trails Mr. Trump by 2 points, and in which, despite an abortion referendum on the ballot, Mr. Trump’s stand on immigration appears likely to provide him a decisive edge in this border state – Georgia (EC 16) — where 538 indicates that Mr. Trump holds a similar 2-point edge that seems impressive in a race this tight – or North Carolina (EC 16) – seemingly her best shot to claim a “reach” swing state, where 538 has her but a point down, with a Democratic governor and a population slowly becoming more liberal, but a state that Mr. Trump has carried twice.  North Carolina might surprise for the Democrats in 2024, as Georgia and Arizona did in 2020, but it must certainly be considered a Democratic long shot.

The Harris-Walz ticket’s best chance for the final EC votes it needs to win is clearly Wisconsin.  It won’t be easy – 538 has Ms. Harris ahead of Mr. Trump by only half a point, and Mr. Trump has scored better in the state than polls indicated he would in both 2016 and 2020.  That said, the state has a Democratic governor, a Democratic senator running for re-election, a marked preference for abortion rights (clearly Mr. Trump’s substantive policy Achilles heel) and a burgeoning population of young science and technology workers in Dane County (Madison), the county that provided Mr. Biden his edge over Mr. Trump in 2020.  (Of note:  the state didn’t lose an EC vote in the last census, as both Pennsylvania and Michigan did.  Whether or not it was because of an influx of these younger, predominately liberal voters, it certainly wasn’t because older rural voters are flooding into the state. 😉 )  The Harris-Walz ticket also has … Mr. Walz.  We’ll get back to him.

I don’t pay attention to candidate campaign schedules, but if I was advising the Harris-Walz ticket, I would suggest that it deploy Mr. Biden to Pennsylvania, former President Barack Obama to Michigan, Mr. Obama and Mr. Clinton to the Democratic strongholds of Georgia and particularly North Carolina, and former U.S. WY Rep. Liz Cheney to the Republican suburbs of all of the cities of all of the Blue Wall states.  As for Ms. Harris:  although she obviously needs to make a showing in all of the Blue Wall states in the final days, I would submit that her primary focus in these final days is generating turnout in Milwaukee, Madison, and other liberal bastions within Wisconsin.

Finally, as to Mr. Walz.  By all accounts, he didn’t fare well in his debate against MAGA Vice Presidential Nominee U.S. OH Sen. J.D. Vance.  Furthermore, I think it’s hard to dispute what I’ve noted earlier in these pages:  that if Ms. Harris picked the Minnesota Governor to hold the swing state older white males more likely to lean toward Mr. Biden than they would toward her, the pick probably hasn’t brought the returns she hoped for.  That said, I would submit that now is Mr. Walz’ moment.  I would suggest that Mr. Walz could play a key defensive role in these final days, akin — as every baseball fan will understand – to a left-handed reliever, whose sole value to his team is to enter in a late inning to get out the other team’s key left-handed hitter.  If Wisconsin is ground zero, Mr. Walz should be everywhere in the hinterlands of the state, seeking to persuade older white men (speaking as an older white man 😉 ) that Mr. Trump is too hateful, that what he proposes isn’t in keeping with the America in which we were raised.  Mr. Walz’ job wouldn’t be to win the Trump counties; it would be to hold down the Trump totals.  If he would be successful in doing that, while Ms. Harris hopefully hypes turnout in the Wisconsin Democratic strongholds, they can win the state.

Speaking for my fellow Wisconsinites – in this rare instance, for the Trump supporters as well as for the Harris supporters – I think we’re all exhausted at being Ground Zero.  But it is what it is, and we are where we are.  I suspect that all of us Badger Staters are looking forward to the brief respite that Sunday’s NFL NFC North first-place showdown between the Packers and the Detroit Lions will provide.  I don’t hold out that much hope for the Green and Gold – the team is not as good as its record indicates and the Lions may be the class of the NFL’s NFC – but the game will, for a few brief hours, serve as a blessed distraction in which we can all join hands.

After that, all focus will be on the battle for our democracy.

I apologize for any undue burden this recent proliferation of notes, or any hereafter posted between now and Election Day, impose; raking leaves provides additional mental space for idle ruminations 🙂 . 

We’ll see what happens.