Since Joe Biden dropped out of the US presidential race three weeks ago, a lot has happened in the Democrats’ camp, with the formal nomination of Kamala Harris and the announcement of her running mate Tim Walz energising the campaign.
But can the Democrats actually win this? That’s the question our debaters are throwing around in this week’s Friday Fight. Arguing for the negative team we have Crikey’s very own Charlie Lewis. And in the affirmative corner we have Ava Kalinauskas, research associate at the United States Studies Centre.
On November 8, 2016, the Hillary Clinton campaign took part in the then-viral trend of the mannequin challenge. And who could forget her warmly received cameo on the hit comedy Broad City, which did so much to sure up her vote in California? It was the kind of knowing, media-savvy stuff that played brilliantly to knowing, media-savvy types in Democratic strongholds and, as it turns out, absolutely no one else.
I’m not sure what it is about the Democrats’ lusty embrace of Charlie XCX’s endorsement and jokes about JD Vance sticking his dick in a couch that reminded me of the 2016 campaign, except perhaps everything. To say that the Harris team’s embrace of meme culture feels easier and less corpse-stiff than Clinton’s is to clear a bar so low it’s currently liquefying in the earth’s core.
Meanwhile, how many times did Trump do or say something that made you certain his campaign could never recover? Access Hollywood? His misogyny toward Fox News’ Megyn Kelly? His mockery of a disabled reporter? His many legal troubles, including his explicit contention that a judge could not be trusted to do their job because they were of “Mexican heritage”?
For me, it was his mockery of a dead soldier’s family and of Republican senator John McCain for his years of torture during the Vietnam War. There was surely no more sacrosanct convention in US politics: mocking members of the armed forces or their families is Inland Taipan-like political poison. After this, I thought Trump’s campaign would be dead before it hit the ground.
And remember what an unmitigated joke Donald Trump’s campaign seemed in 2016? The laughter over “Drumpf” and “Covfefe”. The way talk show hosts essentially gave up on non-Trump material for the year, figuring to make “scathing” assessments of his buffoonery while they still could. Trump’s candidacy wasn’t just an unpleasantness that could be gotten out of the way, he was tipped to lose so hard that it would disqualify the Republican party from office for a generation. The New York Times gave Clinton an 85% chance of winning, and just as he would four years later, Trump prepared for a loss by claiming the process was rigged.
And after the roiling, uninterrupted scandal factory that was Trump’s time in office, Trump’s popular vote increased by nearly 12 million. So the apparent panic and chaos in the Trump camp doesn’t necessarily mean much about what voters will decide in November.
I take absolutely no joy in bringing any of that up. I only do so because large swathes of the media seem to be so intent on forgetting it, caught up in the vibes of the last three weeks.
“Kamala Harris must mobilize stan armies” writes Vulture, and like a lot of the coverage of Kamala’s brat summer, it’s borderline impossible to work out if it’s sincere, or an Onion headline that’s escaped into the real world.
Harris has inarguably arrested and reversed Biden’s slide in national aggregate polls in the bright autumn of his campaign, and the media, audibly breathing a sigh of relief at the prospect of a contest rather than whatever the hell a Trump/Biden rematch would have become, have been hyping it. CNN this week reported on the “surprising” bump in support for Harris in a key demographic: White non-college-educated voters in swing states. Biden’s improvement among that cohort (as opposed to Clinton) was huge in 2020, and they were the only cohort keeping him afloat in 2024.
So Harris now trails Trump by 14 points, rather than 25. Harris is now very marginally ahead in four of the seven closest swing states and 538 puts her ahead by 2.6% in its most recent national aggregate. Bear in mind that we are likely nearing the peak of Harris’ honeymoon period: next week’s Democratic National Convention. After that, the vigour and novelty of her entry and selection of her running mate will likely wear off, and questions of policy and communication will come to the fore. If we recall Harris’ first pitch at the presidential nomination — where early hype about her chances dissipated amidst high-profile policy backdowns and inconsistent messaging — there are very serious questions about how that will go.
A lot of what Harris is up against is no fault of hers. However hard they try to avoid doing so, Trump is held to a different set of standards by a mainstream media which has never known how to effectively hold him to account. And one of the fears that kept Democrats largely behind Biden (at least in public) for so long — that a decent, possibly crucial chunk of the United States might not vote for any black woman — is presumably as true now as it was in June.
Oh, and…
DING! DING! DING! CRIKEY EDITORS DECLARE LEWIS HAS PASSED HIS ALLOCATED WORD COUNT
…then there’s the fact in both 2016 and 2020, pollsters significantly underestimated Trump’s vote.
There is a long way to go, of course, and none of this is terminal for the Democrats. But a lot has to improve before the current sense of triumphalism pervading the party matches up with any kind of reality.
Read the opposing argument by Ava Kalinauskas.
Is the momentum behind the Democrats enough to win the presidency? Or is the bubble about to burst? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
