I can’t settle on one subject, so I’ll give you a handful.
About that Iowa poll: Ann Selzer is something of a legend in the polling world, and her Iowa poll this weekend dropped a big firecracker into the middle of the political discourse. Harris +3 in Iowa might get a chuckle and a dismissal as an outlier if it wasn’t a Selzer poll. She has quite a track record.
What this means for the race is hard to reckon with at this moment. We will likely get an idea Tuesday night, but for now, it’s not great for Trump that a safe red state gets a shock poll from an extremely reputable pollster. Some of it just may have to do with passing one of America’s worse abortion laws over the summer, which went over like a lead balloon with female voters. Speaking of women…
Women are going to win this thing: Of the nearly 76 million early votes cast at the moment of this blog post (Sunday night), women are outpacing men by 53% to 44%. Women are fired up to elect Madam President and for some reason, the DC media sort of ignored this, as Cassandra pointed out last week.
No matter. Women are coming out in force, and voting Democratic for more than just abortion. They are voting for Harris not just because they prefer Harris, but also because Trump and JD Vance are doing shit-all to win them over. Trump has sounded just plain creepy on the campaign trail, pledging to protect women whether they want it or not (abuser language) or challenging a female political opponent to a fistfight. No, really.
They deserve to lose.
Puerto Ricans will have a say as well: My hometown of York, Pennsylvania, as of the 2020 census has a population of 44,800 which is 23.1% Puerto Rican, part of the nearly half million Puerto Ricans who live, and vote, in Pennsylvania. I know the people I have stayed in touch with from my old neighborhood are not happy. Polls indicate a huge gain in Puerto Rican votes for Harris, not just in Pennsylvania. Will this have as big of an impact as the Native American vote had in Arizona in 2020? We shall see tomorrow.
All Donald Had to Do: If you view the election as a football game, in my opinion the race a few weeks ago could be viewed as a one-point lead for Team Harris and Team Trump had the ball with five minutes left in decent field position. All they had to do was be disciplined, stay on message about the economy and immigration (even if they were bullshit), and they had a shot. But instead, quarterback Trump kept threatening the referee and throwing the ball into the ground and declaring a completion. For example, yesterday Trump praised a rally attendee who basically called Harris a whore. He really needs to peel off votes of women but his idea of reaching out to female voters was, well, what he has been doing for the last three weeks. To be fair, the GOP itself, as the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch wrote about yesterday, has not exactly been selling a winning message.
Finally, yes, there is a chance of violence and assorted other fuckery: They are deluding themselves into thinking this election is in the bag and the only way Dems can win is by “cheating.” As political operative Rick Wilson said recently, Democrats are going to win or lose, Republicans are going to win or flip the table and pull a gun. If you are voting tomorrow in a battleground state, be on the lookout for any Republican fuckery. As for the violence, I’ve heard a few people who apparently were in a coma on Jan. 6, 2021, and were calling MAGA people all talk. Which is plain clueless, for God’s sake. For one, thinking that didn’t work out very well the last time around. Also, they have been fed violent rhetoric for years now, and some of them say that if Trump wins they will lose any hope or reason to live. The last time, apparently authorities shared this absurd, misguided belief. The good news is, this time around the authorities are not taking any chances. Democrats also have their legal teams at the ready for the inevitable legal fuckery. Let them try it. And finally, Trump is already trying to declare victory. Our media needs to push back hard on any chicanery by Trump people.
All in all, I think we are in a good place to win this on Election Eve. Fingers crossed.
The last word goes to Patti Smith.