The Harris Campaign Turns the Corner into Cautious Optimism

I was looking at some old posts over the weekend to confirm that, yes, I always get anxious before elections, and sure enough: I was “bed-wetting,” as they say, about Joe Biden’s chances in late October of 2020. Specifically, I was freaking out about his chances in Pennsylvania, even though polls showed Biden with a clear lead. Granted, the anxiety was retrospectively justified given how close the election was, but I didn’t know that! The polls had Biden winning handily.

This is just who we are, and it’s for one reason: 2016. I knew exactly one person that year who had a strong feeling Trump would win (hey, Smart Bob!), but I brushed it off. I remember how celebratory and confident we all were about electing our first female President. Now, we have PTSD. We have PTSD from 2016. We have PTSD from four years of Trump. We have PTSD from the pandemic. No wonder we’re all a mess. But it doesn’t mean we’re going to lose. Remember how dire we felt about being swallowed by a red wave in 2022, and the GOP was just as overconfident then.

The GOP’s overconfidence is clearly also part of a strategy to lay the groundwork to steal the election, but I refuse to entertain those thoughts right now. Let’s stress about winning the election, and then we can stress about protecting its integrity.

And I’ll tell you what: This headline in the NYTimes yesterday changed my mood a lot.

It’s not that I think Harris has this in the bag, but it means something when Harris and her aides feel at least some confidence, quiet though it may be. Because when they’re freaking out, it suggests they know something we don’t. Which, of course, is bullshit. No one knows anything. Mitt Romney and his campaign thought they had the 2012 election in the bag based on internal polls, but it doesn’t matter what the GOP says: internal polls are no more accurate than public polls and might even be less so, conducted as they are by partisan pollsters whose business is keeping clients happy.

You know what makes me feel better? Josh Shapiro won Pennsylvania by 800,000 votes in 2022. By 15 percentage points. Sure, turnout in the Presidential election will be higher. And yes, Shapiro was running against a sh*tty candidate. But if the overwhelming majority of people voted for a reasonable candidate in 2022, I have to believe at least a simple majority will do the same in 2024. I feel similarly about Michigan—has there been that much change over the last two years for Michigan voters to go from electing a Democratic supermajority to choosing Trump? (I am, however, a wreck about Wisconsin, which still voted for Ron Johnson in 2022).

The thing about that Times article is that Harris aides say they believe the charges of fascism are finally starting to stick, and that checks out. Maybe John Kelly and General Milley calling Trump a fascist doesn’t instantly register with independents, but if it’s in the back of their minds when they saw clips from Madison Square Garden on Sunday, it’s bound to stick. And the Trump campaign, which has been working overtime to contain the fallout, knows it. Calling Mehdi Hasan a terrorist while trying to scrub charges of racism isn’t going to help either.

Also, yesterday’s The Daily was both heartening and terrifying, mostly about how Trump is devoting much — if not the majority — of his get-out-the-vote operation not to getting out the vote, like the Democrats are doing, but to “election integrity,” which again goes to what happens if Trump loses. And again, I’m not ready to deal with those ramifications yet. As we are not election lawyers, that is not our battle. Yet.

Also, I know a lot of our canvassers and phone bank operators (and thank you all for what you do!) are probably facing some hostility, but I can’t imagine what someone knocking on doors for Trump would even say. Do they just list grievances and shit-talk Kamala Harris and “the enemy within”? I can’t imagine that goes over well in person. Has anyone encountered a Trump canvasser in the wild?

Anyway, how are y’all feeling today? Because I’m feeling cautiously optimistic, or at the very least, not in existential despair. As Damon Lindelof said in Puck over the weekend (via Seth): “I might as well be hopeful for the next two weeks because I’ll have four years to be despondent if I’m wrong.”

True enough!