As we see (I hope, I pray) a surge of support for Harris as the election draws to a close, there have been some voices on Twitter arguing that this represents a repudiation of Trump rather than a validation of Harris and that Biden would be seeing a similar surge.
It's not impossible, but it's highly unlikely.
As Josh Marshall argues, Harris has run a pretty flawless campaign. One metric he uses is that you want more days on offense than defense. You want the other side to be responding to your attacks and bad new cycles. Last week, Biden garbled a jab about the views espoused at Trump's MSG rally into making it seem like he was calling all Trump supporters garbage. It was a stupid story about whether he said "supporters" or "supporter's" and the press ran three days of coverage on it. Harris simply hasn't had to face things like that. Plus, it's pretty clear the media hates Joe Biden for reasons that defy explanation.
Yes, there are attempts to land punches on her. Early on she wasn't doing many interviews. Then she did interviews and nailed them, even on Faux. She nailed the debate. She has held amazing rallies that pulse with the sort of energy we haven't seen since Obama's 2008 run.
And she did all this after inheriting a sinking ship in July.
Will she win? I think the signs look good, namely that Trump is camped out in North Carolina, because he has no path to victory without it and things must look grim there. Yes, the Selzer poll. Yes, the rageful flopsweat coming from Mar A Lardo. Yes, the tone and tenor of each campaign. Yes, the backstabbing exposes from behind the scenes of the Trump campaign. But...2016, so who knows.
It's fashionable to say that the GOP would be running away with this race if they hadn't nominated Trump. Maybe. That won't be clear until later this week and we get a sense of how Trump fared compared to Cruz or Scott or other Republicans. I think Nikki Haley is a much more effective messenger of change than the guy who was already president.
What Harris has done so skillfully is to make herself the agent of change, the challenger. As a woman of color, she has a built in vibe as an "outsider" the same way Obama did as a Black man. All of these were smart choices - "weird", "we're not going back" - that have her on the brink of finally, finally shattering that glass ceiling.
Fingers crossed.
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