For conservatives and Republicans worried about the recent Democrat “surge” in polls – or at least since Kamala Harris replaced incumbent president senile Joe Biden at the top of the 2024 Democrat presidential ticket – I’d suggest patience and perspective, and perhaps a stress bag to exhale into.
Or in military parlance, perhaps it’s best to see the past couple weeks as a minor retreat with an opportunity for our forces to rearm, refit and redeploy. There’s a heck of a long way to go in the horserace and there were bound to be setbacks along the campaign journey including polling rushes from the Democrats.
Remember, there are an awful lot of gullible low-information voters out there. Democrats have touched a nerve among the cynical and disengaged. The real mystery is what will happen in a month or so when the Labor Day holiday passes and the real fall campaign push begins.
For now, Republicans are concerned with what they’ve seen and heard of late. In an article titled “GOP put back on defense after Biden’s exit brings surge to Harris and Democrats”, Ramsey Touchberry wrote at the Washington Examiner last week:
“A united GOP departed its national convention with a presidential nominee who dominated the polls, narrowly survived an assassination attempt, and unveiled a long-awaited vice-presidential nominee.
“But the tides have quickly turned for former President Donald Trump and Republicans, who no longer envision a landslide victory or face a bitterly divided Democratic Party. Armed with Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of their ticket after casting aside President Joe Biden, Democrats’ hopes have been resurrected from the dead.
“Harris has largely erased Trump’s leads he once held against Biden in key battleground states. Peppered with questions from the press about Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) after early stumbles on the trail, Trump and his allies on Capitol Hill are having to bat down whether the vice-presidential nominee should be traded in due to a series of damaging statements that Democrats have exploited. ‘At some point, you’ll have to force Democrats into discussing the records of the two administrations,’ Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-SD) said. ‘The closer we get to that discussion, the better it is for our side.’”
Yes indeed. Conservatives have waited patiently the past couple weeks for the media conversation to shift back to issues and a focus on Kamala Harris’s own statements and governing record. Instead, the swamp lizards have preferred digging at J.D. Vance for statements about cat ladies and childless couples.
And news broke over the weekend that unemployment was up and the economy appears to be slowing down – a lot – blunting the Democrats’ momentum, just in time for Kamala’s veep announcement.
Some reactionaries have panicked and a few speculated that Trump was unhappy with Vance and there could be a move in the works. Nonsense. The Trump/Vance ticket will have their day again. It just might take a few weeks or a month to steer the conversation back to what people really care about. As Sen. Cramer indicated above, time, theoretically, is on our side.
In the meantime, the Democrats’ recent polling improvement likely contains several elements:
First, was Biden’s age really what was holding Democrats back all along?
You’d certainly believe this if you abandoned every ounce of common sense and accumulated experience and memory and listened only to establishment media pundits’ theories on what’s now taking place in the 2024 horserace.
Kamala Harris certainly isn’t “new” and she’s also not that “young”, but suddenly, waking up one morning and realizing that their party’s presidential hopes are being fronted by someone who can read a teleprompter speech without mumbling, seemingly knows which side of the stage to exit, doesn’t need to be physically propped up by her spouse and doesn’t give the outward appearance that she’s mere days away from a care facility – was sufficient to awaken the slumbering Democrat DEI giant.
In one instant, Democrat worries over issues evaporated. Senile Joe’s age was no longer a factor. The pollsters’ standard question of, “Is Joe Biden too old to serve another term?” – and the percentage of respondents who answered, “Yes” – wasn’t relevant any longer to them.
Or, if anything, the “too old” question only applies to the Republicans now. Touché, Donald Trump! Cancel those orders for a new supply of Geritol! Return Biden’s in-house wheelchair to the rest home! Bring back those dancers from the “Juneteenth” celebration!
We still can’t determine whether the Biden age issue was the real problem in Democrat-land, but they’re certainly acting as though it was. Heck, I haven’t seen Karine Jean-Pierre being asked to address the matter since Biden removed himself.
No wonder the Democrats are feeling unburdened.
Second, Democrats’ Biden fatigue was more real than Republicans anticipated
After months/years of Americans being served a steaming pile of Democrat crap about how great a job senile Joe Biden was doing, how much world leaders liked him, how beloved he was to African-American voters and rabid abortion proponents, the Democrat base appeared to tire of being lectured by the Biden people that everything was okay and that the octogenarian was sharp as a tack and would mount a characteristic comeback at the right political time and save them from another four years of Donald J. Trump’s bombastic broadsides and authoritarian (to them) behavior.
Therefore, when senile Joe actually did, allegedly, decide he would step aside, they were ready for any old Democrat to take his place. Enter Kamala Harris, where all they’d need to do is dress her up a bit, give her a clean once-over hairdo and perhaps school her a little with instruction on how to deliver a teleprompter speech without cackling too much – and they’d be fine!
Democrat voters, except for the haggish abortion-loving liberal feminists who constitute the hard core of their party, don’t harbor long memories for much of anything, least of all what a candidate/elected official has done in his or her (or they, or “it”, or whatever nonbinary means) career. All Democrats knew was that Harris wasn’t Biden and that the nearly 60-year-old Obama policy protégé would equate to a fresh start.
You can just hear it now – Whoosh! – it’s like helium flowing from a balloon as Democrats took off from the bounds of political earth with a new burst of dynamism, with Kamala leading rallies with thousands of cheering fans who couldn’t get enough of Harris insulting Trump and J.D. Vance, calling them “weird” and digging out the usual non-policy-oriented attacks on the Supreme Court and Republicans’ supposed intolerance.
Whereas Hillary Clinton explained the difference between her and Barack Obama as, “Isn’t it obvious -- I’m a woman!”, Kamala has gotten through the initial phases by not only claiming female status, but also one of color raised by an immigrant mother in San Francisco!
To them, Harris is sparkling new alright. Democrats have forgotten about her utter flameout in the 2020 party primary race, and the Bernie bros have suddenly dropped their loyalty to the “senile old coot” from Vermont because Kamala is just as loony and “out there” as AOC and Sanders himself. To them, any attacks against her are just because she’s a (half) black woman, not due to her hideous trail of quotes and past issue positions.
The Democrat base finally had something to cheer about! And it seems that Republicans, including Trump, were caught partially off guard by the Evil Party’s renewed optimism and vigor.
Third -- Give Democrats credit – senile Joe Biden’s disappearing act was perfectly timed
With all the hubbub surrounding cackling Kamala Harris and her meteoric rise to the top of the Democrat party, it’s hard to recall that everything was in total disarray in Democrat-land just a few weeks ago. Republicans had just wrapped up what even critics deemed a vastly successful GOP convention in a swing state (Wisconsin), Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump’s ear was recovering nicely from the failed assassination attempt and GOPers were talking more about expanding their electoral map than fretting about a resurgent Democrat party.
Heck, even the establishment news media was homed-in on the failures of the Secret Service to protect Trump. It was dark in the Democrats’ world.
Everything changed on the Sunday afternoon when senile Joe, supposedly recovered from his alleged bout with COVID, issued his “I’m quitting” statement. The news hit the world hard despite it being wholly predictable. Democrats mobilized like the American tanks being released in the final phase of the Battle of the Bulge, and away they went.
Suddenly, no one wanted to talk about the Republican convention any longer, and the revelations of government incompetence largely overwhelmed the shocking fact that Trump survived the assassination ploy.
You could just hear the relieved Democrats’ joy. “What? Biden’s out? Who’s in? Kamala Harris? She’ll be awesome! She’s a woman, and she has dark skin! Identity politicians unite! Open up the coffers for the billionaires’ ActBlue money! Hope springs eternal! It’s morning in America! Oops, scrub that – that’s too Republican. It’s time to shatter the glass ceiling!”
The Democrats’ utter jubilation that senile Joe wouldn’t have to be forced out was contagious within their circles. Biden himself became a wise elder statesman, not an anchor chain on their 2024 proverbial ankles. At the same time, the Trump “bounce” from their own convention never materialized.
Democrats had pulled it off. And they think their newfound vitality has staying power, too.
Fourth -- Forget about democracy – we have Kamala!
While Kamala Harris has only been the Democrats’ top dog for a couple weeks now, it’s clear that the Democrats are making a concerted effort to downplay senile Joe Biden’s “Trump’s a threat to democracy” line of argument, one that the current president has used since he opted to run for president in 2019.
Kamala’s vote-less installment doesn’t reek of democracy, does it?
Lastly -- Silver lining? Have the Democrats peaked too early?
Students of American political history appreciate that polling bumps rarely last indefinitely. Democrats have obviously invested a lot of political capital into trying to turn Kamala Harris into the next party savior in the mold of Barack Obama, but here’s thinking that Democrats, once their momentum peters out, will be stuck with the same old problems.
But with Kamala Harris’s cackling grin in addition to make matters worse.
Think about it. If Democrats couldn’t sustain the popular fever for Hillary Clinton in 2016, what makes them think they can do so now for Kamala Harris? A side-by-side comparison of Harris vs. Crooked Hillary would show the two are worlds apart in terms of political talent. Clinton was shrewd and ruthless. Kamala Harris is just stupid. Her rapid rise is all phony.
By all appearances, Democrats may have peaked too early for their own good. They’ll get another temporary political sugar rush after their convention (unless the protesters turn it into a violent mess, a la 1968), but that too won’t last long. Time will tell, but a look back to history points towards things returning to “normal” in the not-so-distant future.
Joe Biden economy
inflation
Biden cognitive decline
gas prices,
Nancy Pelosi
Biden senile
Kamala Harris candidacy
Donald Trump campaign
Harris Trump debates
J.D. Vance
Kamala vice president
Speaker Mike Johnson
Donald Trump assassination
2022 elections
Donald Trump
2024 presidential election
Polls...schmolls. Who believes polls anymore. We should be worried about the maneuverings of BO and his marxist thugs behind the scenes.
I hope you're right. I can't help believing that the Democrats had a plan all along and that scheduling their convention so late was part of that plan. They will do or say anything that moves them ahead. Are we prepared for the concerted ballot harvesting and use of drop boxes that is to come? Are we going to see Trump well ahead at midnight only to somehow be shot down as the "mail-ins" out pace him by just enough? Nothing smells right about any of the Democrat moves.