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Wind at Harris’s back heading toward Tuesday
Carville’s gut tingles
Art Cullen
Oct 30, 2024
James Carville must be pretty smart, because he agrees with me. The Bill Clinton swamp strategist believes that Kamala Harris will win next week for many of the same reasons I do: mainly, money and mojo.
Plus, my brother John thinks so. He’s the smartest guy in the room usually. And so does Allan Lichtman, a professor at American University who calls races right every time, and says Harris has enough of the 13 Keys to the White House (he wrote the book on it, with that title) to ascend from the Naval Observatory to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Lichtman’s keys are led by: It’s The Economy, Stupid, to quote Carville. Short-term and long-term economic prospects are good. Check. No big scandals in the White House. Check. The incumbent administration has enacted major policy changes. Check, and so on.
Carville cited three reasons for a probable Harris win: Trump is a loser, Harris raised over $1 billion, and the Louisiana boy has a gut feeling. Gut is good when it’s Carville’s.
My keys:
BLACK WOMEN will walk over coals to the polls to see Harris elected. My sister-in-law in Atlanta, a proud Black granny with Michelle Obama’s book on her coffee table, is going to make sure her tribe gathered in Georgia and back home in native Michigan votes for Harris come hell or high water. Registrations among women of color are way up in all swing states. Abortion is on the ballot. Polls have a hard time reaching young women in Flint, Mich.
MONEY. Harris has gobs of it. And organization. Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin all have Democratic governors and senators with well-greased statewide machinery. Union enthusiasm has never been higher in my lifetime, especially among the United Auto Workers in Michigan and Wisconsin. Trump turned over his organizing to goofball Elon Musk, who knows nothing about this game — in fact, this is not rocket science. It’s about phone-calling and door-knocking.
BIG MO. Harris has it. She has Barack Obama, The Boss, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. Trump has Kid Rock and Ted Nugent, enough to give the spray-painted and disgraced former president cat-scratch fever. Harris exudes enthusiasm and energy. Trump projects anger. Enthusiasm wins — see Ronald Reagan or Terry Branstad in the annals of winning.
VOTERS WANT CHANGE. They’re tired of chaos. Trump is chaos. Harris is younger and forward-looking. Trump whines about his gilded past. That’s why Republicans might lose two Iowa seats in the House of Representatives to Democrats, situated around Iowa City/Davenport and Des Moines.
Trump led Harris by four percentage points in a recent Iowa Poll. I would not be surprised if the final Iowa Poll shows undecideds breaking Trump’s way. A poll by Progressive Farmer reported that over 70% of rural voters will support Trump, even though farmers enjoyed record net income in the Biden years. That Harris is this close in Iowa suggests that she will do well in Wisconsin. Tim Walz from neighboring Minnesota will help shore her up in the north woods of Wisconsin and Michigan.
In Arizona, the Republican Party is badly fractured. Republican Senate candidate (and Iowa native) Kari Lake trails Democrat Ruben Gallego by a wide margin. Polls may say otherwise, but Harris should win Arizona. They loved John McCain, and remember Trump calling him a “loser” for being a prisoner of war. They are reminded what a jerk Trump is.
No high-ranking official is saying that Kamala Harris admires Hitler or kept Mein Kampf on her nightstand. She is hawkish toward Iran and Russia, perhaps moreso than Biden. She is a former prosecutor. She brags about carrying a gun. Claims that she is soft don’t stick. Or that she is stupid. She destroyed Trump in the debate, and has been smooth in TV interviews and town halls.
So I join Carville, Professor Lichtman and Brother John in guessing that Harris will win. Lichtman might claim he is not guessing, but we really don’t know which way the world will turn overnight.
It looks like Congress will flop — the House is likely to switch from Republican to Democratic control, and the Senate probably will switch from Democrat to Republican. Two races could determine control of the Senate: Independent Dan Osborn could beat incumbent Republican Deb Fischer in Nebraska, and Republican Dan Sheehy leads incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester in Montana. It remains hard for me to believe that rancher Tester, missing a couple digits to farming and sporting a flat-top, will be defeated by a challenger who badmouths Native Americans using vulgar stereotypes. I also recognize that voters are fickle, and people often demonstrate incredible ignorance. You just never know.
Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.
