Erick-Woods Erickson
First, happy 24th anniversary to my wife. I’m off radio today and will be back on air tomorrow.
It is beginning to feel like the press corps and Democrats know Donald Trump is on the trajectory to win.
Ezra Klein is imploring New York Times readers to ignore the polls.
This comes after the New York Times/Sienna College poll has brutal numbers for Kamala Harris with non-white voters. Trump is losing black voters and Hispanic voters, but by far less than Republicans typically do.
The Obama progressive bros at Pod Save America are likewise doing a full “don’t believe the polls” podcast.
Usually, at this time of year, it is Republicans telling themselves to unskew polls and stop looking at them.
Axios is reporting tensions are rising between the Biden and Harris teams within the Biden-Harris Administration. Again, we would not be hearing this stuff if her team felt confident.
Over at the progressive The New Republic, Greg Sergant is sounding the alarm that Trump could win. The normal quiet voices Democrats use internally to redirect resources have turned into yelling and screaming to the press.
Some Democrats worry, for instance, that the party still isn’t doing enough to engage low-propensity Black and Latino voters, particularly young men. There is time to repair this. Democrats also wonder if they failed to define Trump early in the cycle, letting him slowly rehabilitate his favorability numbers. Still others fear they didn’t remind voters early on of the horrors of Trump’s first term, leaving them with rosy memories of his presidency—including blue-collar voters’ fond impressions of the Trump economy. Those latter two problems may not be repairable in time.
All this is why some Democrats are now second-guessing some of the moves made by the most powerful pro-Harris Super PAC, Future Forward.
This is when the wheels start falling off campaigns. There are, realistically, two weeks left to make any adjustments and only just over a week to make meaningful adjustments.
What is notable is that the public polling, though tied, gives Kamala Harris a slight edge.
However, more and more Republicans and Democrats both say that the internal polling, which is deeper and more accurate, is showing Trump starting to pull away from Harris in the sun belt. He and Republican Senate candidates in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are starting to show momentum.
This is not good for Democrats.
Harris can still win, but it is starting to seem that more and more of them realize she won’t. Again, she can win, but her campaign does not seem to be doing what it needs to do.
Just consider Walz’s pheasant hunt. They trotted out the camo cap with Walz’s nomination and are only now, with 22 days to go, trying to get gun owners to vote for them.
Then there’s the ad for men. God help us all with that. As my friend Scott Jennings noted on CNN, the Harris team and Democrats have, for too long, been too interested in men who want to become women. It’s too late to suddenly care about men who want to be men.
Democrats who read this need to start preparing themselves. Donald Trump is on the verge of getting re-elected.
In the words of Lewis Grizzard, Delta is ready when you are.