Good Vibes From The Field Ahead of November 5
It's clear Trump has hit his electoral ceiling. He has no more room to grow, while Harris has plenty.
Detaching my brain from the whirl of social media and canvassing for presidential candidates over the past twelve years has solidified one thing for me: Normies are not like us.
Well-adjusted Americans going about their everyday lives aren’t living and dying with every new polling data point released by organizations both well intentioned and malevolent. They aren’t tuned in to every miniscule shift in public opinion and race in the country. Their moods are not affected by utterly meaningless anecdotes – the American working class turns its weary eyes to its savior, Donald J. Trump – and information spilled into the ecosystem every hour of every day during an election cycle.
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It’s good, really, to have folks out there whose brains have not been totally pickled by the whims of the internet. And it makes for interesting exchanges for those canvassing neighborhoods and swing states in the final weeks and days before the United States once again chooses between self governance and all-out authoritarianism.
I went back to my reporter roots – I worked for a local newspaper in my early and mid-20s – and asked people who have canvassed for the Harris campaign about the vibes they got from voters, many of whom are still inexplicably undecided. The vibes, they report, are generally good, bordering on spectacular.
But first, as the lefty coping soothsayer of BlueSky, I want to ease your anxiety-riddled mind after the release of a New York Times poll claiming Kamala Harris is tied with Trump at 48 percent apiece. During a week in which the public learned of Trump’s apparent adoration of Hitler’s control over his generals and his plans to deploy the U.S. military against his many and varied enemies on Day One of his next term, a tie ballgame is quite the development.
If you know me, you know I love nerdy analytics shit but I am not, in any way, a data scientist. I can’t tell you exactly why a poll turned out one way or another, and longwinded explanations from polling bros like NYT’s Nate Cohn leave me far more confused and frustrated than when I started. Nevertheless, I persist in reading about a poll’s assumptions and biases and whatnot.
Anyway, you should know NYT’s Friday morning poll showing a tie in the presidential race hinges on women sitting this one out two years after Trump’s Supreme Court justices eviscerated abortion rights in the unquestionably radical Dobbs decision.
Again, I’m not a data scientist, even if I sometimes play one on TV. But this idea that women as a share of the electorate will drop in 2024 – the first general election since a half century of abortion jurisprudence was ripped up by frothing right-wing activists on the Supreme Court – seems off base to me. Pollsters are largely ignoring the most impactful political event of the 21st century just 27 months after it happened because they are universally afraid of crossing Donald Trump and his followers. That fear drives them, and it has for this entire election cycle. Remember that at all times.
If you believe the loss of bodily autonomy is no big deal for American women, Trump’s chances are pretty damn good. If you, like me, believe the Dobbs ruling is the animating force in U.S. politics right now, Harris will be the next president. This doesn’t have to be complicated.
Good Vibes On The Ground
Thomas Emerick, a longtime friend of mine in the football media space, is among the millions of democracy-loving Americans working their asses off to beat back fascism for a second straight election. Emerick recently canvassed for the Harris campaign in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania, just outside Harrisburg. It’s a district that Trump won by 8 points in 2020.
That local election watchers and analysts have the presidential race close in Dillsburg is a bullish sign for Harris, as are Pennsylvania county-level early voting returns that show Harris running even or ahead of where Biden was in 2020.
The district’s ultra-right MAGA incumbent and insurrectionist apologist, Scott Perry, is fighting for his life in what should be a comfortably conservative area for Republicans. Emerick said he wouldn’t be stunned to see “reverse coattail effects” for Harris if district voters turn out in large numbers to oppose Perry’s re-election bid and vote for Democrat Janelle Stelson.
“Cutting those margins in blue struggle territory is how Pennsylvania Democrats emphatically shrugged off the red wave in 2022,” Emerick said. “Multiple people talked about how it’s a really conservative area but they’re generally just getting tired of this shit. … I’m bullish that it gives them something to build on in 2024 in that state.”
On a recent canvassing trip to the Pittsburgh suburbs, Emerick said he had “never seen so many yard signs for a Dem ticket in my life.” Signs backing the Harris/Walz ticket, he said, were “all over, like nothing I’ve seen in the [DC/Maryland/Virginia area] really. It’s been hard for anyone to hang on nationally post-COVID, any connection to the incumbent party gets you penalized for governing during inflation. The enthusiasm in real life gives me more hope that we’ll climb that hill, along with my belief that we can work smarter and harder than them down the stretch. It really is there for the winning.”
Emerick said the vibes, more than anything, were “encouraging,” even traveling the Pennsylvania backroads from east PA-10 near York to the west near Harrisburg. The Trump signs that once dominated on those backroads were far more scarce, Pennsylvania canvassers told me when asked about the vibes, however hard to define.
Talking with folks working for the Harris campaign reminded me of my drive from Maryland to Ohio in 2023. My phone’s GPS, for whatever reason, had me bail on the highways and take a bunch of tiny, small town backroads through rural Pennsylvania, where I spotted three roads named for Donald Trump. I tried to drown out the despair with some of my favorite 80s playlists pumping at full volume. It didn’t work. There’s only so much Talking Heads can do, I suppose.
Miranda Yaver, like Emerick, has canvassed Pennsylvania in the final weeks of the election and had positive vibes to report after training Harris volunteers “who have a lot of canvassing experience from prior cycles” along with “many volunteers who had never canvassed before or hadn’t in decades. So, lots of newly activated people.”
Campaign signs in the purple area outside Pittsburgh known as Whitehall were about 60/40 in favor of Harris, Yaver told me, adding she had “productive conversations” and witnessed “some real enthusiasm” for Harris in that swingy part of Pennsylvania. Yaver, like many canvassers I talked to for this piece, said the usual crush of Trump signs were nowhere to be seen compared to 2020 and especially 2016.
It's clear Trump has hit his electoral ceiling. He has no more room to grow, while Harris has plenty. If independent and undecided folks turn out in large numbers, she will win. That's helping me ward off the doomer within, that awful little voice saying Donald Trump – a uniquely horrible presidential candidate – is going to reclaim the White House for reasons no one really understands. I hope it helps you too.
The vibes are good, no matter what the polling tells you.
Follow Denny Carter on BlueSky at @cdcarter13.bsky.social
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