People Seem To Like Kamala Harris

 Obsessively watching the polls can be nerve wracking, especially when a bunch of GOP leaning polls like Rasmussen or Trafalgar come out and screw up the polling averages. There are other things to look at besides the polls.

One thing is how people feel about the economy. Those numbers have been trending in a positive direction for a while now. That's really helpful for Harris, as people have a distorted view of Trump's role the long recovery from 2008. As we move into the post-inflationary landscape, if people feel better about the economy, that helps Harris a lot.

Josh Marshall notes something else that's important to the "horse race" polling but imperfectly captured by it. Harris' favorability numbers have soared since Biden dropped out and she became the nominee. This is fairly unprecedented in contemporary politics. What's more, those numbers keep going up. At first, she consolidated her standing with Democrats, especially those despairing about Biden's age. But her favorability keeps going up as she cements herself with independents and even some "soft" Republicans. 

This is remarkable in the highly polarized age we live in, but it also shows that the GOP attacks on Harris really haven't landed. They had a window of about two weeks to re-define Harris once she became the nominee and they botched it. She and her team have done a great job, but the Trump camp simply hasn't been able to land a punch on Harris or Walz for that matter.

This is interesting, because the news media have been howling about Harris's lack of interviews, yet her strategy is clearly working. She's defining herself without having to play the Gotcha Game with vapid journalists. 

It's also interesting, because it does suggest that those dipshit "undecideds" who dither and waffle all fall before landing on a decision may be way more favorably disposed towards Harris. That's the genius of "we're not going back". People really have had enough of Trump.

I saw a decent pollster today with a poll that had Harris up a few points, but Trump was getting 23% of the Black vote. When you see shit like that...I dunno. Tough to say what the implications of that subset being crazy says about the entire sample. There's no reason for Trump to be pulling historic numbers among Black voters. 

We have two big events coming up: the debate and Trump's sentencing. I really think Harris has an opportunity to stick a hose in the mouth of Trump's drowning campaign during the debate. People don't like Donald Trump outside of his cult. I think she has a real chance to put a pin in this race.