When Kamala's Joy Got Trumped by a Happy Meal

Duane Patterson 11:00 AM | October 21, 2024
AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Another remarkable weekend in American politics just concluded as we are just a fortnight away from Election Day, 2024. The direction in which each campaign is headed could not be more diametrically opposed. 

As of Sunday, the floor falling out from underneath Kamala Harris continued with no end in sight. The TIPP daily tracking poll now shows Donald Trump not just passing Kamala Harris, but starting to pull away. 

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That's a six-point jump in a week. Rasmussen's daily tracker has been showing Trump with the same couple point lead for a little longer. Over at Real Clear Politics, the average of polling in the head-to-head matchup still shows Kamala Harris with a lead, but it's shrinking fast. 10 days ago, the Vice President was up 2.3% over the former President. Today, that lead is down to 0.9%. And as Tom Bevan notes, one of the principle gurus behind RCP, if you actually look at the five most recent polls of their overall list making up the average, and those five also being the most historically accurate, here's what it the average would really look like.

Donald Trump currently leads the Real Clear Politics battleground averages in all seven states - Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada. And RCP is now hinting that Minnesota might actually back into becoming a statistical 8th swing state before all is said and done. Keep in mind that in neither the 2016 nor the 2020 presidential cycles did we see one national or swing state poll at any point in the process ever show Donald Trump with a lead. 

In early state voting, even ABC, which tanked the Presidential debate between Trump and Kamala Harris in the vice president's favor every time they could intervene, sees the trendlines from whom are casting early votes. And it's horrible news for Democrats compared to the previous two contests. Here's Rick Klein from This Week.

I'm sure Harris-Walz campaign manager Julie Chavez has a game plan to counter that, but I'm not sure exactly what that would look like at this point. Take Nevada, for example.

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Yes, more Democrats than Republicans are returning early ballots in the Silver State. But there's a huge caveat to it that even lefty Jon Ralston points out. The percentage advantage compared to earlier cycles is much closer than it has been, and the Democrats seem to be banking, or more precisely, cannibalizing their high-propensity Election Day voters whereas Republican early voters, which are up over the last two cycles, are largely low-propensity voters. That means if this pattern plays out, on November 5th, Democrats will be out of gas, having already banked their most likely voters, while Republicans will have banked people they haven't necessarily had before, and those traditionally voting for them are still headed to the polls on Election Day. 

But again, all this is national horse race stuff, which is not how we elect presidents. That's where the Electoral College comes in. But before we get there, one more harbinger of doom for the Democrats - Nate Silver.

The former 538 blogger/polling analyst now has set up his own shop. Earlier in the summer, he had the odds of Donald Trump winning, both with Joe Biden being his opponent and in the first couple weeks after Kamala was substituted in like a bad understudy. His index flipped around the time of the convention and debate, and he's been desperately holding on to the narrative that while there's been some movement, the underlying fundamentals still favor Harris. 

Add a week of horrific media appearances and rallies by Harris, and the resulting poll data from this past week, and even Silver has had to flip his probabilities back to Trump. 

The news gets worse. Silver outlined the most likely scenarios for how the swing states would break, and the resulting outcome in the Electoral College. Her best chance, at only 17%, is to run the table of all seven. Other than that, you get down to combinations of her winning 4, 5, or 6 out of 7. All are statistically possible, but well under 3% probabilities. Trump, especially if he is surging in Pennsylvania as polling shows, is in the driver's seat with lots of possibilities to get him well north of 270. 

I've mentioned this before, but with two weeks out, it's important to keep as a reminder. With the population spread out the way it is - California and New York being hugely-populated blue states and Texas and Florida being almost as big for the Republicans, Silver, a Democrat, came up with a grid of what percent of a popular vote win would translate to in the Electoral College. Remember, as of Sunday night, in the RCP official average, Harris is +0.9%.

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If the polls are dead-on accurate and she's up just under 1%, Donald Trump has a 90% chance of winning the Electoral College with relative ease, with at least 290. Remember what Tom Bevan said. Taking the 5 most-recent and most accurate polls, Trump is actually up 0.6%. That translates to a 97.6% chance for Trump in the Electoral College according to Silver's grid, with 306 EV's. Real Clear Politics' map currently has the former President at 312 with leaning states tossed in.  

Now how did each campaign spend their weekend? Kamala Harris, the campaign about whom I've been reliably told by regime media is the Joy candidate, booted out a rally-goer proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. She told him to get out and go to the lesser-attended rally down the street. 

At another rally, Harris responded to a pro-Palestinian heckler accusing Biden and Harris of supporting Israel while they are committing a genocide, which is a blood libel, by the way. But did Harris tell him to go to the lesser-attended rally down the street? Nah. She agreed with him as her security were throwing him out. 

It's real, the Vice President of the United States said. She believes Israel is conducting a genocide. Perhaps that's why she's been silent on condemning someone in the U.S. government leaking classified, eyes only, top-secret plans the Israelis shared with us on what sites in Iran they were going to strike.

As for the whole vice president thing, I'm old enough to remember all the way back to July, when Kamala was foisted onto the national stage after Democratic apparatchiks threw Joe Biden overboard. Her big claim for the top job was that she worked closely, side by side, the last person in the room with Joe, not an ounce a daylight between her and the president. That's apparently been chucked out the window along with Joe.

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She can't say what she'd disagree with on policy from Biden, because she doesn't want to speak ill of him. She does have differences, mind you. She just can't tell you. You have to vote based upon your guess of what she'd do different.

The wheels are coming off this wagon in a big way, and it's not just the top of the ticket, though she's truly had a rotten week-and-a-half. In Detroit, after trying to Jedi mind trick this meme that Donald Trump is too old and doesn't have the energy to do the job, Harris and Trump held dueling rallies in Detroit the same day, and almost at the same time. Her appearance clocked in at just over six minutes, while Trump held court for just under 90. Here are the two appearances side by side, sped up 50 times, to give you the sense of who has energy, and who is pretending. 

She sure looked a lot more tired than Trump. And it was confirmed by her running mate, ol' Helicopter Hands himself, Tim Walz. 

Even Harris' surrogates were disasters on stage. In Detroit, Lizzo made one promise sure to scare off everyone else in the country that is even remotely Harris-curious. 

Larry O'Connor, a Michigander, knows that's a cringe-inducing closing message. And Billy Jeff - former President William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, said this at a rally, matter-of-factly.

Now let's talk about Donald Trump's weekend. If Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, the two campaign managers for Trump-Vance '24, aren't studied for decades to come by political gurus, they're not going to be successful. Donald Trump went to a McDonald's in Feasterville-Trevose, Pennsylvania to pick up a part-time shift. After all, according to the fable, Kamala Harris allegedly did that, too, back in her yough in Alameda County, California. But Trump wasn't the only one who went to this particular McDonald's. A few other people heard he might be there. 

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Politico, ostensibly a website about political news, offered this as a write-up.

In that 'brief' period of time, there were hundreds of thousands of social media engagements about this epic troll job just on X alone. It's hard to overestimate how remarkably gifted of a retail politician Donald Trump is, regardless of whether you love or hate him. 


Imagine for a moment being this kid. 

He's going to be able to tell his grandkids one day that he supervised and trained the president of the United States on the proper way to season McDonald's French Fries. What a magnificently spectacular country in which we live. 

This is just extraordinary. Most certainly a 1st generation American family thanking the former President for making it possible for ordinary people like them to meet him. Trump instantly replies, "You are not ordinary. You are not ordinary. I can see." The man's wife, after shaking his hand, thanks Trump for 'taking a bullet for us.' Here's another one.

Mark Halperin, former MSNBC polling analyst and the first person to accurately report that the Democrats would toss Biden overboard for Harris, said this about Trump's stay in McDonald's.

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This will be one of those tales that everyone in the state of Pennsylvania will tell their kids. Of course, only a handful got to actually have an official McDonald's transaction with Trump, but the legend will spread like the loaves and fishes in the Keystone State. Everyone in that town will have a tale to tell. 

The genius of this stop, of course, is that it humanizes Trump. But beyond that, it totally screws Team Harris royally, and it's their own fault. It's actually campaign malpractice for the Democrats not to have staged a Harris work shift before now to soften her edges and push back at Trump's narrative she made up her story of working there as a kid. 

Now, of course, if Harris does try to 'work' a retail job, it will look hopelessly desperate and reactionary. She'll be accused of stealing his campaign strategy as well as his policy proposals. And at the end of the day, even if she were to put on the little visor and sling out a few filet o'fish to pre-screened Democratic party workers bused in as patrons, she can't put on the charm like Trump can. She does not possess that ability to be likeable. Watch this focus group panel on MSNBC with Yasmin Vossoughian. 

What stuns me is not the fact that nobody's voting for her down the stretch, but that MSNBC actually aired it. Finally, to complete the campaign compare and contrast, I mentioned that even Harris surrogates were awful. Juxtapose Lizzo and Bill Clinton to Elon Musk holding his own rally in Pennsylvania. 

Two weeks as of tomorrow. Of which campaign would you want to be a part right now? What are you willing to do to pile on and extend the map? Why stop at 312 Electoral Votes when Minnesota, New Hampshire, Virginia, New Mexico, and all sorts of Maalox-inducing nightmares are possible to give the anchors on regime media as Election coverage rolls on. Why pile on? To send the message that it's not just an Electoral College victory. It's not just about winning the popular vote as well. It's about sweeping the whole thing, House and Senate races, too, and rejecting everything about the last four years. Yes, Republicans are going to win the Senate back. But winning West Virginia and Montana are not enough. Eric Hovde in Wisconsin is right there for the taking, as is Bernie Moreno in Ohio and Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania. If the night is strong enough, then you're talking about Hung Cao in Virginia, Larry Hogan in Maryland, Sam Brown in Nevada, Kari Lake in Arizona, and Nella Domenici in New Mexico. Trust me - a win is a win. I'll take the W. But if Republicans can get from 51 to 53, maybe 55, or even more in a true wave, it makes the job of reversing the damage so much easier.  

Paint the map red. It's not just a book, it's a mission. And that mission's success may have just gotten cemented by going through the Golden Arches in Pennsylvania. 

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Tags: DONALD TRUMP MCDONALD'S SWING STATE KAMALA HARRIS 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

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