In the seven weeks since Kamala Harris got the go-ahead from Joe Biden to run for president, by early September she has the Democratic nomination and she has energized Democrats up and down the ballot. But, heading into the debate Sept. 10, polls still showed Harris in a virtual deadlock with Donald Trump for the presidency.
The race likely will remain tight up to the Nov. 5 election, but Harris remains in a strong position. As of Sept. 10, before the first debate between Harris and Trump, the Washington Post’s average of polls showed Harris was ahead in swing states Pennsylvania (2 points), Michigan (1 point) and Wisconsin (3 points), while Trump led narrowly in Arizona (1 point), Georgia (2 points) and North Carolina (less than 1 point). And polls show Harris closing in on Trump in Florida.
If Harris wins Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, she appears in good shape to win the 270 Electoral College votes to win the election. But all seven of the swing states were within a normal-sized polling error of 3.5 points and could go either way. Those states will go to whomever gets out the vote, and Democrats think they are better prepared for that “ground game” than Republicans are.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) once envisioned an extensive field operation for the 2024 election, including having about 90 staffers in the must-win state of Pennsylvania, Hugo Lowell noted in The Guardian.
But the Trump campaign scrapped those plans when it took over the RNC in March, redirecting the focus on field operations to combating supposed voter fraud and relying on political action committees and ardent Trump volunteers to get out the vote.
The Harris operation is understood to have roughly 375 staffers in Pennsylvania alone, after Democrats spent years building up voter turnout efforts in the state, Lowell reported.
Harris has the money, having raised $361 million in August, with most of the donations less than $200, giving the campaign $404 million as she prepares for the final stretch. As of Sept. 9, ActBlue had received $943 million in donations for all Democratic candidates. Trump’s campaign announced Sept. 5 they had raised $130 million in August, which leaves the disgraced former president $295 million in the bank.
Trump is relying on public belief that, with his business experience (and the character he played on “The Apprentice”), he is better equipped to improve the economy and bring inflation in line. This ignores that Trump inherited a thriving economy from Barack Obama, but Trump rode the economy into recession in 2020 when he failed to get the COVID pandemic under control. Inflation occurred because of shortages relating to the pandemic (remember the empty grocery shelves?). Biden fixed the supply chain problems, restored the economy from the recession Trump left him, and Biden took steps to reduce inflation, even if bacon and eggs are still expensive.
Trump has no clue how to reduce inflation and he wouldn’t be inclined to take the steps if he knew what to do. His standard reply is “Drill, baby, drill,” but US oil production is already at an all-time high. Gas prices have declined, but that hasn’t had an impact on groceries or rent. Harris would go after price gougers who drive “greedflation.”
Harris would raise taxes on the richest Americans and the biggest corporations to pay for child care, expand earned income and child tax credits for working families and deliver a middle-class tax cut—with no tax increases on families making less than $400,000.
Trump proposes to make his 2017 tax cuts for the rich “permanent” and he would pay for it by imposing tariffs of 60% on imports from China and 20% on other goods, which would be paid by consumers. Tariffs would cost the typical American household over $2,600 a year, according to economist Amy Hanauer of Citizens for Tax Justice. It amounts to a tax on the middle and working class.
In a rambling and largely incoherent response to a question at the Economic Club of New York Sept. 5 about how he would make child care policy more affordable, Trump appeared to endorse a 2018 plan by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, to allow families to raid their Social Security accounts to pay for family leave, which would reduce or delay their retirement benefits, Michael Hiltzik noted in the Los Angeles Times Sept. 6.
Hiltzik noted, “The Rubio-Trump plan fit perfectly into the Republican Party’s long-term project to undermine Social Security,” since the family leave program would run a deficit that would not be repaid for 30 years or more.
The alternative proposed by Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, at an appearance before the right-wing organization Turning Point USA, was that child care was the responsibility of a couple’s extended family. “Maybe Grandma and Grandpa wants to help out a little bit more,” he said. “Or maybe there’s an aunt or uncle that wants to help out a little bit more.”
For families without kin living nearby, Vance’s solution is to reduce educational or certification requirements so that more people can enter the day care business.
“Of course, this is part and parcel of the Republican drive to deregulate everything. In 2019, the Trump administration cut back on USDA inspections of meat plants, promoting a self-inspection regime for the industry,” Hiltzik noted.
“How has that worked out? At this moment, at least nine people have died from a listeria outbreak at a Boar’s Head deli meats plant in Virginia, where conditions were, to be charitable, disgusting. Apply the same principle to day care, and contemplate the ramifications.”
If Trump wasn’t a career criminal, he certainly displayed a contempt for laws and regulations in his business dealings before he ran for president. And if authorities refrained from pursuing criminal charges before he was president, his conduct since he was defeated in 2020, and his supporters failed in their efforts to set aside the results, has forced the hand of state and federal prosecutors.
In his second coming, Trump has gotten so noxious that even Dick Cheney can’t take him, announcing that he would be voting for Harris. (That does not rehabilitate Cheney; it just shows how much of a threat Trump is to the Republican Party and the United States.)
In contrast to Trump, Harris is an experienced public servant, having served honorably as a deputy district attorney in Oakland, elected district attorney in San Francisco, California attorney general and US senator before she was elected vice president of the U.S. in 2020. She is ready to take the helm.
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From The Progressive Populist, October 1, 2024
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