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The makeup of next year's incoming Senate is anybody's guess, at this point. Republicans could wind up winning control, Democrats could wind up maintaining their control, and it all might come down to who wins the White House (since the vice president would break a 50-50 tie for control). From the way things look, there are a handful of states which will determine who winds up with a majority.
After what were arguably the two most consequential presidential debates since at least the Nixon-Kennedy debate (which launched the era of televised debates), last night's vice-presidential debate was pretty... well, normal. It harkened back to the age before Donald Trump entered the political scene, when two candidates would debate political issues without getting overly vicious or personal in their attacks, in the hopes of presenting themselves to the public as acceptable leaders of the country. That was really the striking takeaway from last night -- a return to normalcy, in the midst of yet another Trumpian rollercoaster of a presidential campaign. In fact, this normalcy stuck out as completely abnormal to the bizarre political landscape Trump has dragged us all into for the past nine years.
There was no playground-bully name-calling. Instead of viciousness, the dominating vibe was affability. It was all very Midwestern. Neither candidate pressed the attack on the other in a "go for the jugular" sort of way. They ignored opportunities to get the other candidate on the ropes, in favor of appearing to strive for bipartisan agreement. As I mentioned, this was all very weird, since it was so jarringly different from the entire rest of the campaign so far.
While waiting for tonight's vice-presidential debate I find myself reflecting on a question I've been occasionally wondering about over the past few years: what will a post-Trump Republican Party look like? We'll all be seeing one possibility tonight, as JD Vance takes the stage to debate Tim Walz. Because whether Donald Trump wins or loses the presidential race this time around, Vance seems poised to perhaps move into a sort of "MAGA heir apparent" role within his party. After all, Trump picked him to put on the ticket, which is more than anyone else can say (other than Mike Pence, of course, but the less said about him the better). But he'll likely have some challengers for the mantle of party leader once Trump somehow exits the scene.
Tomorrow night might be the last big television event of the 2024 presidential race. JD Vance and Tim Walz will debate each other, and since Donald Trump is so far resisting the idea of having a third presidential debate, this may be it for face-to-face encounters between the two campaigns. So I found myself wondering what I would ask the two candidates, if I had the chance.
Vice-presidential debates are interesting mostly because: (1) they never amount to much, in terms of having an impact on the voters, but also: (2) it is a showdown between the two "attack dogs" (the traditional role of vice-presidential candidates). So sparks do occasionally fly, even if few voters wind up changing their minds.
Donald Trump got his start in politics by infamously pushing the "birtherism" lie about Barack Obama. Now he's pushing what might be called a "burgerism" lie about Kamala Harris -- that she somehow just made up the fact that she worked at McDonald's back when she was a student. It's all a measure of the desperation Trump finds himself now wallowing in, since to date none of his attacks against Harris have even come close to landing.
If you are thinking to yourself how monumentally stupid this all is, you are not alone. It is so monumentally stupid that it's not even worth going down the twisted rabbit hole Trump and his minions followed to come up with the lie, in fact. Suffice it to say they are grasping at straws... milkshake straws, perhaps?
In a surprise turn of events, the mayor of New York City will not now go on to run for president. Or maybe that should read: In a surprise turn of events, this time it wasn't the governor of New York caught in a career-ending scandal, but instead just the mayor of New York City.
That's the way I reacted to hearing the breaking news that New York City Mayor Eric Adams had been indicted on five federal charges, including bribery and wire fraud: "Wait... the mayor? Shouldn't that be the governor?!?" I apologize to Governor Kathy Hochul for this knee-jerk reaction, since (as of yet) she has not been implicated in any career-ending scandal. But it should be a forgivable reaction, after reviewing the recent history of both offices.
Republicans have a problem with women. Their problem is basically that more and more women don't want to vote for them. By increasingly-wide margins, in fact. Some Republicans have now begun to realize this, and they are desperately trying to woo these women back to their side of the aisle. This is not going well, to put it mildly.
As we near the finish line of the 2024 presidential race, we're going to start doing these columns more frequently. Sooner or later I will have to write one each week for the final sprint, but I'm not committing to that quite yet. In any case, it has been two weeks since our last look the state of the Electoral Math, so let's take a look at what has changed since the big debate.
Since the debate, Kamala Harris has improved her standing in the national polls, to the point where all the aggregators of such polls have her up in the range of two to three points. That's a lead, but not big enough of one for any Democrats to relax. And although Harris did get a very slight bump from the debate, it hasn't really shown up in a big way in the state-level polling -- which is, of course, what really matters.
So without further ado, let's get right to taking an overview of the state-level polling. As always, we use the fantastic Electoral-Vote.com site for all our data. We urge you to check it out to see individual graphs of every state's polling over time, to get a clearer picture of how tight this race truly is.
We begin with our breakdown of Electoral Votes (EV). Red represents Trump's share (measured from the top), Blue represents Harris's share (measured from the bottom), and whichever crosses the midpoint has the advantage. To put it another way, if all the polls are correct and blue is above the green line, Harris will win. If red is below the green line, then Trump will win.
[Click on any of theses graphs to see larger-scale versions.]
Thanks to the decision of one man, Nebraska will not be making an eleventh-hour change to the way they apportion their Electoral College votes. This is a very obscure sort of thing, but in one particular scenario it could be key to the entire presidential election. This makes the news that one Republican in Nebraska's state government has decided not to go along with the last-minute change rather important.
Donald Trump (rather infamously) never admits he's wrong. Even on things that are easy to disprove with incontrovertible evidence, Trump will still insist he is right. He will construct an alternate reality inside his own head where he is proven to be right and all those who disagree are proven to be in some giant conspiracy against him, and he will go right on insisting that up is down, or that night is actually day. He never backs down and certainly never apologizes -- no matter how much harm his lies may cause.
When the lie involved is something like: "I drew a new line on the map, so that's where the hurricane was going to head," then there aren't any actual victims (other than, perhaps, the government meteorological scientists who were pressured to lie about reality). But Trump and his new minion JD Vance are propagating a monstrous slur against a group of people that are now definitely at risk. And not only do they refuse to back down from their lie, they are creating new, worse lies and threatening to bring hordes of their followers into the hometown of the scapegoated minorities.
This should be seen as nothing short of reckless endangerment. If any violence erupts in Springfield, Ohio, it will have been the direct result of Trump and Vance spreading lies about the Haitian immigrants who now live there. We wrote earlier this week about how this constitutes "stochastic terrorism," but that was before Trump announced he'd hold a rally in Springfield within the next two weeks. Not content to let things die down, Trump is going to fan the flames and pour gasoline on the fire with absolutely no regard for any possible consequences that could happen as a direct result. Which is a pretty good definition of reckless endangerment.
