We are now entering the final weeks of the 2024 election, and things are looking pretty close. According to 538, Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump by about 2% nationally, with state-level polls tightening in some crucial swing states. Election forecasters like Nate Silver say the election is essentially a coin flip, and while that’s been the case for some time, it does feel like Harris’s early meme-filled momentum has stalled. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why that’s the case — polls do often tighten as Election Day grows nearer — but it’s hard not to notice that it’s happened in tandem with the Harris campaign’s apparent transition away from energizing the base and toward appealing to swing voters and disaffected Republicans. This is now a classic general election move. But should it be?
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Early on in Harris’s abbreviated presidential run, she and running mate Tim Walz were more or less running on the idea that Republicans were a bunch of rights-destroying weirdos. She seemed to buck the election consultants, picking the largely progressive Walz over more moderate options like Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, and embracing the reportedly unplanned slogan “We’re not going back.” She drummed up new energy among the base, particularly among young people and minority groups who weren’t as enthused by President Biden and saw her as a potential break from some of his policies, including his unwavering support of Israel in its war in Gaza.
Now, though, Harris seems to be listening to the consultants. She’s been touting endorsements from the likes of George W. Bush administration members Dick Cheney and former attorney general Alberto Gonzales. She has now on several occasions promised to appoint a Republican to her cabinet and says she’ll create a bipartisan council of advisors. She has echoed certain right-wing talking points on immigration. She keeps mentioning her gun. Walz, who made a sassy couch joke about Trump VP pick J.D. Vance at his campaign introduction, practically hugged Vance after their first and only debate. Speaking of Walz, the “weird” messaging seems to have disappeared from the trail, and we’re back to talking about how Trump’s a threat to democracy. Not that he isn’t, since he certainly appears to be, but as I’ve pointed out before, that messaging has had diminishing returns. It’s feeling like “Dangerous Donald” all over again.
All of this is an apparent effort to appeal to swing voters and Republicans, and in a nation this polarized, it’s not necessarily a bad tactic. As Noah Berlatsky pointed out in his “Everything Is Horrible” newsletter, Harris is polling a point or so ahead nationally than she is in the key swing states she needs, and in a super-close election, that point difference really matters. If the swing states are running redder than the rest of the electorate, conventional wisdom says that she should therefore tack to the right to pick up more swing state votes.
But that conventional wisdom hasn’t always panned out. Hillary Clinton also tried to appeal to Republican voters who might find Trump distasteful — in 2016, Senator Chuck Schumer proclaimed, "For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia.” Needless to say, it did not work out for Clinton in the end. In 2020, Biden’s appeals to bipartisanship did net him about 18% of Republican voters who voted third-party in 2016 (Trump got 70%), but that was an easier task to accomplish when Trump was the incumbent and the chaos of his administration was fresh in everyone’s mind.
Maybe Harris does need to get a handful of disaffected right-wingers to push her over the edge. But Democrats can’t keep taking the base for granted. The coalition has long consisted of blue collar voters, young people and minorities. That coalition is now shifting. Polls show that Trump is appealing to Black men in previously unprecedented numbers, and he has led Harris among young men of all races between the ages of 18 and 29 across the last three Times/Siena national polls. Though the majority of the nation’s largest unions endorsed Harris, the Teamsters Union, which has backed Democrats since 2000, refused to endorse, citing polling showing the rank-and-file members largely favored Trump. Harris, who has not yet broken away from the Biden administration’s policy and funding of Israel’s war in Gaza, also appears to be losing Muslim and Arab-American voters. These voters may not come back. If that happens, the Democrats will largely be the party of college-educated white urban and suburban voters, and that can’t possibly be enough to sustain it long term.
Even with early voting underway in a number of key states, there are a few things the Harris campaign can do to signal it hasn’t forgotten about its core voters. It can re-center focus on the economy, which a majority of voters consistently say is their top priority going into Election Day. It can continue to push Harris policies that matter to voters, like the care economy and affordable housing, and can signal a break from Biden on Israel. And please, Democrats, for the love of god, stop talking about Dick Cheney.
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