44 years ago, on the cusp of the 1980 Election, one of the best spoof comedies ever made, Airplane!, was released. Back then, it was a remarkable couple of weeks, especially in late October, as polling indicated strongly that the contest between Ronald Reagan and incumbent President Jimmy Carter, with independent John B. Anderson also trying to peel off votes, was way too close to call. 

Carter led most polling until mid-June of 1980, and even when Reagan overtook him pretty consistently after that, polling from some recognizable outfits were telling us every day that it might be a long night before we knew who won. Newsweek partnered with Gallup the final week of October, and had the former California Governor ahead, but only by a single point, 44-43. CBS and the New York Times paired up on a survey released at the same time, and got exactly the same result. There were several other polls the final week of the campaign in a flurry, some showing Reagan with a 5-point lead, others at Reagan +3. The average of all these polls were well within the margin of error. 

Of course, the election was a landslide. Reagan won the popular vote, 51-41, and only lost six states and the District of Columbia nationwide in the Electoral College. It was a rout. The pollster were off by an average of 7 points. 

I'm not saying the polls are just as off this cycle, but the mood of the country and the polling parallels are otherwise similar. And going back to Airplane!, Barbara Billingsley, who prior to this film was known only as June Cleaver, America's mom during the late 50s and early 60s on Leave It To Beaver, unintentionally previewed what would become Kamala Harris' closing campaign pitch. 



Polling all summer and into the fall has been flashing red for Team Harris with all sorts of political identity groups - Latinos, Teamsters, Arab-Americans, Catholics, Evangelicals, cops and firefighters, Gen Z voters, and Blacks, especially Black men. Early voting in many of the swing states has buttressed what the polling is signaling. In Georgia, Black turnout in early vote is several points off what it was in 2020. In Philadelphia, another traditionally liberal Black stronghold, there's just not the same intensity or turnout in mail-in and early ballots requested. 

Both Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are doing their best to pretend they don't believe the data is accurate. Harris said her internal polls are her instincts, and Walz has already offered the sure sign of a losing campaign - the only poll that matters is on Election Day. But how the campaign is acting betrays their words and shows they know they are in dire trouble. And with a week to go as of yesterday, they're still trying to shore up their Black base of support. 

Kamala, fresh off of not being able to negotiate an interview with Joe Rogan, settled for a sit-down with Former NFL tight end Shannon Sharpe. After the dissolution of his Undisputed program with Skip Bayless, Sharpe has been flying solo as a podcaster. Harris' mission? Say whatever she has to in order to convince Blacks in the audience there to listen to a show about sports to vote for her. It went about as well as you'd expect, considering the impressive string of media faceplants the Vice-President has engaged in over the past 3 weeks. 

She was asked about why voters trust Donald Trump on economic policy more than her. She replied by talking about stimulus checks that went out.



On what differentiates her from Joe Biden. The answer is a patented word salad.



She's there specifically to pander to male Black voters. She makes a reference to Black business owners, and in an attempt to resonate with them, feels their pain of how hard it is to run their businesses. She complained that they have to hire bunches of accountants and lawyers to combat IRS audits. 



She literally cast the tie-breaking vote on legislation that funded 87,000 new IRS agents specifically there to audit people. On Medicare for all, another U-turn.



She doesn't support Medicare for all now, she says? Bernie Sanders, who crafted the legislation she co-sponsored and campaigned with him in the Senate to support, will be crushed at this news. Okay, no, he won't. He's been on several Sunday shows over the last month claiming she's only saying what she has to in order to get elected, and that her underlying true positions haven't changed. That may be true, but it's hardly a moral virtue by which to elect someone for president.  



I can't wait for Cam Edwards to react to Kamala Harris, the 2nd Amendment champion for Black men. But wait, it's not just the 1st and 2nd Amendment Donald Trump is going to trash. Hell, since we're in the last week of the '24 cycle, let's go for the baby inside straight and claim Trump's going to suspend the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments, too. 



Harris tried to spike the ball on her record on the border. 



This is, of course, delusional. Nobody in the country, Black, White, or Purple, believes her record compares favorably with anyone on the border. This was a friendly interview. Sharpe knows about as much about politics as Ayatollah Khamenei knows about foosball. It's entirely plausible that the Harris campaign supplied Sharpe with his question set, and yet she still answer coherently without lapsing back into her word salad greatest hits.



Less than five minutes later, in response to a completely different question, she answered with the exact same word salad, almost word for word.



Remember Joe Biden's claim that Mitt Romney was going to, "put y'all back in chains"? This is Kamala Harris' 2024 equivalent. 



This is the point where Kamala Harris tried to rap with the viewers she's desperately pandering to. This is her Barbara Billingsley Airplane! moment. 



At least in the Zucker Brothers classic, Billingsley, when she realized she wasn't connecting with her two fellow passengers, cut her losses and went back to her seat. Kamala is still pandering to a part of her base she still can't count on for their vote a week out from the election. 



Again with the price gauging bit. Economists, both left and right, have dismissed her plan as thoroughly unserious. She apparently believes her intended audience is too stupid to know she's an economic illiterate. 

This interview with Shannon Sharpe was actually recorded five days ago. It was just released yesterday. Why the delay? It wasn't like a clearing hold banks put on an out-of-state check. It was purposefully withheld from the public for almost a week. Why? Could it have something to do with the fact that five days ago was her trainwreck of a town hall on CNN with Anderson Cooper, and the campaign and Sharpe didn't want to pile on and chose to hide it a bit? 

Harris held a rally in Ann Arbor, Michigan with her running mate, Tim Walz. It took her about 30 seconds to show why she was never a cheerleader in high school. 



Ka-ma-la! Ka-ma-la! The crowd is in a frenzy. Here comes Kamala to wreck the day. "Now chant your own name." Literally, crickets. It's as if she sprayed her audience with Phos-chek. You can't help but laugh at her. Not with her, at her. We've never seen a candidate this bad in our lifetime. I only hope that if we see someone this bad again, that person also is a Democrat. 

The evening rally was the end to another horrible day for Kamala on the campaign trail. She began her day visiting Hemlock Semiconductors, and another word salad for the ages emanated from within.



I mentioned Tim Walz - He was at Harris' Ann Arbor rally, and said this.



Well, at least we now know why Walz was never a head football coach. if you're down with 2 minutes to go in the fourth quarter, 3 yards and a cloud of dust will get you...9 yards and an expired clock. If you're down with two minutes to go, you have to go into No Huddle offense. You have to hurry up, and you have to make plays downfield, preferably along the sidelines so you can get out of bounds, stop the clock, and regroup. This is Tim Walz telling me he has no idea about football while trying to tell me something about football. 

The line of the day from the campaign trial was turned in by J.D. Vance in Racine, Wisconsin.



Kamala Harris - Because nothing comes to mind. Classic. Another day off the calendar, another loss for Kamala Harris. She and her campaign are flailing and falling further behind in polling and early voting. Tuesday can't come soon enough.