Harris/Walz Must Finish 2024 with a Crescendo

Because we wrote warnings to fellow Democrats that Donald Trump was poised to win the 2016 election, and correctly called the 2020 election for Joe Biden, we are often asked to handicap the current battle for the White House. Our answer, just like everyone else’s, is that we know we do not yet know. We give about equal likelihood to three distinct possible outcomes: 1) Donald Trump wins narrowly, 2) Kamala Harris wins narrowly, or 3) Kamala Harris wins decisively.

Some would see this as good news because Trump is defeated in two of these scenarios, but we see the current state of the race with alarm because only the third scenario is a good outcome for American democracy, stability in the United States, and stability and order in the world. MAGA has extensive plans to send America into chaos and foment mass protest, violence, legislative challenges, and coast to coast litigation if the election is at all close. Trump is certain to again tell his supporters the premeditated lie that he won, and say as he did on January 6^th, 2021, “we fight like hell and if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." The truth is, we are now just three weeks until Election Day and we do not yet know whether the Harris Walz campaign will be able to achieve the kind of victory necessary to preserve American Democracy, but it appears the odds are not in our favor.  

Just like everyone else we scour the publicly available polls every day, but the polls are not likely to give us much of an indication of which of these scenarios will prevail. The current state of the art of polling in 2024 (and only some of the polls reach this standard) does not have the capacity to distinguish between scenarios 1) and 2). It is disappointing that the polls have not yet started to indicate scenario 3), but neither are current polls inconsistent with the potential of a late-breaking decisive Harris victory. Obsessing over which candidate is up or down by 1 or 2 points in each of seven battleground states did not predict the Trump 2016 win or the fizzle of the “red wave” in the 2022 election. It is possible that the Harris/Walz strategy will work and deliver a decisive Blue Wave victory without ever showing up in the pre-election horserace polls, and of course the final outcome could be as close as current polls are showing. We do not think there is any likelihood of a decisive GOP victory in this cycle.  

History’s Best Run Presidential Campaign Must Get Even Better

We have been following American politics for many decades and we have never seen a campaign do as many things right and commit as few errors as this Harris/Walz campaign team was able to achieve in July and August: the pass off from Biden to Harris; the selection of Tim Walz as running mate; the star studded, bi-partisan, and culturally relevant Convention; and raising over one billion dollars.  But September, and now two weeks into October, have brought a clear dissipation of the campaign’s momentum. The campaign’s failure to anticipate Sunny Hostin’s question on “The View” about differences between herself and President Biden was an enormous missed opportunity to promise voters that we can do better than the Biden economy with a middle class tax cut, expanded child tax credit, and help for families purchasing their first home and call for more robust NATO military aid for Ukraine. Harris is the Democratic nominee because President Biden is unpopular and uninspiring for many voter segments and this question offered the Vice President a needed opportunity to create more distance from his record and policies.

Where is Beyoncé? Where is George W. Bush?

The Democratic National Convention was a triumph on nearly every level and initially the momentum was extended with Harris’s bravura performance in the debate, and key endorsements from Taylor Swift, Liz Cheney and her father, former Vice President Richard “Dick” Cheney. Even if some of the momentum has been lost in the intervening weeks, we hope and expect that the campaign has extensive plans to end the final weeks of the election with crescendos in each of the campaign’s two strategic initiatives:

1)      Energize the base with cultural icons like Taylor Swift, Oprah, Megan Thee Stallion, Pink, Michelle Obama, Keenan Thompson, and DJ Cassidy’s 50-State tour-de-force (aka the “vibes” campaign) combined with selective use of progressive policies (especially abortion, LGBTQ rights, marijuana legalization, and taxing the rich to afford tax cuts for the middle class, child tax credits, and help for families buying their first home.)

2)      Reach out to non-MAGA Republicans and independent voters with key endorsements and warnings from Republican leaders, former Trump White House staffers, national security advisors and military leaders, that Trump represents a threat to America and the Republican traditions of support for law and order, and a robust pro-democracy foreign policy.

Both of these strategies are necessary; Democrats need to energize the base in order to win and they need to reach beyond the base to win decisively. Both tracks need to be dialed up to 11 in the remaining weeks. We hope the campaign has big plans and that they include both Beyoncé and Taylor Swift and both George W. and Jeb Bush. To get the attention of male voters it would be great to schedule a rap battle involving Kendrick Lamar, Bad Bunny, Eminem, and Jay-Z. Add Bruce Springsteen and dozens of other A-Listers from the worlds of music, movies, comedy and Instagram and you have a monster audience and undeniable energy levels. Then the message can be delivered to this broad audience, and the message is vote! and get your family, friends, and community to the polls as well. 

Standing Up to Bullies

Standing up to bullies is the theme that unites all of the messages the Harris/Walz 2024 campaign needs to deliver in the closing days. Harris has been standing up to Trump, beating and humiliating him in the first debate to such a degree that he is scared to debate her again, and this week calling Trump, “too weak and unstable to lead America,” at a rally and a “loser” on Late Night with Stephen Colbert. This must escalate, escalate, escalate, but Harris must be careful not to imitate the GOP bullying “bro-culture,” but rather to call it out. This is not a “no you are a threat to democracy” moment but nor is it a Kumbaya moment. This is a “WTF is wrong with you?” moment.

With JD Vance talking about family values and questioning whether Harris knows what it’s like to be a mother, “Mamala Kamala” can appeal to suburban moms by responding to the GOP bullies the way their own mother figures should have done when they were in kindergarten. Harris needs to ask Trump, Vance, and the rest of the GOP goon squad whether their family values included the importance of telling the truth or the importance of helping other people in need? Trump and the Republicans, up and down the ballot, are playing the role of grade school bullies attacking others for their differences. Harris and the Democrats must show their strength by standing strongly for our allies in the LGBTQ community, especially transgender youth, and legal immigrants. This will precondition voters when they hear the Republican attack ads for races at all levels. The Republicans are spending most of their resources on ads voters already hate, that also reinforce their role as the bullies on the American playground.

Obviously, attacks on Trump are expected from the Democratic nominees for president and vice president, but the campaign has another target that is both less expected and critical to the second strategy of reaching out to voters on the other side, and this is to go hammer and tongs against the world’s worst bully, Vladimir Putin. Attack the puppet and the puppet master. Progressives may not understand why this strategy is so necessary and many will point to the low level of salience for foreign policy in most elections. But this low level, consistently about 15% of voters in polls across decades of election cycles, is not a small number in 2024 where razor thin margins have some analysts talking about African American males under the age of 50 (a key Democratic constituency that is no more than 3% of the electorate). Democrats must take advantage of their endorsement from Dick Cheney, who with George W. Bush won the 2004 election on American foreign policy strength and reach out to this constituency of foreign policy hawks, that moved to support Nikki Haley in the GOP primaries.

Kamala Harris could draw Trump into a major GOP rift by suggesting openness to NATO forces (not including US forces) moving into western Ukraine sending a clear signal to Putin that Europe will not tolerate further territorial expansion. Putin has already scripted Trump to return with charges that Democrats are “war mongers” and to try to play on American fears of World War III and Russia’s nuclear weapons. Trump may be afraid of Putin, but many Republican leaders understand that American leadership in the world requires a president that is not scared of our adversaries. When Trump successfully torpedoed Ukraine funding at the start of the year, other Republicans undercut him, and the aid package passed in February. Democrats would gain a strategic advantage by repeating this dynamic in this campaign’s closing weeks.