Questions For the Fall

Okay, folks, it’s now after Labor Day and my prohibition on paying any attention to the polls has been officially lifted.

Now that the dust has settled (kind of) on the summer of: Biden’s disastrous debate, assassination attempt on Trump, successful GOP convention landing with a thud after Trump’s 90-minutes of grievance, Biden’s dropping out, Harris’ quick coronation, successful Dem convention (whew) it’s time to poke our heads up from our summer reading and have a look around.

The upshot of all that tumult has been that a dead heat that felt really bad for Biden has been transformed into a dead heat that feels pretty good for Harris. Going into all this Biden trailed Trump by a point or two in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania and now Harris leads Trump by about the same. She’s also put four other states back in play, but she’s still trailing by a slim margin in most of them.

The numbers haven’t changed all that much, but the vibe sure has. If you live in a place like Madison, which I do more than half the time, you can get the feeling that Harris could not possibly lose. Which leads me to another observation: because people in places like Madison, based on 2016, do believe that Harris could lose, she can’t possibly lose. Nobody’s going to let down their guard.

Let me raise some other questions now that we’re finally and mercifully in the home stretch.

Did Trump lose in August? John Kerry went sail boarding as the Republicans spent August of 2004 turning his Vietnam War record against him. By the time he got around to responding it was too late. Kerry wasn’t well known to the public, so the GOP saw an opening to define him before he could really define himself. Harris faced the same opportunity and risk. She has pretty successfully defined herself as the kid who worked at McDonald’s while Trump’s attempts to paint her as a San Francisco liberal don’t seem to have gotten much traction. Kerry probably lost his race in August. Did Harris win hers in the same month?

Will Harris lose on September 10th? Expectations are sky high for the former prosecutor’s performance at what may be the only debate. It’s not just that she has to be better than Biden; she has to be great. It’s not Trump that I worry about. He’ll be Trump. Nobody expects him to be anything but a jerk. But Harris will face tougher questions and follow-ups than she got from CNN’s Dana Bash.

Does Harris still need Sister Souljah? I had been convinced that, given her background as a California liberal, at some point she would have to break loudly with the hard-left, just as Bill Clinton did back in 1992. I’m less certain of that now given how successfully she seems to have defined herself as a relative moderate in the context of the Democratic Party.

Will Harris regret her Veep choice? Of the three Blue Wall states, Pennsylvania is the tightest race. For that reason I thought Gov. Josh Shapiro was her best choice, but the hard-left cast him as too supportive of Israel and so she took the safe way out with Tim Walz of Minnesota. Shapiro would have been a two-for as he also would have provided her with a strong show of independence from the hard-left. If she loses PA and the election with it she may have cause — and lots of time — to rethink her decision.

Will Trump regret his Veep choice? J.D. Vance was supposed to help Trump in the very Blue Wall states just mentioned. But then there were the cat ladies and a string of statements seemingly designed to alienate swing voters. The ticket already had a nut job. Vance doesn’t balance that out. While the question about Walz is if he helps the ticket enough, the question about Vance will be how much he hurt.

Will Harris need to issue a 900-page plan? Harris’ avoidance of detail has worked to her advantage while Trump is saddled with the 900-page Agenda 2025, full of details designed to scare the bejesus out of the American public. But Harris does risk being stuck with the reputation of having no substance — just like FDR and JFK, by the way. She will need to flesh out some of her ideas, but she should propose only popular things. Yes, she’s for Teddy Bears. Specifics? They should be black and white with cute little noses. Stuff like that.

Will the politics of joy backfire? About three-quarters of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction. Trump’s “midnight in America” persona has played well in the prevailing mood. On the other hand, we’ve been hearing that same American carnage theme for about a decade. Harris’ positivity sounds new and refreshing. She probably needs to adjust it a bit, though. Something more in the spirit of, ‘yes, we’ve got problems, but we can fix this, people.’ (No exclamation point here.) She probably needs to tone it down a notch, but keep the basic ‘can do’ feel of the message.

Can Trump adjust? Okay, so this isn’t even a question. No, Trump can only be Trump. He is incapable of changing his approach to meet circumstances. Harris, on the other hand, has shown a remarkable ability to learn on the fly.

Well, that’s only a few of the many interesting questions that will be answered in the next two months. We know you have other sources of punditry, but we hope you’ll return to YSDA now and then to get the razor-sharp analysis unavailable anywhere else.