The news that not only Liz but Dick Cheney are endorsing Kamala Harris is remarkable for anyone over 35. The elder Cheney served in Nixon's, Reagan's and both Bush Administrations. They join several other Republican politicians in saying, at the very least, that they won't be voting for Donald Trump. Then you have profiles in cowardice like Dubya Bush who won't endorse either candidate, which would normally be a huge deal, but seems unequal to this moment.
There was a meme going around in various forms talking about how the Democratic tent was so big it went from Dick Cheney to AOC or even Ilhan Omar. That's true and it leads me back to my basic fact about this election that seems to fly in the face of polls that show a really tight race.
-Who voted for Joe Biden that is going to switch and vote for Trump?
-Why do polls show a major erosion in Black support for Kamala Harris?
-Why do polls show a neck and neck race for voters under 35?
-What are we to make of new voter registration?
The Times/Sienna poll - which has always been really bad for Democrats - has Trump with a one point lead. Look, even Harris with a four point lead is too close given how manifestly unfit Trump was and currently is. But the poll has Harris struggling to consolidate Black and youth voters. This, despite a massive surge is registering Black Women to vote since Harris got in the race.
Black women are the base of the Democratic Party, their most reliable demographic - even more that being a registered Democrat. If you take that group and then add a bunch of what we might call Patriot Republicans - the Cheneys, Adam Kinzinger, et al - and add on top of that every single Biden voter from 2020...where are the new Trump voters coming from?
Biden won 51.3% of the vote to Trump's 46.8%, despite a broad feeling that the pandemic hampered Democratic GOTV efforts - efforts that Harris is going to spend millions on, because she has a massive cash advantage over Trump. If Trump is really tied with Harris, that means that some traditional Democratic voters have abandoned her - despite January 6th, despite Dobbs - and Trump has added voters to his tally.
The number of Patriot Republicans is likely small. Dick Cheney does not bring a constituency with him. But if you're a "moderate" or "independent" voter who pays marginal attention to politics and Darth Cheney is out there saying the Trump is so awful that he's going to vote for Kamala Harris...that seems significant. Harris is the bipartisan candidate in a country that nominally says it like bipartisanship.
I've held that debates are stupid and don't really move the needle. Obviously the last debate changed everything, as it showed Biden's diminished capacity as a speaker. However, in that debate, people watching it really didn't like Trump either. The focus groups were actually split between who had the worst debate. And then since the shooting, especially, Trump seems "off".
If Harris runs circles around Trump - which could happen, she's a lawyer, he's a mushy brained walking tantrum with no new things to say - we have to continue to ask: Who has become a Trump voter since 2020? We have evidence that January 6th was a bridge too far for a numerically significant number of Republicans. I haven't seen anything to suggest that there are Democratic leaning voters who want to move to Trump.
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