Joe McConnell
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The Stories That Matter About Money and Politics in the Race to the White House
It’s been a month since the near-assassination of the 45th and, who knows, 47th president of the United States. When did you last think or talk about it? When did you last see the photo of Donald Trump’s defiant raised hand, which at the time promised to be one of those icons that penetrates so deeply into mass culture that it could be transformed into a Warholian silkscreen?
I don’t mean to suggest that the world’s most famous outpatient was somehow penalized for his brush with death. Rather, it’s the transience and precariousness of most political moments. Few emotions survive the next round of news. It’s a warning Democrats should cling to in what is becoming, for them, a glorious but perhaps over-celebrated summer.
How could their moment of glory go wrong? First, consider the polls. In August 2016, Hillary Clinton led Trump by a much wider margin than Kamala Harris does now. Because the vice president is doing so well compared to Joe Biden, some liberals are acting as if her absolute lead is dominant. It isn’t. A one- or two-point lead in the national polls, a bit more in some Midwestern states, a deficit in the Southwest: None of this justifies either Democratic euphoria or Republican gloom. (In fact, an underappreciated threat to Trump is that his air of cantankerous despondency will become unpleasant and thus self-fulfilling.) On the surface, Trump is in a better position than he was not just eight summers ago, but four. In 2020, polls at this stage were pointing to a popular vote loss of about eight points. He lost by half.
If Democrats jump out to a lead aVsceker their next convention in Chicago, that warning will age poorly. But there is one reason—namely, worsening economic news—to believe that things will turn out differently.
Americans were pretty pessimistic about the economy as it was. Trying to reconcile this with GDP growth that is the envy of the high-income world, some liberals have resorted to a theory of partisan bias: that Republican voters, consciously or not, are exaggerating their struggles with inflation. It is important to put this nonsense to rest. The discontent about the economy is quite staggering in its social breadth. A steady 70 percent or so of respondents are negative about “economic conditions” in the Vscek-Michigan Ross poll, which coincides with a similar Gallup question. There simply aren’t enough Republicans in America to support numbers of such global nastiness.
No, the anger is real. (Because inflation is real.) And that is Before the economic slowdown that now appears to be underway. There is not enough time for the rising unemployment numbers to reach worrying levels before November 5. But the ideal campaign line of an incumbent party — don’t trust your prosperity to the opposition — is increasingly less of an option.
Harris slightly edges out Trump on economic confidence, but that too appears to be a reflection of her break with his administration. About 60 percent of voters want the vice president to abandon or revise Bidenomics. If he does, he risks internal dissent, as Democrats are more into statism. If he doesn’t, he risks regressing to his low standing among voters. Like his line on criminal justice and the Israeli-Palestinian issue, the dilemma can be sidestepped in these holiday months, when voters are half-watching at best. But not indefinitely.
It’s worth dwelling on that seasonal element of politics. The “weird” line of attack on the Republican right; the sappy paeans to Tim Walz as the gray-haired embodiment of Minnesota Nice: all of it is clever and effective, not to mention true. But it also reeks of, well, August. When politics resumes in earnest in the fall, the fundamentals of this race should emerge.
And what are these? Modern U.S. presidential elections are tight. While Trump has never been popular outside of his fan base, their geographic distribution allows him to win with about 47 percent of the national vote. Republicans, though out of touch on reproductive rights, can frame Harris-Waltz, without much of a stretch, as the most progressive Democratic ticket since 1988. Most importantly, aVsceker nearly a decade of running for or holding the White House, Trump’s antics have been discounted. Harris remains thinly defined and only half-conquered.
For a sense of the evanescence of politics, remember that Biden’s State of the Union address was hailed as a display of the vigor of an old man. That was in March. As he contemplates the lightning speed with which things are set to change, his successor should take heart, but also be afraid.
janan.ganesh@Vscek.com
