A growing sense of unease has set in among Democrats, who fear a presidential election they thought they had won by switching the top of the ticket might be slipping away.
Vice President Kamala Harris has abandoned her cautious media strategy, deigning to appear even on Fox News, a cable network both she and President Joe Biden were at pains to avoid earlier. So far, the results have been mixed at best.
Liberal opinion leaders are urging their readers to ignore the polls, following a previous pattern of polling denial (or at least skepticism) that ended in acceptance that Biden was losing and citing the same polls to chase him out of the presidential race. Less than a month before his exit, Biden doubters were dismissed as the “bedwetting brigade.”
Harris is still leading in the national RealClearPolitics polling average by 1.4 points. But Biden led by 9.4 points and Hillary Clinton by 6.7 at the exact same point in 2020 and 2016, respectively. Former President Donald Trump is for the third straight election cycle running stronger in the battleground states that will decide the Electoral College majority, and thus the presidency, than he is nationally. Harris’s current national lead is also smaller than Clinton’s final popular vote margin when she lost to Trump.
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The Democrats’ panic may be premature. But it is based on five reasons.
1. The Trump factor
Put simply, many Democrats do not believe Trump should be at all competitive in this race. Many of their elected officials and top strategists have little appreciation of his political skills or appeal. Trump was impeached twice, presided over a pandemic and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, has now been indicted numerous times across multiple jurisdictions, has been convicted in the only one of those cases to go to trial before the election following other adverse civil judgments against him, and was thought to have left office discredited as a political force.
But Trump is tied or leading in most of the battleground states, albeit within the margin of error, and polling better nationally than he has in any of his three presidential campaigns. Democrats have a tendency to lose confidence in any candidate who cannot build a clear lead over him.
Before the June 27 debate, Democrats were worried that an 81-year-old Biden was no longer up to the job of beating Trump. Biden’s performance onstage with Trump and subsequent failed cleanup attempts proved this beyond a reasonable doubt to most Democrats.
Less than a month later, Democrats swapped Biden out for Harris, who is younger and a skilled messenger in scripted settings, at least. Initially, the gambit seemed to work. And she is still up 1.4 points in the same polling average where Biden trailed by 3.1 points at the time he dropped out of the race. But the fact that the race is back within the margin of error has undercut Democrats’ confidence in Harris now as well.
2. It’s the democracy, stupid
Relatedly, Democrats have framed this election as a referendum on democracy. If the survival of democracy is on the ballot, the race being no better than a coin flip is bound to horrify Democrats.
Biden ran heavily on the themes of democracy and Jan. 6, giving many speeches on these subjects. But he did not otherwise display any urgency equal to the task of saving democracy, with a lackluster campaign schedule and increasingly unsteady live oratory.
Harris moved away from these themes when she took over as the presidential nominee. She has returned to them more as the race enters the homestretch and now faces a similar problem: She and her surrogates are saying democracy is on the line while at the same time telling Democrats to be patient and rely on their ground game to inch past Trump in the battleground states. It’s too close for comfort.
3. 2016 hangover
Many Democrats will never get over the feeling of confidently assuming Trump would lose only to see him elected president. Trump would not have the same element of surprise this time around. But the psychic effects of his upset victory on the Left still endure.
There was a pretty big polling miss in the battleground states the year Trump won, which led to overconfidence that Clinton’s small national lead would translate into an Electoral College majority. Trump overperformed his poll numbers again in 2020, though it was not enough to secure a second term. But he’ll get one now if there is any kind of polling error like the last two presidential elections.
A big debate is whether Trump’s obvious competitiveness this year — he enjoyed polling leads over Biden dating back to 2023 — suggests that those polling errors have been fixed. Others do not think the public pollsters are willing or able to spend enough money to correct for the response rate bias that leads to these problems. Thus there has been rumbling about expensive private polls that were used to nudge Biden aside and are said to look gloomy for Harris now.
Most political reporters have seen dubious internal polls selectively leaked by campaigns, and sometimes those numbers are rosier than the reality. At the same time, pollsters hired by candidates to help them make decisions about advertising spending and where to campaign can pay a higher professional price for inaccuracy.
4. Fear is a good motivator
After weeks of being buoyed by positive media coverage and good “vibes,” it is possible that the assessments of the race have been overcorrected in Trump’s favor. If so, that is not necessarily bad news for Harris.
Fear of losing a close race can keep donors engaged and prevents complacency from setting in among voters, who need motivation to go to the polls. With Biden as the nominee, many Democrats were in danger of losing all hope. With Harris, there is still a sense of the possible, even if Trump cannot be counted out. But she has never hesitated to describe herself as the underdog in the race.
Democrats have used fear and loathing of Trump to turn out their voters for eight years. It has worked more often than not. It could help them pull through in a bad national environment one more time.
5. Democrats vs. Dick Cheney
A final worry is rooted in a strategic decision Harris has made since leapfrogging Biden. Her team clearly believes that ex-Republicans and current anti-Trump GOP voters are an important swing vote in this race. She has appeared alongside Liz Cheney and touted her father’s endorsement. Dick Cheney was once as polarizing a vice president as Harris and as unpopular with Democrats as Trump.
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Harris has also abandoned or muted many of the progressive positions she took in her previous presidential campaign, which did not last to the Iowa caucuses. She is doing so despite fissures emerging in the Democratic coalition. She has attempted a last-ditch appeal to black men but has still seen some erosion with union households, Hispanics (especially men), and even young voters compared to Biden’s 2020 showing. There are also leftists unhappy with her handling of Israel and Gaza. They probably won’t be appeased even if she hits it out of the park on Fox.
Whether Harris can compensate for any defections by attracting an offsetting number of predominantly white, erstwhile Republican suburbanites could do a long way toward deciding the election. Worries that this won’t pan out plague Democratic doubters.