With lower than 40 days till election day, how can it’s that Trump has taken a small lead in Arizona and Georgia – two swing states he misplaced to Biden in 2020? How can he be narrowly main Harris within the swing state of North Carolina? How can he now be basically tied along with her within the different key swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin?
Extra typically, how can Trump have chiseled away Harris’s benefit from early August? How is it attainable that extra voters seem to view Trump favorably now than they did a number of months in the past when he was within the race in opposition to Biden?
How can Trump – the sleaziest particular person ever to run for president, who has already been convicted on 34 felony prices and impeached twice, whose failures of character and management have been skilled straight by the American public throughout his 4 years on the helm – be working neck-and-neck with a younger, proficient, clever particular person with a commendable document of public service?
Since his horrid efficiency debating Harris, he’s doubled down on false claims that Haitian migrants are consuming pets in Ohio. He’s been accompanied nearly in all places by rightwing conspiracy nutcase Laura Loomer. He mentioned he “hates” Taylor Swift after she endorsed Harris; that Jewish folks will likely be accountable if he loses the election; that the second try on his life was incited by the “Communist left rhetoric” of Biden and Harris. And so forth.
He’s change into so incoherent in public that Republican advisers are begging him to get again “on message”.
So why is he neck-and-neck with Harris?
Earlier than we get to what I feel is the rationale, let’s dismiss different explanations being supplied.
One is that the polls are understating voters’ help for Harris and overstating their help for Trump. But when the polls are systematically biased, you’d suppose it could be the opposite approach round, since some non-college voters are most likely reluctant to confess to skilled pollsters their desire for Trump.
One other is that the media is deliberately making a nail-bitingly shut race with a view to promote extra advertisements. However this will’t be proper as a result of, if something, extra People seem like tuning out politics altogether.
A ultimate principle holds that Harris has not but put to relaxation voters’ fears about inflation and the financial system. However provided that the American financial system has rebounded, inflation is approach down, rates of interest are falling, wages are up and the job engine continues, you’d suppose voters on the margin can be shifting towards her moderately than towards Trump.
The simplest clarification has to do with uneven info.
By now, nearly everybody in America is aware of Trump and has made up their minds about him. Current polls have discovered that almost 90% of voters say they don’t must study extra about Trump to determine their vote.
However they don’t but know Harris, or stay undecided about her. Extra on this in a second.
Trump is exploiting this asymmetry in order that in relation to selecting between Trump and Harris, voters will select the satan they know.
This requires, first, that Trump suck all of the media oxygen out of the air so Harris has fewer alternatives to outline herself positively.
People who’ve change into overwhelmed by the chaos are tuning out politics altogether, particularly in swing states the place political promoting is nonstop. And as they tune out each Trump and Harris, Trump is the beneficiary, as a result of, once more, he’s the satan they know.
In different phrases, Trump is working neck-and-neck with Harris not regardless of the mess he’s created over the previous few weeks however as a result of of it.
Trump’s technique additionally requires that he and his allies concurrently flood the airwaves and social media with unfavorable advertisements about Harris, that are then amplified by the rightwing ecosystem of Fox Information, Newsmax and Sinclair radio.
Trump’s marketing campaign has given up attempting to advertise him positively. The Wesleyan Media Mission estimates that the Trump workforce is now spending nearly zero on advertisements that present him in a constructive mild. There’s no level, as a result of everybody has already made up their minds about him.
As a substitute, the advertisements aired by Trump and his allies in swing states are overwhelmingly unfavorable about Harris – emphasizing, for instance, her previous help for gender transition surgical procedure for incarcerated folks.
Researchers on cognition have lengthy recognized that unfavorable messages have a greater impression than constructive ones, most likely as a result of in evolutionary phrases, our brains are hard-wired to reply extra to scary than to constructive stimuli (which could clarify why social media and even mainstream media are crammed with unfavorable tales).
Lastly, Trump’s technique necessitates that he refuse to debate her once more, lest she get extra constructive publicity (therefore he has turned down CNN’s invitation for a 23 October debate, which she has accepted).
Behind the data asymmetry lie racism and misogyny. I can’t assist questioning what number of People who proceed saying they “don’t know” or are “undecided” about Harris are concealing one thing from pollsters and presumably from themselves: they really feel uncomfortable voting for a Black lady.
Having mentioned all this, I’m cautiously optimistic in regards to the end result of the election. Why? As a result of Trump is deteriorating quickly; recently he’s barely been capable of string sentences collectively coherently.
Harris, in contrast, is gaining power and confidence by the day, and regardless of Trump’s makes an attempt to close her out, extra People are studying about her. As she will get extra publicity, Trump’s “devil-you-know” benefit disappears.
Maybe it’s extra correct to say I’m nauseously optimistic, as a result of, to be candid, I’m going into the subsequent 5 weeks feeling a bit sick to my abdomen. Even when Harris wins, the truth that so many People appear ready to vote for Trump makes me fear for the way forward for my nation.
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Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public coverage on the College of California, Berkeley, and the creator of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Frequent Good. His latest e-book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Repair It, is out now. He’s a Guardian US columnist. His publication is at robertreich.substack.com
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