Why I Think Kamala Harris Will Win

All the arrows are pointing in her direction

I have worked in Washington, D.C. for over forty years. I’ve worked in government, research institutes and philanthropy. People think that means I have insight into elections.

I often think it does, too. But I painfully remember eight years ago this week when I assured two very nervous members of the Ploughshares Fund board of directors that there was “no way Trump can win.”

So, I don’t know if Kamala Harris will win. But I think she will. I base that on an analysis of the fundamentals in this elections. Although polls show a close race, almost all the fundamentals are developing in favor of Harris.

1. Harris is running a superb campaign. There is very little finger-pointing or second-guessing of Harris. Observers are nearly unanimous that she is doing exactly what they think she needs to be doing to win. In contrast, Trump is running a bizarre campaign, including delivering at his fascist Madison Square Garden rally what has got to be the greatest self-sabotage of a presidential campaign since Gerald Ford insisted that Poland was not dominated by the Soviet Union. Pennsylvania alone has 400,000 Puerto Rican voters - and they are furious.

   

   Photo by Cirincione

2. Harris has a compelling closing message. My wife and I were among the 75,000 proud Harris supporters on the Ellipse Tuesday night. We heard one of the best closing arguments a candidate has ever delivered. Instead of choosing whether to run on democracy or economics, she deftly linked the two. “She pulled off the bank shot: saying we have to save democracy, yes, but save it for a reason, which is to make your life better,” says journalist Anand Giridhardas. “She is, on a deeper level, attempting a rebranding of the Democratic Party away from program creation, dating back to FDR, and reorienting it around quality of life improvement. Don’t talk about the programs you want to create. Talk about the pain points you want to solve.”

3. Harris has forged a powerful united front against Trumpism. She has a broad appeal. By her gender identity, racial identity and policy record, she has the support of the party’s progressive base. Her pragmatic economic proposals win over centrists. Her demonstrated patriotism, foreign policy, protection of democracy, and pledge to give “a seat at the table” to people with opposing views has helped her peal off Republican officials and Republican votes from the MAGA-distorted Republican Party. Trump doesn’t have single significant Democrat defecting to his spiraling campaign.

4. The Democratic Party is strong and united. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in such good shape. The party loves Kamala. Everyone wants to be on the stage with her. The critical issue of Israel’s wars on Gaza and Lebanon have roiled the party, but there are no other serious divisions or in-fighting. The party is focused on winning the White House and Congress with an intensity I have rarely seen.

5. Harris and the Democratic Party have the stronger ground game, by far. Forget what people tell pollsters. What matters is which party gets the most voters to the polls. Trump has trashed the GOP get-out-the-vote effort, believing that he was all the motivation people needed. Then, he out sourced it to private firms, including Elon Musk. It has been a disaster. Here is Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank on why the Democratic ground game will win North Carolina:

   The Biden campaign began hiring staff in January, and it has been running field operations since June. It built up to 360 paid staff members, with 29 field offices statewide, operating with a network of satellite offices in homes and businesses.

   Forty thousand volunteers have signed up since Harris became the candidate, on top of those who were already volunteering for Biden. The Harris campaign has been running four shifts of daily canvassing here — at 9 a.m., noon, 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. — in which hundreds of volunteers knock on thousands of doors. Last week, campaign volunteers knocked on more than 100,000 doors and made more than 1.8 million phone calls in North Carolina alone. Comparable efforts are underway in every swing state.

   And the Trump campaign?

   Well, it seems to be accomplishing a whole lot of nothing on the ground. As the Republican nominee spent a lot of the campaign hawking sneakers and trading cards to enrich himself and turning the Republican National Committee into a cult of personality, he neglected to build a field operation. At the last minute, the campaign tried to outsource the function to billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who has poured some $75 million into an astroturf effort, paying canvassers to knock on doors and (possibly illegally) bribing people to register to vote with $1 million giveaways.

   But the operation has floundered. A quarter of the door-knocks done by Musk’s paid workers are reportedly suspected of being fake in some battleground states — who knew that $20-per-hour hired guns might not be as dedicated to the cause as passionate volunteers? — and the operation has failed to meet its (relatively low) targets.

   There’s a whole lot more, but you get the idea. This story is repeated in state after state.

6. The economy is booming. I know that grocery and housing prices are high, but it is getting harder to deny the broad prosperity that most Americans are experiencing. Have you checked your 401(K) lately? Inflation is at 2 percent. Unemployment is at 4 percent. Gas is under $3 a gallon. America has the leading economy in the world. Harris’s economic plan would improve all this — which is why it was endorsed by 23 Noble Prize-winning economists who said her plan was “vastly superior” to Trump’s.

7. The Democratic Party has the superior candidates down ballot. This will boost enthusiasm, volunteers and turnout. Ruben Gallego will almost certainly win against the election-denying Kari Lake in Arizona and he may provide “reverse coat-tails” to help Harris win Arizona’s 11 electoral votes. Elisa Slotkin will likely defeat Mike Rogers in Michigan, again helping Harris. Colin Allred is tied with Ted Cruz in Texas. That doesn’t mean Harris will win Texas, but if Allred can pull off the upset, his victory could offset Jon Tester’s possible loss in Montana and keep the Senate Democratic.

8. Reproductive Freedom is on the ballot. This is boosting turnout and voters’ opposition to Trump. Early voting shows a huge turnout in many states with women voters outnumbering male voters. A ten-point voting gap in North Carolina, for example. Eleven points in Georgia. Twelve points in Michigan. We can’t say for sure who these voters are backing, but polling shows Harris wins women voters strongly nationally and in swing states. Harris is favored by 57 percent of women voters polled in Michigan, for example.

9. Harris has the superior vice-presidential candidate and a strong stable of charismatic surrogates pulling in huge crowds of their own in all seven swing states. Trump has nothing like this. He brought his A-list to his MSG rally and it was pathetic. Harris has Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, PA Gov. Josh Shapiro, MI Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. NC Gov. Roy Cooper and a deep congressional bench including my rock-star congressman, Rep. Jamie Raskin, who has been to 26 states for Harris and the Democrats. Not to mention the highly popular Gov. Tim Walz, a superb VP candidate. Plus, a long list of major celebrities backing Harris from Taylor Swift to Bad Bunny.

10. All of this is why — despite the desperate, ominous emails and texts we get every day from Democrats — Harris campaign officials are “cautiously optimistic” that they will win. “Top Democratic strategists are increasingly hopeful that the campaign’s attempts to cast former President Donald J. Trump as a fascist — paired with an expansive battleground-state operation and strength among female voters still energized by the end of federal abortion rights — will carry Ms. Harris to a narrow triumph,” reports The New York Times. “Even some close to Mr. Trump worry that the push to label him a budding dictator who has praised Hitler could move small but potentially meaningful numbers of persuadable voters.”

Trump’s message of dominance, power and violence does mobilize a large section of the American public. That is very disturbing. But Harris’s inclusive, optimistic, pragmatic campaign is winning day after day. If we can keep up that momentum for six more days, she will win the election.

Then we will have to help her defend her hard-fought victory.