Regardless of whether the Democrats closing ranks around Vice President Harris as their replacement nominee is a good idea, they have done so. In addition to all the plausible contenders having already endorsed her, she has secured pledges from a sufficient number of the delegates
to next month’s convention to secure the nomination.
The result is that we have a brand new race on our hands. Former President Trump and his supporters have devoted months to arguing that Joe Biden’s presidency has been terrible for the country and that he should be replaced. That argument is now moot.
And, not shockingly, the new one
looks much the same:
On the surface, then, not much has changed. But there’s a huge difference. I’ve been saying for months that there was very little room for movement in the Trump-Biden polling because the two candidates were so incredibly well known that public opinion was essentially fixed. (The RCP data looks artificially volatile because of the compressed scale; all of the variation is taking place between 42% and 48%.)
Despite having been on the national stage in some way since her announcement in January 2015 that she was running to replace Barbara Boxer in the Senate and, especially, since her January 2019 announcement that she was running for the Democratic nomination for President, Harris is a relative unknown. Even though (or because!) she’s been Vice President for three and a half years, most Americans couldn’t pick her out of a lineup. Or pronounce her first name.
Further, despite Biden’s rather extraordinary efforts from Day 1 to put the spotlight on her, branding every initiative with “Biden-Harris Administration,” the nature of the Vice Presidency is to play second fiddle. Even though I’m a political junkie who writes about politics on a near-daily basis, I have a only a vague sense of who she is and what she stands for. And, if I’ve heard her speak since the 2020 Vice Presidential debate, it clearly didn’t make much of an impression.
That’s a long way of saying that all of these numbers
are essentially meaningless. It might as well be Trump vs. Brand X.
Indeed, here’s a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll
pitting Trump and various other people Americans don’t know much about:
Trump’s floor and ceiling are damn near the same. The others are really about name recognition. Despite the buzz around Gretchen Whitmer in certain circles, I doubt one in three Americans could tell you who she is, much less anything about her. (Hell, one in four probably couldn’t identify Michigan as a state.)
It’s also worth reminding ourselves that we do not elect Presidents based on a national popular vote. Rather, we have 50 state contests plus the 3 DC Electors that go automatically to the Democratic nominee.* There are, at most, seven states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) where the outcome is not certain. Likely five, as I don’t think Georgia or North Carolina are seriously in play; if they are, Harris will win in a landslide.
While picking Whitmer or Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro for the top of the ticket might have swung one of those states, there’s no guarantee of that. But it’ll be up to Harris to demonstrate that she’s come a long way from the candidate who couldn’t even make it to 2020 in the race for the 2020 Democratic nomination to persuade voters in the Rust Belt that she’s a better bet than Trump.
Let’s hope she’s up to it.
*That’s a joke, of course, but might as well be true.
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.
