The pro-Harris, media-led propaganda effort is in full swing.
While on vacation, the writer of this blog was informed multiple times that Harris had pulled well ahead of Trump in the polls, and that she now dominated every one of the battleground states.
That is not really true. See here...
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-harris
If you click on each of the battleground states right about the results on this website, you will see that Harris leads in Michigan. Trump leads in Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and he has a slight lead in Wisconsin. These are collective results of all polls since Harris became the de facto Democratic nominee. If the election reflected these collective polling results, Trump would have 297 electoral college votes to 241 for Harris.
However, it is true that Harris has moved the results slightly. The most recent polls put her ahead in Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona and Michigan. If Harris takes these states, and Trump takes the rest of the battleground states, he still wins the election but with only 270 electoral college votes to 268!
This may now be too close to call.
Some wildcards.
Trump appeared before the National Association of Black Journalists and said, regarding Harris, "So I don't know, is she Indian or is she Black?"...But you know what, I respect either one, but she obviously doesn't, because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn, and she went - she became a Black person."
Trump has been vigorously condemned for this comment in the American press.
It remains to be seen whether or not this will hurt him, as Trump has a knack of saying out loud what many people may be thinking but would not dare to say in public.
Certainly, Harris has played up various aspects of her background depending on who her audience is. Then again, she has a perfect right to do that, as it is her background after all!
We may see what America really thinks about this matter in poll results very soon. If Trump's numbers drop, than those comments hurt. And if they go up?
Harris is about to pick Josh Shapiro as her running-mate. He is the Jewish governor of Pennsylvania. This would normally be a wise choice, as he is moderate and balances out Harris' very left wing views on many issues. He is also from Pennsylvania, which is one of the battleground states that she must win to become the President.
The war in Gaza makes this a breathtakingly risky move. Shapiro has come out for a two-state solution, and he has been a critic of Netanyahu. Nonetheless. he also opposed the student occupations that were designed, in part, to force their post-secondary institutions to divest from Israel. He is also on record, as a student, in saying that peace is actually impossible between Israelis and Palestinians.
In picking Shapiro, rather than celebrating the choice, Harris will be in the position of having to defend and justify this decision from the very start to the masses of young people who have been registering to vote for her since she became the de facto Democratic candidate, and who see in her much of what they want in terms of rights to abortion, and other progressive changes to the national life of the country. Many will find the choice of Shapiro to be totally inexplicable - anti-Semitism is alive and well in America. If she actually does choose him as her running mate, it will very likely cost her votes. (Note - the fact that she has a Jewish husband will also feed countless conspiracy theories on the Left and the Right.)
Harris has not taken questions from the press since she became the de facto Democratic nominee. She will face questions at some point. This could spell trouble for her.
Besides having to answer for things like reversing her position of fracking in America, which has been the source of US oil self-sufficiency, the recent debacle that saw a female Italian boxer withdraw from an Olympic bout against an Algerian boxer who is alleged by some to be a transgender person with a male physique - saying, in effect, that she had never been hit that hard in her life, and that she was concerned for her safety - is a possible powder keg for Harris.
She is on record of favoring transgender rights. If asked by the right-leaning media, would she support the Algerian's right to box against women in the Olympics even if that meant, in the eyes of some, a significant risk to the health and safety of women boxers?
The issue itself is immaterial - the boxer is not transgender. The point is that this is potentially a lose-lose scenario for Harris because of the impression that it could leave with many voters depending on how she answers, and it is also an obvious type of question that she will face if she ever allows the press to ask her questions. How she deals with things like this will say much about whether she is actually ready to be the President of the United States.
A final note on the possible election result.
The repeal of Roe v Wade resulted in the mobilization of millions of determined voters who cost the Republicans dearly in 2022. It is possible that no polls are actually accurate now, as they focus on general intentions and not on any one issue. In fact, abortion may be the one issue that actually matters, and if that is the case, given that the Democrats support abortion, Harris may win this election in a landslide.
The nuttiest election ever continues!
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