I don't make specific predictions, but I will say I'd much rather be us than them. I felt awful late in the game in 2016. Growing up in western Iowa and living in Des Moines, I could see these communities where Obama was mostly competitive looking like total wipeouts and knowing we were in trouble in the Midwest. The real key for me has …
I don't make specific predictions, but I will say I'd much rather be us than them. I felt awful late in the game in 2016. Growing up in western Iowa and living in Des Moines, I could see these communities where Obama was mostly competitive looking like total wipeouts and knowing we were in trouble in the Midwest. The real key for me has been in the House polling. The warning signs started blaring in early to mid-October that we were losing a ton of ground in Midwest battlegrounds. But it was slow to show up in state polling so people dismissed it. I hadn't discovered DKE yet, which was probably for the best because I was very down on our chances. This year looks wildly different. I'm getting the sense the bottom could fall out in the suburbs for MAGA candidates, and I don't think the state polling is accounting for that. Trump has also had the opposite of 2016 in that all of the news down the stretch has been awful for him. It's either been about his mental decline, racist rallies, taking away health care, and so much more.
Despite all of the worry, EV numbers mostly look good in my opinion when I look closely. Lot of work to got to turn out our voters, so there's always unease. If we don't turnout the story ends poorly. But I'm mostly happy. Even Nevada is looking better this week to me than it does to some, though I'll admit I'm no expert on the Sunbelt states. NC is the state I'm most uncomfortable with guessing. I get the sense there's more room to drop in the rurals there than some of the Midwestern states, but the Triangle has grown. Again though, feel less comfortable there. But I like what I'm seeing out of Milwaukee, and as a Dem consultant told me this week, "you can't swing a dead cat in Philly without hitting someone canvassing for Harris." She's run a great campaign given the unprecedented circumstances. Not perfect, but damn good. Hope I'm right. A few more days of hard work and we'll know.
I will on occasion slip back into a pre-2016 thought process of how to look at campaigns. A few days ago I saw a headline that "Harris challenges Trump to take cognitive test" and for a few seconds it made me a little worried but then I saw the context that she was asked about Trump calling her low iq and this was in her response and I thought that was fine. The reason I got a little worried because I thought if you're talking about Trump's cognitive ability unprompted in the last week of the campaign, that's probably not a good sign.
I bring that up because Trump's such a weirdo that we don't attribute that type of traditional political strategy to his behavior. But if you were to do that, the things he's done this week would suggest that he's headed for a bad loss. Really trying to turn Biden's gaffe (a story that hasn't broken through the political bubble) into the predominant story in the days immediately before the election would only be done by someone that thinks they're about to lose. And on a much lesser note him going to Dearborn, and courting the votes of a community that I belong to, but is also about 2% of the electorate in Michigan and many of us may not vote for Harris but she's still going to get way more votes from us than Trump is also loser behavior.
I don't make specific predictions, but I will say I'd much rather be us than them. I felt awful late in the game in 2016. Growing up in western Iowa and living in Des Moines, I could see these communities where Obama was mostly competitive looking like total wipeouts and knowing we were in trouble in the Midwest. The real key for me has been in the House polling. The warning signs started blaring in early to mid-October that we were losing a ton of ground in Midwest battlegrounds. But it was slow to show up in state polling so people dismissed it. I hadn't discovered DKE yet, which was probably for the best because I was very down on our chances. This year looks wildly different. I'm getting the sense the bottom could fall out in the suburbs for MAGA candidates, and I don't think the state polling is accounting for that. Trump has also had the opposite of 2016 in that all of the news down the stretch has been awful for him. It's either been about his mental decline, racist rallies, taking away health care, and so much more.
Despite all of the worry, EV numbers mostly look good in my opinion when I look closely. Lot of work to got to turn out our voters, so there's always unease. If we don't turnout the story ends poorly. But I'm mostly happy. Even Nevada is looking better this week to me than it does to some, though I'll admit I'm no expert on the Sunbelt states. NC is the state I'm most uncomfortable with guessing. I get the sense there's more room to drop in the rurals there than some of the Midwestern states, but the Triangle has grown. Again though, feel less comfortable there. But I like what I'm seeing out of Milwaukee, and as a Dem consultant told me this week, "you can't swing a dead cat in Philly without hitting someone canvassing for Harris." She's run a great campaign given the unprecedented circumstances. Not perfect, but damn good. Hope I'm right. A few more days of hard work and we'll know.
I will on occasion slip back into a pre-2016 thought process of how to look at campaigns. A few days ago I saw a headline that "Harris challenges Trump to take cognitive test" and for a few seconds it made me a little worried but then I saw the context that she was asked about Trump calling her low iq and this was in her response and I thought that was fine. The reason I got a little worried because I thought if you're talking about Trump's cognitive ability unprompted in the last week of the campaign, that's probably not a good sign.
I bring that up because Trump's such a weirdo that we don't attribute that type of traditional political strategy to his behavior. But if you were to do that, the things he's done this week would suggest that he's headed for a bad loss. Really trying to turn Biden's gaffe (a story that hasn't broken through the political bubble) into the predominant story in the days immediately before the election would only be done by someone that thinks they're about to lose. And on a much lesser note him going to Dearborn, and courting the votes of a community that I belong to, but is also about 2% of the electorate in Michigan and many of us may not vote for Harris but she's still going to get way more votes from us than Trump is also loser behavior.