As all who care are aware, over the weekend the highly respected Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll released results of its last Iowa poll taken October 28-31, which showed Vice President Kamala Harris – who in all of the organization’s previous polls since she became the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee had trailed former President Donald Trump in a state he won in both 2016 and 2020 – had edged 3 points ahead of the former president. Even more intriguing was the poll’s finding that Ms. Harris’ strongest Iowa demographic group was women 65 and older, in which she held a whopping 2:1 lead over Mr. Trump. I find the results particularly noteworthy since there are a lot of Evangelicals in Iowa.
To start with the most glaringly obvious: winning a presidential election is a matter of math — how many votes a candidate gets, and where the candidate gets them. Although I’m confident that Ms. Harris would like to claim Iowa’s 6 Electoral College (EC) votes, the poll may be more important for what it indicates might happen elsewhere.
Although it will take some states, such as Georgia, days to reach a final vote tally – and thus, during those days, the outcome of the election could remain uncertain – I would suggest if we knew definitively on Election night the final results of all states east of the Mississippi River, we’d probably have a pretty good idea who our next president will be. I’ll even go so far as to venture that if we definitively knew the results along the Atlantic seaboard, those alone might provide us a fairly firm indication as to the final outcome.
Take Ms. Harris first. Commentators – including me 😉 – have gone on ad nauseam about her surest path to an Electoral College victory being the “Blue Wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. However, this presupposes that Ms. Harris claims all of the states carried by former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016 and President Joe Biden in 2020. Since the “Blue Wall” path gets her to exactly the necessary majority of 270 Electoral College votes, if she unexpectedly loses even a pretty tiny New England EC state, such as New Hampshire or Maine, she’ll need to win one of the swing states now seemingly favoring Mr. Trump to reach 270, even if the Blue Wall comes in for her.
Conversely, as to Mr. Trump: since the 2000 Bush-Gore electoral debacle, I understand that Florida has sharpened its electoral processes such that it can now report its results reasonably promptly. As of the time this is typed, 538 has Mr. Trump leading Ms. Harris by a comfortable 6.7 points, but there are a lot of women over 65 and Latinos (remember the Trump Madison Square Garden rally) in Florida. Although Mr. Trump’s path to the presidency becomes significantly narrower if he is somehow loses Florida, perhaps more realistic Election Night scenarios from which Ms. Harris might draw reassurance would be if prognosticators consider the Florida race too close to call for an extended period, or if Mr. Trump’s margin of Florida victory is significantly smaller than now forecast. Either of these scenarios might well be an early indicator that Ms. Harris will do well in the Blue Wall states and have a better chance than now anticipated to claim either North Carolina or Georgia. As I’ve also noted here repeatedly, if she does eke out either North Carolina or Georgia, she can afford to lose either Michigan or Wisconsin and still win the presidency.
I understand that the Trump Campaign and the alt-right media silo have been constantly spreading the message that Mr. Trump’s victory is overwhelmingly likely. Let me join those observing that such is a transparent tactic to condition MAGAs to blindly accept the Trump team’s claims of voter fraud that will inevitably begin immediately if the former president loses the election. Likewise, Mr. Trump has recently ranted on his social media site about election fraud in Pennsylvania. Let me also join the chorus who have observed that such is a clear indicator that Mr. Trump is worried that Pennsylvanians are trending toward Ms. Harris.
President Joe Biden was asked some time ago whether he thought our election processes were fair and accurate, and whether he thought violence might ensue in the election’s wake. He replied that he was confident that our election processes would be fair and accurate, but he wouldn’t offer a firm opinion as to whether violence might result as the results were announced. I obviously agree with the President as to the integrity of our electoral processes – only the willingly gullible can think otherwise – and time will tell whether or not there will be violence after the winner is declared. I would offer that if Ms. Harris is declared the winner after all legal votes are tallied, Mr. Trump’s supporters might be less likely to riot than in 2020 because they will be acutely aware that unlike 2020, Mr. Biden is the Commander in Chief in charge of the National Guard and the U.S. Military.
At the same time, I consider the likelihood of election interference by swing state Republican officials, now fully immersed in MAGA election propaganda, at least a great a risk to Ms. Harris’ presidential bid as losing the vote. Taking Wisconsin as an example: If Ms. Harris wins the state’s popular vote after the initial tally, I do not consider it beyond if the state’s rabid MAGA-controlled legislature to adopt some rationale to disallow a significant number of votes in a Harris stronghold such as Dane County (Madison), in an attempt to award Mr. Trump Wisconsin’s 10 EC votes. (To be fair: I have no fears about Georgia. GA Gov. Brian Kemp and GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger proved their mettle the last time, and they must each privately personally detest Mr. Trump. If they declare that Mr. Trump won Georgia, I’ll believe it. 🙂 )
I have commented in different earlier posts that no matter what I might think about other aspects of former Vice Presidents Dick Cheney’s and Mike Pence’s respective conduct of their Vice Presidencies, I will always mentally qualify my assessments of them by noting that on the most important issue of their and our time, each got it right. On the other hand, last week former Green Bay Quarterback and Hall of Famer Brett Favre spoke at a Trump rally in Wisconsin. It is the latest of a series of disreputable incidents in which he has been involved since the end of his Packer playing days. I will always have a bifurcated view Mr. Favre – the division between the truly incredible athlete and competitor … and the person he has shown himself to be.
I mentioned in an earlier note that Ms. Harris had been looking tired. In the last couple of weeks – perhaps from the adrenaline she’s felt from being electorally on the upswing – she has looked revitalized, vibrant. On the other hand, it is now Mr. Trump that seems spent – perhaps not unexpected given his 78 years. Although I thought that Mr. Trump would fade away if he was defeated in 2020, I do not think it is unreasonable to suppose that if Mr. Trump is defeated this time, we will dispense with him personally, although the MAGA movement has now unfortunately grown deep-enough roots that it will survive him. Another MAGA Messiah will emerge, although I haven’t yet seen a potential successor with the former president’s animal charisma.
In a couple of previous posts, I have likened this campaign to an NFL game. In recent days, a different image has entered my mind, perhaps arising from what I consider Ms. Harris’ and Democrats’ Herculean efforts on behalf of our democracy. It is from one of our daughter’s high school swim meets. (This is, mind you, a distant memory; our daughter has been a practicing psychologist for over 15 years 🙂 ). In that meet’s last event, a relay, a teammate of our daughter swimming one of the first “legs” had difficulty such that by the time the relay got to the last leg – always swum by a team’s “anchor,” the strongest swimmer of a team’s relay quartet — the other team’s anchor was half a lap ahead – a quarter of the leg’s entire distance — by the time our team’s anchor even hit the water. Although the other swimmer’s lead looked insurmountable, our anchor was an extraordinary swimmer and competitor; she launched in, and took off. With every stroke, she closed the gap. We spectators, starting to collect our things to depart, at first called out support in moderate tones for what appeared an obvious lost cause; but then, as the gap closed — as the two swimmers hit the turn, and started back, one ahead, then the other, steadily closing — we stood, and started yelling; by the end – as what was initially a yawning chasm between the two young women unbelievably narrowed, and narrowed, and narrowed, as they strove to reach the pool wall, the impossible suddenly seeming possible — all were screaming and jumping. It wasn’t clear until the last yard – the last second – who would win.
We’ll see what happens. If I post at all tomorrow – and I appreciate your bearing with me if you have waded through this series of lengthy missives as we passed these many days to our election outcome — it will be from a different perspective. That said, all who read these pages are aware that I am a West Wing fanatic. My Twitter feed recently included a reference to a recent book event at which Martin Sheen, who played President Josiah Bartlet in the television series, spoke. The video is poor, but stay with this clip. As the link indicates, Mr. Sheen, as undoubtedly was planned, first reads an assortment of snippets of Bartlet dialog crafted by series creator Aaron Sorkin over the years; but at the end, Mr. Sheen closes the binder and for a golden minute, he again is Bartlet. As we look with hope at an uncertain electoral outcome, it seems fitting to conclude with inspiration from our greatest fictional president.
McCoy's Noise 