The polls are running on a very thin line and it is not a given that the anti-Trumpians will vote for Joe Biden’s vice, hated (also) for her inconsistency. The game is still open.
An obsessive media vulgate has been repeating, for over a month now, that Kamala Harris would already have victory almost in her pocket. In particular, the vice president would be a formidable candidate, having proved capable of reopening an election that, in mid-July, seemed decided in favor of Donald Trump. Harris, it is said, would have managed to unite the Democrats, finally igniting their enthusiasm. But are we really sure that things are like this? There is reason to doubt it. Obviously, it cannot be denied that the Democratic candidate has gained ground in the polls. And her extraordinary ability in fundraising is equally undeniable: in just a few weeks, she has in fact managed to rake in a total of about 540 million dollars. However, this is only one side of the question. It is necessary to observe the current presidential race from another angle, trying to dispel some convenient clichés. First of all, Harris has not reopened the electoral game. Despite having a better response than Joe Biden in the polls, the game is not over today just as it was when the current tenant of the White House was running. Let’s take the data at the national level. According to the Real Clear Politics polling average, between mid-March and the end of June, Trump was, yes, consistently ahead of the American president but by about one percentage point. After the disastrous televised debate on June 27, Biden ended up under attack for four weeks by the establishment of his own party, which was pushing for him to abandon the race.
Well, in those four weeks, the Republican candidate’s lead has, yes, risen, but has never exceeded 3.5 percent. The entry into the field of Biden’s vice has improved the situation for the Dems, it is true. However, as of August 22, Real Clear Politics attributed to her, always at the national level, a lead of 1.5 percent. This means that, both when Trump was ahead and when Harris took the lead, neither contender ever reached a lead of 4 percent. It is clear that the game is always in fact been opened. Second, it should be kept in mind that polls are snapshots. To be interpreted profitably, they must be read in historical perspective. And here we find some surprises. Again according to the Real Clear Politics average, it is true that last month Harris was ahead of Trump in Michigan and Wisconsin: however, it was a smaller advantage than that held locally by Biden and Hillary Clinton in August 2020 and August 2016, respectively. In fact, as of August 19, the tycoon was slightly ahead in Pennsylvania, while in the last two elections, also in August, Clinton and Biden were significantly ahead of him in this state. But that’s not all. The president of Harris’ Super Pac (Political Action Committee), Chauncey McLean, recently admitted that for her, the confidential polls would be “much less rosy” than the public ones. Moreover, calls to not overdo optimism also came from Barack Obama and Bill Clinton during the recent Convention in Chicago.
The picture of the surveys is therefore more complex than it is often portrayed. Moreover, the candidate for the White House must deal with many problems: starting from the internal fractures of the Donkey. Despite the display of unity shown in recent weeks, internal divisions remain. In this respect, the main issue is represented by the pro-Palestinian far left. Harris did everything to gain their sympathy, after, during the primaries, the pro-Palestinians had started a boycott campaign against Biden’s re-candidacy, accused of being too favorable to Israel. In July, the vice president avoided attending the speech given to the American Congress by Benjamin Netanyahu. Furthermore, she preferred to choose Tim Walz as her vice president, rather than the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, who the “pro-Pal” saw as a thorn in their side because he was strongly pro-Israel. Yet, despite these concessions, the pro-Palestinians remained on a war footing. They contested Harris during electoral events in Michigan and Arizona, not giving up holding protests in Chicago during the Democratic convention. For the vice president, this is a significant headache. Despite being a minority, the pro-PALs risk proving decisive in some key states, such as Michigan and Georgia. States, where Harris cannot afford defections to the left next November. It should not be overlooked that, in 2016, Hillary Clinton lost the election precisely because, in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, a few thousand Bernie Sanders voters decided to vote for Trump.
Another problem for the vice president is represented by the choice of her vice president, Tim Walz. Had she opted for Shapiro, Harris would almost certainly have had a crucial state like Pennsylvania. Furthermore, since Shapiro is a centrist, he would have defused the criticism of Republicans, who paint her as a left-wing extremist. Not to mention that the governor of Pennsylvania would have been an effective card to attract the vote of the blue-collar workers of the Rust Belt. Significantly progressive, Walz, on the other hand, not only moved the Democratic ticket further to the left but, as we have seen, his nomination did not even calm the discontent of the pro-Palestinians. Furthermore, although the opposite is often repeated, it remains to be seen whether he will be able to help the current vice president in the working-class vote: when he was re-elected governor of Minnesota in 2022, the person concerned did not in fact get a particular push from the “blue-collar workers”. Not only that. The radical positions on abortion, expressed by the current Democratic presidential ticket, risk alienating the Catholic vote. Which is a problem: let us remember that, very often, those in America who manage to win over the majority of Catholics are then able to reach the White House.
And again: an unknown quantity for Harris is represented by environmentalists. Four years ago, they were in fact one of the pillars of the electoral coalition that brought Biden to the White House. Then something cracked. In 2021, the current administration asked OPEC to increase oil production, while in March 2023 it gave the green light to a mega drilling plan in Alaska. In addition, a few weeks ago, Harris’ campaign announced that the Democratic candidate is no longer in favor of banning fracking: a controversial method of extracting gas widely used in Pennsylvania. And to think that when she ran for the Democratic nomination in 2019, the fight against this practice was an integral part of her green battle. The question then is obvious: are we sure that ecologists will forgive her for such a turn of events?
This then brings us to a more general problem. The Biden administration is quite unpopular on various issues, from inflation to illegal immigration. Harris would therefore need to distance herself as much as possible from the current occupant of the White House (in fact, during her speech at the convention, she mentioned him just three times). However, this objective is very difficult for her to achieve, given that the Democratic candidate is also vice president. The specter of Hubert Humphrey is therefore looming on the horizon: the 1968 Democratic candidate who, also vice president in office, was crippled by the unpopularity of Lyndon Johnson, who sat in the Oval Office at the time. Let’s be clear: this is not to say that Harris has no hope of winning. Trump must in fact face various problems: that is, he must quickly recalibrate his electoral strategy, taking into account Biden’s exit from the scene. Furthermore, he urgently needs to make up ground in North Carolina. In any case, the road to the vice president is far from clear. First of all, we need to understand what the impact of Robert Kennedy Jr.’s withdrawal and his support for Trump will be. Secondly, in the immediate future, the trend of consensus could be overturned again by two events: the televised debate between Trump and Harris, in addition to the expected sentence regarding the conviction suffered by the former last May. In short, the game remains wide open. Anyone who says otherwise either hasn’t understood anything or is acting in bad faith.
