July 21, 2024: Democrats: Yay, we have a candidate that isn’t Biden!

July 22, 2024: Democrats: Oh, our candidate is Harris. Yay?

August 6, 2024: Democrats: Crap.

Okay, I’m going to say this for the umpteenth time: the polls are crap. Yes, three months out, it’s STIL:L too early. Undecideds really start to solidify about two months out. Following the poll numbers is pointless. But who can resist a pretty bouncing ball? At this point in time, I’m still only looking at the trends, not the actual numbers.

Trends are bad enough.

Sheesh, Harris is supposed to have a bounce! Lackluster doesn’t begin to cover it.

Yes, yes, I’ve heard the media coverage. I’m now convinced journalists cannot read polls.

Okay, for all of you desperate to see numbers, I’m referring to the August 7th Real Clear Politics aggregate. NOT the stupid average, just using the chart they provide to review the various polls. Hyperlink in text, otherwise linked in description.

Only a handful of these things use likely voters which means the vast majority are garbage, pure and simple. It is WAY too late to be using registered voters. Pollsters only do that when they care more about what the results look like than what they actually represent. It’s a red flag that the polls are trying to manipulate the voters instead of representing them.

Of the not garbage, likely voter polls, three of the four* show Trump with a significant lead and the fourth shows a good sized bump for Harris. How reliable you think SurveyUSA is will tell how much you should trust that one bump for Harris.

On the whole, the pattern is pretty much as expected – Harris should have gotten a bump. The problem is that pattern only emerges when you look at the garbage registered voter polls. Even those aren’t really showing much in the way of a bump – pothole is more like it. Out of the eight polls shown with Harris in the lead, the median is 3. That’s pretty sad.

Oh, sure, Trump’s is a 2 but with only five polls. But if we look at the likely voter polls, he’s got a +1 and a +5 to Harris’ +3. Unlike Harris, we weren’t expecting Trump to go up in the polls but to stay the same or decline slightly, which is pretty much what happened.

What this means is that Harris didn’t get much of a boost when she became the heir apparent. For all the media hoopla and the Democrat relief at Biden’s removal, I fully expected a significant boost to Harris’ numbers. This ain’t it.

But what about all the money she brought in?

What about it? How much was from small donors? Not all that much comparatively. Corporations can’t vote and billionaires can only vote once. She has the war chest she needs for January, not August. Money is important but has diminishing returns. She needs to have spent most of that months ago to get the bang for the buck.

But her rallies! All those people showed up!

The rallies are bigger than Biden’s, I’ll give her that, but they are pallid in comparison to Trump’s. Skipping the allegations of bussing in rally goers, paying for attendance and the whole concert debacle, her crowds aren’t all that large. If folks won’t show up to wave signs, they are unlikely to show up to vote.

But Harris is in the lead!

You read that stupid RCP Average thing, didn’t you? She is not in a clear lead. I don’t see good cause to assume any lead. Give it a couple weeks to shake out.

Of course, Harris doesn’t have that kind of time. She’s already had hecklers from her party’s crazy base show up to one of her rallies. The DNC is only seven days away as of this writing. The best she can hope for is that the convention doesn’t hurt her. It would be a miracle if she got a successful convention. She isn’t likely to get much, if any, boost going into the final stretch – the General Election.

I’m assuming her running mate doesn’t become more of a liability than he already is. He’s got scandals coming out of the wood work. Normally, that’s not a huge deal, especially since he won’t help her win Minnesota. But Walz is much better in front of a crowd than Harris is and is beginning to outshine her. If he becomes the face of the ticket at the convention, he’ll take the ticket down.

Assuming Harris doesn’t beat him to it.

Her non-answers and allergic response to media engagement are beginning to grate on the public and media, both. Will she show up for the Fox debate on September 4th? All she keeps repeating is the September 10th date but that was negotiated for Biden. Trump has committed to three debates, including the September 10th.

The smart move is for Harris to accept. Any other candidate would because not showing up is going to look really, really bad. Trouble is, Harris is a lousy debater. Trump will eat her lunch. That might be okay if Trump gets overly aggressive but no one expects Harris to hold her own enough to look competent.

Well, it probably won’t be as bad as the Biden debate. Probably.

Trump wants the September 4th debate because it comes before the early voting starts. Harris is a complete idiot if she doesn’t show up. Giving Trump an hour and a half of free prime time town hall on the largest news network is insane.

But her campaign is being run by Howdy Dowdy. With apologies to Howdy Dowdy.

Oh, I know. There’s a lot of headless Republican chickens running around squawking that Trump is messing up and going to lose. Calm down, guys, and go reattach your heads.

So, word has it that Harris’ campaign is being stage managed by one of Obama’s team. Am I supposed to be impressed that the idiots that got the Democrats into this disaster on toast are in charge of a dumpster fire of a campaign that is supposed to save them? Look, I hate to break it to you but this whole Biden fiasco was not some super 4D chess move. The Keystone Kops have more on the ball than this bunch of amateurs.

None of this was brilliant. Exactly the opposite. The senile old man they backstabbed outsmarted them. Harris was the worst possible replacement and they are stuck with her now.

Obama was a good candidate. Likable, smart and capable of coherent speech, unlike most of the Democrat field of late. Running a campaign with a candidate that doesn’t choke in front of cameras is a cakewalk compared to trying to win an election with a candidate that can’t handle sit down interviews with friendly journalists.

Don’t even start in about 2020. Covid can’t save Harris. Biden had an excuse to hide other than raw incompentence. Harris has no such cover. Worse, neither Fox nor CNN are as inclined to let her skate by. Fox because they figured out where their bread and butter comes from and CNN because they are desperately trying to avoid bankruptcy.

Harris’ lackluster polling is unlikely to improve. There’s already evidence that it is falling. If her numbers don’t stay up to reassure her flighty party and the out on a broken limb media she may find herself on the receiving end of the ire of her entire side as the situation becomes more hopeless.

Looks like the honeymoon is over.

Oh, in case you’re wondering, no, the Minnesota primary doesn’t matter, It’s an open mess in a fairly blue state. It isn’t going to tell us who will win in November. It’ll probably shake out as currently predicted. Probably. Minnesota should be all happy with the Democrats at the moment. Then again, not much has gone to plan this cycle. If there is an upset in turnout, it’ll be hilarious but not meaningful. The convention can still do a lot of damage.

So could a Trump Town Hall where he answers questions and keeps pointing out that Harris didn’t have the guts to show up. Then he starts comparing the economy under the Trump administration to that of the Biden/Harris administration.

I seriously owe Howdy Dowdy a better apology, don’t I?

Hiding behind a teleprompter and having them rev the jets as she gets off Air Force Two – which she hasn’t done yet – isn’t any substitute for getting face time with reporters. No, stealing Trump’s campaign pledges won’t help, either, Did we notice a whiff of desperation there?

Yes, yes, we did.

But, but, Trump’s behind!

Er, not that the stupid polls actually prove anything, but he was way behind in both 2016 and 2020. Even if you are deluded enough to think the 2020 was a fair election, it was still a squeaker. Not the seven point lead Biden supposedly had in August of 2020.

While hiding in his basement.

Heck, I kinda prefer having Trump trail for a few weeks. Shakes what tiny bit of complacency there might be in his support right on out.

Not that people who show up to outdoor rallies in July and August are even remotely complacent.

More to the point, it hurts Harris. The longer she is supposedly in the lead, the more Democrats who don’t want to vote for her but don’t want Trump to win will decide that they can sit this one out. The media, in its incompetent desire to get all things Trump will hype the daylights out of the Harris campaign. If she’s going to win anyway, you don’t need to actually vote, right?

This is precisely what finished off Clinton.

Come September, I’ll start to take the polls more seriously. By October, I’ll probably be down to telling you they’re crap only once per post. Okay, seriously, the polls won’t be great ever – that’s baked in to how the sausage is made – but the closer they get to the general election the better they will be done. All these Harris versus Trump polls are just hot air. There’s nothing to check them against.

That changes as we get within four weeks of November 5th.

It’s really easy to see how messed up the polls are when they aren’t even vaguely close to what the election itself shows. The only poll that counts is the election. But the pollsters would like to keep their day jobs so they need to look like they know what they are doing when it counts. That would be when everyone can see whether or not they got it right. The election.

That’s a very long time away and much too close for Harris’ comfort.

I know, it contradicts. But Harris does not have the time to lay the groundwork a campaign requires and she just wasted 22 days avoiding the media. She NEEDS that facetime. She needs interviews and debates as well as tough press conferences. Without them, she can’t build any true excitement. No one knows who she really is and they are rapidly losing interest in finding out. Harris’ team has no idea how to deal with all this and little time to figure it out. November is coming much too soon.

For Trump, the opposite is true. He’s unlikely to misstep this late in the game but he’s up against people that lack anything resembling scruples. Just as Joe Biden. A last minute surprise might damage the campaign too late to recover. It’s going to seem like an eternity until November.

Everyone keeps advising Trump but he seems to be doing just fine so far. If I were to advise either candidate, it would be Harris. Sadly, the best advice for her probably won’t get her an election victory. But she really is best advised to get in front of the media immediately. Put your danged policy positions on your silly website, Girl! Stop acting like a little kid and start acting like a tough professional. No one wants to elect an indecisive ten year old.

Take all three debates. State your own policies and defend them. Interview with anyone that will let you, EXCEPT The View. I know, but you need to look presidential, not silly and partisan. Do at least one press conference a week. If you gaffe, own it and correct it. You can’t lose the annoying part of your laugh this quick but you can be careful not to laugh nervously. Stop covering by laughing when you feel stressed. It makes you look insecure.

Be what people want in a president. Decisive, witty and professional at a minimum. Knowledgeable would be a big plus. If the rumors are true about your lack of preparedness, knock it off. It’s time to cram like crazy. Every interview is a pop quiz. Cram accordingly.

Will it win 2024? Maybe, but not likely. However, if you pull off something like a graceful landing this year, you’re a long way to setting yourself up for a 2028 run. But Kamala, to do that, you have got to be on your A game. Now. Today. And for the next three months.

Hire Carville if he’ll take the job. You’ll hate him but he knows what he’s doing. Obama’s crew had an easy candidate; Carville had Bill Clinton and got Waffleman elected.

Will Harris do any of that? Heck, no. She’ll never see this little blog and Carville probably won’t take her calls. Besides, it’s not hard to cram for a pop quiz; she needs to cram for her comprehensives. By tomorrow.

My only other advice to Harris would be to enjoy her little lead while she has it. The election is likely to be brutal and that faint little boost won’t last long.

Back to the Republicans, it is interesting that they are gaining in the number of registered voters. It’s interesting because the Republican leadership has ignored registration drives for decades. Looks like the new leadership is doing a good job. Probably.

Does that mean Trump is going to win? No, it doesn’t mean anything. Inter and intra state moves result in people changing their registration. Intrastate should zero out but interstate can’t tell a new Republican from an old one. You’ll see people excited over this and it does signal a change in Republican leadership but you cannot gauge an election by voter registration. Too many factors can cause it and besides, more people registered as ‘independent’ which tells us nothing about the race.

Well, there is one tidbit that is a bit strange. The Democrats seem to have lost quite a few registrations. That may not bode well for the future but it can also be statistical noise.

We’ll find out in three months.

The issue is how well will Harris do in the polling over time. So far, the indications are not well. The use extensive use of registered voters smells of pollsters desperate to get the ‘right’ result rather than the real one. I even saw one poll cited on Fox that had a margin of error of +/- 4.2. For those of you who don’t speak statistics, that’s an 8.4 point spread! It’s HUGE. It’s also almost certainly rigged. You only use ridiculously large margins if you are trying to cheat.

Pollsters do that way too often.

As the election nears, they can’t get away with this nonsense. This is so close that I doubt they keep it up for more than a week or two, if that. The better polls will fudge a bit for about as long, but unless Harris has a real increase in the polls that doesn’t involve only polling Democrats this is about to go downhill fast.

Pollsters can only cover for her well away from the election when they can use faked results to try and influence voters. And yes, the only polling one side or at least skewing toward one side is a very real thing.

This is why you read all that itty bitty print. Pollsters are only as honest as you make them be.

A lot like politicians.

Regardless, pollsters will get caught by even the most poll illiterate people if they try monkeying around with the results too close to the election. Judging by that mess on RCP I’d guess the better pollsters are already skittish. Seriously, that’s a tiny lead if it’s even real. Weren’t the Democrats all happy about their new candidate?

Guess they finally noticed who they were stuck with.

We’ll know for sure soon enough, but it already looks like the honeymoon is really over.

Just in time for the Democratic National Convention!

Yay?

*You sharp-eyed smart alecs already noticed there are only three likely voter polls on the chart. I wasted my time counting them up on the full ledger before creating the graphic. The medians are taken from the chart.