Yesterday, I argued that President Biden withdrawing and Vice President Harris taking his place as the presumptive Democratic nominee has resulted in a rebooted race
. Not only because Biden’s age been removed as a central campaign issue but because, unlike Biden or Trump, Harris still has the ability to change public perception.
Looking at the early polling
, not much has changed on the surface. There are now several polls conducted since Biden quit the race and Trump still has a modest lead:
Domenico Montanaro
‘s deeper dive into the NPR/Marist poll (“Presidential race hits a reset with Harris vs. Trump“) though, shows the effect I was expecting.
The 2024 presidential campaign has hit a reset with more voters moving into the undecided camp now that Kamala Harris is potentially the Democratic nominee, a new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll
finds.[emphasis mine]
Harris and former President Donald Trump are statistically tied, but 1 in 5 independents, including almost 3 in 10 independent women, now say they are undecided. So these next few weeks will be vital for Harris to reintroduce herself before views solidify.
The survey also found that Democrats are feeling better about their chances now, and Black voters, in particular, say they are more fired up to vote.
Democrats are more energized, which you’d expect after weeks of doom and gloom from party elders about Biden’s inability to win. Independents haven’t yet moved her way. But here’s the key:
In a head-to-head matchup, Trump gets 46%, while Harris is at 45%, with 9% undecided. In Marist’s survey earlier this month, just 2% were undecided between Trump and Biden. [emphasis mine]
and, it thus follows
With more folks undecided, there’s an opportunity for Harris that Biden did not seem to have. It’s another key indication of just how much of a restart this move is for the campaign.
Even deeper:
There’s no guarantee that these people will overwhelmingly move to Harris’ camp, of course. But they’ve had eight years of exposure to Trump and clearly don’t like what they see. And they now have a new option that isn’t the 81-year-old they also didn’t like.
Last week at the start of the Republican National Convention, former President Trump announced junior Ohio Senator J. D. Vance as his running mate. This selection has led to new scrutiny of the first-term senator. What’s been coming out since then isn’t defining Vance in the best light.
I’m going to table talking about the most salacious rumors (also I know they will quickly come up in the comments) and stick to the more grounded material. The one that is currently most in the public consiousness are Vance’s on the record comments about women (and couples) that don’t have children. I’ll turn to USA Today for the details
:
Vance appeared on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” in July 2021
while he was running for Ohio’s U.S. Senate seat
. The video shared
by the editor-in-chief of the pro-democracy MeidasTouch Network
has more than 18 million views on X less than 24 hours after posting.
Vance also argued in the interview that people without children don’t have a “direct stake” in the future of this country.
In 2011, a court decision in Alabama in the case of Mack v. Carmack
– in which the plaintiff had a miscarriage after a car accident – found that the Wrongful Death Act could be applied to the death of the fetus in the miscarriage. Years later, in 2018, a key constitutional amendment was passed in Alabama
declaring that “it is the public policy of the state to recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children.”
Although the amendment was passed to restrict abortions, the Alabama Supreme Court pointed to that 2018 measure to recognize embryos as persons under state law, saying the amendmentallowed for a more expansive view of the law at issue in the case.
“When it comes to the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, that means coming down on the side of including, rather than excluding, children who have not yet been born,” the ruling reads.
Also in this recent case, “lawyers have applied an 1872 law that allows couples to sue for wrongful death of a minor child. The Alabama Supreme Court has now stated that embryos outside of the uterus are the legal equivalent of a child, and anything that can happen to an embryo can be considered the wrongful death of a minor, with legal consequences,” Dr. Shaun Williams, a partner in reproductive endocrinology at the Connecticut-based clinic Illume Fertility
, wrote in an email. He was not involved in the Alabama case but has been tracking it closely as a fertility specialist.
“It is one more step that the State of Alabama has taken to limit abortion access, even though the goal of fertility treatments is to build a family and to have children, IVF clinics are the only location where embryos actually exist outside the human body,” he said. “The most concerning aspect about this ruling is that it will make it much more difficult for some couples in Alabama to overcome the devastating emotional and social consequences of infertility. Traveling to another state is often not feasible for fertility treatments which often involve multiple visits to a clinic during each treatment month.”
Vance’s comments only have served to revive this issue–especially given that IVF is not guaranteed to work. Additionally, they alienate people who don’t have biological children but are steppartents (including, I will note Vice President Harris). This is especially problematic given Trump’s historic unpopularity with women, including those within his own party. While Trump did slightly better with women in 2020 than he did in 2016 it’s still and ongoing weakness for him. From Pew
:
Trump won a slightly larger share of women’s votes in 2020 than in 2016 (44% vs. 39%), while Biden’s share among women was nearly identical to Clinton’s (55% vs. 54%)
What’s astounding to me is that this footage is not very old. In fact, Vance made similiar recorded comments around the same time. This is exactly what should have showed up in vetting and yet, so far, the campaign has not issued any response.
The book, Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them), was written by Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec. Posobiec is a well-known alt-right agitator and conservative media personality who promoted
the bonkers Pizzagate conspiracy theory. Lisec is a professional ghostwriter. And their book professes to be a history of communist and leftist revolutionary abuses over the decades—but with a twist. They claim, “For as long as there have been beauty and truth, love and life, there have also been the ugly liars who hate and kill.” And these “people of anti-civilization” have always gone by different names: communists, socialists, leftists, and progressives. The pair contend these folks—be they the Bolsheviks of Russia or the BLM activists of this decade—are better called “unhumans.” …
It’s a hard-edged message. The foes of conservatism are not merely misguided souls pushing the wrong policies but people who seek to annihilate civilization. They “rob” and “kill,” Posobiec and Lisec maintain: “They don’t believe what they say. They don’t care about winning debates. They don’t even want equality. They just want an excuse to destroy everything. They want an excuse to destroy you.” …
The book (with a foreword written by Steve Bannon) is a far-right declaration of war that accuses conservatives of not understanding that the left cares only about one thing: revolution to achieve total control. The unhumans aim to “kill the people who have more” than they do. As they put it, “On a base level, unhumans seek the death of the successful and the desecration of the beautiful.” They decry the far left atrocities of the past (the French Revolution and the communist revolutions in Russia, China, and elsewhere) and claim the same malignant force is shaping the present, noting that the “chief institutions of consensus-making” in today’s society “are controlled by radicals and infiltrated by unhumans.” The book comes across as modern-day McCarthyism: This dark menace has infiltrated nooks and crannies across America, from the boardroom to the classroom to even churches. No surprise, Posobiec and Lisec have plenty of praise for Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
In their view, the dangerous unhumans are everywhere. The Civil Rights movement? Mounted by unhumans. Critics of hate speech? Unhumans. The Black Lives Matter protests? Organized by unhumans. In fact, they compare the BLM protests of 2020 to the terror of the French Revolution, noting, “There is no way to reason with those who manipulate the have-nots en masse to loot and to shoot. They simply hate those who are good-looking and successful.” (Yes, they wrote that.)
Again, while this speaks to a subset of the MAGA base, perhaps even to some who read OTB, this is an extreme and potentially alientating viewpoint for more centrist Republican voters. And the book contains the following endorsement from Vance:
In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags. Today, they march through HR [Human Resources], college campuses, and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people. In Unhumans, Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back.
Again, this associate theoretically should have come up in vetting and still they went ahead with the selection of Vance.
At this point, I am honestly curious what the logic was behind choosing Vance instead of the more traditional Republicans who we were told were being considered including Senators Marco Rubio and Tim Scott and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.
While some have suggested the goal is to shore up votes in places like Ohio. This seems a bit strange given Vance’s underperformance in the 2022 general election. From Business Insider:
While Vance won the race that November, the extent of his struggles was on full display on election night.
Vance defeated Ryan by 6 points.
But Republican Gov. Mike DeWine defeated his Democratic opponent, former Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley, by 25 points. And both Attorney General Dave Yost and Secretary of State Frank LaRose were reelected by roughly 20 points.
Ryan was undoubtedly a strong candidate, but Vance’s underperformance relative to other Ohio Republicans was quite stark. One might even argue that DeWine’s coattails helped carry Vance over the finish line as Ryan clearly won over many voters who also backed statewide Republican officeholders.
Additionally, Vance also was on record of strongly opposing Trump before he came to be one of the former President’s most ardent supporters. So there already was a lot of media materials that could be used against the new Vice Presidential candidate.
From my perspective, beyond any personal affinity Trump has for Vance, it’s unclear what Vance actually brings to the ticket. Yes his anti-abortion and Christian Nationalist views are popular with the far Right. But those people were already Ride or Die Trump. What remains to be seen, especially if more alienating quotes come out, is the impact Vance will have on the more moderate wing of the Trump coalition.
To that point, Vance’s polling since the convention has been a mixed bag for Republicans. From Forbes:
A Reuters/Ipsos poll
conducted Monday and Tuesday found a slight shift in Vance’s favorability numbers, with 32% of respondents thinking of him favorably compared to 24% the prior week, though his unfavorability also increased, jumping from 30% to 39%.
An NPR/PBS News/Marist poll
conducted Monday asking whether registered voters found Vance favorable or unfavorable found more (36%) were unsure or had not heard of him—though numbers were different along party lines, with 51% of Democrats finding him unfavorable compared to 11% of Republicans, and 57% of Republicans finding him favorable compared to 18% of Democrats.
A Monday-Tuesday CNN poll
compared Vance’s favorability to what it was among registered voters in late June—before the convention—and found his favorability jumped from 13% to 28% while his unfavorability jumped from 20% to 34% and the amount of respondents who had never heard of him fell from 51% to 16%.
Note that all of that polling occurred prior to the “Cat Lady” comments coming out. Of course, there is still time between now and election day for Vance to make a positive impact on voters. However, that also means there is still time for more damaging material to come out. As usual, only time will tell.
NPR
(“Harris says she ‘will not be silent’ about humanitarian toll in Gaza“):
Vice President Kamala Harris, in remarks Thursday after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said that while she held an “unwavering commitment to Israel,” she “will not be silent” about the humanitarian toll in Gaza.
“I’ve said it many times, but it bears repeating: Israel has a right to defend itself and how it does so matters,” Harris said. But, she said, she discussed with Netanyahu her “serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the death of far too many innocent civilians.”
In her remarks, Harris reiterated the deal proposed by Biden that would ultimately lead to a permanent end to the fighting, the release of all Israeli hostages by Hamas, and a complete Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza. Earlier Thursday, John Kirby, the NSC spokesman, said “gaps … remain” in the negotiations but “we believe that they are of a nature that they can be closed.”
Harris said she told Netanyahu “it is time to get this deal done.”
[…]
Harris, who is now the likely Democratic presidential nominee, inherits this war as she attempts to maintain a delicate balancing act in a race where one misplaced word on the conflict can cost her support in key states that Democrats need to keep the White House.
“Let us all condemn terrorism and violence. Let us all do what we can to prevent the suffering of innocent civilians,” Harris said Thursday. “And let us condemn anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and hate of any kind.”
She is maintaining the administration’s support of Israel and trying to not alienate supporters of the Jewish state, who make up a key Democratic constituency. But she is also expressing sympathy for Palestinian civilians killed in the conflict and trying to win back some of the young, progressive, Black and Brown voters whom Biden alienated with his response to the war.
“What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating,” she said Thursday. “The images of dead children and desperate hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering and I will not be silent.”
As Biden’s vice president, Harris has remained in lockstep with the president on policy, including his steadfast commitment to the security of Israel.
But there have been other times where the vice president has differed in tone, particularly in describing what she has called the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza.
In both public and private, Harris is seen to show a greater understanding and empathy for Palestinians, multiple people told NPR. And they say she’s also shown greater empathy for protesters demonstrating against Israel’s military operation.
“If you look at her public remarks about Gaza as vice president, unlike Biden, she really did manage to convey a much greater empathy and sympathy for the suffering of Palestinians,” said Aaron David Miller, a longtime Middle East expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Harris is striking the right balance here, I think, both in terms of politics and policy. But there’s a decided awkwardness in simultaneously running for President as her own woman while also being Joe Biden’s deputy. And it raises some uncomfortable questions.
Certainly, it’s not entirely novel, even in the modern era. Al Gore did this in 2000, as did George H.W. Bush in 1988. And both, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, distinguished themselves from their boss.
But this is different. First and foremost, we’re now in a 24/7/365 media environment that dissects every word out of the candidates’ mouths in a way that wasn’t the case a quarter century ago before the advent of social media. Second, both Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan were toward the end of their second terms, so their legacies were more established. Third, Gore and Bush won the nomination in contested party primaries, so had earned the right to proclaim a new vision for their parties; Harris had it handed to her as a fait accompli by Biden himself.
Further, while the differences in her stance and Biden’s are largely matters of tone and emphasis, this will naturally feed into Republican calls for Biden to step down and related questions about whether Biden is actually calling the shots in his own White House.
Indeed, in the context of Biden having stepped aside over intra-party concerns over his ability to perform, I find it a bit odd that his Vice President is meeting with foreign heads of state, let alone a close ally in the middle of an existential war, and expressing her independent thoughts. While I hope it will be the case come noon next January 20, she is not now the Commander-in-Chief nor in charge of US foreign policy.
