One of the more unusual aspects of this presidential election is how remarkably stable it’s been. With less than a week to go, the candidates are pretty much where they were six weeks ago.
On September 25, the national average from 538 had Vice-President Kamala Harris at 48.4 per cent and former president Donald Trump at 45.8 per cent. On Wednesday, 538 had Harris at 48.1 per cent and Trump at 46.7 per cent. She’d dropped 0.3 point and he’d risen 0.9.
What about the other 5.2 per cent? Aside from a smattering of third-party voters, most are people who haven’t yet made up their minds. They fall into at least three different categories.
The first is low-information voters only now realising there’s an election. They must decide if they’ll vote; and if so, for whom. These people are only tenuously linked to politics. They’re driven more by visceral reactions to the candidates than well-informed ideas about issues.
The second group is people who like most of the Trump presidency’s results but dislike the man. They believe America was more prosperous, safer and stronger when he was in office. But they see his character flaws and wonder if they can stomach four more years of narcissism, rage, grievance and ranting about “the enemies within”.
The third group are people who are open to Harris but question if she is up to the job. To them she seems more honest and trustworthy than Trump, and she is certainly younger. But can she lead? Does she have the necessary inner strength? Does she possess wisdom and empathy? Can her words be trusted? Will she govern more from the middle than from the left? Does she really represent a change?
These three groups are in every battleground state. Their decisions to vote or not, and their choices if they do, will settle the contest. Each candidate’s closing message will either draw a majority of these fence-sitters or drive them away, and with them victory. This should be an easy task for Trump. The RealClearPolitics average finds 26.9 per cent of Americans believe the country is going in the right direction while 64.3 per cent say it’s off on the wrong track. He’s consistently ahead on questions of who would better handle the economy, inflation and the border, the most important issues. Yet it’s a horse race.
His speech on Sunday at Madison Square Garden illustrates why. There was some good. He hit Harris on issues important to voters. He blamed her for casting the deciding Senate vote on the American Rescue Plan, which helped fuel inflation. And he ended on a rare (for him) optimistic appeal about what Americans can achieve.
But the good was overshadowed by the bad. He tossed out brash promises without substance, made weird digressions, and engaged in pointless attacks on old enemies. Worst of all, incendiary comments from speakers who preceded him buried any constructive messages under needless controversy. Why start the night with a foul-mouthed comedian who goes after Puerto Ricans? A senior campaign adviser said the insult didn’t “reflect the views of president Trump”, but Trump ignored advisers urging him to apologise. He instead sidestepped, saying, “There’s never been an event so beautiful”.
Undecided voters won’t be won over if Trump simply rallies hard-core supporters. It’s obvious what he should do instead – make a disciplined attack on Harris’s weaknesses; dial down the hate; stop the rambling, often impossible-to-follow streams of consciousness, and; silence his MAGA carnival sidekicks and their abuse and invective. Then he’d likely win going away. But Trump has rarely done these things throughout the campaign. He likely won’t find the self-control to in these final days.
Harris has the tougher task but has crafted a better, fresher closing message – Trump has an enemies list while she has a to-do list. She used that line on Tuesday in her speech at Washington’s Ellipse, explaining what she’d do as president and what motivates her. That’s important because she’s been running for president for only about 90 days. Americans don’t know enough about her.
That’s why her embrace last week of John Kelly’s description of Trump as a “fascist” was a mistake. That attack might reinforce existing supporters. But it won’t convert a single undecided voter. They wouldn’t be on the fence if they felt Trump was the next Hitler. It cost valuable days of coverage that could have been spent telling fence-sitters more about what makes her tick and what her presidency might look like.
We’re in the final few days of the most astonishing campaign in modern US history. So much has happened, yet so much has stayed the same. The campaign ends next Tuesday, but unfortunately the deep divisions that created this chaos won’t.
The Wall Street Journal
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The WSJ’s verdict on Kamala Harris
At home, she’s no centrist. Abroad, she seems unprepared for the dangers ahead. If she does win, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping will quickly test her mettle.