Tipsheet

Is She the New 2024 Frontrunner?

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  August 12, 2024 11:00 AM

Based solely on the national polling averages, Kamala Harris is now the presidential frontrunner, though many caveats apply.  Despite Nate Silver's model pushing her into the driver's seat, Harris been pitching herself as the underdog, a label that certainly applied to her party when Joe Biden was its nominee.  Since the unpopular incumbent was thrown out of the race, however, Harris has enjoyed weeks of momentum -- very much fueled by unprecedented media propaganda, as well as her team's calculated decision to bubble-wrap her appearances and control her public utterances to an extraordinary degree.  I'm not exaggerating:   


As the press slobbers, their candidate might get an interview scheduled by the end of her second month in the race.  And her new, still-nonexistent platform appears to consist of ripping off Trump ideas and running away from the actual agenda she laid out when she ran for president last cycle.  This is what she believes, in her own words (click through for receipts):


Her running mate is also an extremist.  As for the data, RealClearPolitics shows the Democratic nominee ahead by less than a point in the two-way and five-way averages, though Trump is statistically tied or leading in a number of recent surveys.  At the state level, the contest has also shifted toward Harris.  She now leads in RCP's averages in Michigan and Wisconsin.  Trump maintains uncomfortably narrow -- and narrowing -- leads in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania.  Georgia in particular has gotten much more competitive, and is once again in the tossup column.  It looks like Trump's ad spending in the coming weeks is heavily focused on locking it down:


As we've written before, perhaps it would be a good idea for Trump to stop attacking the Republican governor of that state, who is much more popular among Georgia's electorate than Trump is.  He has spent more than a week airing his foolish and self-destructive personal grievances against Brian Kemp. She is more than happy to keep gaining on him, in the meantime.  The New York Times chronicled Trump's weeks of angst and counter-productive behavior.  Harris' rise has been boosted by Democratic relief and enthusiasm, the entry of a non-Trump-or-Biden candidate into the race, astounding media water-carrying, and Team Trump's flat-footed paralysis and dysfunction.  By bylines on this story are reporters with whom Trump himself is known to be in contact:

Mr. Trump has picked fights with allies publicly and privately, including a broadside against Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia at an Atlanta rally — the kind of meanspirited public attack on a popular Republican that his own allies believe helped sink two Senate races in Georgia in January 2021 and could harm Mr. Trump in the state, a vital battleground in November. This story is based on interviews with more than a dozen people close to Mr. Trump, nearly all of whom insisted on anonymity to describe private discussions and events. As Ms. Harris — long ridiculed and underestimated — has transformed the contest, campaigning energetically and drawing roughly even with Mr. Trump in many polls, Mr. Trump has responded with one unforced error after another while struggling to land on an effective and consistent argument against her...His quickness to anger has left him susceptible to manipulation, even among close allies...

A week before the Hamptons fund-raiser, on July 25, Mr. Trump stunned one of his wealthiest patrons, Miriam Adelson, the widow of the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, by having an aide, Natalie Harp, fire off a series of angry text messages to Mrs. Adelson in Mr. Trump’s name, according to three people with knowledge of what took place. The texts were particularly jarring because Mrs. Adelson and Mr. Trump had a friendly meeting just a week earlier at the Republican National Convention, according to a person briefed on the matter. The texts complained about the people running Mrs. Adelson’s super PAC, Preserve America, into which she is pouring millions of dollars to support Mr. Trump...Nearly three weeks since she became his Democratic opponent, Mr. Trump and his campaign are still struggling to settle on how to define Ms. Harris, what message with which to attack her...Most of Mr. Trump’s top advisers have urged the campaign and the candidate to focus on the economy, immigration and crime — issues on which Mr. Trump’s message resonates powerfully with the so-called persuadable voters they are targeting. Sometimes, Mr. Trump has done so. Other times, he has not.

That all sounds about right. A batch of new NYT/Siena polling shows Trump trailing Harris in all three 'blue wall' Midwestern states, down by four points in each:

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Trump trailing in this series was a familiar sight in 2016 and 2020 (though he fared well this cycle against Biden), and as Bevan notes, this pollster is among the many that have chronically underestimated Trump's support. Veteran Democratic strategist David Axelrod isn't sure he's buying those margins (this analysis is likely a mix of candor, and a hedge against over-exuberance and inflated confidence within his party):


One way or another, the trajectory has not been good for Trump since late July. He is reacting poorly, and his campaign doesn't appear to be doing much of anything to adjust to the reshaped race.  Meanwhile, we have new battleground numbers from Polling Plus -- which features the chief pollsters of Insider Advantage and Trafalgar, the latter of which outperformed the competition in recent cycles before experiencing an overly-red face-plant in 2022.  Tight, but better for Trump:

Arizona: Trump +1
Michigan: Harris +1
Nevada: Trump +3
North Carolina: Trump +4
Pennsylvania: Trump +2
Wisconsin: Trump +1


I'll leave you with these clips. Trump handily beat this guy for the nomination, but still might benefit from emulating his focused messaging, attacking with precision: