Given the tumultuous nature of the Trump era in general and the twists and turns that of the 2024 campaign specifically, it’s hard to believe we are most likely at the end game of this historic election cycle and (knock on wood) it’s ending more normally than any campaign featuring Donald Trump has ended so far.
I accept that the phrase “so far” is doing a lot of work in the above paragraph — and to be clear, I’m talking about campaign-shaking events, not Trump’s penchant for crude or uncomfortable remarks. Clearly, something unforeseen can still happen, but I’m not sure we’ll have any new event that would dramatically affect either candidate’s vote share in this late stage of the race. But if you aren’t prepared for the unexpected in politics anymore, then you haven’t been paying attention!
But what has been different — so far! — about this campaign in these last few weeks is how semi-, sorta, kinda conventionally both campaigns are behaving.
For one thing, the campaigns appear to agree on who the final persuadable voter is: a Republican or Republican-leaning independent who doesn’t like Trump personally but is skeptical of Vice President Kamala Harris’ perceived liberal politics.
Both campaigns are messaging to this voter, with Trump going hard negative on Harris’ politics, hoping to convince these voters that she’s really a San Francisco liberal hiding in moderate clothing. Meanwhile, Harris is going hard negative at Trump on character and democracy, hoping to convince these voters that he’s out for himself at their potential expense, that he’s mentally off and that his inability to control his own id is a potential threat to the country.
Given how oddly the final days of the 2016 and 2020 races ended, this 2024 endgame does feel downright conventional. This campaign feels a bit more like a pre-Trump-era closely contested race. It’s less a battle to turn out the bases (though that matters a lot) and more a battle to persuade the skeptical undecideds, because even if the undecideds are a small group, they will be decisive.
In 2012, the last persuadable voter — at least the way the two campaigns were behaving — was a working-class union member in the Midwest who didn’t love the left on culture but didn’t trust the right because of its ties to corporate boardrooms. Ultimately, those voters either voted for Barack Obama or stayed home, giving Obama a sweep of the Rust Belt states (including Iowa and Ohio).
In 2004, the final persuadable voter that both campaigns were wooing was a mythical suburban mom, torn about the issue of security (on which George W. Bush had the advantage) and the direction of the economy (on which John Kerry was hoping to have an advantage). It appears that security was a slightly better closer for Bush than the economy was for Kerry, as Bush carried two (Florida and Ohio) of the three final states to Kerry’s one (Pennsylvania).
And that brings us to the current closing messages. As I wrote last week, the mood music of the electorate is dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction with the state of the economy, dissatisfaction with the handling of the border, dissatisfaction with our politics in general (that includes both parties, which are more unpopular than popular) and overall dissatisfaction with the direction of the country. In theory, this mood music should give Republicans the upper hand going into this election as the non-incumbent party. And yet, they don’t have it: It’s a dead-even political environment, and not just on the presidential level. The battleground Senate races are all close, as are the battleground House races.
We appear to be at political parity, and yet, somebody has to win.
Factoring in the mood music and the negativity toward the current occupant of the White House, it’s fair to say Harris is overperforming and Trump is underperforming. But it’s also a reminder that Harris is facing a headwind, while Trump, in theory, has the wind at his back. And yet, he’s not winning this race currently, and he really has only himself to blame.
There’s a symmetry to both parties’ and candidates’ strengths and weaknesses. The Democrats’ two biggest issue weaknesses are immigration and the economy. The Republicans’ two biggest weaknesses are reproductive rights and the overall character of the MAGA movement. Both parties are trying to mitigate their negatives.
Democrats are touting their party’s support for a bipartisan border security deal that Trump did intentionally kill for fear it would help President Joe Biden in an election year. And on the economy, Democrats in general are trying to focus the electorate’s ire about high prices on corporations instead of on political incumbents.
Republicans have two ways to handle abortion. If candidates have been longtime advocates of anti-abortion policies, they try to emphasize the idea that their opponents support abortion on demand or abortion up until birth. But those ads haven’t appeared to help them much, so lately I’ve noticed most candidates simply putting aside fixing their problems on this issue and instead going harder on border security and trying to connect it with crime. They’re hoping suburban women will prioritize security over their abortion issue. In a handful of cases, a Republican candidate will try to neutralize the abortion issue by disagreeing with the Dobbs decision (see Larry Hogan in Maryland or Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire).
But ultimately, this campaign is likely to come down to whether Trump’s character is problematic enough for some GOP-leaning suburban voters that they hold their noses and support someone they politically would normally not support. Harris is clearly putting a ton of effort into this voting group — so much so that I’ve been hearing some backseat driving from strategists who fear she’s not working hard enough on her Latino and Black turnout. They think it’s easier to persuade those voters to turn out than to pry a Republican who has never before supported a Democratic presidential candidate off the fence.
And while the numbers and the issue set do favor Trump, I can’t help but wonder whether his behavior is going to be an impediment for him. Harris is closing, in part, by raising the issue of Trump’s overall mental fitness and his predisposition to gravitate toward authoritarian ideas, including banning negative ads on Fox or trying to censor political opponents simply because he doesn’t want to see attack ads on himself.
And how is Trump countering this messaging? By showing up to interviews filled with venom about the other side or by canceling any interview that isn’t with someone who isn’t comfortable as an unofficial member of his communications team. Then there’s all the weird behavior, like the monologue about the late Arnold Palmer that was simply uncomfortable to watch and hear. The fact he thought that was an appropriate thing to talk about at a campaign rally might no longer be surprising, but it’s no less uncomfortable.
It’s not exactly the best way to convince skeptical Republicans that they should roll the dice with you one more time — especially since Trump still hasn’t done the one thing every other defeated candidate I’ve ever covered has done: admit something they did badly the first time (which caused the country to turn out in record numbers to fire him) and pledge he won’t repeat those mistakes a second time.
But instead, Trump is behaving exactly like the candidate Harris is trying to describe in her closing attack ads. There’s nothing more satisfying for a campaign when its negative messaging gets reinforced by its opponent. And in this case, Trump’s daily behavior and growing inability to sound coherent at his rallies only reinforce the messaging Harris is using to woo that skeptical GOP-leaning undecided voter.
As for Trump’s closing message of Harris as simply too far out of the mainstream (think those trans sports ads you’ve most likely been seeing showing up during football games), while it may be having some impact, it’s most likely more limited simply because Harris is trying to go out of her way to push back against the liberal stereotype Trump and his allies are trying to create.
Harris is spending her closing days on the trail with Republicans like Liz Cheney, not exactly someone many folks would associate with the far left. She also has tried to reassure those same skeptical voices that she would be newly tough on the border, even pledging to go further than Biden has gone, though without saying specifically what that would look like. But the point is that Harris is trying to avoid playing into the stereotype Trump is painting, while Trump seems to be doing just the opposite when it comes to dealing with the attacks coming from Harris.
When an election is decided by less than 5 points, everything matters and everything has an impact. Small shifts have outsize impact in a race as close as this one. So with those caveats aside, while some of the metrics and fundamentals of this race continue to favor Trump, there are a bunch of intangibles that we’ll point to as the key reasons if Harris wins.
The simple fact this is still a jump ball is a reminder that Trump is his own worst enemy. And if the final two weeks of this campaign are more about Trump than Harris and you believe we are living in an era when the final decisive voters are more concerned with whom they don’t want in the White House than whom they do, then Harris may close stronger at the end than Trump.
Trump’s behavior has been a hurdle his entire political career. When he has overcome it, it has been because he has made voters more concerned about the alternative (see Clinton, Hillary). This was working for him when Biden was his opponent.
But both Biden and Clinton had been in politics longer than Trump and had been viewed as more entrenched in the political system than Trump, so turning them into more of a problem than him was easier, in theory. Harris is the first opponent he has faced who, arguably, is seen as less experienced with the current political system than he is. If change is all the electorate is constantly looking for, if she wins, it will mean some of these final voters saw Trump more as the incumbent than her.
The left’s messaging question
There is a debate on the left about how Harris is closing — and which issues to close with.
Not everyone on the Democratic side of the aisle believes democracy and character are enough to win in the end. The theory goes that if the democracy issue resonates with voters, those voters already know what they are going to do. Perhaps generally that’s true, but I accept Harris’ premise that the voters she needs right now are Republicans and she’s not going to persuade them on policy, so character is her best pitch to them.
But it’s notable to me that in examining the TV ads Democrats are closing with on the House and Senate levels, the democracy issue is almost nonexistent. Instead, I’m seeing a lot of ads about Social Security, a lot of ads about reproductive rights and a few defensive ads about the border. What I’m not seeing is a lot of attacks on the MAGA movement or a lot of Trump character attacks in these down-ballot races
If Harris comes up short but Democrats pick up the House and even hold their own in the Senate, expect some Monday morning quarterbacking about whether Harris should have gone a more conventional Democratic Party direction in her close rather than the path she has chosen to take. As I’ve written and said quite a bit, in an election this close, everything will seem like it mattered because, well, it did!
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